#the way there’s no justification for bigotry and oppression

[gingerswagfreckles]

When people on the left want a justification for hating an entire marginalized group of people, they just reframe that group of people as an oppressor group, regardless of whether or not that lines up with reality in any way. The entire internet did this to Jews and now Jumblr is doing it to Atheists for some reason. Atheism is illegal in 19 countries and punishable by death in 13. This is very much enforced in these countries, which are many of the same countries Jews were expelled from in the past 75 years. Atheists who were arrested in or fled MENA countries in which Atheism is illegal are the natural allies of Jews. And yet what do people on this website bitch about endlessly? How annoying Atheists are, how Atheism is ok but annoying militant Atheists are everywhere (they're not) and are all culturally Christian (have you ever spoken to an ex Muslim atheist in your life.) Now I'm seeing posts where someone rants and raves about how Atheism is a product of imperialism and colonialism or whatever and how all of the types of Atheists you don't like are just ex Christians...do you guys hear yourselves. What are you saying?? There has been one US Senator to be openly Atheist ever. The only places people can claim to have been oppressed by Atheism are like Soviet Russia and Communist China. You in the West are not fucking oppressed by Atheism, whether you are part of a minority religion or not. Hating Atheism is the overwhelming majority opinion on both the right and the left. Atheists can't even acknowledge that they're Atheists outloud without being accused of being possessed by the devil by Republicans or being asked "but not like, really Atheist, right? You agree there's probably SOMETHING out there and that everyone who thinks otherwise is an arrogant jerk, right?" by people on the left.

Acting like Atheists have any significant political or social power in nearly any country in the world is just ridiculous. You guys know that's not true, you know belief in religion is the majority opinion and Atheists get treated like shit globally. And yet here we are doing the same song and dance we've seen a million times before, where people are using all kinds of leftist sounding language to justify mocking, dismissing, and being overly cruel about a marginalized population. Because hey, if I just throw the word imperialism in there, it's ok now, right? It's acceptable for me now to say out loud how much I hate a whole group of marginalized people based on the absolute worst behavior of the worst people in that marginalized group! What even is "bigotry." That doesn't apply to me, I said the magic word imperialism! AND I found a nutcase awful person from this group willing to stand up and say I'm you're strawman! So now it's totally acceptable for me to use this as an excuse to go on about how I've always thought atheists were annoying freaks who should shut the fuck up forever and are the real source of all the problems in the world!

[velvetvexations]

whenever I see the TMA/TME shit being thrown around, I'm just sitting in the corner with my head in my hands mentally begging the people who think it's good to get a grip already

oppression and marginalization and privilege are complicated and nuanced, and this doesn't suddenly just go away for trans people! the way trans people engage with gender and are treated by society is often complex and personal and dependent on any number of things, you can't just say "these things are transmasc and these things are transfemme and that's it"

just claiming that everybody who isn't a trans woman is "exempt" from transmisogyny is frankly an absurd statement to me. bigots often don't even care to know the distinction between "gay" and "trans", let alone the different flavours of trans identity! and even if they do, they don't target their bigotry based on "who specifically identifies as the people i hate", they look at anybody who seems close enough and go "oh they must be the people i hate"! despite how hate crime levels seem to be a common justification for arguments that "trans women have it worse than trans men actually"... do they think people would go "look, a trans woman, time to get to hate criming! oh, you're actually just a cis guy who likes to wear dresses? guess i'll just leave since you're exempt from the effects of transmisogyny."????

and that's not even touching on the way it's so frequently used like a fuckin shitty-ass replacement for agab-type terminology; heck, ive seen at least one person actually refer to it as a better replacement for agab! i'm nonbinary, i don't consider myself transmasc OR transfemme, stop trying to shove me into a yet another shitty little reductive dichotomy! i'm already rejecting the idea that i need to have "M" or "F" assigned to me, i shouldn't need to disclose my agab so they can decide whether or not i get an "A" or an "E" instead! at least agab stuff doesn't inherently make assumptions about my identity and experiences as a trans person!

The idea is that only trans women are "targeted" by transmisogyny, but this is ridiculous, because cis crossdressers are just as in the line of fire. A drag queen is the same thing as a trans woman to cis transphobes. They do not care about our internal sense of self. Similarly, they do not care that trans men are not trans women. They don't. You can tell them you aren't a trans woman when they beat up because you advised to use the woman's bathroom. They don't care.

[ventbloglite]

I have heard from transmisogynists some variant of "These trans women are just men who want to escape responsibility for misogyny by saying they're women, because if they're victims they can't be oppressors." over and over.

Now I'm seeing basically the same thing said about trans men. "Trans men transition to escape misogyny then use their AGAB as an excuse to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be victims and have male privilege."

and like, that's just such an ingenious way to view transgender experience. I get why cis people would be that cruel, but it's baffling when it's only transgender people.

Trans men do not transition to escape misogyny, that's literally an ancient transandrophobic statement which has been used to erase historical trans men for decades whether they view the highlighted statement as 'girl power' or 'gender traitor' or some other justification of hatred towards men.

Because, and I can't stress it enough, to suggest so is to suggest the opposite of trans women and agree with transmisogynists.

Trans men and trans women aren't that different, they're all transgender. There's no reason at all why transitioning towards womanhood would be deeper or purer than transitioning towards manhood.

There's no reason at all why trans women would transition because they're deeply and sincerely women and self actualisation is worth it, but trans men only do it because they hate being women or hate women in general and want to escape misogyny which absolutely always happens and doesn't at all invite any other bigotry or oppression from being transgender.

Trans people don't transition/aren't transgender for political reasons. To encourage such ideas is to encourage trans men to stay in the closet 'because it's more feminist' to not share a gender with the cisgender men who actualy wield the power.

[stormsbourne]

when montero (call me by your name) by lil nas x had its music video release, I bore witness to a very strange and annoying kind of discourse. for those few not in the know, lil nas x's montero music video features the singer pole dancing his way down to hell, where he proceeds to fuck the devil. this, to me, seemed pretty tame and mild. I've seen much more risque music videos than this, though I did enjoy the video and the song greatly and there were a few days when it was fresh that I listened to it on loop. all well and good. but when I went online, I found myself occasionally stumbling across posts expressing that lil nas x, a gay black man, was fucking it all up for other gay people. the homophobes, after all, already believe we're metaphorically in bed with satan; why would you cater to their opinion and reinforce negative stereotypes about gay people like that?

this is all, of course, very silly for multiple reasons, among which are: that not all homophobes are christian and that, even for those who are, the "in bed with satan" shit is a cover for fundamental, irrational disgust and loathing; that lil nas x, as a gay black man, has likely been subjected to this exact kind of attitude, including from fans of the genre he'd previously made a startling and sudden entry into, country music; that owning and fucking with stereotypes that oppressors have of them is a long and storied tradition of the oppressed, specifically because often the beliefs oppressors have or the justifications they make up for those beliefs are so fucking idiotic; and that lil nas x, a savvy businessman with knowledge of what Society is like, may have even deliberately chosen to do this for the publicity and attention it would get him in the public sphere.

but of course, none of these reasons mattered to the people making these accusations and recriminations. he's making us all look bad; this is the sort of thing that makes the straights complain about us; it's irresponsible and wrong of him to play into stereotypes and reinforce bigotry. et cetera, et cetera. that, of course, ignores even more things, like the fact that the sort of bigot who would be angry about the "gay guy fucks devil" stuff would likely have found a reason to be mad at him anyway, and that it's not nas' job to try and singlehandedly reform the bigots of the world. but I'm sure it feels much better to have someone you can blame for the foibles and flaws of modern culture, to have someone you can be angry at and accuse of personally making everything worse. it must really imbue a sense of control in a confusing and frustrating reality.

anyway, unrelatedly, heard sabrina carpenter has a new album coming out! hope it's good.

[hangingfire]

Meditations in an emergency

Late in Questlove’s 50 Years of SNL Music, we get to the SNL episode that aired on 29 September 2001. There’s a shot of Rudolph Giuliani standing front and center with a group of solemn firemen and policemen, and at the sight of his face I physically recoiled. It was like I’d flipped over a rock and found a giant venomous centipede.

It got me thinking this morning about something I glancingly read (can’t find the link now) about how the Youth Of Today have a hard time taking 9/11 seriously. As a now-very-middle-aged GenXer who had a hot moment of thinking her dad was in the Pentagon that morning (he wasn’t) and who has a firefighter relative who survived the collapse of the North Tower … I had a bit of a hard time getting my head around that. But the sight of that motherfucker Giuliani (“America’s Mayor”; it nauseates me to even think that phrase now) brought into laser-sharp focus the reasons why one might find the pieties around 9/11 to be cringe at best, and outright risible or even contemptible at worst.

I mean, think about everything people said that fall and winter about bringing America together, how everything changed that day, the death of irony, yada, yada, and then some more yada. There was, indeed, a brief moment of shared grief and horror and shock and an outpouring of empathy that really was quite genuine. (To this day I hold that the Onion was the truest expression of that national feeling.) But that sentiment was immediately politicized, and soon there was war in Afghanistan (questionable) and then Iraq (unjustified, with a casus belli that was a complete and total crock). And if you were an American of Middle Eastern descent (or even if you just looked like it), the brief moment of goodwill was even briefer; you would have quickly become a scapegoat for all kinds of hatred and bigotry. The aftermath of 9/11 made “waterboarding” part of common parlance. Yeah, everything changed … for the worse, in the long run.

9/11 became a justification for all kinds of things, ranging from nagging inconveniences to outright crimes, much like the way that a certain type of American evangelical claims that they’re being “oppressed” by anyone who doesn’t worship like them or look like them or be cishet like them. People love it when they can play the martyr and oh boy, the US rode that martyrdom blank check into the goddamned ground.

And you can draw a straight line from the Bush administration, which, despite being stupid and evil, at least paid some lip service to democracy and the checks and balances of government, to the current shitshow that is stupid, evil, vindictive, and not even pretending to care about the rule of law, led by a convicted felon and rapist, whose policies and personality cult could very well lead directly to the deaths of more Americans than were killed on 9/11. Never mind that we practically had a 9/11 death toll every day during the worst of COVID, the last time this guy was in charge. I mean, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if I were given a this-or-that choice, I’d rather have Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld back instead of these clown comics. And I hated those guys.

So yeah. If I were a younger Millennial or Gen Z kid, I might not take 9/11 all that seriously either.

And I guess you could throw up your hands and say that if 9/11 couldn’t change anything, nothing else is going to change either. If 9/11 couldn’t change anything, if Sandy Hook couldn’t change anything, and if a convicted felon can still get elected … what’s the point?

I don’t know. I’m just a parent who got laid off from her job last fall and is trying to get by in this hellscape, and yeah, it’s hard to have any hope. It’s hard to imagine any kind of unity in the face of an existential threat, especially since it seems like the moment we had all those years ago was just an illusion. A lot of smarter people than me have written and talked about what activism looks like nowadays, and how we shouldn’t do the fascists’ dirty work by giving up. And we shouldn’t. I guess if there’s anything I’m taking away from this, it’s to take that anger and disgust at the fallout from 9/11 and everything that came after and what’s happening now and find a way to use it.

[ctsouth]

Beastars is so good in concept and lots of individual moments are really compelling and strong but it fails in the way fantasy racism allegories often fail in that it goes out of its way to justify the in universe bigotry, and worse than it having these justifications and expecting you to disagree with the bigotry on principle that bigotry is sort of nebulously bad as is so common in this type of fiction, it kind of actively agrees that its (vaguely) oppressed class NEEDS to be oppressed to prevent harm. It wants to go for this mutual oppression angle which becomes just absurd when you look at how its society is actually structured. To say nothing of how many more layers of weird it gets when you get into plot points regarding mixed species characters who are both carnivore and herbivore.

Like. The parts of beastars that are just weird furry slice of life are genuinely pretty phenomenal. The Plot of beastars is complete fucking dogshit and I have yet to see a convincing argument for it being the way it is

[transfemme-shelterdog]

why do so many "trans-inclusive" radfems think they're progressive and radical for misgendering trans people 😭

just because you dislike a trans man doesn't mean he's secretly a woman, just because you dislike a trans woman doesn't mean she's secretly a man. there is no way to wiggle your way out of that, it's literally just basic human decency.

like, there's zero justification for intentional misgendering. you're (general "you") straight up just transphobic. stop trying to make excuses for your bigotry and do better; the bar is currently at the floor, for fuck's sake.

it's pretty blatant a lot of these people would be outright TERFs in another life. intentionally misgendering trans people "for the greater good", excluding them from your feminism on the basis of "they're predators who don't understand us or oppression"... TERF or TRF? impossible to say. All radfems are the same. I'm getting bored of it.

I used to be a "baby radfem", so glad I grew up and turned away from it. It's easy to fall into a political belief that fuels your anger and insecurity, and feelings of being The Upmost Victim, your desire for revolution, when you're a young impressionable gender-confused teen AFAB, coping with CSA trauma. It's easy to fall into the idea that all Males™ are evil, inherently sick creatures who are driven purely by primitive biological desires when all the men in your life failed you.

It's really saddening to see people in my own community fall down this pipeline. I wish I could assure them all that's it's okay to be angry, but that bigotry isn't the answer... you know, without them calling me a transmisogynistic pooner. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

All the more reason why I doubt a lot of these "transfems" are actually transfem. I like to think that transfems are more reasonable than to inflict something they hate being done to them, against another.

Maybe I'm just too optimistic

[author-by-night]

There’s a pearl clutching game of brinkmanship in “polite society” that passively encourages abuse and bigotry and silences victims without anyone having to actively try to.

This isn’t / won’t be news to most people, but it’s this invisible Thing sitting on at least US society (and I’m willing to be any white imperialist culture) and I want to try to drag the quiet part out and put words to it.

There are two axioms in our culture that underly the problem:

There are Good People and Bad People, and the social contract only covers Good People.

Good People don’t try to make problems for other people.

These axioms cut in about a thousand directions, but manifest in one underlying feeling that stifles change and fairness: we’re not allowed to say out loud that anything reflects negatively on a member of Polite Society.

When community standing is based on an invisible moral value judgment, anything that can be interpreted to impact a person’s moral value becomes an existential threat. This is what’s behind most white defensiveness: if someone is “proven” to the satisfaction of public opinion to have lost the moral high ground they get obliterated. Mistreatment of them becomes fair game, they lose access to community support or even financial opportunities, and turning that status around is a gargantuan effort if it’s even possible.

This is compounded by the fact that moral value is a matter of communal perception and reputation. What you are known for becomes how much you’re a Good Person, and thus intentionally voicing anything that might influence public perception is taken as both a value judgment and an attack. You’re not allowed to come out and tell someone they’re being unfair, or hurting you, or being bigoted because if those things are consciously perceived about them without a justification they are “the type of person who would do that.” People might erroneously conclude that they’re a Bad Person, and that could destroy them. “Why would you attack them like that, try to ruin their life by voicing that you’re hurt?” Does that feel familiar to anyone here?

Passive aggressiveness and ostracism are hugely relied upon under this cultural paradigm. For one thing, they’re quiet and it’s easy to have plausible deniability (even to yourself) while employing them. For another, they seem more theoretically ethically defensible. You can’t in fairness force someone to interact with someone else, right? You can’t force them to react to someone else in certain ways, right? Emotions are valid, after all.

It seems logical on its face to draw a line between choosing not to go out of your way for someone else / choosing to be honest about how you feel about them and choosing to intentionally blow up their spot. But the truth is that line is a lot murkier and more nuanced than people will admit, and especially when you reach a societal level… “passively” squeezing someone out becomes exactly as tangible as landlords price fixing their rent. We can’t say “well there’s no quid pro quo so it’s fair” or act like as long as someone doesn’t come out and say “ruin this person’s life or go after them” they can’t have done anything wrong or harmful. These practices can (and frequently do) create a gravity of maltreatment based on community vibes that is real, and is more likely to be instinctively targeted toward those falling at the fringes of that community.

On a more macro level this results in an inflexibility of the status quo. It’s a circular logic: we have to be Good or we could lose everything, therefore what we’re doing has to be Good. Normal has to be Good. You might see where I’m going with this, that this is where the whole concept comes around to white supremacy, and you’d be right! But that’s not all. Leftist spaces, queer spaces, gaming spaces, Tumblr… all operate on this logic too. Cancelling someone, a tactic born out of community action and a desire for social justice, relies entirely on this phenomenon. Being oppressed by white supremacy, patriarchy, and Christian hegemony unfortunately don’t preclude us from unconsciously conforming to the culture they create and using those same tools to police our own.

To truly create better, healthier, more stable communities we do all need to be more resilient to hearing what our impact on other people is… but that also means lowering the stakes by erasing the background of moral judgment, and cultivating a cultural understanding that people are as imperfect as they are nuanced. This doesn’t mean giving harmful behavior a pass, relaxing boundaries, or tolerating missing stairs. What it does mean is approaching people with understanding and empathy, divorcing behavior from inherent righteousness, and staying mindful of community dynamics.

We need to reform our attitudes toward fault, wrongdoing, and apologies. Understanding over rightness, amends over penance. I don’t really know how we get there from where we are, but I can only think that it starts small among friends and works its way up from there.

[obstinaterixatrix]

so a pal sent an article by a philosopher professor tearing down crypto guy’s philosophy (I think it was overall good, had important history/context, but it’s definitely skewing more personal essay imo and the guy does use rhetorical sinophobia to make a point; which is obviously intentional to break through to people who are uncritical of western ‘aid’ due to internalized bigotry and not applicable to people (especially people of color) (especially asian people) who are already critical of it) (this aside became the whole paragraph) (that being said I did like the conclusion of a concrete example of effective aid and there were some pretty funny/scathing quotes) and I ended up reading some of the articles the author linked to and it really reminded me of how original kamen rider centers the theme of ‘protecting human freedom’ over ‘justice’ because something that kept coming up was how women would report that powerful men in the ‘movement’ would pressure them into polyamorous relationships with the justification that polyamory is more progressive than monogamy. which is bullshit, they’re both neutral romantic orientations outside the context of society’s dominant narrative. it’d be like deciding that being asian is more progressive than being white; while this can’t be said for sure, I think there is a higher *probability* for someone who is marginalized to more critically examine oppressive structures due to minority stress and community needs, but while the foundation comes from the asian identity, it isn’t innate to being asian (e.g. my relationship to privilege/oppression would be way different if I spent my life in china, where I would be in the dominant group—obviously being in the usa adds an element of marginalization that doesn’t exist there *even with* the usa’s global power and influence). so ‘progressive’ only makes sense to apply to ideology/action, not innate identity (and I’m sure some people could make the argument that the orientation of abusive men in that movement was ‘abusive’ not ‘polyamorous’ but that gets into litigating identity in ways that aren’t provable or relevant). anyway the problem with ‘progressive identity’ is that it fundamentally has the conclusion that ‘everybody should be [x] instead of [y]’; it’s regressive to be monogamous, therefore everybody should be polyamorous (which, as a bonus, ignores everybody outside that dichotomy). and any conclusion like that is easy to leverage by abusive people in power, because people who are in positions of power will use every tool they can; physical violence is for situations where physical violence doesn’t damage status, psychological violence is for situations where psychological violence doesn’t damage status, we are now in a society that largely(ish) finds physical violence unacceptable which means psychological violence is going to be the tool of choice. and psychological violence is acceptable when the perpetrator is able to convince others that their perspective can’t be questioned and doesn’t cause (meaningful) harm. thus, the perspective of ‘human freedom’ can highlight gaps that personal definitions of ‘justice’ (or, ‘being progressive’) can’t cover up.

[astropithecus]

So, an interesting fact about me, I'm an agnostic with a degree in Biblical Studies from an evangelical megachurch diploma mill - I was going to school to be a pastor.

I spent a non-trivial amount of time with ancient Hebrew and Greek lexicons, reading the books of the Bible in their original languages. I did a lot of extracurricular study on the ecumenical councils - the bishops that voted on which books were going to be "the Bible" initially at the behest of the Roman emperor Constantine. I read a lot of the Gnostic texts that contributed to early Christian philosophy but were declared heretical a few hundred years after they were written.

The conclusion I came to was that if there were ever any spiritual truths in the texts that make up the Bible, they would've undoubtedly been obscured during Christianity's time as the official religion of the Roman Empire, if not excised entirely. Even just the fact that Christianity was the official religion of Rome often comes as a surprise to Evangelical Christians - they tend to be indoctrinated with a narrative that the Romans targeted Christians for persecution, they see Christians being thrown to lions as the representative image of Christianity in Ancient Rome. In reality, Roman historians are the ones that created that narrative in the first place, hundreds of years after the fact. The relationship between Rome and Christianity was complicated. For a couple of centuries, there was some scattered persecution, generally not targeted at Christians specifically. Ultimately, however, the Empire's attitude toward Christianity became essentially "if you can't beat them, join them."

The Roman Empire had need of an official religion and a holy text that reflected its values - xenophobia, patriarchy, slavery, expansionism - and the ecumenical councils provided it. People point out the hypocrisy of modern-day evangelicals for saying "God is love" but then hating women and minorities, but that is the religion of the Roman Empire, alive and well in 2023. It's a stretch to call the Roman Empire "fascist" (the word didn't exist yet), but the word fascism comes from Fasces, the symbol of Roman imperial magistrates. It is no coincidence that the more literally you interpret the Bible, the more comfortable you become with a nationalist Christian theocracy, as the Bible was assembled by the ecumenical councils to be a cultural assimilation handbook for new, recently-conquered subjects of the Roman Empire - the world's first "Christian nation." Modern-day Christians promote the idea that people are "twisting" the Bible to support hatred, bigotry, and oppression, but they're ignoring there was a period of several hundred years where anything that questioned the absolute racial and cultural supremacy of the Roman Empire and it's natural-born citizens was declared "heresy" and struck from the canon. It's a text whose primary purpose is to provide spiritual justification for conquering and subjugating people.

That means White Christian Nationalists aren't "misinterpreting" the Bible, they're using it exactly the way the Roman Empire intended it to be used. To codify and legitimize a caste system where native-born male citizens occupy the highest strata, and political leaders are the arbiters of God's will. It took a lot of re-writing to take the "proto-communist" teachings of the early Christian church and turn it into that Bible, but that's probably why most of what became known as "the New Testament" was written by Roman citizens, well after after Jesus' death. Fun fact: Saul of Tarsus - author of the Pauline epistles, otherwise known as "two-thirds of the New Testament" - was a natural-born Roman citizen that never met Jesus. As if that wasn't a tenuous enough connection, about half of the Pauline epistles are probably falsely attributed. We don't really know who wrote them, when, or why.

Once you recognize the bias, it is glaring. The Bible paints patriarchy as such a fundamental force of nature that salvation itself is an "inheritance" you have to become "joint heirs with Christ" (the Son of God) to receive. It says anyone violent or debased enough to seize power is "appointed by God" - a step further than even "might makes right," this says "might makes you the literal mouthpiece of God on Earth." If I'm being honest, at this point it wouldn't matter if the Bible were the infallible "Word of God" or not - if this is "God" talking, I wouldn't worship him just based on principle.

But it puts Christians in a difficult spot. You either have to concede that the Bible is fallible (which is heresy, according to evangelicals) or that God really does hate women, foreigners, democracy, and social equality. If a divine force "guided" the decisions of the ecumenical councils it would mean God endorses slavery, government authoritarianism, and racial supremacy. On the other hand, if there was no divine influence, then the entire Christian canon is essentially fanfic, philosophy cherry-picked by Romans to not be at odds with their own imperialist values. Either way, it's not representative of ideals I could dedicate my life to. I left the church before my ordination.

Before my mother passed, dismayed for my eternal soul, she used to tell me she prayed Proverbs 22:6 over me often - "Train up a child in the way he should go: And when he is old, he will not depart from it." Christians regard this scripture as a promise that if they raise their children to know God, they won't be led astray as adults. I wonder sometimes if she got what she prayed for, but in a different way than she expected. She raised me to know a God of love, of peace, with a heart of justice and understanding (which means tolerance, by the way - it's the ancient Hebrew word shâmaʻ which means to hear, and understand. When King Solomon prayed for "understanding" to lead his people, he was asking for the ability to hear and relate to people different than himself. That's what scriptural 'wisdom' is - empathy and compassion - you know, the things Evangelical Christians call 'woke' now). Because of it, now that I'm 'old', I can't be led astray by the callous Roman imperialist god of the Bible or the new capitalist American prosperity Jesus that didn't really mean what he said with "sell all you have and give to the poor."

Seems a little arrogant, doesn't it? Maybe even offensive. "I know the truth, everyone else is wrong." Who do I think I am? But since I exist, now old and still well-"departed" from the modern Christian church, the only alternative explanations are a) Proverbs 22:6 isn't actually a promise from God despite what the majority of western Christians believe, b) God doesn't keep his promises or, c) nobody is listening to prayers from little old church ladies and this whole 'god' thing is just ascribing anthropomorphic motivations to the forces of coincidence and random chance in the first place. As an agnostic, I don't really have any skin in that game, so feel free to pick whichever explanation sits best with you. Just remember, if you ever ask yourself "what would Jesus do?" - the answer might include flipping over tables in a church bookstore and chasing church-goers with a bullwhip.

[pfp-rousseau]

(Portrait painted by me)

As you know, John Jacque Rousseau was a prominent Enlightenment philosopher, whose ideas can be summarized with this quote, “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains”. Rousseau believed that human beings are naturally good, and become corrupted by the process of becoming “civilized”. This “corruption” was largely the acceptance (subconsciously or not) of inequalities; so something like class, which is artificial and has only existed for a few thousand years, is understood by people living in societies as natural.

Rousseau came up with these ideas after his clumsy attempts in getting accepted into aristocratic social circles. As a middle class Swiss man, Rousseau was not given an education in high class etiquette; Try as he might, he could not conform, making a series of embarresing fuax pases at fancy salons. As a marginalized outsider, Rousseau could see how constraining these elite spaces were, how they created inequalities by creating social divisions between an ingroup and outgroups. He developed these ideas in Discourse on the Arts and Sciences(1750), which got him notoriety from fellow academics; that attention would expand to the wider public with the release of Rousseau’s novel La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), which quickly became a best-seller and garnered Rousseau a loyal fanbase. Probably as a result of this growing middle class readership, Rousseau followed his novel with a similarly accessible book on child-rearing called Emile, Or On Education(1762).

The book spends most of its pages on the development of the titular “Emile”. The advice expressed reflected Rousseau’s philosophical ideas. For example, he stressed that parents should not attempt to force their children away from their natural inclinations by trying to reason with them; they should instead learn to follow their parent’s guidance through a hierarchy of strength (i.e do as I say because I'm stronger than you).

It should be noted that this focus on the “natural” and “primitive” wasn't specific to Rousseau; Enlightenment philosophy in general was concerned with the “state of nature” or the “natural order”. This was the result of Western thought turning away from religious doctrine to explain the workings of the world.

While these thinkers should be commended for breaking away from religious dogma and critiquing social inequalities, the last section of Emile shows the Enlightenment’s short-comings when it came to truly tackling injustice. This section (the fifth one) is the only part of the book where Rousseau draws his attention towards “Sophie”, Emile’s feminine counterpart. It is here where Rousseau expresses bald-faced misogyny to the reader; for example, he states that girls, “ought to have little freedom” and women, “ought to make herself pleasing to man instead of provoking him”. He justifies this sexist position by arguing that women are naturally inferior to men; “In the union of the sexes”. he claims, “one should be active and strong, the other passive and weak”. The presence of this type of relationship results in a dynamic where, “women is specially made to please man, If man ought to please her in turn, the necessity is less urgent”.

In Rousseau’s Emile, you can see how age old bigotries were propped up and maintained by Enlightenment philosophers; by picking and choosing at will what was “natural”, these figures could critique social constructs that got in the way of their liberty while continuing old oppressive belief systems that benefitted them. The replacement of the old, religious justifications for bigotry with new “scientific”, “anthropologic” ones laid the groundwork for future expressions of misogyny and racism, especially in medicine.

[wlwocprincess]

the way the darkling is literally your typical YA protagonist. Horrible childhood, nearly killed by others, abusive mother, had to constantly run away from oppressors but then eventually managed to create the Little Palace, and that's his story's ending.

I've always wondered if Yuri Vedenen was meant to be a parody of the protagonist of that terf wizard franchise. But now, I'm wondering if it was the Darkling all along, just villainous.

This is such an interesting ask! Thank you and I’m sorry for getting to it so late!

What I think is so interesting about The Grisha trilogy that gets under discussed is its position as a subversion of the typical fantasy story for young people. I very much believe that the Darkling is supposed to be a subversion the Edward Cullens and the typical immortal love interest who also operates as a dark seductive force, he’s supposed to be the “interesting” one.

I think more than anything, the subversion of this specific character of the terf wizard has to be the entire story of the Grisha trilogy, specifically Alina, since she’s the protagonist and what I find most interesting how different each story validates the protagonists’ specialness and heroism, specifically to the species and non species. Wizards are secretive and hoard this power to themselves with a separate society with its own problems with its own injustices (that are often framed as “Not That Bad” so there’s barely any unpacking) whereas Grisha coexist with humanity but there’s no separation there, this is where I feel like the Grisha trilogy reigns superior to terf Wizarding world.

The Grisha trilogy portrays a, not perfect, but nuanced tale of magical humans and prejudice, the problems with the world (racism, ableism, classism, systemic oppression) don’t entirely disappear with the existence of Grisha and their oppression, it doesn’t take a backseat, Bardugo doesn’t pretend that issues with the world don’t exist and the potential of persecution is not treated as a justification for magic to be victimized above all else, for there to be a magical “solution”—in TWW’s case being isolation. Being part of one minority doesn’t disqualify the other problems that exist in the world.

This is why I often have a problem, personally, with fantastical prejudice and oppression is that it serves as a metaphor to all systemic oppression, which is ridiculous because not all oppressions are comparable and often, they treat the world as a utopia aside from the magical oppression OR they force actual oppression to take a backseat and put the fake oppression on par with real ones.

But most importantly, it shows a lack of understanding of how oppression works. Bigotry and prejudice is irrational, and often, this fear of the unknown is justified via socialization and there is a use of power to force oppressed people into these systemically degraded systems that need to be acknowledged and dismantled, many of these systems of oppression not only coexist, but also are directly related to one another and liberation in one place is a threat to oppression in another. Giving a concrete reason for prejudice and making that reason being Literal Power just does not always work in my opinion.

The Grishaverse goes about this much more realistic way in my eyes, and due to the this, the specialness of Alina and the Darkling, is made much more complicated and by complicated—I mean false.

The Grishaverse does not present fantastical power as what is ultimately liberating but solidarity and community. Alina loses her powers, yes, but also gives it to the community, to the people at the lowest, and at her end she embraces what truly makes her special—which was never her fantastical power but her humanity and she embraces community.

Contrast that to terf wizarding, which yes, also somewhat subverts H*rry’s “specialness” but also doesn’t really deal with what creates Voldemorts and Death Eaters aside from the simplistic “Evil is Evil and Must Be Punished” whereas there is understanding behind what makes the Darkling the Darkling. But there is no acknowledgment of systemic problems and ones that are highly reflective of real world issues such as House Elves and Banker trolls (I think they’re trolls?) end up being brushed aside. H*rry may encounter these issues but doesn’t bother to really try and make the world he lives in better.

Where the Darkling’s ideology fails is that he, a man who is privileged in every axis and holds the most fantastical power, believes that this fantastical power is what will liberate him. He doesn’t value community, as he values his one sight of what will bring him liberation. The Grisha who follow him are not on equal footing with him and he presents himself and his way as the only source of liberation that the Grisha in Ravka have. He is willing to play into other systemic systems in order to achieve what he thinks will bring liberation, the patriarchal culture of rape and class by creating The Little Palace that is only a safe haven if Grisha are willing to be tools of the government, meant to be looked for all throughout the country and brought to be groomed into service to the crown from an incredibly young age. He believes that allowing Genya to be raped by the king is a worthy sacrifice. He even manages to convince Genya herself of this, her personhood, her mental state, her physical well-being being negatively impacted on the basis of her gender are all nothing in comparison to the liberation on the singular axis that she is promised. She must endure this to gain that liberation.

Other Grisha become tools for Aleksander, and it’s not at all surprising, he and his mother are not simply Grisha—They are amplifiers. He is an Other among the Grisha themselves, this is why power is so important to him. Power is survival. The Grisha’s liberation is his liberation but also his draw towards ultimate fantastical power is what he believes will protect himself, if all other Grisha are below him and can be used as tools, they can never use him as a tool.

This is what makes him such a complex and tragic antagonist because he is not simply a Leftist Villain Gone Too Far, he is a single issue champion who never sees the value in community or dismantling other systems.

However, this is simply my take and I do have issues with how Leigh goes about dealing with these systems in a restorative way, the series is not perfect but I don’t entirely expect her to have all the answers anyway but I am glad that there is a series that deals with magical prejudice without disregarding all real systems of oppression.

Thanks for this ask, I’m sorry if I didn’t answer your question in the way you wanted, but you raised such an interesting point! 🩷

[zatdummesmadchen]

True but that’s not the point they are trying to say.

This post is highlighting the love and loyalty that queer Muslims have for their country and culture. It is targeted towards those (Israel supporters) who are using homophobia as a justification for supporting or turning a blind eye to a genocide, oppression, bigotry towards their people. — Pinkwashing basically.

Technically weaponising lgbtq, women's rights when it comes to Palestine.

There are so many queer Palestinians who are advocating for their country which has been under brutal Israeli occupation for years. That’s what the post is about.

Queer Arabs/Muslims/Palestinians/Christians even Jews have been advocating for Palestine for years.

Also every Muslim country is different, Palestine literally has many intelligent educated women reporting, demonstrating and fighting against oppression the way they can, this is also true for queer Palestinians.

I think a queer Palestinian saying this in the post has more weight don’t ya think?

I am not saying your points are wrong but let’s not shut down and call the experiences of queer Palestinians 'blatantly not true'.

Israel is killing every Palestinian regardless of sexuality. (Or …age or …gender) that’s what they are trying to say.

Again. Not trying to attack you, but please please don’t try to claim this post as false which was probably written by a Palestinian queer man who is probably no longer with us.

[rametarin]

The real 'point' of the "bear or man" question.

H'okay. Lets pretend we do not live in a world of anti-racism how it is.

Someone on Generic-ADHD-Video-Site.com posits a strange question to you. "You're stuck on an island with one of two men. You have only these choices. Black man, or white man?"

And surprise surprise, the poll responds: White man. As the majority of ADHD-Video-Site, in this timeline with little in the way of anti-racist work, favors whites. And Asia, also, is allowed to participate; from East Asia to Southern Asia/India. So, fair to say, the results skew.

People that are not racist ask, "Excuse me!? You can't just pose a stupid question like this. That isn't okay." That even half the people would feel so emboldened to engage this stupid question, much less demonstrate their bigotry by just going with the white guy because the alternative is a black man, is questionable.

And the people that run the poll and the alleged fair outcomes go, "Oh? Well maybe if black people weren't so likely to rape and kill you, WHICH STATISTICALLY THEY DOOOOOO, there wouldn't be so much bias against them! It's just the facts."

They then go on to cite statistics, which present themselves as objective, empirical, possessing scientific rigor and oh the people presenting are such LOGICAL and FACTUAL people, not at all driven by bias and prejudice. But they don't cite nonpartisan, unbiased sources, their methods if mentioned at all wind up being suspect or black boxes you aren't allowed to scrutinize, but you do discover there's a funny college and academia based clandestine group with some funny ideas about race and nationalism they would like to make more common and be the foundational logic behind more domestic policy in the country.

Come to find out, Radical Nationalist people have certain "lenses" through which they "analyze" the world and interpret it, claim they aren't an organization, "just a set of ideas," and these ideas include treating racial demographics like destiny and citing that they're different classes of people to argue their destiny is one of war, conquest and oppression, it's just a matter of which is which. This view colors their willingess to use faulty premises and treat their propaganda as if it's scientifically and logically accurate truth free from bias or agenda.

And when called out on their racist shit, they fall back to justifications. Be they "trying to make people THINK!" with stupid ultimatums like this, intended to make you agree with them if you accept their shitty premises, or "just twying to have a convuhsayshun" when they're caught lying about negative interactions with black people that never happened, but are adjacent to real stories and instances- they're just using fabricated encounters to count every outrage a minimum of twice and make the situation seem a magnitude more dire. Encouraging different races to hold up in their own amongst their own to protect themselves against the dangerous man-type in their midst.

We know exactly what the purpose and function of propaganda like this would be, and whom would be perpetrating it, if it were race.

We know exactly who would put forwards a stupid, unbelievable poll like "Bear or man?" and then when the answer is predictably an upset, treat it like it's a genuine opinion poll held by the everyday woman and exposing their very real feelings about men.

When people voice disbelief at this staged fake shit, out come the handlers waiting in the wings to weigh in and go, "WELL MEN ABUSE AND RAPE WOMEN SO MUCH AND SO OFTEN, YOU CAN'T BLAME THEM FOR FEELING SAFER WITH A BEAR THAN A HUMAN MAN! Ask yourself this: Why would women feel safer with a wild predator than another human man? Is it because the bear is less likely to rape them? Or if they get beaten and mauled and eaten by the bear, are people more willing to just believe the woman, without second guessing them?"

And just like that, you know exactly the mentality and purpose of who staged this stupid, generic seeming question with a landslide outcome, and why it was a landslide. Because the real purpose of this fake assed poll was to be a "stawt of a convuhsayshun uwu" where they repeat those tired old, debunked lines like, "10% of the M&Ms in this jar are poisonous. Would you eat them? Mmmm?! Would YOU risk it!?" Implying that even 1/10 men are rapists.

Then predictably out comes the radfem statistics about how many women get raped and sexually assaulted (implied to be by men, also implying women don't rape other women ever at all or that forcing sex on a woman with a strapon isn't rape unless the male gender is involved) and thus that PROVES that most men are scum, how "society caters to them and believes them over women. :^("

Where they wheel out recommendations that women get the political and social power of benefit of the doubt and men get presumed guilt without the ability to prove their innocence, that this lack of default benefit of the doubt is punishment to women and proof of a patriarchal society, that "this needs to change," and if you aren't willing to just believe women over men in these accusations, you just hate women. "Equality" for them gets clarity, in they believe women deserve the right to put a man in prison with something as simple as an accusation, and the social consequences of losing ones career, occupation and income while the legal system scrutinizes them as a criminal by default.

There. I just wrote out the grandiose long walk from the start of a stupid echo-chamber stunt designed to trick impressionable, emotional women and girls into going down an emotionally charged rabbithole of bias and "questions that make you think :^)"

When the usual suspects start "just asking questions :^)" about race, we see them for what they are. Hate mongerers and racial supremacists sewing propaganda and very much trying to exploit your lack of perspective or experience and interpret the facts, demand you treat these facts as truth and objective (no matter how subjective they are) and then grill you on how you feel about these very true things, demanding you internalize and acknowledge them as true.

When the same sort of people pose the same type of bigoted propaganda designed to politically galvanize and mobilize people by feeding them shitty information, just on the basis of man and woman as sexes (or genders, in the modern day), we give them the benefit of the doubt as feminists, not immediately throw it into the bin with the Race Realists posing similar scenarios and propaganda.

"Man or bear" isn't a genuine innocent poll, it's propaganda theater.

[mallhatespeech]

abt prev rb, please do be careful when discussing this with western christians. they have been using this as justification for islamophobia and antisemitism for a few decades. they also pretty commonly use it as a way to prove that ALL christians are oppressed which is very not true in the US. there are christians that are oppressed in the US for the sect of christianity they follow but this is usually in junction with other oppressed identities (i.e. romani people). i know this from firsthand experience, make sure you're having complex and in depth discussions with your christian friends about it. don't let them fall back on bigotry