#the racial binary needs to die

[doctormastertardis]

the entire fandom discussion and meta after "Dot and Bubble" aired reminds me of a joke:

"what's a white supremacist's favorite person of color?"

"a poc who is half white, or passes as white of course"

[pumpumdemsugah]

Why do folks act like you can only acknowledge sex-based oppression and the reality of human sexual dimorphism if you want trans folks to die? Why are we acting like white folks made up ‘male’ and ‘female’ when every human culture knew what a male and a female was before colonialism existed and patriarchy has existed way before white supremacy did? Why?

It makes me uncomfortable bc you’d get labeled as a terf for saying this but the average irl person that isn’t chronically online holds these beliefs and still believes in trans rights and uses preferred pronouns. Hell, I have two nonbinary friends who recognize the reality of sex and sex-based oppression. I personally both recognize sex and believe that trans women have a place in our fight for women’s liberation. So like. Why are folks on the internet acting like it’s impossible? What is going on around here? Because I saw a (19 year old) person say ‘sex based oppression isn’t real socialization isn’t real yada yada yada that’s white colonial bullshit and if you believe otherwise then kill yourself’ and my eye twitched.

and it gets on my nerves bc most of the ppl saying this shit are Westerners! If they went to a non-West country and said this shit, I bet my left tit that they’d be looked at like they’re insane!

These people can say this for the same reason they hate radical feminists but recommend radical feminist Audre Lorde, they don't read or comprehend, they regurgitate talking points and see Black women not as academics or peers but tokens to invoke without knowing what they believe. It's arrogance, self righteousness and anti-intellectualism mixed together. Non-western cultures now all have the same ideas about gender that all support whatever some white American says. I think what's crazy is how incredibly racist the entire thing is and ahistorical. It's shrunk the experiences of everyone else so white western losers can feel more complex

I do not trust white people that bring up Black women to talk about gender in the modern sense because they always get racist and make shit up

Social media has melted everyone's brain so much everyone is making extreme claims grounded in wish fulfillment . Online liberals are acting and pushing the idea that sex is fake but the Blacks are just built different with one body plan. Please ignore that because human beings spend most of our time in Africa, African people have the most genetic diversity compared to every other group in the world . White people think complexity only applies to them. They did this before with race science and they're doing it again. Educated white people without expertise are making shit up

Male & female is fake but big negro bone is real and that research about bones, race and osteoporosis, I've read it, it doesn't say what online people say it does, you're just racist. It's projecting body insecurities onto Black women as inherent qualities of our bodies so their white body is normal and a problem that was a them thing is an us thing but this isn't racist and demeaning. Online liberals want us to be a permanent Other so they feel normal then claim it's solidarity not racial hierarchy by another name. The dehumanisation of enslaved Black women is brought up not to talk about slavery but to Other the bodies of dead tortured Black women and ask the living ones to agree because they said magic buzz words. Online people don't bring up slavery to talk about what white people did but to add sex characteristics they want Black women to have and rewrite history. Slave master didn't think Black people felt pain so performed surgery without anesthesia on enslaved Black women that needed to be held down because someone that needs to be held down commonly is a sign she doesn't feel pain. Slave masters knew they were chatting shit.

Talk about how WOC don't fit the gender binary because of white supremacist dehumanisation has become talk that our bodies are wrong and weird and that's why. The blame for shifted from white people's racism to, of course the non-white have wacky body plans. Do they even think we're people? Conservatives and dumb dumbs acting like the sexual dimorphism in human beings is extreme ( it's not ) and that's why male and female artistic gymnastics is so different. Not training or history and using it as a cover for mockery and sexism so now regular men are challenging actual female athletes ( and losing ) under the delusional being male is enough

The online left and right are so are stupid about this but everyone ends up affirming centuries old ideas about race and women. What's annoying is people that say sex is fake aren't being truthful, it's fake for white people as they transcend language but the crudely made Others, we're bigger and badly made and that's why they're normal. Solidarity though

Why does it need to be explained that Blackness isn't a sexed quality or characteristic ? It's unbelievably offensive. None of these people are as intellectually curious as they claim they are. None of them have read anything about slavery, colonialism or feminism. They saw a post.

[rjalker]

Cannot believe I had to read with my own two eyes, somebody calmly pointing out the fact that some people, indeed, do not experience racism and are not oppressed by racism, and then somebody else responding, completely unironically, by repeatedly telling this person that they're stupid and chronically online and need to go outside and touch grass because it is apparently just such an absurd concept that... Some people don't experience racism and this is just a fact of how racism and white supremacy work.

you people would be a lot less racist if you would stop insisting upon co-opting the struggles and language of black and brown people to copy and paste queer politics onto, and then deciding to make insisting that these are the exact same thing the hill you have chosen to die on when you are literally choosing to die on the hill that it's violently exclusionary to say that some people don't experience racism and you are claiming that this is the exact same thing the exact same thing as saying that trans people are not oppressed.

You are literally making up people to get mad at you are literally deciding that the basic fact that some people do not experience racism and you are trying to pretend that this is saying that mixed race people don't experience racism because you have decided for some fucking reason that the experiences of mixed race people and non-binary and intersex people are exactly the same thing and that actually racism is just a metaphor for hatred against trans people so acknowledging the fact that some people don't experience racism is what you have now decided to translate to saying that non-binary and intersex people don't experience oppression.

Because you are racist, and think that queer politics aren't good enough to stand on their own that now you have to co-opt the struggles of black and brown people to make them seem more dramatic, like the kind of people who refuse to just call it emotional abuse and instead insist upon calling it narcissistic abuse because they think that emotional abuse doesn't sound cool or dramatic enough

It is 2024. Something has gone deeply wrong with you if you think the factual statement "some people don't experience racism" has anything to fucking do with whether or not people who do not conform to the gender binary are oppressed.

Queer politics and racial politics are not the same thing.

Racism is not a secret metaphor for hatred against queer people for you to decode and declare that somebody saying some people don't experience racism means that what they're actually saying is that people who break the cissexist gender binary aren't oppressed.

You are simply fucking racist and have decided to die for no fucking reason on this hill. This is your sign to fucking cut that shit out right fucking now because holy fuck.

If you are reaction to transrad fems is going to be to declare that every single person on this fucking planet is oppressed by every single fucking system of oppression at all times, then you are just going to become worse than fucking useless, it's just a matter of time before you start saying All Lives Matter If you are choosing to take the basic fact that some people are not oppressed by racism as a personal and violent attack against queer identities that are not even remotely involved.

[gryficowa]

Boycott!

Israelis hate Palestinians, Poles, Roma, other Jews (For supporting Palestine), Holocaust survivors… They hate everyone, but of course we are the bad ones

Eden was persecuting Nemo (a non-binary person) and that dickhead was defending her anyway, so what if during Eurovision all the Israelis were persecuting everyone around them, no, they are victims…

Israelis are not victims, they are torturers who cry like victims when in practice they hurt others and they fucking laugh about it because people believe them

Yes, I admire Israelis who oppose Zionist propaganda, it's just a pity that they are closer to zero and it fucking sucks

Even the Germans opposed the Third Reich, even the Russians opposed Putin (People love to forget about strikes when they can see everything as divided into good and evil)

When I see Israelis striking for Palestine, it is extraordinary, but as I mentioned, the number of unbrainwashed people who are pro-genocide garbage is very low and it will depress me, even there were many Poles (Despite the rotten apples) who risked their lives, and people still they believe that Poles cooperated with the Nazis (When Poland was a victim of colonization), how do you imagine the future of Jews? Will they wear all the shit the Zionists gave them? I don't want them to deal with this shit, I don't want the Jews fighting for Palestine to be erased, Zionists will try but they won't succeed

I hate how Zionists (Mainly Israelis…) call everyone Nazis when Israel is the real Nazi, doing the same as the Third Reich, FUCKING GENOCIDE AND RACIAL SEGREGATION IS NAZISM

Being against Israel for its crimes IS NOT NAZISM OR ANTI-SEMITISM, ISRAEL IS THE TORTURER, IT COMMITS GENOCIDE, IT'S LIKE SCREAMING THAT THE PERSECUTION OF THE THIRD REICH WAS XENOPHOBIC

Besides, the explanation "That Palestine is just as guilty" is sick, because that's what the fucking Nazis explained, according to them, Jews were also fucking evil, so they deserved to die, because they steal and are to blame for the fact that life in Germany is shitty (Because was not good at that time, but instead of caring what the reason was, it's always best to blame the whore on the group that can't defend itself…), because Jews are to blame for the existence of gays… Now the same is being done towards the Palestinians, to vigorously spread the narrative that either Palestine itself is to blame, or there's fault on both sides and it's fucking sick

I just hate that victim blaming still fucking works

Now that I have your attention:

-----------------------------------------------------

I know I've gone on and on, but it pisses me off, Roma and Poles were also victims of the holocaust, gays and homosexuals too, people with disabilities too, the fact that Israelis can hate other holocaust victims and think that they are "appropriating a Jewish thing" is fucked up

Just because the number wasn't big enough for you doesn't fucking mean that the other victims were less important, each of the victims is fucking important, so did the German ones (Because the Third Reich put them in concentration camps too), there were more Nazi victims, and we probably don't know about many of them yet, because society has decided that that they're not that fucking important and it sucks

Don't forget about the collections at the top

[forbiddnsky]

I don’t mean to be like disrespectful at all… but how do u feel about how prophet Mouhammed owned slaves? I know you once said he lead with compassion and gentleness and as much as I wish that were true I can’t get over the most probable fact that he was just another man in power utilizing theology to manipulate armies and women to serve him? It’s so hard not being able to talk to anyone about this bc most Muslims live and die by him and all he represents but it just doesn’t line up with reality for me and it makes me feel so alienated from Islam altogether

Brother asked a very good question! ☝🏼🤓

Ngl with a TAD bit of basic research you would've found your answer but that's okay lol, there are a few books I can point you to that go more in depth, which is where my understanding of Riqq comes from.

Islam does not legitimize slavery. But when we use the word "slave" we usually correlate it with the transatlantic slave trade. English words rarely correspond to Shariah concepts, so the use of "slave" isn't conceptually the same. Slavery has not always been the binary opposite of freedom, cultural traditions profoundly obscure our understandings of this concept. I think this is important to keep in mind when understanding slavery, or Riqq- in regards to Shariah. (Not to say that there weren't slaves back then that were treated unjustly and were abused! Of course there were slaves, (not pertaining to just race or gender), which were oppressed and abused).

However, we are discussing slavery in the framework of Islam. The Prophet PBUH knew that any form of oppression goes against Islamic teachings. That's why he treated everyone with utmost respect and dignity. To have a "slave" Islamically meant you had to treat them no differently than you treated yourself. You could not harm them in any way, or overwork them, you had to feed and cloth them, they were not considered "less than". The raqīq was considered an extension of the family and household. By this very logic, we would conclude that the Prophet PBUH did not have "slaves" in the same way we would use the term in this day and age- they were not forced to do labor nor were they abused or dehumanized in any way, shape or form by the Prophet PBUH, as that would be forbidden in Islam. Also, RACIAL SUPREMACY IS FORBIDDEN IN ISLAM!

One example of the treatment of slaves by the Prophet PBUH is Zaid, may Allah swt be pleased with him (a simple google search will give you the info ya need) as well as Bilal ibn Rabah, one of the closest and most trusted and distinguished companions of Prophet PBUH. He faced torture prior to his freedom by Prophet PBUH and in turn became one of the greatest names in Islamic history, honored to this day. AGAIN, There is no such thing as racial supremacy in Islam.

The laws of Islam sought to emancipate abused slaves; to free someone of any form of oppression was regarded as an act of piety and an act of worship. By Islamic law, autonomy and equality are valued and the belief that no tribe, no race, no human is better than another is emphasized. In Islam, there is no submission to ANYONE or ANYTHING but Allah swt.

I hope this cleared things up for you. May Allah swt increase us in knowledge and forgive us for our ignorance Ameen. 🤲🏼🤍

[woundedearth]

the hill i will die upon is bodies are neutral, beauty is not requisite to Womanhood or its subsidiaries, and no one owes anyone the performance of or aspiration to conventional attractiveness. humans, cis and trans, have such incredible natural diversity of bodily configurations. there is so much racism and transphobia and ableism encoded in these conceptions of beauty, health, normality, etc that desperately needs to be unpacked to understand the politics of your own body. how colonialism imposed a narrow gender binary from the outside in, how protestant ethics underpin the moralization of health, how you can trace so many modern narratives about beauty to product advertisements. all these ideas are fucking constructed. recently! you can trace their lineage and how they have developed to place narrow boxes around your experience of existing in a body in a world that we're pretending isn't defined by malnutrition and toxic pollutants and climate crisis, inherited epigenetic trauma and racialization and poverty, product placement and how capitalism is implicated in all of this shit for profit. and the biological imprints of all these things that are so deeply historical and systemic that they're out of any human being's control!

my thesis here is just that the power in knowing these things exist hopefully allows us to decouple all the bullshit from self image. i think some version of that is necessary when your community is sick, traumatized queer ppl whose lives have come to bear ALL the bullshit. like, fuck this! none of this is ever going away, so at the very least we can say "there's no SHAME in bearing the brunt of this, existing in my body, being marginalized, being sick and/or disabled, being poor, and not fulfilling societal expectations of ~beauty~ because of all that. or because you just don't fucking want to"

[shayminlucario07]

Also (Sorry for derailing OP but this NEEDS to be said), just because a character isn't built like All Might doesn't mean he's a Twink. We have been misusing that word too much for too long and it's genuinely a big problem.

If a man is a Twink, he does not have significant (or even really that noticable) muscle mass. The only muscle definition he has comes from how thin he is. (And they have little to no body hair, but that particular aspect is less commonly misrepresented.) A character is not a Twink just because they're thin. Best example- Link. In almost every depiction where he's an adult, he's not a Twink. At most, he's a Twunk (which, if you don't know, is a combination of Twink and hunk- we've basically forgotten that the term hunk was used in that way, but it was! Know your Etymology, people, this is really important for us queers. Don't let our history die). Cloud Strife is not a Twink- again, at most, he's a Twunk (but if he can swing around the Buster Sword, it's probably just stylization- like how Tifa isn't overly muscular, because the designers are fucking cowards). Most characters in Genshin Impact aren't Twinks- except the ones like Bennett and Mika who are literally teenagers, and like, Gorou and Lyney.

(Also, I'm certainly not qualified to unpack this, being a white person, but there's a racial aspect to this as well- at the VERY least in fandom- because I so often see the lighter-skinned characters being feminized or "twinkified" while darker-skinned characters are hyper-masculinized which... I shouldn't need to say it, but I'll leave that for someone more qualified to unpack. (Obviously the reverse also happens a lot and is equally a problem, but again, someone more qualified, and I just happen to see it less.))

The misuse of this term may seem innocuous, especially considering how many major figures in the queer community misuse it (Trixie I love you but please stop), but it is NOT innocuous. Even independent of the harm done by these terms losing their meaning (mostly from straight people appropriating them) from a queer culture preservation standpoint- misuse of this term is a nightmare for body positivity. I am someone who very much fits the actual description of a Twink (though, if you call me that, I'll punch you), and who doesn't like the way they look. Seeing people who DON'T fit with that meaning get mislabeled as Twinks only worsens my body image issues- especially since the only body types that don't get mislabeled as such are not realistically attainable for me, because of how thin I naturally am. I'll never look like a bodybuilder, like a Bara anime character, because that's not how my body is built- it's just not attainable. The body types that actually ARE realistically attainable (regardless of how much work attaining them may take) being mislabeled with the same term that describes the body I have and hate now, makes me feel like there's no hope- that I'll never be comfortable in my own body, and I'll never like the way I look. I'm not Trans or Non-binary (that I know of yet, at least), so I may be inaccurate here, but I don't think it's a stretch to describe the feeling I'm talking about as dysphoria, or something similar, at least.

And finally, just because someone is a Twink, that doesn't mean they're inherently femme. Body type does not equal gender presentation- you aren't more or less masculine or feminine just because you are or are not thin, fat, or muscular. Twinks are very, very often feminized- in very fetishized and, frankly, homophobic ways, especially with fictional characters (Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom Link being the most obvious example)- and I shouldn't have to say why that's a problem, or the many ways in which it is.

*grabbing mlm shippers by the shoulders* guys nobody needs to be the twink. nobody needs to be the sub. nobody needs to be the femboy. they can both be big fat hairy men who bask in each others masculinity or they can both be unspeakable monstrous creatures with inhuman genitalia it’s okay I’m holding your hand. Let me show you the way

[whoa-its-dani]

PSA - Don’t Give Money to “Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights”, it’s a cult.

Don’t give money to “Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights”.

It’s a front run by a cult group called “RevCom”. RevCom / The RevComs is an anti-trans, anti-sex work, racist, MLM / pyramid scheme cult run by a creepy dude called Bob Avakian.

Here’s part of a statement by NYC for Abortion Rights discussing it: [x]

We, a coalition of grassroots pro-abortion organizers, publicly denounce RiseUp for Abortion Rights.

Our movement needs to be strong and united. Most repro groups have turned their backs on RiseUp privately since their inception. It is vital for all repro groups to now unite in discrediting RiseUp publicly.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of our concerns about RiseUp, and why we strongly urge pro-abortion activists to join us in rejecting its leadership and demanding the group step back from pro-abortion spaces:

RiseUp is a cult and pyramid scheme.

RiseUp is an offshoot of the RevCom (Revolutionary Communist Party) group. Over the past few decades, RevCom has emerged as a personality cult revolving around its white male leader Bob Avakian. While RevCom fervently denies accusations of it being a cult, RevCom’s own website claims the only effective way to achieve social change is to follow Avakian’s leadership and teachings. Similar to its parent group RevCom, RiseUp’s only goal appears to be gaining more followers in order to raise more and more money. Both essentially function as pyramid schemes that prey on social movements.

RiseUp diverts money from social and racial justice movements.

RevCom and its fronts — RiseUp and Refuse Fascism — are notorious for raising tens of thousands of dollars and using those funds to pay RevCom leadership, and to purchase marketing materials (to raise even more money). Refuse Fascism exploits civil unrest to recruit followers (as it did during the 2014 and 2020 uprisings), and RiseUp is now repeating the same scheme. The RiseUp website, for instance, features urgent prompts to donate with no information about where this money goes. What we do know is that this money never goes to abortion funds (which they argue are not a strategy to defend abortion access), providers, practical support groups, or anyone actually working to increase abortion access.

RiseUp stigmatizes abortion and perpetuates harmful myths.

RiseUp is currently focused on its ‘Save Roe’ campaign, which involves the wearing of white pants painted with fake blood, die-ins, and coat-hanger imagery. These theatrical tactics further the extremely harmful idea that abortion is a violent procedure and safe self-managed abortion is not possible. In fact, RiseUp has not once raised awareness about medication abortion as a post-Roe tool, and its only aim is “saving Roe”, despite this never having been enough historically.

RiseUp perpetuates anti-Blackness and does not center intersectionality.

RiseUp’s leader, Sunsara Taylor, has been a controversial figure in pro-abortion spaces. She and her followers are known for swooping into town and leeching off of existing BIPOC-led grassroots efforts across the country. Additionally, RiseUp frequently likens abortion bans to “female enslavement,” which is profoundly disrespectful to Black, Indigenous, and POC comrades.

RiseUp has a homophobic past, and remains transphobic.

RiseUp leadership frequently others trans and non-binary folks and excludes them from its speeches, writing, and conversations. In responding to feedback in Instagram comments, RiseUp admitted they focused on “women and girls” and referred to trans and non-binary folks getting abortions as “others” (we have screenshots).

RevCom also has a homophobic past. Up until 2002, the group’s official position was that homosexuality contributed to women’s oppression, amongst other nonsense. While RevCom and its fronts have since begun to include platitudes for the rights of LGBTQ+ peoples, they have yet to apologize for this past or issue a statement or position in defense LGBTQ+ rights.

RiseUp continues to intentionally exclude sex workers.

Sunsara Taylor, the brain behind RiseUp’s grift, is explicitly against sex work and the porn industry (see her prior activism with Stop Patriarchy). Sunsara Taylor’s stance is harmful to the fight for abortion, which we believe must be intersectional.

More sources are included in the full statement.

This has been your PSA. I’d appreciate if you could spread this around.

[literary-structures]

Although [Christopher] Okigbo, in his personal life, was willing to die for a political cause, he routinely rejected the notion that he be bound by political obligations in his professional life. For instance, when he was awarded a prize at the 1er Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres in Dakar in 1966, he declined it on the grounds that black literature was an absurd concept. In this declaration Okigbo expresses a longing to be recognized as a writer, not as a black writer. For him, the aesthetic realm transcends, or ought to transcend, racial and political boundaries. In life he might be a firm believer in the need for black people to assert their rights. As a poet, however, he felt that his work should not observe systems of racial exclusion or separatism in any form. Also, his rejection of the prize might be construed as a classic modernist gesture of distancing oneself from careerist or financial ambitions in the name of artistic purity. Sometimes, as in “Black Orpheus,” the idea of an apolitical literary sphere represented a pragmatic compromise, a willingness to suspend or forestall political differences that might hinder the establishment of independent African cultural institutions. In other cases, the discourse of aesthetic autonomy could function as a self-conscious professional strategy, a belief that literature and its producers ought not to be influenced by wealth or by vested political interests. […] The modernist ideal of autonomy, refashioned to speak to the circumstances of the Cold War, could permit African intellectuals to reject ideological binaries. Commitments to artistic and political sovereignty were frequently blended in the fabrication of anglophone African cultural institutions of the decolonization era. The doctrine of nonalignment, expressed both politically and artistically, bolstered anticolonial sentiments by insisting on African self-determination in all its forms. Even apolitical art, in a paradoxical formulation, could have some political resonance in that it insisted on the right of Africans to determine their aesthetic future without interference from the Cold War superpowers, which were prone to evaluate every aesthetic object by its ideological utility.

Peter Kalliney, ‘Modernism, African Literature and the Cold War,’ in Modern Language Quarterly (2015) 

[randomnameless]

I second the point about Earl Grey - how can Fodlan be an Earl Grey Masterpiece (tm) compared to, say, that silly Engage game, if we have an evil cult of evil racist supremacists who are behind everything wrong (tm) in the world?

Due to Supreme Leader bias or pandering, the devs still wrote the benevolent dragons and their influence to be BaD and needing ReFoRmAtIoN because, uh, reasons - even in VW which is, imo, one of the reasons why this route is so flawed and needed Rhea to die off-screen for the route to ultimately end - which makes the story look really off : if Agarthans are the reason why everything goes wrong in Fodlan (because random people can't even be asses to each other, as Nopes demonstrated, everything was engineered by Agarthans!), why are the Nabateans, depicted as benevolent and helping humans - if not reacting strongly when people try to kill them even if the plot takes great measures not to give them to much light - universally decried - as in, their legacy (the CoS) cannot continue to exist in the way it was at the beginning of the game (you know, when Agarthans and their allies wrre wrecking shit up) and must be "reformed" under Billy's guidance?

Fodlan points at the CoS being "BaD" because characters who diss them are never challenged, because the CoS itself never gets a chance to explain why they do X or Y or the game weirdly frames it as wrong (remember Caspar being upset because people who, uh, tried to rob a site and killed unarmed students are executed???), and ultimately, is always "ReFoRmEd" or "changes" for the "better" at the end of the war.

So, despite showing us all the relative benevolent things they do, given how the narrative pisses on them at every second, the treatment of the CoS is seen as peak "morally earl grey" - when, imo, it's just nonsensical writing made to pretend two lords have a point.

On the opposite end of the spectrum - bar Supreme Leader's skewed priorities in FE16 - we have nothing remotely positive to say/read/discover about Agarthans, they're racial supremacists, they commended a genocide - even if Epi frowns a bit at Thales' methods, he still wants to save and calls Nemesis'n'his Elites "allies" while calling the Nabateans "spawn of the abomination" or "wretches"... -

So we end with one faction the game depicts as "Trust me they BaD even if I always show the inverse" and another as "shown and told to be BaD" - that's where the logical fallacy from the Earl Grey falls apart : if one faction is told to be BaD despite showing things they do that are GoOd, the opposite faction should... also be kind of the same, or at least, not be told and shown to be BaD, right?

I get trying to make Fodlan more interesting and escaping the binary writing of the games and setting by having HC or fanfics giving more meat to Agarthans...

But in the canon material, even if Nopes wasted its WoH paralogue on depicting the Agarthan PoV out of everything they could have came up with, the Agarthans we see (Cleo, Myson, Thales, Kronya Epi, Solon, etc) are relatively one-note and way more nefarious to Fodlan and its people than whatever the Nabateans are presumably doing.

But hey, the Earl Grey veneer regarding the CoS (and Nabateans, because as a race they must be wrong Supreme Leader said so) really took its hold on the fandom (special mention to Rhage!) - It used to annoy me but now I laugh at it, when some people, let it be on YT comments or whatnot complain about the game not showing the dark side of the CoS or the Nabateans doing things that'd make the conflict less one-sided : while they understand the framing of the CoS and Nabs is artificial and hammered without any substance, instead of wondering why this is so artificial, they have the inverse reasoning : the game was afraid of making Rhea/the CoS look bad by not showing the so-called atrocities the totally not biased characters say about them -> believing the totally not biased totes reliable characters over, well, what they can play and see and read in various flavour texts as a player.

"Why don't we see the CoS being more racist and/or forbidding contact with outside, leashing out Gilbert's brother for trading with Albinea?"

Maybe because the person who says the Church promotes isolationism is full of crap and doesn't even know what he is talking about? Even in his end support blurb ?

I'd also say this also is a result of Nopes - which felt, on that regard, a bit more "well-written" than Houses since they dropped (but not totally, it's a Fodlan game after all!) all pretenses of "telling us the CoS is BaD" - Claude and Supreme Leader piss on the CoS ? Fine, let them do their stuff, but AG will have NPCs, characters and supports (Dedue'n'Cat) contradicting everything the other two routes are parroting/saying.

Of course the characters will never be challenged on that front, and Dimitro exists because this is still a Fodlan game - and yet the less "hypocritical" side of the writing is shown in this game : in Golden Shower, we're left wondering for reasons why the CoS needs to be eliminated, Claude's faulty reasonings can be poked with a spoon (even if no one uses any in his army, save for Barney's ominous lines) and it just comes as a one-sided hatred and tantrum an asshat is throwing because, uh, why not, coupled with racist stereotypes and a big dose of "I'm going to remove the outdated customs of that land I'm invading with my army" stench.

Supreme Leader? Does Supreme Leader things, backstabs the CoS - who lent their help when she asked them to lol - and while we witness an assassination attempt from the CoS in this route, well, it's against her, the main instigator of this war, something even Larva spells out! This route ends with the CoS making the big sacrifices to get rid of the big bad (Thales) this path first identified, ignoring Supreme Leader in the process.

So in those two routes littered with various "but Church BaD trust us" we end up with people questionning the Lord who is depicted as a petulant shit head, and... the CoS having a big sacrifice/heroic moment at the end to defeat the bigger foes, the Agarthans.

-> Nopes ends (maybe against its initial will as a game centered on Agarthan narrative?) on a better appreciation/note/feeling for Nabateans and the CoS, despite having two routes siding against them.

Compare with Houses, who always removes Nabateans/Rhea of the picture (except in SS's S support) and brings "reforms" to the CoS - because it needed some, even if we will never know what they are or why those reforms were needed.

If by playing FE16 some people got the feeling Nabateans and Agarthans were, uh, as bad as the other because Supreme Leader said so, those same people might have been frustrated playing Nopes because, hey, in Nopes, the game is more or less telling you that, no, Nabateans try to help protect and save Fodlan, when the Agarthans are hell bent on destroying it and everyone who isn't them!

Mind you, Claude's route made some people feel bad for Nabateans/Rhea/the CoS, because of his insistence that they must be destroyed because "reasons" when all of his assurance that they have to be destroyed comes from thin air and we're shown AND told they aren't... doing the things Claude accuses them for.

Nopes ruins the Earl Grey veneer FE16 built to demonise the CoS, so by extension, if Supreme Leader's priorities have to make some sense in FE16 (funny how Claude can be called an idiot or moron, but Supreme Leader might just be called 'misguided'), the Nabateans have to be a least a bit bad, or really really bad so siding with the Agarthans isn't completely bonkers.

Ergo : For the Agarthans to be a "viable" option to ally with, their common enemies, the Nabateans, must be demonised, even moreso than what FE16 and its subsequent fandom/fanworks tried to because Nopes hammered again that Nabateans are protectors/siding with humans who don't want to fight/war for "reasons".

Tl;Dr : some people cannot accept that their "Earl Grey" masterpiece is pretty straightforward, and all of this "earl grey" exists in their own fanon because they do not like what the canon is telling, and refuse to make the difference between fanon and canon.

I keep thinking about how people want the Agarthans to be victims. Not so much that people are saying they did nothing wrong, but a lesser evil compared to Rhea and the Nabateans. I'd ask myself why people would want such a thing, as even in the route where you side with them they're made out to be evil that will be exterminated, but I wouldn't have to think about why that as. The answer is simple, they validate Edelgard's killing of Rhea.

And, really, it fits with stuff I've seen since the game came out. The people claiming that despite Silver Snow and Verdant Wind being routes where big reveals to the lore are given to the player they, alongside Azure Moon, lie to the player and that Edelgard is the only one to tell them “the truth.” Or that said lore pops out of canon once the player decides to side with Edelgard. They want to ignore that the same route not only paints Edelgard as a liar often enough that a chapter titled “Lady of Deceit” begins and ends with her lying to her army, but also reveals that Edelgard herself knows that her source was an Agarthan puppet yet she is still clinging to that narrative. They'll claim it's all a matter of what the player believes to be true and tell people to disregard the game's creators saying that they built Fodlan to support the story of Silver Snow, and that while Flower is about believing something else, how that leads to not only mowing down everyone who stands in your way because of those beliefs but also ends up with tyranny and oppression under the path of supremacy.

Or we'll get people who ignore that Claude's route talks about how we need to let go of misconceptions we may have about others by getting to know them, and how Claude's misconceptions about the Church may have been caused by the Agarthans feeding him info to turn him against Rhea. No, instead Claude is a manipulative schemer who should have killed Rhea as his final boss after learning about her past and how his ancestors profited off the slaughter of her people, and that Golden Wildfire is who Claude really is and his good route.

Because people want to believe that Houses is this morally grey game, where everyone is a hero from their POV. But let's look at that. As mentioned, Claude's POV blaming the Church is ultimately framed as him having misconceptions, and once he got to know them he realized that Rhea didn't have to be his enemy in achieving his goals. Not only that, he realizes the Agarthans tried to manipulate him like he says they did to Edelgard, and ends up taking them out before finishing off Nemesis. Dimitri's POV is based on his survivor guilt and belief that he needs to live for the sake of avenging those who died. He grows out of this thanks to Byleth teaching him he needs to live for the sake of the living and for himself, all while taking the Agarthans out by complete accident while Edelgard's ideals are presented as demonic while Dimitri's beliefs make him a savior. Meanwhile, Edelgard's POV is based on what her father told her despite her knowing he was an Agarthan puppet. She can't be swayed her path as she tries to lie and manipulate those around her, and the world supports the route where Byleth leads the Black Eagles away from her influence (making it so that the Black Eagles are the only class who can get their story-related character development joining any other class). It's either that, or you ignore the world building to walk a path that is based around hadou, which has negative connotations especially when contrasted with oudou, which is what Dimitri's route is supposed to lead to.

You can ignore this growth if you play Hopes, but Hopes is supposed to show how much of an influence Byleth has on their class and is not supposed to replace that experience. Shez can't give Dimitri or Claude the character growth they would have gotten to see the problems with their POV, nor can they stop the Eagles from supporting Edelgard. Shez just seems to go with whatever the lord says, adapting to the route being played, and as such enables each lord's behavior. Not to mention that Shez is hinted to be from Agartha himself, and even then the Agarthan POV doesn't paint them in a positive light.

So, really, what are people saying when they want the Agarthans to be the sympathetic villains rather than the game wanting us to feel sorry for the Nabateans? That they feel the game not doing so is a flaw despite the Agarthans being so racist that they view everyone else as non-human animals and therefore it's okay to experiment on them? That we should support their genocide of the Nabateans because Edelgard said things used to be better despite the reveal that they're the ones who gave mankind Crests while making themselves out to be gods? We should still think that the Church are the bad guys when the Agarthans are the ones behind the experiments, Duscur, the death of Claude's uncle, and so much more? Or that Nemesis was a good king who was demonized by history rather than the power-hungry asshole he's depicted as, the only real misconceptiont here was that he ever was a hero in the first place rather than the tyrannical bandit he actually was.

In the end, it's just people not wanting to let go of their own misconceptions about Fodlan. They don't want to see Fodlan for how it really is. If anything, Houses can serve as a deconstruction of the idea of Death of the Author. It's a game with some very direct messages, but the routes where the player diverges away from those messages (Flower and the entirety of Three Hopes) it leads to bad endings because, at the end of the day, Fodlan was built around those messages. It was built about the need to see people for who they really are rather than who we think they are, as Edelgard being revealed not to be the heroine but rather the villain is the twist of the game who needs to be removed from power. Also that people supporting each other is a far better outcome than everyone being left to fend for themselves, especially when the people at the top use their power to benefit others. But it's up to people to do that themselves, to figure things out for themselves rather than fall into the trap.

Otherwise, we're left with people defending the likes of the Agarthans.

[normal-thoughts-official]

Oooh yeah the first time I was playing as a female mc because I wanted to romance ava and I usually go male mc if I want to romance a man and female mc if I want to romance a woman (and I think there was one book with where mc could be non-binary so I picked that one but I didn't finished the book), and Stacy's brother felt Hetero™ in a way, like Hollywood ish (? Honestly like cinematographicly bad hetero) but I ended up really loving Andy too, and Stacy felt a little flat but also I really liked her potential, like go crazy girl, and the mom issues.

Apart but holy shit you're 10000% right about that teacher like who inmediately threatens expulsion just like that for something not violent ??? And to an honor student with way too much on his plate ??? Obviously it would have been bad with any student, but you have literally the reason of why he's doing it and as a teacher HE LITERALLY COULD HAVE HELPED WITH IT ??????? Like something teachers can't really help students because it's a family thing only or is a financial struggle or etc but it was literally because of school (and his family, but the teacher could have heloed him with the school part)

(Identity thief anon (also I go by any pronouns ahhshs))

ur valid! that's lowkey what i wish i'd do (picking female MC if my fave LI is female and the other way around, i mean) but unfortunately i always go into the stories blindly having no idea what i'll find </3 so i cant really do that doiajdiosa and then i get attached for the MC i picked so i feel bad about changing their gender/name/appearance when i replay. so what i usually do is that i pick a male MC when i get the option because A- u don't always get the option, so i end up being male half the time and female half the time either way; and B- i feel slightly more comfortable with a male identity than a female one. like i'm still nonbinary and i wouldn't consider myself male aligned or within the gender of Man, but like... when i first came out i went by any pronouns but then because im afab everyone was like "cool, she/her only it is" so i was like fuck that and stopped using she/her. so i feel slightly more comfortable with a masc MC and end up going with that

there's also the fact that it always feels slightly genderfucky to have a male MC because choices is so sexist and also always writes the stories assuming ull pick a female MC, even when they give u the option not to. so when u pick a male MC he's very like not toxically masc and some things they add to make a QuiRkY MC that are very white woman and would feel annoying are actually kind of subversive for my black and brown male MCs. so like another win for queerness /j

ILITW MC in particular i feel has HUGE nonbinary vibes like no reason at all he just does <3 maybe it's just that for once the male clothes for ILITW actually fUCK. i wanna dress in that goth outfit <3 so gorgeous ugh. i love him even tho he's a fucking dumbass

also there's a book where an MC can be enby? worm? ive only ever read one book in choices with any enby characters at all (america's most elligible, books 2-3) but they weren't even a LI which is disappointing cuz they were a billion times superior to any of the LIs. sorry america's most elligible LIs fans

also oh connor IS the epitome of white cistraight man even when u play as a man tbh, like he was just so cistraight to me daouhdsaojdasij he kind of annoys me but also i forget that he even exists until he shows up onscreen and choices starts trying to push me into his lap and i'm just like, ugh, not again

and yeah i think i feel a similar way about stacy. i don't dislike her as a character and i don't feel like she as a character felt flat, her growth was very interesting and i loved seeing her start to challenge her mom like YESSS GO GIRL GIVE US EVERYTHING, she just felt flat as a LI to me ig? like idk i didn't feel chemistry between her and my MC personally, but also like, stacy girls are valid u know

right exactly. like i don't think ppl really understand that a school that doesn't drive people to cry during finals week and feel absolutely crushed by having to be there and that makes ppl feel like they're stupid, not enough, and overwhelmed IS IN FACT POSSIBLE and actually pretty easy to make when we stop treating students like statistics that will get the school more clients/funding (depending on whether it's a private or public school). and like as a teacher getting my degree in brasil it just feels completely surreal to me that anyone would see a student who's so overwhelmed by the amount of extracurriculars and responsibilities he feels like he has to take that he starts taking drugs to help his performance despite it affecting his health, and see that as like... something morally reprehensible? like it is bad that it happened but it's not the student's fault, what's morally reprehensible are the circumstances that led to his decision, not his decision

and like it is very much a systemic problem, more and more kids are taking focus pills to be able to survive the pressure of school and have a shot at a future, either on their own or because we are actually medicalizing not existing to be productive. and if it's a systemic problem then the fault is at the system?? and like holy shit i legit don't understand why choices gave us options like being like "it still isn't enough" when lucas gets rid of his pills, what do you mean it isn't enough??? enough for what??? to FORGIVE him???? for something that only hurt himself??? for something that is very much a systemic problem and therefore NOT HIS FAULT????? literally what the fuck even is this, lucas doesn't have to "make up" for a single thing, he needs to be HELPED is what he needs

like idk i know that the school system in the US is...... extremely backwards lmao which is not a term i like to use because it usually implies imperialistic views but the US is the height of world imperialism so like actually idc. brasil has a pretty progressive constitution and as a teacher my whole education was focused on being critical of the school system, particularly the productivity obsession, and drilling into us again and again that we aren't supposed to just be teaching subjects, we are also supposed to be teaching how to be a citizen, be a critical human being, work towards building a better future, and learning and growing AS A PERSON to be healthy and happy are values of the school system

like that's easier said than done when schools are under insane amounts of pressure by companies in practice to be productivity-driven, and most teachers who actually want to do a good job end up having to live at the edge of the knife and constantly fighting back outside pressure, but at least it is very much a mandatory part of our education to become teachers and also like literally part of the constitution. so i just... i can't fathom reacting the way mr cooper did? like as a teacher i felt BETRAYED, i felt like he shat all over my profession because that is the opposite of what we should be doing, this is a kid who needs help

and just like hOLY SHIT HE DID NOTHING WRONG, what are you punishing him for??? it's not even a like, stealing bread to feed your family situation, because what he did HAS NO VICTIM OTHER THAN HIMSELF, and therefore HE IS THE VICTIM NOT THE CULPRIT. he doesn't have to repent or atone or answer for a single fucking thing, he didn't victimize others, he doesn't have to apologize, there's nothing to punish him fOR??? like i don't believe in punishment anyway cuz im a prison abolitionist but doDAUSDJADASIJDAS???????????? HE DIDN'T. HE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG. WHY IS THIS WHOLE GAME ACTING AS IF HE WAS IN THE WRONG. OH MY GOD

it's like saying that someone needs to be forgiven for self harming????? like how is it that someone has been hurt continuously until it led them to hurt themselves and then they have to? make up for it to a bunch of other ppl? my god it makes me so mad and i genuinely don't understand the logic, like usually when i see someone doing fucked up shit i can see the logic but i don't agree with it, but this time i genuinely DON'T SEE THE LOGIC. my USan friends said it was because he was technically doing drugs but like i legit still don't understand

anyway any school that drives a student to do something like that needs to rethink their entire curriculum and the psychological effect it's having on kids, because lucas is 1- not even the first one according to mr cooper; 2- even if he was, that'd be the only one who got CAUGHT; and 3- even if there was really only one singular student who went tHIS far, i doubt the others weren't feeling that same pressure and dealing with it in other similarly unhealthy ways

i know that's probably easier in brasil than in the US even if it's by no means easy here because here at least in public schools the curriculum and political-pedagogical plan has to be agreed on by the school community (teachers, parents, students, workers, and anyone who lives in the area of the school) and it's updated every year, so like, you have more means to do something to change the school in a deeper way, altho of course that still has to mean swinging the rest of the community, but still. but at the very least he could have looked for counseling for him? tried to find a way to take some of the workload off his shoulders? given him some more time on assignments? motioning for all the clubs he was the president of to have co-presidents so he was less overwhelmed?

like there was just daodsao he could have done so many things and he justs DIDN'T he chose to not only punish him instead but quite literally THREATEN HIM WITH DEATH because that's what calling the police on a latino student over a drug charge is. like he might've survived but the possibility that he would fucking DIE was very much there, and i know choices didn't think of that because they'd rather die than think about the racial implications of anything but holy fucking shit. and im not even getting into how mr cooper is BLACK because then ill just start biting people like thanks for putting that threat on a black character's mouth choices. if u need me ill be foaming at the mouth

anyway SORRY god why is it that i always get to the salty part within 2 seconds of joining a fandom i promise that i actually like it lives and the way they handled most of their plot, i genuinely think it's a very well written and actually worth ur time story but i just doadosaida like i said particularly as a teacher in the context where i'm being taught, plus with all my political beliefs, i just can't let it go aaaa

also ty for telling me ur pronouns! idk if i assumed them at any time, i don't think so but i might have done so without realizing and if i did im really sorry. also sorry for the gigantic salty reply daojdsaojdaisjsajdoadsaodasj rip me i never shut up

[alex-myers-ethn-100c]

Octavia Butler - Overall Takeaways and Analysis

In addition to imagining queer relationships and a third gender option, Butler prompts us to re-examine the role of toxic masculinity and virility in our movements. Time after time, the toxic man in the community causes problems that cause not only himself but the rest of the community to be in trouble. Keith in Parable of the Sower becomes too impulsive and leaves the community, causing his own death and creating the potential for a break in. Curt in the Xenogenesis books attacks the aliens that are trying to help him because he feels that they are stifling his free will and ends up getting himself killed by a reflexive sting as he punches one of the Oankali. In contrast, Gan in the short story “Blood Child” gives himself up to the alien that his family lives with so that his sister does not have to carry the alien eggs and potentially die in the process of extracting the alien larva when they hatch. Butler prompts us all, especially men, to re-evaluate our need to be constantly in control and be comfortable letting others take care of us and doing reproductive labor like taking care of others in the community.

Butler’s Parable of the Sower is ripe with teachings that apply to ethnic studies work and organizing. For instance, the central philosophy of ‘Earthseed’ that defies change but not in a way that absolves us of our responsibilities to the earth and to each other. We must be flexible and willing to adapt to the world around us lest we get left behind and trap ourselves in a deadend. Furthermore, the Earthseed religion and community reminds us of the basics of kinship. Rather than competing for limited resources in a capitalist, zero-sum game, we can share with each other and protect each other in order to ensure everyone gets what they need. Ultimately, one of the key questions posed at the end of Parable of the Sower is one of land: should we settle among the stars, what is our responsibility to the earth here? This question prompts us to re-examine our relationship with the land that we live on and engage Indigenous communities to create a world that addresses the needs of everyone as best as it can despite the incommensurability of our positionalities.

Kinship is not limited to Parable of the Sower. In her lesser known works, Butler struggles with power dynamics and new kinds of familial structures in the Xenogenesis trilogy and Fledgling. The Xenogenesis books imagine a parental configuration after a fictional alien species, the Oankali, makes contact with humans and integrates with them. There is a third sex option: the ooloi who links male and female and is responsible for healing and genetically altering the world around it. This theoretical third sex/gender pushes us to think outside of binaries and imagine what new forms of gender and sex identities we can tap into as our society and sense of self and kinship changes. Fledgling, a vampire story, takes a familiar genre and re-imagines the vampire as a polyamorous, bisexual being that forms a symbiotic relationship with human beings that is more mutualistic than parasitic. The formation of vampire communities is a fictional microcosm of different types of communities and kinship that are more open and welcoming than the nuclear, biological family that racial capitalist society upholds as ‘normal.’

[rwby-diaries]

So, over on the Fair Game Effect server, we did a little AMA!

The moderators of the Fair Game Effect Server hosted AMA’s for content creators and we participated (and had loads of fun doing so!) We wanted to post the questions and answers here for y’all who aren’t involved over there. 

Here we go!!!

Essentially, Clover! After episode 12, a lot of us came together on the Clover Deserved Better Server. Once there, a few of us, including our previous member Ryan, had talked about creating a rewrite of the RWBY show from start to finish. A server was made and many joined in. The first change ever made from CRWBY-canon was that Clover would not die. It was also obvious for us that we were going to have fairgame canon in our rewrite, shortly thereafter we landed on Qrow and Clover being married before RWBY even takes place. Both characters hold a special place in our hearts and it’s Clover and Qrow who inspired us to take lead and start this project!

The biggest changes we wanted to see in RWBY Rewrite was more representation for POC and LGBT+ We’ve talked about characters ethnicities, gender identities, and sexualities at length and it’s something we want to take very seriously. Some of us draw on our own experiences and lives when discussing potential ideas. We haven’t confirmed many, but so far we have:

trans Nora

genderfluid Neo

non-binary Ren 

For ethnicities, culture, and racial backgrounds, we tend to look to their inspirations or who they’re based off of for more than just default white.

Additionally, we wanted to give each character a bit more depth. To be less vague, a lot of the background characters feel one-dimensional, and we want to explore and flesh them out even if those details wont be touched upon as much in canon. We are also tweaking a few relationships, but that's something you'll have to wait to see!

Yes! We generally like to allude to their inspirations. Some of the birthdays carry meaning behind them:

Cinder’s birthday being on a holiday about witches and bonfires

Weiss’s birthday being on the last blue moon we had

Others were simple:

“Haha, Tai on tie-dye day

“Mercury is a bitch, I’m a bitch, why not both be gemini bitches?”

We actually started the project in the midst of the Clover Deserved Better movement, and therefore made the decision to keep Clover immediately as we not only wanted him back, but we thought it was a good writing decision as Clover balances Qrow out.

Immediately following that decision, we knew we wanted Qrow and Clover together romantically. Within approximately a week of knowing that, it was suggested that they knew each other from the Vytal Tournament, and it quickly evolved into them being together since their Academy days and being married before RWBY takes place.

After we decided they met at the Vytal Tournament, it kind of evolved into this monolith of an idea. If you read during fairgame week this post, they initially meet during the ball, but they don’t exchange names. Clover spends most of the tournament trying to find Qrow. They end up actually fighting in the 4x4s in the tournament. Clover and Qrow end up freezing when they see each other, and Clover first hears Qrow’s name from one of the announcers.

A dynamic we want to make sure is clear with their relationship is trust. Since Clover is in the military, and Qrow doesn’t necessarily trust Ironwood, we want to convey that Qrow trusts Clover with his entire heart and vice versa. They are also incredibly close to their nieces. Mirroring how Ruby looks up to Qrow, Yang looks up to Clover! This is reflected in her design, mostly the sleeveless-ness. Fashion runs in the family.

While we don’t want to give too much away, we have worked hard at developing Clover’s backstory! For one, we created a team (team CLVR) that he used to be a part of and has since grown apart from, but they are still lifelong friends. (You can read more about them here.)

We’re trying to give everyone established backstories, even if they don’t make it into the story itself we like to have them there for continuity and it helps to see how characters would interact based on their experiences etc...

We are developing a lot with the history of Remnant. It’s not complete, but a few things we are working on are the White Fang and the Great War.

STRQ: We are diving deep into this team, actually!

We have a lot of ideas for Summer specifically, about who she was before she became “Ruby’s dead mom, Tai’s dead wife”.

We want to make Raven’s feelings a bit more clear, specifically with her initial trust and love for her team and what caused those feelings to fade away.

They’re going to have some more designs as well, reflecting their ages. (They don’t need to wear the same outfits from birth to death).

We will be focusing on Tai’s emotional state after losing the of the loves in his life, as well as developing his relationship with his daughters.

There is still much more to be done for them, but we plan on giving them plenty of love and development.

Those are all the questions we got! If this sparked any curiosity in ya, feel free to send asks!

Big thank you to the mods on the Fair Game Effect Server for hosting our AMA and to everyone who sent in questions! We hope you enjoyed it!

[dadjokeslady]

Well, we agree on one more thing than, I do believe that gender is a social construct that should be deconstructed. As well as marriage and the nuclear family, or Monday for that matter. But the thing is that gender is more than a set of roles imposed on people, roles are the worst part of it, but there is more to it.

As a social construct, It do not mean gender don't exists, It means It occupy a intersubjective space, meaning it's a subject element that is present on most people's subjective experience, and thus can't just be wished out of existence. It can though be deconstructed with time, the same way that the notion of masters in a feudal society owning the plebs. Of course the hierarchy was not deconstructed, and it should be, but it's nature changed with the gradual change of systems.

For that matter, the notion that gender is not determined by sex is a step towards making it clear it is not something set in stone, and you'll find most non binary people would agree with that.

To deconstruct gender, what I believe is the course of action is both an academic discussion about it, a chance in how we teach children about the gender expectations and the gradual change of notions over time, once woman stops meaning subservient in everyone's mind, and that's a battle still going on, once man stops meaning violent... Once we divorce the gender from the gender expectations, those expectations dieing off, we will start to divorce gender from every aspect of its constituency.

But doing so without changing all the other aspects is impossible, you can't abolish gender while "all man are rapist" is still true, and to be frank, gender won't be abolished in our lifetime. Which do not mean we should not work towards making it achievable by the next century...

Anyway, sorry for the ramble.

I'll add that I do believe that in the scope of intersex people sex is very much a spectrum, but it has little relevance in the discussions I engage with in here. There is no need for fighting about it when there is so much more pertinent topics to be discussed, like the inner workings of the patriarchy and how to more effectively destroy it.

I'll tell you, no feminism that say woman have to do or be something specific will do. Any prescriptions that women have to feel in some way, or that women must do some stuff, is in the best case scenario a change in the patriarchy ways of working. We should be telling girls that they can do whatever it is that their heart desires, without forgetting to warn then about how the patriarchy will try and stop them from doing it, or even worst.

At the same time, understanding, in a ideological level, how the patriarchy is an institution, faceless, and how it forces everyone to perform specific roles. We can't win while we fail to understand that "all men are rapists" and "patriarchy fucks with man too" are mutually exclusive.

An useful analogy is the racial tensions in the united states, the white poor man's hate towards black people makes him vote in the kind of people who want them to stay poor into perpetuity. Racism fucks white straight man.

Now, again, sorry for the ramble, I'm open to talk if you want to DM me, or to tag me in a new post less cluttered with discourse. Have a great week.

You heard it here first: "we ain't trans exclusionary cause we exclude trans mascs from their gender identity"

I can't tell if TERFs are deliberately trying to be obnoxious anymore.

[ask-the-power-rangers-au]

How is everyone feeling in these trying times? (This includes you, Author)

Well I feel really anxious right now. As a gay and non-binary person my rights are literally being taken away and given back and taken away again so fast that I can never tell what my future could actually look like. Then when it comes to BLM I feel like I can never do enough. Racial equality and revolution is happening all around me and my parents won’t really let me out to protest for what I believe in. All I can do is help my friends who are able to and sign as many petitions, help donate as much money, and so on. I’m trying and I know that one day I could tell my kids that I and my friends were fighting for the right side of history. But ya know, I’m scared. For my friends and family and myself. Scary things are happening, but I know that change is coming, I just can’t let the conversation die.

Roman: Well, we aren’t really going through the same stuff that all of you are, but in my world right now, I’m ready. I’m here for the challenge and I know we’re the front line for protecting our Earth. But if I was with you all I would be out there on the front line helping protect.

Logan: Being a Ranger has been a distraction for me from my own personal issues if I’m being completely honest. But I believe it’s helped me grow and now I’m more prepared for this task than ever before. If I was in your position I know I would be doing what I can to medically help those in the protests as well as spread useful information along to future protesters.

Patton: Apparently I’m a legacy. My parents were Power Rangers, I grew up in fear that something would happen to them and it did. Now I’m in their shoes it’s me who’s in danger and I don’t know if I can do it. I’m scared. But that’s okay. Right? I’m allowed to be scared. However, if I could be with all of you I would be doing my dang best to keep my followers informed and prepared. Knowing is what people need right now and making sure everyone has the right news is important.

Janus: Being a Ranger is insane. I mean it just hits me sometimes that I’m in serious serious danger. And my friends are in danger and my boyfriend is in danger. I mean what we do is crazy, but I know that it’s gotta be done and while there are definitely better people to do the job, we got picked. And we’re gonna do our best. I’m gonna do my best. But you all are going through some shit and damn I wish I could be there to help fight for the lives that were lost. I will body slam a bitch.

Remus: Bumblebee, you would be Anonymous. I would be one of those badasses in riot gear! I’ll overthrow the damn government no question, they’re damn going down. And in any case, when I’m a Ranger that’s just who I am. When I’m out of that armor I’m always looked at weird, I know it’s the clothes and the attitude and I know I never let that societal bullshit affect me, but I really can’t help that it does. And I know that I’m in no way treated the worst. First off I’m white, so like, privilege right there. But I know that when I’m a Ranger that’s just who I am. No real judgement shit. I’m here to help.

Thomas: And soon I know we won’t have to be here at all.

[a-woman-apart]

I am Bisexual

I am a black, bisexual ciswoman dating a white, straight cisman, and the fact that he is male and straight are not the reason I am dating him, nor are they a reason NOT to. Pretending though, that his labels don’t factor into who he is as a person would be completely idiotic. 

At the end of the day, though, we are dating because we share similar values, we are compatible in multiple ways, we respect each other, and we love each other and are committed to making this work. It is true, that as a straight man, he wouldn’t be open to dating me if I were a man, but it is also true that if I were a man, certain aspects of my personality would change, due to a complex combination of nature and nurture that scientists still haven’t figured out.  

Also, there are people from both our “communities” (said very loosely) that aren’t down with “The Swirl” which is only something you get to celebrate if you are extremely privileged and quite a bit into eugenics. We each have racist people in our families, and we both get dirty looks on the street when we’re together for different reasons, but hatred is always at the core of the discrimination. 

Loving vs. Virginia was passed in 1967, and it is important to note that The Lovings wanted to be left alone and to live in peace, even though their marriage wasn’t recognized by law and it was a crime, even for white women, to give birth to interracial children. The Lovings only took their case to court when they faced racialized harassment. 

To me, it is absolutely terrible that in roughly 10 years, we went to celebrating “love is love” to now criticizing people for who they choose to date or how they identify. I can’t tell you how many times on this site I’ve seen bisexual women pressured to identify as pansexual to be “less discriminatory” or told in disgusting tones, “Why date men if you can choose to date women?” as if bisexual and/or lesbian were just things you can turn on and off like a light switch. 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the rise of radical feminism and AFAB-nonbinary/transmasculine culture has coincided with poorer mental health for women in our community and also with a HUGE uptick in misandry and biphobia. Even gay men aren’t above being “canceled” for so-called “transphobic” caricatures of women, even though men have been playing women in the theatre for centuries, and now, women can play men, too. #Progressive  

Honestly, one thing I will say that guys do better than us women (in general, there are always exceptions) is comedy. Yes, men, as a a general rule, are funnier than us. Men are more likely to make fun of themselves, us, and other people, with no mercy, and I honestly think the women/AMAB non-binary in our community-- either the black or the LGBTQ+ one, take your pick-- need to learn to take a fucking joke. It’s not that fucking serious, but the one thing that ISN’T funny is the hideous biphobia, racism, and backbiting I’ve witnessed online and offline this year. 

What makes it even more disgusting, is that while I am including AMABs in my roast, I have actually seen MULTIPLE stories of AMABs being excluded from AFAB offline gatherings (DOCUMENTED ON THIS HERE VERY SITE) in the name of “safety” because they are seen than nothing more than a man in a dress. 

So, here’s where I lose some subscribers...if a so-called “man in a dress” is unwelcome in your circles, do you REALLY think you have room to fucking talk when a huge portion of you you skirt the line between male and female because you can’t accept your own femininity? So really, are you really “non-binary” or are you just a scared little girls who can’t grow up?

Of course, that isn’t ALL of you, but when the country (as pointed out by J.K Rowling) sees a 4400% in female to male transition (a lot of it with very young girls becoming AFAB/non-binary, many of whom are taking testosterone) while male to female transition rates remain UNCHANGED, suddenly this isn’t a “trans” or a “non-binary” problem, this is a FEMALE problem. Trans people, prior to this huge upswing, made up less than 1% of the population, and that included MtF and FtM transition rates. These rates had remained steady FOR YEARS, so from a purely mathematical perspective this uptick is a huge statistic anomaly. 

For years people on the Right have decried the so-called “feminization of boys”, when in reality the “masculinization of girls” is statistically a far more pressing societal issue. 

I didn’t want to get this harsh, but this is concerning as a medical health issue, especially because research from the Scientific American reports that lots of young women who report having gender dysphoria end up not being dysphoric about their gender at all, but uncertain about their sexuality [click link]. If I had a quarter for every time a girl who never felt comfortable with her femininity or identified as asexual or aromantic turned out to “just be gay/bisexual” then I would be pretty fucking rich. 

I felt the same way. I felt like I was “Not Like Other Girls” and even though I never felt like a man, I often didn’t quite feel like a woman. It turns out that bisexuality, especially in women, corresponds with certain personality traits (aggression, assertiveness, high sex drive) that have been “coded male.” Gender bias in medicine is still responsible for why we don’t have more studies on lesbian and bisexual women, or on women IN GENERAL. As someone who is concerned about women’s rights and the safety of young girls and women, I think it is a HUGE DEAL that modern medicine still sometimes operates on the false assertion that women are just men without dicks and added baby-hosting parts. The effects of testosterone have been heavily studied, but there is SO much we don’t know about estrogen, including why different amounts of it don’t factor into PMDD, PMS, and other reproductive issues, as much as certain women’s brains and bodies responding to it DIFFERENTLY for reasons not fully understood. 

To make matters worse, while disparities in treatment based on race are less marked in other areas of medicine, black women still die in childbirth-- especially in the Southern U.S.-- at much higher rates than other demographics. Bisexual and lesbian women are also more likely than straight women to fear childbirth, which can be a huge source of anxiety for us. Even if we choose to undergo it, our anxiety is often downplayed by health care workers. This fear of childbirth can be seen even in bisexual and lesbian women who love children and strongly desire to be mothers. This, as well as the cost of surrogacy/IVF treatments, has been a reason that same-sex female couples often opt for adoption. 

Bisexual women, in particular, are also more likely to suffer mental health conditions and be the victims of male-perpetrated domestic violence than straight women and lesbians are. “Straight-passing” doesn’t really seem to provide a shield from that, I hate to tell you. 

The very concept of calling someone out for “passing” in an attempt to insult them actually reeks of jealousy and amazing privilege. In the case of bisexual people, it assumes that hiding an entire facet of our identity doesn’t matter and doesn’t take an emotional and psychological toll, because we can “choose” an opposite sex partner. This ignores the fact that falling in love isn’t based on choice, and that the moment we pursue a same-sex partner, we still have to “come out” if we want to maintain a healthy, open relationship with them. 

In the case of trans individuals, it assumes that “passing” erasing the fact that you have biological differences (such as typically being unable to parent children) from cis people that might make you undesirable to certain partners. Also, if you are also “stealth” you risk the chance of experiencing discrimination and/or violence if your identity is “discovered.” 

As far as being “white/European passing” this also does not erase the genetic and geographical ties you have to your ethnicity and/or country of origin. It doesn’t change the fact that if people start making racist comments about any of your racial demographics, it still hurts, even if you try to hide it.