#their reproduction LITERALLY involves something called

[proship-cafe]

periodical (and deeply funny) reminder that, technically, all hmstck ships are incest

[bluedalahorse]

Notes on Sara’s initiation costumes

I am allowing myself a few comments of meta before before I begin my Substantial Adulting Task Of The Day.

How we see a character at the beginning of a season and at the end of a season is so indicative of their arc. Costuming plays a role in this, and this morning I’m particularly interested in how it plays out with Sara.

In episode 2.1 of Young Royals, the Manor House girls initiate Sara into their circle. This initiation ceremony includes various costume items, all of which evoke with different archetypes and provide foreshadowing for the group’s eventual split. The girls cover Sara’s face with a witch mask, and have her wear an apron painted with a garishly bright and headless naked body, including prominent pillow breasts. For a portion of the initiation, Sara wears a princess’s tiara—something that is taken back by Fredrika, who anxiously explains about it being a family heirloom.

As we saw with Wilhelm’s initiation, and with initiations of this sort in real life, there is often a stage of the process that involves degradation or humiliation of the initiate before they are fully integrated into the community. The Manor House girls decide to degrade Sara with the breast-apron and the witch mask. Let’s unpack these symbols a little more. The nakedness of the apron speaks to with the idea of being exposed and vulnerable, but also—in this case—has connotations of sexuality and sexual awakening. It’s hard not to think of the way people cut teenage girls and adult women down by slut-shaming them. As for the witch, witches are folkloric outsiders. People of all genders in modern times have reclaimed the label of witch and found the empowering aspects of non-conformity, the same way Sara sometimes tries to empower herself by saying “I don’t need to fit in anyway” especially early on in the series. At the same time, we can’t ignore the way that historical accusations of witchcraft and witch trials have been used to push women out of their communities—especially older women, and women who were experiencing mental illness and neurodivergence. There’s a difference between claiming the role of the witch for oneself, and having it slapped on you as you’re forced out of the place you call home.

What about the tiara? The tiara of course invokes the archetype of the princess, and more broadly the idea of royal women. By joining Manor House, Sara has gotten a chance to “try on” royal status, but she doesn’t get to keep it. Fredrika taking the tiara back shows how quickly the can girls take back their welcoming of Sara, and how conscious they all are of Sara’s outsider status even when she’s passing her initiation with flying colors. (Lighting the banner on fire? Iconic.) I love how layered the symbolism of the tiara is, and how organically it fits into the Hillerska universe. It makes total literal sense that these landed rich kids would bring a family heirloom like that to school, use it for their teenage antics instead of like going to the drug store for bachelorette party supplies or whatever, and then get nervous about breaking it or getting it dirty during aforementioned teenage antics. And yet, the fact that this item has a history in Fredrika’s family shows that there’s a real system of power and wealth and lineage beyond the tiara—a system that works against girls like Sara.

Note that the tiara appears again in 2.5, when the girls are doing their TikTok video. The camera is panning across the dormitory wall when the voice on the video says “Who’s going to be the first to get married?” The camera lingers for a moment on a Polaroid of Sara during her initiation, where she’s wearing the breast-apron and the tiara together. This combination of power (tiara) and reproductive biology (apron) are a glaring reminder that the monarchy’s historic power has relied upon bloodlines to keep it going, and that they’ve used dynastic marriages to secure and maintain those bloodlines. This raises the question: does Sara reinforce that historical pattern with her gender in a way that Simon can’t, or disrupt it with her social class the same way her brother does? The camera cuts away from the photograph and over to the Manor House girls, who push Fredrika forward and she mimes showing off an engagement ring.

(Tangent: I keep wondering if Fredrika’s going to end up in a somewhat significant heterosexual relationship next season. I don’t see it taking over the plot but I can see it being used to develop themes.)

Let’s move ahead to the girls’ falling out and where Sara ends the season. Felice is upset with Sara in a fairly nuanced way; we know what she feels most betrayed by is Sara being in love with August when August did horrible crimes and Sara knew about it. Felice is trying to grapple with the complexity of Sara—she’s seen a side to her that she didn’t know about before and couldn’t have easily predicted. I think it’s fair to say that even if Felice is furious with Sara and feels deceived, she’s still seeing Sara as a human being. She’s just seeing a human being she doesn’t want to be friends with anymore.

Stella and Fredrika, meanwhile, don’t see Sara—they only see the initiation costume. Sara, the witch, is disloyal to Hillerska conformity and should be cast out. Sara, the blatantly naked girl, went and slept with a boy she shouldn’t have. I think it’s worth pointing out that while, yes, August did crimes and Sara knew that, Fredrika and Stella don’t know this part of the story. From their perspective, they are attacking Sara for… *checks notes*… hooking up with a guy that Felice dated last semester and never really cared about?  They’re mad with Sara for being so “naive” as to be “manipulated” by the school’s notorious player (even though Sara did a fair amount of initiating in the relationship and August was infinitely less harassment-inclined toward the other Hillerska girls in season 2?) While, in life, sometimes slut-shaming is really obvious, there are other times where it’s covered up by flimsy excuses. “I’m sex-positive, I just think in this case she should have…” Stella and Fredrika are not making the case for justice or accountability. Again, they don’t know what this has done to Sara’s relationships with Simon and Felice. They’re enjoying the opportunity to tear Sara down and reinforce the values of their insular, elitist community.

This is precisely what makes Stella and Fredrika so interesting to me. Until they clear the air about whatever’s going on between them (we know Stella has unrequited romantic love, but Fredrika’s romantic feelings are unconfirmed, and it’s clear they haven’t had a real conversation about it) they are inclined to lash out at authenticity in others. Their joking about the sex tape and surrogate mothers in 1.6 kinda happens along the same lines. Sara has the authenticity of the witch archetype and allows herself to be emotionally naked/vulnerable in that moment, holding true to her heart even when it’s weaponized against her. This is why her parting line to Stella and Fredrika, about how at least she can be honest about her own feelings, is so satisfying to me. YMMV, of course. But I think it says a lot about who Sara is and what she’s willing to own, even if she takes a while to process a deeply messy situation and let go of what she loves.

(This is also why Maddie can’t be present in the scene. Maddie is chaotically authentic and only follows Hillerska’s rules when she wants to. She’d be chiming in like, ok yeah he’s evil trash but he at least went down on you right?)

To wrap up, I want to address Sara’s final look of the series. The word that comes to mind when I think of her final outfit is “dislocated.” Sara’s left her riding pants behind on the dorm room bed—a symbol of breaking with her friends, and specifically the way they’ve weaponized their wealth against her. As she leaves Hillerska’s grounds with her rolling suitcase, she’s wearing her skirt and blouse, but not her blazer and tie. She’s still somewhat attached to the school, but not in the way where she’s wearing their logo anymore. She also wears her purple shirt, reminding us of Simon’s infamous purple clothing accents, and I think we’re supposed to see this as her thoughts being partially with her brother and the home she grew up in. While Sara begins the season in caught up in a jumble of archetypes, she ends the season in a different kind of liminal space: between two worlds, but not really anchored in either of them. This makes me wonder where Sara will end up in season 3 physically. We’ve all assumed she is going back to Linda, but it may be that she tries something really unexpected, like moving in with her dad or trying to make it on her own now that she’s eighteen. Both of those things make me worry for her.

Sara’s future home is another issue entirely, so I’ll bring this back around to character arcs. There’s themes going on in season 2 about how people can get pigeonholed into certain fairy tale archetypes, and a lot those themes get reinforced through costuming choices. At the end of the season, we’re being asked to see Sara as a person—her sparkle and flaws all as once, just as she is.

BONUS COSTUMING NOTE: did you notice that Sara is predominantly dressed in white during the Valentines ball scene, while Felice is predominantly dressed in black? Please note that this is the episode where August begins scheming again and in the episodes that follow we see him lurking around the chess board in the common room and talking to the other third years about how to win chess and stuff. My point is, FELICE AND SARA ARE THE CHESS QUEENS THIS SEASON. I THINK IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ON PURPOSE. I love the way this show makes me think!

[twisting-echo]

SonallyNShadamy4Ever has returned... Again!

(Please click on pictures for better quality!)

SonallyNShadamy4Ever, later known as Sonally4LifeReborn, now going by FinalBossSonally has returned and is harassing me and others once again.

I don't even have words right now. My stomach honestly feels sick from dread. Once I start feeling better, this parasite shows up and ruins my day. The comment he left on my Alice Tsukagami x Brad Hawk moodboard made me emotionally relapse. This guy is taunting me about my bisexual identity and that I ship Roupaz. I've reported this guy many times, and he keeps coming back and harassing me and others. But let's get this over with.

"Let's be real." (Considering that biology was one of my favorite subjects and still is.)

Incest and asexual reproduction are not the same. Asexual reproduction involves a single parent, resulting in offspring that are genetically identical to each other and to the parent. Incest refers to sexual activity or marriage between close blood relatives, such as siblings, parents, or cousins. Incest involves sexual reproduction; it is not equivalent to asexual reproduction. Incest does not lead to genetically identical offspring; instead, it introduces genetic diversity (albeit with potential risks such as recessive genetic disorders).

So basically, asexual reproduction produces clones, while incest involves sexual reproduction with close relatives. The two processes serve different purposes and have distinct genetic outcomes.

Yes, it is confirmed that Knuckles and Julie Su are distant relatives.

When distant relatives, such as cousins, enter into a romantic relationship, it does not necessarily constitute incest. While forming a relationship with distant relatives is not inherently incestuous, it’s essential to consider both the genetic risks and the legal and cultural context.

There is a difference between being a distant relative and a direct relative. Direct relatives are closely related and share a higher percentage of genetic material; distant relatives have more distant connections within the family tree.

Knuckles and Julie Su are extremely distant cousins—their shared ancestor was several generations ago; they didn’t meet until they were older; and they didn’t learn about their relation until even later.

I don't ship Knuckles and Julie Su because I'm an "incest lover." I liked their relationship because of their interactions with each other and because I thought they made a cute couple. I liked them way before it was revealed that they were distant relatives. That came out way later. I can't control that. I honestly wish that they could've left that part out of the canon entirely. But what can I honestly do about it? It's canon; thanks, Ken Penders.

FinalBossSonally didn't “innocently inquire” about my Sonic the Hedgehog ship memes; he interrogated me about them, demanding to know why I ship them, forcing his own ships on me, and insisting that he was “simply correcting my shipping tastes.”

This guy literally told me—a bisexual woman, that he was “disgusted” by the fact that Roupaz almost became canon, by the fact that they’re an interspecies relationship, and by the fact that Rouge is bisexual. But Sonelise is A-OK because it’s “straight.”

He claims that he's not homophobic/biphobic, but I have cold, hard proof that he is.

Here he is insulting Kanohi-Zeo for having LGBT headcanons for STH characters and openly admitting that he HATES LGBTQ+. He also ropes in that being a "lesbian" is on the same level as being a pedophile, or something that is illegal. And then he continues to complain as to why they didn't make Knuckles a "female-leaning bisexual," so at least he could be attracted to females because Knuckles' species needs straight male echidnas to repopulate. And then he finishes by calling Kanohi-Zeo disgusting for having these headcanons. If that's not homophobic, then I don't know what is. Aside from it being offensively uneducated stupidity, of course.

So, I didn't respond to his toxic, childish comment, and I blocked him, again.

And as for FinalBossSonally being "my master," FinalBossSonally, you are not the master of anyone; you are a stalking, batshit, psycho, toxic, homophobic, parasite with some serious mental issues. Go touch grass and get some help. I'll be here, having fun in my bisexual hell with my friends~

This link below is the post about my first encounter with SonallyNShadamy4Ever and the full contents of my callout post.

This link below is the post about my second encounter with SonallyNShadamy4Ever as Sonally4LifeReborn and the full contents of that.

[ask-numberjacks]

IT'S LORE TIIIIIIMEEEEE

SO

This is my theory on the Numberjacks' (and meanies', kind of?) creation and anatomy. To begin with, I'll talk about how I think they were created.

The Brain Gain Machine is quite obviously not fully machine. It can move, talk and a lot of weird green goop is involved??? Which I don't think would be there if it was completely machine. So I think it is a cyborg. And it originally looked something like this. I think it is parasite-esque, using the sofa as some kind of shell. My lore theory/AU(?) says that there were 2-3 of these, the others being destroyed and this one being damaged, so it was modified to be a cyborg. Since the Numberjacks and Meanies are somewhat alien, I think they all share a godlike creator that sent the Brain Gains to Earth to then later send signals to them (via the 'cables' on top of it) that 'spawned' the characters. The other Brain Gains would have been the ones that created the Meanies.

Numberjack birth I guess?

Since they are literally maths, the Numberjacks are just physical forms given to mathematical concepts/structures. Since they are created by the Brain Gain Machine, they do not need to reproduce (hence not having reproductive organs).

'But if the Numberjacks are maths given physical forms, what about the Meanies?' You might ask. Well, since they are more complex, with more specific abilities of their own, they are physical forms given to concepts, for example, topology (in Shape Japer's case).

Now on to the anatomy of the characters.

Their organs are somewhat similar to that of humans, but do not have all of the same ones. Since, as I've said before, they are just maths given a physical form, they do not grow or change in any way naturally. (The younger characters would be pretty small if that was the case.) However, since they are still living beings, they need to eat to survive. It'd also be pretty obvious if they did need to use the bathroom because Zero, One and possibly Two would be wearing nappies/diapers.

I think they'd also have an organ that I will call:

a Changeheart.

Which would be of similar size to that of their regular heart, except it gives them them a mild ability to change how things are mathematically described (and since the way things are described can't be changed, the thing being described has to change itself). The reason this would work is because I think the godlike being I mentioned earlier would be the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis given form, and the hypothesis is that our external reality is a mathematical structure. (You can tell I did a lot of research on this lol)

'Waste' products from their stomach are burned as fuel by this organ.

The changeheart gives out pulses (presumably bioelectric? Idk I'm not that good at science) containing the change that needs to be made to the surrounding area's structure. The Brain Gain Machine picks up on these pulses, concentrates them and sends them to a specific location to be used by another person with a changeheart.

The reason it has the same green goopy stuff as Brain Gain is because the Brain Gain itself has a changeheart, just a really big and more complex one.

Now on to human forms! Since I feel like it should be explained for various reasons.

Since they are 'aliens', they would not be born with a humanoid form. I think several other characters other than the Puzzler and the Numbertaker have humanoid forms since it has been implied that they have done things that only humans would be able to do (mostly shown in the audio stories). They may have one opportunity to visualize and shift into a human form that will be that form for as long as they live (which is forever). Since visualizing a human form means knowing what a human looks like, they would've only seen humans as they are usually, which also means their human forms would not have... you know. And anyway since they are all technically biologically agender they couldn't do that.

me right now

Oh gosh that was a lot. If you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading! I hope you found it interesting.

If you have any questions about this or want to know more about, for example, the Meanies' anatomies, feel free to ask in the ask box thingy!

[thenightling]

The reality of "Cancel culture" is jus an annoying casual bullying to make people stop talking about various subjects

Last night I posted something that amused me about Spirit Halloween. It was about spirit Halloween now selling adult sized reproduction Ben Cooper Halloween costumes (Popular but very cheap kids Halloween costumes from the 1930s to the early 1990s).

This resulted in someone hijacking my Tumblr post about to give a "Friendly reminder" that we shouldn't buy anything from Spirit Halloween because Spirit Halloween is owned by Spencer's Gifts and "in 2016 Spencer's gifts sold 'Grab America by the p-ssy' shirts and they have yet to apologize!"

I don't care. Yes, it's disgusting that Trump said he could grab a woman by her p-ssy and get away with it. Yes, the shirt was in poor taste but I'm not avoiding a store because it's owned by the same people who own another store that sold a tasteless shirt EIGHT years ago!

I am tired of being told what I should or shouldn't interact with.

I run a Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Facebook group and I was called a TERF apologist and even Transphobe all because I won't ban the mention of J. K. Rowling. She is literally mentioned in episode 11 of The Sandman Netflix series. And Neil Giaman's four part story The Books of Magic is often mistaken as a Harry Potter rip-off even though it was published over seven-years before the first Harry Potter book was published.

Even though my group's very first rule is "No bigotry" I was accused of leaving transphobic content on the group. Someone in "The Trailer Park Pagans are at it Again" group even kept a bunch of posts from transphobes from within my Sandman group from before I could ban them (Most of those troll posts were less than eleven minutes old when screen grabbed) to make it look like I allowed that crap.

When Hocus Pocus 2 was released to Disney+ someone in my group decided to announce that Bette Midler was a transphobe and she "No longer felt safe in the group" if I talked about Hocus Pocus. Like simply mentioning a fictional character Bette Midler played will make her manifest in their bedroom.

I am NOT justifying or "apologizisting" anything Bette Midler has said. Liking those films is not based on the personal lives of the women involved.

I posted an ASMR video by "Jim's ASMR" based on The Sandman and someone felt the need to tell me how "Problematic" he is because he cheated on his wife in real life with other ASMR artists.

I posted a Nostalgia Critic video and get a lecture about how problematic Channel Awesome is (Yes, I know. I know. I saw the manifesto.)

I really like Danny Elfman. Recently there were some awful accusations tied to him from decades ago that I will not defend but thankfully it appears there was no real evidence anyway. But apparently I'm not supposed to listen to my old recordings anymore, even though he's not getting any new money for them. Annoyingly some people have even used his Oingo Boingo song "Little Girls" as "Proof" that he's a sexual predator even though the song was meant to be a call out to shame people in Hollywood who take advantage of underage girls. You're not supposed to like the main character of the song, and he's even caught at the end of the music video version.

I was told Netflix's Castlevania is problematic and I should avoid it because of some misbehavior of the show's writer. I LIKE Castlevania!

I've been told to avoid Tim Burton because he's "racist" even though I've seen him make a conscious effort to be a lot more diverse in his casting.

On Facebook someone tried to scold me for being Wiccan. They lectured me because Wiccans borrow from other religions and there for "Culturally appropriate." Well, name any religion that doesn't do that. I replied with more or less that challenge and got "If you acknowledge the problematic elements of Wiccan why don't you avoid it?"

Because I'm a f--king adult and I don't avoid all things that are "Problematic." All religions borrow from other religions. There's no pure and untainted form of Paganism. It's Neo Paganism for a reason. And most of it was reinvented or cobbled together in the nineteenth century, just slightly older than modern Wicca pieced together from ancient folk beliefs.

Spirit Halloween Spencer's Gifts J. K. Rowling Harry Potter Bette Midler Hocus Pocus Nostalgia Critic Jim's ASMR videos Danny Elfman Castlevania Tim Burton Wicca (My own religion!)

I've reached a point where I'm sick of being told what I should avoid even discussing because it's "Problematic" or offensive. Note: I am NOT justifying sexual abuse or J. K. Rowling's anti-Trans views.

I understand there's a valid reason to avoid some of these things if you have strong convictions about them and that's up to you but I do not appreciate my posts being hijacked to be given a "Friendly reminder" why you shouldn't shop at Spirit Halloween.

"Friendly reminder" YOU don't get to dictate what I talk about or where I shop, or what music I listen to. If it's problematic that's on me. It's not your business. If I want to listen to an ASMR by a man-whore who doesn't know who to be faithful so what? I'm not sleeping with him, I'm listening to his semi-hypnotic insomnia aid videos.

[atthebell]

QRE YOU WATCHING COVENANT sorry i just watched it a week ago and it's genuinely the funniest movie ive ever seen. and of course like everything im thinking who's who qsmp-wise but. anyway just saw ur post about davidcest and i forgot it happened it took me totally off guard

okay you know what's funny is my comment about david on walter action wasn't even about the kiss i hadn't gotten there yet it was just about them talking in the most insane homoerotic way possible and i was like okay this is a wild direction to go

i honestly cannot fathom trying to map qsmp characters onto this i don't think it works at all but power to you on that my only input is that whatever is cucurucho is dead dead very dead by the end

it is a really funny movie i think michael fassbender is kind of insane and the entire movie is wild bc like i said it's way more space disaster than sci-fi horror and feels very out of left field in terms of themes (the whole creation thing, the questions of faith vs. science vs. faith in science etc. etc.) but i also think the same was the case with prometheus-- scott was going for something very different with these, which he talked about a lot, making them more centered on the issue of the androids and their place in humanity in this universe and the philosophical implications of them and with the act of creating life generally. and in fairness that latter thing is literally a huge part of the entire series that's why every movie is obsessed with the alien reproductive cycle and how it mirrors the human one, the ship is called mother (or father, in resurrection, but i wont get into all my issues with that movie here), there are like. crazy amounts of pregnant people even aside from xenomorph embryos, the whole design of the aliens coming from h. r. giger, whose whole thing was the eroticism of bodies and machines and combinations of the two. like it makes sense to do a spin-off/prequel series where you talk about the nature of life and tampering with life and where androids lie within that but it is a crazy set of movies and tonally very different to the original especially, even with the stuff with ash.

i know scott didn't direct romulus and that it involves the xenomorphs way more again so i'm interested to see how it ties in with the rest of the series i'm hoping to see it this week and will report back posthaste

[lemonhemlock]

Hiiii lemon 👋🏻

I was trying to make an oc for Cersei and Jamie and talked about it with a couple friends to bounce ideas with and they all had the same thing to say "you really think Cersei would love someone!? she literally killed Melara for daydreaming about Jamie..." And this kinda made me a bit...

Anywayyyyy personally I think yes Cersei can be delusional, heartless... But that's part of her charm !!! And really people would not be as harsh on her if she was a man.

Like imagine a boy killing his bestie over liking his sister/lover... People would call that a romantic gesture lol.

Which is why I'm here to ask what would you personally do if you were making Cersei/Jamie a female love interest.

Hi, anon! There's quite a lot to unpack in your message. Cersei and Jaime could have the potential to love other people. But certainly their insular upbringing and dysfunctional family made them overly reliant on each other to the point of co-dependency. So I think that if you want to create realistic OCs for them, you should give them traits that tend to their greatest needs or inadequacies.

For Cersei, it's perhaps more easily identifiable the kind of husband who could make her happy - it's basically who she imagines Rhaegar to be. A noble, handsome, gallant young man who would be devoted to her, treat her kindly and involve her in his daily political dealings. Both Cersei and Jaime struggle with gender roles. Cersei wants to be considered a leader and valued for something other than her reproductive abilities, she wants to be respected and not discarded the replaced the minute her body becomes "irrelevant". So power-sharing with a husband who values her personhood and intelligence would help to heal her accumulated trauma. What Cersei yearns for in a partner is not so different than what any woman would wish for herself.

With Jaime, it's more complicated, because you somehow how to prevent him from joining the Kingsguard. Because 1. he would not be able to have a functional relationship when his vows are in direct contradiction and 2. if Cersei is still Queen somehow in this AU, he'd only be miserably sniffing around her skirts, entangling himself in her business, getting inevitably jealous and miserable and keeping her from taking her marriage seriously. Other than that, Jaime has no true interest in politics and he bores easily, so an ideal wife for him would be one with good social and administrative skills, who could handle the tasks Jaime would consider tedious in his position as (eventual) ruler of Casterly Rock. He also has a quick with and is quite funny, so I think he couldn't be truly content if his wife didn't share those qualities. So, IDK, some combination between Sansa and Aunt Genna. :))

Ultimately, I think they could really only reach a true level of contentment if their spouses help them fulfill their societal roles. They're too entrenched in their identities as Lannisters to ever run off to the Free Cities and do whatever and too comfortable to renounce all privileges and live the lives of regular peasants or merchants. Feudalism offers few opportunities that provide safety and comfort; they can't exactly became finance bros or get a job at the business factory to support themselves or engage in some other bullshit activity that's little work and high reward, so staying in the socio-economic sphere of their rich family is their best bet.

Cersei has this fantasy of swords and mail, but she wouldn't have been happy as a knight, with the pushback that comes with true non-conformity. Equally, Jaimie already did what he wanted and eschewed his role as heir, but life as a perpetual knight doesn't seem to bring him satisfaction either. They're not revolutionaries out to dismantle the status-quo and campaign for change, but, in the absence of that, society is not going to just simply accommodate their idiosyncrasies just because it's them. And they don't really like it either when they find out the world doesn't bend around their wishes! (affectionate)

[darabeatha]

Trope trope trope trope!

𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 “𝐓𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞” 𝐈 𝐠𝐞𝐭, 𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐚 𝐓𝐕 𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐞. / @caemthe

𝐌𝐨𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐳𝐮𝐦𝐚 𝐈𝐈

Animal motif: jaguar! a reference to not only Tezcatlipoca but also to the Ocelomeh (Ocelotl in singular and Ocelomeh in plural; jaguar warriors. They were basically members of the Aztec military elite) to whom he's the leader of.

Back from the dead: it's his second chance at life! "Moctezuma II, the unfortunate ruler of the Aztec Empire during its fall to Hernán Cortés' conquest. Having felt pity for his betrayal and terrible end, Tezcatlipoca had summoned Moctezuma into the South American Lostbelt for a second chance at life."

God in human form: technically he is Tezcatlipoca's impersonator! Putting a small parenthesis to fgo; to the Mexica, this person was called the 'Ixiptla' who for one year was seen as the god (in this case Tezcatlipoca) on earth. They were highly respected and seen as the god, and at the end of the year, they were sacrificed. Despite this, being the deity's impersonator was seen as an incredibly high honor and not a tragedy or something bad like how we would think in the present (this sacrifice just like death in battle was like the absolute honor). Real Moctezuma wasn't an Ixiptla in this sense, but I think that for the fictional narrative, it was an interesting choice especially considering the second reason as of why he was summoned by Tezcatlipoca (besides him taking pity of how his life ended) which i won't say how it ends bc it'll be spoiler

Rage helm: except that in this case, even if you take off his mask he is still frowning !

Perpetual frown: Rarely will you see him not looking angry or frowning even if he's literally just vibin' . Sometimes this scares people away and it doesn't help that he tends to have airs of grandeur moments (tm) sometimes (king moment), but when you get to know him, he's pretty considerate and chill person ! U just have to ignore his king-ly traits at first

Clean freak: inspired by his real counterpart, my Mocte is very much into cleanliness and tidyness. On a single glance u think he wears the same black body suit all the time but then u open his closet and he just has a bunch of exact same copies of it. U will not catch him wearing the same clothes he did again till 4-5 days or the next week. He's like that one lil robot in wall-E that can't stand stains, u leave a ketchup stain over the counter and even if it doesn't involve him, you'll see him going like -SCRUBS-

War is glorious: Or more specifically speaking; death in war. 'Dying in war was the highest honor and was something that was longed for. The concepts of war and sacrifice responded to the needs of cohesion and reproduction of society, by dying in war or through sacrifice, the warrior would be able to pay the gods their mythical sacrifice which had given origin to life'. Mocte is not devoid of this line of thinking.

Foreshadowing: goes by the name Izcalli when first introduced and then his true name is revealed; Moctezuma II the last Aztec emperor (which he's technically not really -the- last, as two other rulers succeeded him after his death but their reigns were quite short-lived so it's not uncommon to see him referred as the last)

[carefulfears]

Hi there im only on season 6 but can you explain to me why Chris carter is hated? Havent seen any interviews from those involved in production including him and the actors but are there links you can get me started on? I would like to know all their takes on the x files and their perspectives of the characters and plot. Tysm!

hey darlin!

i think a lot will become apparent as you keep watching but i'll give you a quick run-down from my perspective personally lol

most people who take issue with CC fall into one of two camps (primarily a mix of both):

1/ people who dislike him for his stance on the mulder and scully relationship

chris carter never wanted or intended for romance in his show, or to allow his characters much development, and it became a hinderance at times. obviously this is rooted in misogyny too, especially in his resentment of his own audience; much of his writing in the later years is fairly pointed as a refusal to the women who loved his show.

2/ people who dislike him for some of his storylines and the underlying misogyny (this is me)

most of this will be clearer as you continue the series, but the most offensive examples to me are the reproductive trauma arc of season 8, CSM's arc in season 11, and the abuse apologia of the second film. practically the entirety of the second film, actually, i think he literally should've been investigated for. there's something glaring about all of that to me that i can't get past.

also when he was called out for scully never having a desk and he said she never asked for one even though that was quite literally the plot of never again lol. also it's his character what was she gonna do of her own volition.

just keep watching anon! sending love.

[theremina]

I fully expect to get shouted at for saying this. I still think it’s worth saying. ❤️‍🩹

The amount of reasonably well-off white people I’ve observed losing their entire shit over crappy AI theft these past couple months is… well, it’s completely understandable, of course.

But let’s unpack the fervor pragmatically.

As a classically trained full-time professional musician who has been honing their own craft since early childhood, and as someone who is used to being taken for granted, undervalued, even exploited, by folks who literally have no idea how much work and expense goes into doing what I do, I keenly relate to frustrations concerning algorithmic AI theft.

That being said, never have I ever observed a single one of the most reactive, aggressively angry white professional artmaking chums lashing out blindly over this problem come anywhere close to the same level of agitation regarding far more brutal atrocities: systemic racism/sexism/transphobia/homophobia, the climate crisis, Roe being overturned, anti-science / antivax rhetoric, etc. Yanno, shit that’s literally, directly killing people and the planet.

Some of the same dudes screaming “unfriend me if you’re going to post that garbage, and btw FUCK YOU” at the world right now are the same men who’ve opined in the past that I shouldn’t “get so worked up” over various systemically violent, directly life-threatening issues faced by millions, even billions of us.

Listen, I’m not saying artists don’t deserve to be concerned or upset. I don’t use any art generating AI myself, in large part bc I’ve seen how much needless pain and stress it’s causing a lot of my loved ones. For me, personally, it’s not remotely worth it.

That said, a lot of the same white, predominantly male artists we’re all watching yell at Cloud right now use Spotify, right? No judgement. I do, too! And a lot of you enjoy music with synths or samples that reproduce piano or string or drum or horn or choral vocal sounds? And you’ve probably watched a bootlegged television show or two in your day, yeah? Or resorted to 12 foot dot io?

Meanwhile, you’re out here literally damning random non-artists to hell for making corny-ass AI selfies? That’s the hill you’ve decided you wanna die on? Okay…

OR! Or, hear me out, what if you allowed your personal frustration over this issue to radicalize you less selectively? Mebbe? Could ya try showing up with a fraction of this passion to support reparations for Black Americans, or the safe and legal reproductive rights for half the population, or combating climate crisis, or disability rights, or universal income, orororrr, etc?

Look, I dunno. We live in an abattoir. Times are only getting tougher. Maybe before you decide to have another Totally Normal One that involves howling directly in the faces of disabled and low-income folks who aren’t in the fine arts or commercial arts industry and probably can’t afford a boardwalk caricature right now, let alone a $1K commission for you, you could try hitting the pause button, take several deep breaths and ask yourself: “am I picking healthy battles?”

(This is the exact same advice I try to give myself every single time I get worked up about something that isn’t literally life-threatening. I do not always succeed, of course. My shit stinks, too!)

Butt. Maybe next time you observe a friend getting excited prompting images for their own personal pleasure by using AI, consider restraining yourself from calling them a “lazy thieving scumbag”? Remember, not everyone can afford decades of training and school. How is your Facebook buddy who’s happily making endless Beksinski/Moebius/Ryden-derivative computer doodles for their own personal satisfaction managing to trigger your biggest, scariest threat response?

There gotta be some middleground between “woo this AI fad is fun and harmless” and “my barista friend sharing Meitu-lookin cybercosmonaut selfies on IG is stealing food directly out of my family’s mouth” worth exploring.

Sincerely, I get why folks are upset. But maybe don’t bring a nuke to a knife fight.

I promise you, this is a lesson I have personally learned the hard way. Maybe it doesn’t have to be so hard for you? Or —and this is my main concern, tbh— so hard on people who don’t deserve to be your punching bag.

I dunno. I��m just a bit shocked at how emotional some of you are able to get about this specific issue when your chosen line of work is largely run by rapists and racists and robber barrons. (Oh my!)

[sharkface-daydreams]

i don’t know dragon age so give me. either your favorite or most niche dragon age ship

🥺🥹💜 ask dragon age for me.... 💜💜💜💜

well my favorite of all time is a pc/canon ship but not a canon romance but i did think of a niche npc/npc ship that has recently made me feel like eating glass lmao so i did two

i attempted to give some context but not completely infodump >< idk if that was achieved lol

My Grey Warden who has to go save the world after being recruited from a no-caste nothing on the underbelly of dwarven society fell for a guy you can't romance bc his culture is the Qun, which dictates basically your role and existence since you're born. They don't do like romance or marriage or whatever bc genetics are dictated by people who manage that. (Although some people do escape and live outside of that) His name is his job title. But he's a good man, a good soldier and a good friend and Torani Brosca respects the shit out of him so she keeps her feelings to herself. But yes she'll fight by his side and find his missing sword and stay as close as she can 🥺 and she never ever thinks of herself and her wants bc everything went towards her sister's chances of getting the family married up out of poverty so she really doesn't examine the feelings either it's just. I want to be close to you. Always. 😭

Uuuuunfortunately in my canon playthrough she takes the final hit in the last boss fight to kill the big bad and dies :( Beforehand she asked Sten to return her sword to her sister in Orzammar so Rica could have something to remember her by. She technically could have lived but that involves a mage party member fucking someone so she could have a baby and uh. suck the undying soul of the Arch demon into the unborn vessel instead of requiring a Warden to essentially cancel it out by killing it and... i don't actually remember the specific mechanics but a Warden specifically has to die in order for the big bad to STAY dead bc they have a like. half vaccinated version of the blight that kills them extremely slowly. But dorfs have such a low reproduction rate and the only way for them to get out of castelessness was for Rica to have a nobles baby and marry up... so Tor was like no i am not forcing anyone into that I'll just take the hit. 😔 so there's glass snack #1.

glass snack #2 is from the Dragon Age Inquisition DLC The Descent so this'll be spoilery lol but omg Renn and Valta

Ok. Dwarves live underground, are immune to magic and the magic ore only they can dig up bc it kills anyone else. There's a group called Legion of the Dead who are socially dead, they literally have a funeral for them when they leave, and they go into the old deep roads and protect the city from the Dark spawn until they die out there with their boots on. This is what Renn does. Valta is an archivist who's been essentially put on bitch work bc she pissed off a higher-up by not erasing something really trivial from their records. And we're down there helping them figure out why the earthquakes are suddenly nuts. It seems like they've been working side by side for years and Renn either has a specific task or personal obligation to defend her while she's in the dangerous tunnels and old roads, I'm not sure which. But while they bicker a LOT there's soooooo much fondness underneath all that and they care about each other so fiercely and honestly we don't get a whole lot of conversation and banter even but what we do get is just fucking LOADED with meaning and I'm just *eats drywall* about it

ough and when he dies defending us from some threat we've never faced before she's even more determined to figure this out so he hasn't died in vain auuuurghh god so many things ending in tragedy but in the meanwhile.... the meanwhile is so good 😩 and that dichotomy of already being 'dead' but still having reason to live, to fight for and protect someone. ough...

[sleepymarmot]

Yesterday was the first time I encountered the name of Janet Sobel, an Ukrainian American female artist who influenced Jackson Pollock. Under the cut are the notes I took while trying to learn more about her.

Naturally, the first thing I did was to look her up on Wikipedia. The only color example of her art in the article was this:

My first thought was "This looks like Marc Chagall!"

The second: "They lived at the same time. I wonder if both of them were drawing from the same tradition. Was she also Jewish?"

Wikipedia said the following (direct quotes):

Janet Sobel was born as Jennie Olechovsky in 1893 in Katerynoslav, Russian Empire (now Dnipro, Ukraine).

Her father, Baruch Olechovsky, was killed in a Russian pogrom.

Her depiction of soldiers with cannons and imperial armies, as well as traditional Jewish families, reflected the experiences of her childhood. Her figures often demonstrated the time of the Holocaust, where she relived the trauma of her youth.

And that might already be clear enough for some readers including myself, but for an unknown reason the article doesn't directly call the artist Jewish. For example, Chagall's page is in the "Jewish painters" category, but hers isn't.

So I returned to the google search results... And literally the next English-language biographical article said this in the blurb, without even the need to open the link: "She was born Jennie Lechovsky in 1893, to a Jewish family". Is there, like... a reason Wikipedia decided not to say it directly?...

Anyway, turns out, Sobel and Chagall actually met while he was in America!

Another artist whom Sobel met at this time was her near-contemporary Marc Chagall, with whom she shared Russian culture and language and a love of music. When Sol took her to visit Chagall in his studio, he recalls that the two spoke Russian together (rather than Yiddish, another language that they had in common). Chagall had only landed in New York on June 23, 1941, the very same day the Nazis invaded Russia. During the seven years he remained in the United States, he never tried to learn English, provoking one biographer to quip: "The longer he stayed in America, the more Russian he became." At the time of their meeting, both Chagall and Sobel were preoccupied by accounts of the war raging on the Eastern Front, the land of their youth, and both were feeling profoundly Jewish. Chagall's memories of his native Vitebsk included his uncle teaching him to play the violin, and, as a result, he liked to listen to music all day long while he worked. This habit was not so different from Sobel's who commented: "I always read books, the Russians and the English, and I love music…. I don't think that ever I would paint a picture without music to listen to. All humans must have something like that, that warms them inside." (source)

The same article also points out some Ukrainian and Jewish motifs and references in Sobel's art, as well as a few more reproductions of her art. Even so, my cursory search didn't explain the similarity with Chagall's style I felt in the picture above — the big floating face, the way the colors are placed. Surely it wasn't just my imagination! Needs further research. Maybe she was inspired by his art directly, instead of both of them independently having similar influences?..

Here are some other quotes, mostly concerning the way this Jewish Ukrainian immigrant grandmother, unsurprisingly, faded into obscurity. Turns out that in addition to the obvious reasons, there were some unfortunate coincidence involved, including a paint allergy (details in the links).

But Sobel’s fame did not last long. The news media often referred to her as a grandmother and housewife first, then as an artist, said Sandra Zalman, an associate professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of Houston. “Sobel did not fit into the categories that the art world conceived of her,” Zalman said in a phone interview. “She got attention for being an outsider, but then is quickly forgotten for being an outsider.” Pollock, for instance, was the quintessential American artist. Dressed all in black, he would crouch or stand over a canvas while athletically flinging paint, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Sobel, on the other hand, would lie on her stomach on the floor of her apartment in her high heels and stockings, passively watching the paint fall onto her canvas from the bristles of a brush. “It is not easy to paint,” she told The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. “It is very strenuous. But it’s something you’ve got to do if you have the urge.” Some art critics dismissed her creations as “untrained” or “primitive.” Sobel’s skills, Zalman said, were not a threat to Pollock; her influence was merely a place holder for his fame. (source)

---

Pollock's was an instinctive, shoot-from-the-hip technique that didn't painstakingly plot its next move – rather, one that grabs a bottle, takes a swig, wipes its lips on its cracked knuckles, and couldn't care less who's watching. This is painting free from form and formalities, the kind of painting that only an American, a real American, could invent. Only it wasn't. Contrary to established myth – a myth accelerated by sensational spreads in Time and Life magazines in 1949 and 1956 under such eyebrow-raising headlines as "Jack the Dripper" and "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" – Pollock's "signature" style wasn't his invention at all, but the brainchild of another artist, one whose extraordinary story confounds and invigorates our understanding of one of the most celebrated contours in recent cultural history. Put simply, modern art has a problem. Her name is Janet Sobel. (...) Writing years later in 1955, the art critic Clement Greenberg admitted to visiting the exhibition with Pollock and that the two "noticed one or two curious paintings shown at Peggy Guggenheim's by a 'primitive' painter, Janet Sobel (who was, and still is, a housewife living in Brooklyn)". Putting to one side Greenberg's derisory instinct to belittle the status and achievement of Sobel ("curious", "primitive", "housewife"), what he goes on to acknowledge places beyond doubt the enduring significance of the encounter: 'Pollock (and I myself) admired these pictures rather furtively… The effect – and it was the first really 'all-over' one that I had ever seen… – was strangely pleasing. Later on, Pollock admitted that these pictures had made an impression on him." Why "furtively"? It is, after all, a word that admits a level of guilt and secrecy to the act of looking. Despite Pollock's own admission that Sobel's work "had made an impression on him", Greenberg can't resist diminishing the magnitude of that acknowledged impact. Greenberg goes on to insist that when Pollock "began working consistently with skeins and splotches of enamel paint, the very first results he got had a boldness and breadth unparalleled by anything seen" in the work of any previous painter, including Sobel. "Even as he selects Sobel as Pollock's predecessor," notes the art historian Sandra Zalman, "Greenberg asserts that Pollock had already surpassed her." (source)

---

What seems to me even more important for understanding Janet Sobel’s motives for making art and possibly for explaining, in part, why the New York art world abruptly forgot her work is contained in her statement that she sent to Porter for the catalog of A Painting Prophecy, 1950: “I am interested in people and everything that pertains to them.” Her statement is short, succinct, and humanistic, but in it, Sobel unfortunately, does not identify herself as a visual artist, and so the statement differentiates her profoundly from the artistic and intellectual ambitions expressed in the statements of the exhibition’s twenty-one other artists, who included Robert Motherwell, Stuart Davis, William Baziotes, Adolph Gottlieb, Jackson Pollack [sic], Louise Bourgeois, I. Rice Pereira, Jimmy Ernst, and Mark Rothko. Sobel’s statement, however, shows a remarkable congruance with the humanistic title of a book that first appeared in 1952, Life Is with People: The Culture of the Shtetl, which Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a New York University professor, writes “was the first major anthropological study of East European Jewish culture in the English language.” In contrast to others, I would even argue that Janet Sobel’s fame in the early and mid-1940s came about because she was a woman, especially one whose very homey domesticity was so different from the public’s ideas of what the typical avant-garde artists then coming to prominence—like Jackson Pollock—were like. It may also be true that during World War II, when American men were more likely to be serving in the armed forces and overseas, it was easier for a woman to receive recognition for working in a factory or as an artist and doing a “man’s job.” Beyond her work’s artistic qualities, the press was intrigued that so conventional a woman—a matronly, plump, unpretentious, middle-aged, middle-class Jewish Brooklyn mother of five, a grandmother, a housewife, who had no art training and who had begun to make art only in the past five or six years—was so gifted and original an artist. However, Sobel never had to seek out the interest and support of members of the New York art world and cultural hierarchy on her own; she was very fortunate that her son Sol so energetically showed his mother’s artworks to his own art teachers and to prominent individuals like Sidney Janis, who at the time was known as a collector and art writer and had not yet opened his gallery; and to the philosopher and educator John Dewey. (source)

---

But despite that critical acknowledgment, Sobel was soon forgotten by the New York art scene. In 1946, She would move to Plainfield, New Jersey, where she was effectively cut off from her contacts in New York. She would continue to paint into the 1960s and exhibit her works locally.  Her sudden obscurity was also the result of the critical consternation that followed Sobel. “Sobel’s work did not fit easily into any of the categories of the burgeoning 1940s New York art world or alternately it slid into too many of those categories. Sobel was part folk artist, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist, but critics found it easiest to call her a “primitive.” Greenberg’s endorsement functions ambivalently it lends credence to Sobel’s aesthetic accomplishments but safely sequesters her work,” wrote art historian and professor Sandra Zalman in an essay on Sobel’s work.  Dealer Gary Snyder has been an advocate of Sobel’s work for decades, first seeing it in the exhibition “Abstract Expressionism: Other Dimensions” at the Zimmerli Art Museum of Rutgers University in 1989. “What struck me was the quality of the work, which was equal to that of Pollock, and of the same era,” said Snyder, who organized a pivotal exhibition of Sobel’s work in 2002, the first solo show of her work since her exhibition at Guggenheim’s exhibition in 1946.   Snyder feels that, for many, Sobel simply didn’t fit with the narrative being built up around the New York School of painters so she was written out of its origin story. “Those years, the reputation of New York School of Abstract Expressionism was burgeoning with these bad boys of Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning. Janet Sobel didn’t fit into that myth of powerful hard-drinking painters of big paintings. The attention went elsewhere.”  At the very end of her life, in 1966, the art historian William Rubin, then a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, would visit a bedridden Sobel while researching the work of Jackson Pollock. Rubin would there select two all-over abstractions by the artist to be brought into MoMA’s collection, one of which, Milky Way, is currently on view at the museum.   Beginning in the late 1980s, there has been a steady reappraisal of Sobel’s work, particularly in the past 15 years. Still, those conversations have largely centered on her drip paintings and their relationship to Pollock. “Her stored experiences are what led to the spiritual, humanist, and profound nature of her art. When we visit MoMA and see The Milky Way, we realize that this is more than a painting—it is a message, to us, the viewers,” said James Brett, founder of the Gallery of Everything, London, which presented a booth devoted to Sobel’s work at Frieze Frieze Masters 2022, featuring five works seen in the background of the Ben Schnall photograph.  Today, Sobel’s oeuvre feels prescient and important for reasons well beyond exhausted conversations about the origins of Abstract Expressionism. Indeed, the folkloric qualities of her earliest paintings and her deep involvement in an American Surrealist style led largely by women feel particularly relevant to larger questions about the telling of art history. She remains quite singular in that regard.  “She’s a very unusual self-taught artist in that unlike most self-taught artists, her work evolved over time, like more Modern artists,” said Snyder. “She moves from a primitivism to a Surrealism, to a drip-style of Abstract Expressionism all within about 10 years, which is quite phenomenal growth.” (source)

Here's a video from the MoMA showcasing one of Sobel's most famous paintings, Milky Way (1945):

While reading all this, I discovered that Pollock was married to the artist Lee Krasner, who was also from a Jewish Ukrainian family (but born in America, unlike Sobel, and her Wikipedia entry doesn't hesitate to use the word "Jewish"), and who significantly influenced his work. Isn't it interesting how a white man from a Protestant family became an icon of American modern art, while these women were forgotten for decades?

[emperorblargus]

Why EmperorBlargus thinks you should be voting for Democrats today

So today there's a sort of off-year election day in America, and apparently that involves a bunch of state-governors in certain parts of America and a few state legislature elections. Now once upon a time, I said if I became an American citizen, because political parties go wrong, I'd probably be an Independent. That said, I didn't see ANY election in recent history I wouldn't have voted for the Democrat.

Today, there are some people who think that they can sit this one out, or vote for a third party, and that will work out and stick it to people. My reaction to that is below.

Really, commander? Well, if your "options" are "Democrat, Democrat, Socialist" or "Socialist, Democrat" I can see it's fair game to vote for the Socialist. If there is a seat which is "Republican" and no other candidates, you can - or rather, I should say, SHOULD, if you fulfilled the criteria, have considered running for that seat. But of course, that time is past. Also those aren't the majority of races. In general, you'll have "Democrat, Republican, Third Party" and too much of that time that Third Party is going to drain votes (or be set up TO drain votes) from Democrats. Voting third party isn't going to help, unless there's a "collective epiphany" of a very large number of people and those don't work that way and the risks are way too high.

I repeat, that's not going to work. Too many "third parties" have turned out to be Republicans with the serial numbers filed off and there's plenty more where that came from. Meanwhile, the people having a "collective epiphany" thus far seem to have decided to turn into raging racists, anti-semites, islamophobes, homophobes, transphobes, and borderline genocidal fascists. So I say, to hell with collective epiphanies and to hell with collective spiritual awakenings in the present and now. It ain't working, and the evidence is it ain't working, and the evidence is also it's making things worse. Maybe we need to stop with that, because that strategy seems to be working best for people with the worse instincts, and not bringing out anyone with better instincts. My reaction below as to, literally, seeing this and see people continue to promote this as a viable option.

A reminder that the Republican party is the party trying to ban reproductive care, prosecute people for miscarriages, ban transgender people, expel all people of a certain religion (and remember that will possibly extend to anyone who has ever been involved with that religion OR looks like the "stereotypical" [in the eyes of the people enforcing that rule, a view that doesn't have to have any rooting in reality, c'mon, you guys have already been protesting this] member of that religion, accept into their ranks take funding from open holocaust deniers, is OK with someone who blames wildfires on "Jewish Space Lasers", and generally destroy democracy in America.

BuT BoTh sIdEs, SO I GUESS TODAY'S FINALLY THE DAY YOU'RE GOING TO FUCK EVERYTHING UP to own the libs or something. Really?

A reminder that the current credentials of the average Republican politician seem to be corruption, fraud, damn fraud, and requiring your son to be your accountability buddy so you don't watch pr0n. I don't really see a progressive movement succeeding if it ends up putting these people in charge. You've got to hold onto what you already have, too. Gif related, my feelings.

I'm also starting to highly doubt the leadership capability of many so-called "alternatives". You know, if you want to be a challenge to the Dems, you can't just be someone who is "I'm an Independent". The expectatin is you're going to get better policy than Democrats, but instead both the candidates and the people asking for alternatives keeping making some critical mistakes. For example, like pandering to the "upper left quadrant" of "people who would like to have social safety nets, but only if they were granted exclusively to a small clade". Or to sum up a certain trumpeted "independent" candidate, it's a case of "I Gotta Solution. A Final Solution" populism. The Young Turks "third party" option seems to have an issue with trans people which the old guy in the Presidency doesn't. Cornell West noted getting nominations as an agreed-upon party member would be difficult in terms of ballot access, and instead of rectifying those he made the logical step to run as an independent. RFK, meanwhile, is a vax denier. There's something really unstable, I note, among these people and a drain from movements such as "Occupy Wall Street" to literal neo-nazism, and that has me questioning how viable these really are.

Meanwhile Democrats *HAVE* delivered, such that they can. Biden tried to cancel student debt with considerable success, though SCOTUS is in the way (and that's a Republican problem), reduced inflation, and lead to low unemployment, and an increase in unionization. And no, despite the accusations surrounding Biden and the rail strike in 2022, workers actually did win paid sick leave. Meanwhile, Michigan Democrats with a 1-seat majority on their legislature(s) struck down the "right to work" laws in that state.

So in total, that's it. With Democrats, you get progress in the end, and you maintain protections. With Republicans... you don't, and you might not have anything left at the end of it. There's no third party viability, and believe it or not there's no requirement that there be any viable third party candidates. That's it, and in my view you should give Democrats a chance in this year's elections.

[officialvoiceofgenerationx]

PMRC vs. Trans Kids

In 1985, a gaggle of bored Senators wives decided to do something to protect kids from rock'n'roll. They formed a scold squad called the Parents Music Resource Center - apparently they failed to notice that the kids in question - Gen X - had been effectively abandoned by our parents years before.

There were a bunch of Congressional hearings featuring members of various hair metal bands and the result of all the wasted tax dollars was some stickers on some albums and cassettes. The stickers were supposed to warn parents that the cassette or album had songs about drugs or violence or sex - as if all the big bands of the 1960s and 70s hadn't done plenty of songs about those topics - and again, as if our parents were involved in our lives beyond the occasional backhand for no reason. In practice, the stickers called attention to albums and cassettes that might be interesting. Bands who got the PMRC sticker automatically became more appealling.

The term "Streisand Effect" didn't exist yet, but that's what it was.

The big thing for scolds to get their panties in a bunch about today is trans kids. They obviously learned nothing from the PMRC shitshow. Telling teenagers not to do something is the best way to ensure that they will do that exact thing - and that they won't tell you about it. The conservatives who are currently shitting their britches about kids who want to choose what clothes they wear or what name they use - which is really all the whole trans kids curfuffle is about - are making it cool to explore all possibilities when it comes to expressing one's gender.

I'm all for this, by the way. It's true that, when it comes to reproduction, there is a clear and obvious binary - some people make sperm and others make eggs - but aside from that, literally everything related to gender is made up. Gender is a fiction with no actual basis in reality. The controversary about trans kids is inspiring kids to think about gender - and to figure out ways to make themselves happy while simultaneously pissing people off. That's what teenagers are supposed to do.

Fuck up the norms, kids.

[radkindoffeminist]

Things I really want TRAs to get through their fucking skulls.

B*tch, c*nt, and wh*re are misogynistic slurs. This isn’t something I am ever going to debate. These are derogatory terms used specifically against women and using them against women doesn’t make them less of a slur. Using them because ‘in some places c*nt isn’t a slur’ doesn’t make them less of a slur. Also, I’m literally fucking British and have lived in Scotland for some years now so before you start with the whole ‘but in some places it’s completely normalised and used commonly’: it’s not. I have heard some men use it to insult their friends, but it’s not thrown around constantly and is still typically used to degrade women.

R*tard is an ableist slur which should also never be used. (And, to be honest, lots of radfems need to learn this one too.)

We don’t want trans people dead. We don’t want them to struggle and be without help. We just disagree on the help that they should get. You think the only way to help them is to validate their gender and help them to change their entire body in the hope that might make them feel better. We think that mental health support designed to help them cope with their body issues is a much more effective form of support. No situation involves killing them or letting them all commit suicide. We want those who are genuinely struggling to get help.

Slight caveat to the point above: the males who fetishise womanhood and being a lesbian and who aren’t struggling with their body and their identity but just get off to being in a dress and want lesbians to fuck them? They don’t deserve help. They’re pornsick men. But the ones who really are struggling and just trying to get by do need help.

Your community is homophobic as shit. Saying that it’s just a ‘small minority’ who support genital preferences and say rejecting trans people is transphobic and call lesbians TERFs for not liking dick does not fix the problem and only serves to diminish what those who have been at the receiving end of this hateful and homophobic rhetoric have been through. You need to start speaking up against this rhetoric and telling people that it’s not fucking okay. You need to start taking a stand anytime someone says lesbians need to learn to like (girl)dick or to have a sexless relationship with a trans woman to be inclusive or uses the term genital preference (certainly if they’re saying it’s wrong/that people can learn to get over a ‘preference’; but even saying that it’s okay is homophobic because an inherent sexuality is not a preference).

Your community is misogynistic. Even ignoring the fact that the idea that trans women are women and that they know exactly what womanhood is like is misogynistic in and of itself, trans ideology is deeply misogynistic. It’s not okay to use misogynistic slurs, even against women you don’t like. It’s not okay to send rape threats to women, even ones you don’t like. It’s deeply misogynistic to blame all transphobia on TERFs when it’s men who are typically in charge of laws being changed and men who are the ones going around assaulting and mustering trans women. And it’s deeply misogynistic to tell women to get the fuck over themselves and learn to deal with having trans women in their spaces. Women built female spaces for a reason and you are completely ignoring our sex-based oppression which is deeply misogynistic.

Oh, and trans inclusive language? That’s misogynistic to. Forcing women to refer to themselves by their organs and functions especially when women have been seen as little more than their organs/reproductive abilities; making this language completely inaccessible to many women, especially those who speak English as a second language; forcing this language almost exclusively on women while men are still called men (or sometimes just cis men to be a little more specific); and telling any woman who has a problem with it, regardless of their reasoning, to get over themselves? That’s all deeply misogynistic.

Self-ID will be dangerous. I don’t care what stupid reasoning you come up with it not being dangerous because it will be. Men have and will continue to pretend to be women to access those spaces and creep on women because self-ID means that all they have to do is claim that they’re a woman and suddenly it’s transphobic for them to not be allowed to enter. There is no ‘you can tell the difference’ because it doesn’t matter what your personal opinion of that person is: if they say that they are a woman, they have to be allowed into women’s spaces and creepy men will abuse that. (And, no, you can’t argue that trans women ‘have always used women’s spaces and it’s been fine’ because we both know that we live in a different time now. It’s no long a very, very small number of trans people who genuinely tried their hardest to pass as the opposite sex. So unless you’re happy to exclude non-transitioning and non-passing trans people from the spaces which match their ‘gender’, these are the only options.)

Keeping spaces sex-segregated is the only viable alternative to self-ID for most public spaces. I’m happy to hear any ideas of how you’re going to make sure that only trans women can access women’s spaces and that cis men will never be able abuse self-ID to get in, but I don’t think such a solution exists. Therefore, I will continue to defend these spaces being sex-segregated because that’s the best way to ensure that the women in these spaces are safe from the abuses of males.

Continuing to scream that we’re so worried about sharing spaces with trans women ignores what you’re actually asking for in regards to self-ID. As above, literally any person will be able to say ‘I’m a woman’ and access these spaces so while you may focus on the ‘genuine’ trans women who just want to use the bathroom and be more comfortable than they would be in the male spaces, we worried about every single male abusing the existence of self-ID in order to abuse women. Remember what self-ID is: anyone can identify as any gender at any time just by claiming that they are that gender.

‘You shouldn’t be scared of public bathrooms because the bathroom in your home is gender neutral’ is the stupidest fucking argument. Like, I’m sorry, but how fucking idiotic do you have to be to think that comparing a private and public space is not only a good idea but will also support your point? You share a bathroom in your house with people you choose to live with and invite over; you share a public bathroom with strangers. Do you not understand that people can be comfortable sharing a space with family and friends, but uncomfortable sharing with literal fucking strangers who don’t always have the best intentions???

Saying women are adult human females or that they have vaginas does not reduce women down to their organs and you are ignorant as shit is you continue to repeat this lie. Reducing someone to their organs (or any other feature) means that you think the only important/significant thing about them, that you view them as being only of value because of this feature. You know like conservatives saying that women are only valuable/useful for sex and giving birth to children? That’s what reducing women to their organs really means. Stating the common characteristic shared by a certain group does not mean you view the whole group as being valued for that one thing. It’s why no one says that lesbians are female homosexuals reduces lesbians to their sexuality: because, in this case, we recognise that we are stating the shared characteristic that lesbians have.

Radfems don’t believe in gender as a concept. If you’re talking about how radfems believe sex = gender then your argument is already flawed. If you’re talking about radfems believing in gender in any way then your argument is already flawed. We believe in the existence of biological sex and recognise its impact on people in current society, fighting for rights of women who are discriminated against on the basis of their sex. We use the words women and girls which describe people of the female sex based upon their age: adults are women and minors are girls. Men and boys work similarly. These terms are therefore sex-based, not gendered/gender-based. We believe that, functionally, gender is a set of misogynistic stereotypes which tells people (though especially women) how they are supposed to act and serves no purpose in society other than to make people continually question themselves and force people into little boxes. We believe that TRAs and conservatives have gone two different ways with gender and both are harmful: conservatives telling people that they must follow gender roles based on their biological sex and TRAs telling people to identify with a gender based upon what gender roles they like/take up.

Define woman. Please. All we want is a coherent definition of woman which doesn’t rely on stereotypes, debunked brain sex, circular reasoning, or calling it ‘a feeling’. No one has ever been able to give us a coherent definition.

Yeah, brain sex has been debunked after some fucking massive studies into it. Turns out, it was always rooted in misogyny and most of the previous studies were basically just confirmation bias to ‘prove’ that men and women are ‘wired differently’ to give a scientific foundation to all the misogynistic stereotypes surrounding women. Once you account for brain size, we’re really not all that different after all. So no, a trans woman cannot just be born with a female brain; a trans man cannot just be born with a male brain. No such thing exists.

Which argument do you want: there is absolutely no difference between cis and trans people and therefore many people have probably had crushes on trans people without knowing it OR trans people are in danger of being abused/raped/murdered specifically because they’re trans? Because the first argument would suggest that trans people could never be targeted for being trans because people will always see them as their chosen gender and the only people who would know that they’re trans is people that they’ve told but the latter point means trans people are targeted because people can see that they’re trans and therefore many/most trans people don’t pass and so it’s unlikely that people have had all these crushes on trans people because it’s fairly obvious that they’re trans? Because I’m willing to admit that some trans people really do pass and I would not know that they’re trans unless directly told, but the percentage who pass that well is minuscule and hardly representative of all trans people.

Your community is racist. Stop leaning on the whole ‘black women had their womanhood denied from them like trans women are’. Black women weren’t seen as women because they were seen as less than human; they were still viewed as female which is why they were raped and forced through pregnancies. Stop saying that attributes we say are more likely to be found in men are more commonly found in black women therefore we see black women as men. That’s an argument used in bad faith and you know it. Like please learn the difference between ‘more commonly found’ and ‘exclusively found’.

Your community is intersexist. Intersex people are not pawns to be used in your argument. Like 0.1% of the population having a condition which genuinely makes their biological sex more complicated than male or female does not disprove the sex binary and, if anything, the fact that these people struggle with many health problems and are typically infertile goes to show that the sex binary does exist. Moreover, if gender is completely different from sex then conditions which make your biological sex complicated/mixed should say nothing about gender. (And yes, I said 0.1% of the population even though intersex conditions occur at a higher rate than that because most intersex conditions don’t make your sex more complicated than male or female so only a small percentage of intersex conditions overall make people’s biological sex complicated.)

Shut the fuck about PCOS. My condition is not to be used in your arguments. Radfems have never used my condition against me or called me less of a woman for it, so you don’t get to say I’m less female for it either or tell me that you somehow know that radfems see PCOS sufferers that way. You’re the one who abused the existence of my condition and implies that I’m not fully female to make some backwards arguments. You’re the ones abusing the existence of my condition.

Going one step further than PCOS, shut up about women without a uterus or ovaries or post-menopausal women. We know they’re fucking women, dipshits. They’re still adult human females, just ones who are older, went through some trauma which resulted in surgical removal of their sex organs, or had a developmental issue in utero which resulted in them not developing certain organs. (See that I said developmental issue? Because you know what we call people who didn’t grow a uterus but that’s not a problem/issue at all? Men.)

A lot of your views of gender are based on stereotypes. A lot more than you’re willing to admit. You can try to pretend that you’re above all the stereotypes and I’m certain that you genuinely believe that you are, but no one has been able to define woman without referring to brain sex (which is normally just down to stereotypes and debunked anyway) or just straight up stereotypes. And so many people list various stereotypes as one of the reasons they knew that they were trans or non-binary. Even when people say that they don’t ‘feel connected to womanhood’ or whatever as a reason why they’re NB, it’s often because they’re androgynous or not completely feminine 100% of the time. They won’t ever admit that as being the reason, but you can see from how they speak about womanhood and their disconnect to it that it’s true.

Not everything is a fucking dog whistle! A dogwhistle is an inconspicuous term/phrase/symbol which a group uses and only those who are within the group recognise. Like how 88 is a white supremacist number because H is the 8th letter of the alphabet so it’s HH which is Heil Hitler or how ‘I just want the trains to run on time’ is a fascist phrase because it refers to people saying that Mussolini was bad but at least he got the trains to run on time. The only thing that might be considered a radfem dog whistle is TIM/TIF, not because it has a secret double meaning that only we recognise, but because it’s a term which radfems typically use and often isn’t understood outside of radfem circles. It stands for Trans Identified Male/Female and we mean exactly that. We don’t have things that secretly mean that trans people should die. We say exactly what we mean but you just choose to believe the secret meaning you made up over what we are directly telling you, probably because ‘I hate all trans people and I want them to all die’ isn’t something we say.

Saying that we only care about what genitals we have is a simplification of our views which is basically incorrect and used to ignore all our actual issues while making us out to look like creeps. Do you also not understand the homophobic history behind it? Being used against gay people to ask why they were so obsessed with what genitals someone had and why they couldn’t be with the opposite sex? (I’ll answer that: of course you don’t give a shit because you don’t care about homophobia or using homophobic rhetoric which supports your ideology.) We don’t actually care about if someone has a dick or vagina. We care about the fact that the dick havers were raised with male socialisation and that means that they experience life differently from us. We care about the fact that the penis owners are much more likely to abuse women and that far too many will do whatever it takes to be around vulnerable women so that they can abuse them. We care about the fact that we have faced specific issues because we have vaginas both directly (eg: menstruation and childbirth) and indirectly (eg: period stigma, medical misogyny, catcalling, and other forms of discrimination) and we want spaces away from the very people who uphold this misogynistic system to be able to discuss our issues openly. But you constantly ignore all of these issues and make it out to be just about genitals because you ignore our arguments and want to make it out like we’re fucking idiots.

‘Here’s six women. One of them is a trans woman. Guess who’ Isn’t the argument that you think it is. Firstly, literally no one is saying that trans people cannot pass at all. No one. Of course we understand that SOME trans people do pass really well and we would never be able to differentiate them from actual women. Secondly, just because they appear like women doesn’t make them women. They are still biologically male and hence a man. It really doesn’t matter how feminine or well passing they are; they’re men. Thirdly, it is not representative of all trans people. Yes, some people pass well but the photos you show are almost exclusively of rich models who are wearing heavy makeup and who’ve had extensive work done which isn’t accessible to most trans people and you’re basically telling them that if they can’t pass so well then they must not be women. Isn’t that wrong by your own ideology? Fourthly, you really going to do that and then accuse us of saying that women must be feminine? Really? And finally, this is almost always used as a trap against us, hence why we often refuse to respond, but you’re not proving anything. You’re not fighting against any of our arguments; you just think you’re fighting against the whole sexual dimorphism and generally being able to tell women and men apart but being able to generally do something doesn’t mean that there aren’t exceptions? Exceptions don’t make the rule.

I’m not here to argue about what I would believe in some theoretical utopia. I’m here to argue about what is happening in reality. I’ve heard the line ‘but would sex be important if we lived in a society which didn’t discriminate against people by their sex/gender aside from when medically necessary?’ way too much. And the answer is no, but we don’t live in that world and that world is not going to exist within my lifetime at the very least, probably not for centuries. We live in a world where women are treated differently because of their sex. We live in a world where period stigma and medical misogyny and catcalling and rape and domestic violence and devaluation of women’s labour all exist, among other deeply misogynistic issues. So me fighting to get people to recognise that sex is an important characteristic and defending it’s legal protections is not because I deeply believe that it should be an important thing, but because the way in which women are treated by society, particularly at the hands of men, shows that we have built a world in which someone’s sex is an important characteristic and which will affect many aspect of our lives and hence we need to recognise the reality of the world in which we live in. If the end goal is to build a world in which sex is irrelevant outside of medicine then we first need to recognise why it’s not a reality now and work to fix that rather than pretending that everyone’s going to go along with us and misogyny will completely disappear overnight or arguing the what-ifs of this purely theoretical world that we will not live to see.

Radical feminism is about freeing women from their sex-based oppression and fighting for sex-based rights. As a result, males of all genders all inherently excluded from our feminism. To say that we exclude trans people completely is ignoring the fact that trans men and AFAB non-binary people are included in our fight for women’s rights because, regardless of how they identify, they have and will continue to be oppressed on the basis of their sex and they deserve rights to protect them from that discrimination. Your unhappiness that we’re only including people on the basis of their sex is not my fucking problem. Your unhappiness over trans women specifically not being included is not my fucking problem. Movements which seek to free people from their oppression don’t owe it to you to include everyone, they only have to include the oppressed people that they are fighting for. Your inability to understand that is not my fucking problem and only goes to show your entitlement.

If you don’t argue with me in good faith, don’t except me to argue in good faith either. If you’re going to twist my words, ignore what I say, tell me my sources are wrong with no evidence (or tell me that it’s not a source you like/trust enough), and refuse to respond to many of my points then don’t expect me to do the same. I have tried way too many times to argue in good faith only to end up having my points ignored, my sources dismissed, my words twisted if not just straight up having words put into my mouth. If you are not going to be open minded when you talk to me, don’t expect me to put the time in to explain things to you. If you are rude or dismissive or ignoring me or not asking questions, I’m not going to put in all the mental and emotional labour to explain concepts to you and you have not ‘won’ the argument if I have enough and stop responding. You are not owed our time and effort and you should never expect it just because you claim that you ‘really want to learn’.

Please learn some critical thinking skills. I know radfems say this all the time, but I really mean it. If not to understand radfems more, but to be critical of literally all the information that you absorb. I am tired of explaining to people that just because you don’t like or trust the source (like the Daily Mail) doesn’t mean that the actual story itself is untrue. Newspapers like this are incredibly bias and will publish stories which feed into their specific narrative, but it doesn’t mean that what they publish is actually false? Unless you can actually find a source which can tell me that whatever story I’m showing you never happened/was objectively false, I’m going to keep using it. A story which goes against your beliefs doesn’t make it a fake. Biases in newspapers come from the stories which they choose to publish (or not publish), the details they focus on, and the wording they use. My favourite example of this is a few years back when every newspaper was publishing articles about how the Labour and Tory proposed budgets were never going to work/actually balance because the assumptions they used weren’t right. The Daily Mail, however, published only that Labour’s proposed budget wasn’t going to work. Was the story correct? Yes. Did they purposefully leave out information which therefore gave a bias perspective of the two budgets? Absolutely. If you throw everything out which has any biases (which was a thing a TRA I argued with claimed you should do and said that was what they were taught to do), you would have to throw out literally everything ever written. Instead, it’s significantly better to be critical of what you read and understand what biases are in place and why.

[trans-axolotl]

i am so sorry if this is the most ignorant shit you’ve ever heard—that long post about how the trans community isn’t inherently safe for intersex ppl—can you outline the harmful, like, ideas? phrases? intersexist talking points that you’re referencing? again i’m rly sorry, for some reason your intersex questions tag won’t show up for me but if you’re willing i’d love to maybe know what phrases or words i should look for to call ppl out on. obviously feel free to tell me to eat shit. i appreciate ur time thank you v much

you're totally fine anon, I'm usually open to most questions when I can tell that people have good intentions :)

So I'm gonna list out a lot of shit but I do want to clarify that it's not only trans people who do this stuff; cis people are horribly intersexist as well. I'm just going to be talking about some specific intersexist things I see more often in trans spaces and also because my audience online is a lot of trans people.

A huge thing is I see a lot of trans people saying that they "want to be intersex" or "wish they had an intersex body." This is an issue for a lot of reasons, because it feels fetishistic, is ignorant of what intersex actually is, ignores the fact that being intersex means you're going to face a lot of oppression, and generally contributes to stereotypes that intersex is like some mythical third sex where you perfectly have a mix of all your characteristics in a gender-affirming way.

Faking being intersex. I haven't seen this shit as much online in a while but this honestly was a kind of big issue in some of my online circles like 5 years back and I still see it popping up every now and then. I don't think I need to explain why this is bad.

Literally just using slurs. I see wayyy more dyadic trans people than I should saying "hermaphrodite" when that is not a slur that dyadic trans people can ever reclaim.

Saying stuff about "AFAB bodies" or "AMAB bodies" or generally talking about sex assigned at birth and assuming that means people have certain body parts or experiences. Not all people who were AFAB have a uterus, not all people who were AMAB have a penis. Generally, I see a lot of trans people making generalizations about the "transmasc or transfem experience" in a way that doesn't leave room for intersex trans people who have different experiences with transition or different ways of understanding their trans identity. Acting like AGAB tells you anything more than what is assigned at birth is a problem, because it excludes intersex people who have different bodies, sex characteristics, lived experiences, all that.

Saying really harmful shit about our bodies, whether that's about body hair or genitalia or our voices, or anything. I've had a lot of dyadic trans people say weird shit to me that I think they think is complimenting me but is just really fucked up. People make weird offensive comments about my body hair and will just say a lot of invasive stuff about my body that is not their business. Asking invasive questions about my genitalia, demanding to know what's in my pants, that sort of stuff.

Specifically harassing a lot of intersex people of color and saying racist shit to them when they speak about intersex topics. This is something I've seen a lot irl and also on tumblr, and people specifically have targeted intersex poc on here and said really racist shit to them if they call people out for saying intersexist stuff.

Getting involved in intracommunity discussions about whether or not intersex is LGBTQ and ignoring intersex people when we speak on it. Our relationship to the LGBTQ community is intersex people's business and we all have a lot of different thoughts on it, and too many trans people speak over us on that.

On the flip side, always leaving us out of conversations where we are relevant (like reproductive rights, lgbtq bills, some types of discrimination, medical abuse, stuff like that)

Only bringing up intersex people when they're arguing with transphobes. Way too often i only see people bringing up intersex issues when its like "Take that transphobes! People with XXY chromosomes exist so you're wrong!" And it's like yeah, that's true, but it's shitty when y'all only bring us up when we're a convenient talking point and then don't know shit about what our activism is, what issues are important to us. It feels exploitative to only use our issues when convenient for you and then not pay attention to us the rest of the time.

Currently a lot of people are ignoring the way transphobic bills are also intersexist. People don't realize that all the things they're saying about "It's so easy for cis kids to get hormones, why is it so easy for cis kids but it's hard for trans kids!!!" is ignoring the fact that most of the cis kids who are "easily" getting hormones are intersex kids who are put on hormones in a way that is often coercive and is trying to "cure" being intersex. All these transphobic bills have specific exceptions to enable intersex medical abuse and it isn't cis people being lucky, it's intersex people being abused.

In general, trans community will ignore intersex exploitation when it's convenient. This one I'm less mad about because I don't think that even a lot of intersex people know this, but the history of how gender-affirming surgery and transgender clinics have been created in the US is really not great. Like obviously gender-affirming surgery is great and I want gender clinics to exist and trans healthcare to be easily accessible, but a lot of transgender healthcare was borne out of intersex medical exploitation. Look up John Money and the John Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic for a particularly bad example. This isn't trans people's fault at all, of course, but what is an issue is when I see trans people unquestionably celebrating doctors who invented trans surgeries, or celebrating the birth of gender clinics without critically understanding the horrible history some of these places have.

Acting like being intersex makes it easier to be trans, or would make it easier to get hormones or be respected by cis people. Most of the trans and intersex people I know have gone through so much shit. I went through hormonal conversion therapy because i was trans and intersex, which was literally so fucked. Because I was both trans and intersex, they did a lot of fucked up medical abuse to try to turn me cis and dyadic, and it did not make medical transition at all easier, it made it harder. That's why it can hurt so much when trans people say that being intersex makes being trans easier, because it fucking doesn't.

Also, I've seen a lot of dyadic trans people lately acting really hostile towards intersex organizations that are advocating for an end to intersex surgery because they think it's going to limit access to trans surgery. Dyadic trans people do not get to fucking say that we should stop advocating for ending intersex genital mutilation because it's "not the right time politically." It's always fucking necessary to be advocating to end IGM, and if there was a specific issue with a specific policy that intersex orgs were advocating for that would make it difficult for trans people to get surgery, that would be important to bring up, but most people I've seen saying that stuff are just saying that we shouldn't talk about it at all.

Not educating themselves on intersex issues. Most trans people I know have no clue what intersex is, what our major activist issues are, what the major intersex org for their country is, what the legal landscape of intersex rights is in their country, stuff like that. I'm not saying that trans people all have to be experts on specific intersex intracommunity debates, intersex history, intersex politics, but I do think that dyadic trans people do need to do the bare minimum of education.

Honestly? This is a little more personal but I know so many intersex people who have had bad experiences in their relationships. A lot of dyadic trans people can get weirdly jealous of their intersex partners, which is fucked up when you consider the fact that the things they are jealous of are things that cause us systematic exploitation and abuse. I know a lot of dyadic trans people who also just...trying to think of how to put this. Who are really not considerate partners during sex for some unique needs that intersex people have during sex. Again not a issue unique to trans people but something that I know happens in like most intersex people's relationships so it's good for trans people to be aware.

In general, the way a lot of trans people talk about and think about biological sex is counterproductive to intersex justice. Biological sex is a social construct. Sex isn't real, in terms of there's no reason sex is tied to gender, and also no reason that we've decided some body parts are now all linked together in a specific way that for some reason is going to be sorted into two categories. Chromosomes and genitalia are not some special body part that is entirely different than like, your kidney or your stomach. Biological sex is not real and the sex binary is not real and I see a lot of people talking about stuff like "male" or "female" is a real category that means anything. There is so much diversity and variation of sex even within dyadic people, and I see a lot of trans people clinging to biological sex in a way that is really apparent and also pretty harmful.

This got kind of long but these are some things that really bother me. I also left out most of the overt stuff like actual hate crimes and assault because I think that most people can recognize that as intersexist when that's happening. Again, I don't want to make it seem like it's only trans people doing this shit, but this is the stuff that I am seeing a lot specifically in trans community and some stuff that has some unique dynamics from trans people. And I think that trans people a lot of times will say things about "how close our two communities are" and "how much our issues overlap" when in reality they don't, and most dyadic trans people aren't putting in the work to build solidarity with trans intersex people. Cis intersex people also aren't putting in the work to build solidarity with trans people either, to be fair, and I'm really mad at them too, but I'm talking about this from the perspective of a trans intersex person who's already existing here in these spaces. other trans and intersex people feel free to add on.

okay to reblog.