#unjust hierarchies

[somerandomg33k]

Question

Is it a good thing to make money? Cause I think Liberals general think it is a good thing to make money. But of course, freaking Liberals and their love of unjust hierarchies.

[wishesofeternity]

My problem with The Dragon Prince is that while it preaches about "breaking the cycle" and "choosing love", it repeatedly does so in a way that echoes the age-old idea of telling victims to passively accept their lot in life and the injustices inflicted upon them while their perpetrators never have to acknowledge their wrongs or face consequences for their actions. This is the kind of narrative they follow on both a personal and systematic axis, and it's exactly why the show will always frustrate me.

[edwardseymour]

on the topic of stanne's being incapable of viewing feminism through any other lens than 'not like the other girls'... would anne even be regarded as so exceptional if she wasn't as privileged as she was? would the idea of her innate exceptionalism, her standing out at court as more fashionable/passionate/moral/intellectual/exotic still persist? i just have to wonder how many women could have been remembered by history as exceptional, if only given the ability to — if they had the resources from birth that anne had etc.

[the-avaricious-meddler]

Resisting the urge to scream when people miss that the Judgements are only at the top of the chain because they put themselves there and in fact the chain only exists because they created it and instead read FL as a generic "some beings are just naturally above others Because" story

[bisexual-magneto]

I mean, I feel like it is a natural outcome considering that both the jury and the public seemed to completely forget that Depp v Heard was about defamation, not abuse, but it terrifies me that a lot of people don't realise me what a giant blow to women's freedom of speech this was. She didn't name Depp as an abuser in that article, she said she was a figure representing abuse. The article was co-written with the ACLU and one of the contested lines was written by the editors but she got sued for it. Not the Washington Post, not the ACLU. Which definitely is at least partially because she had the worst lawyers and partially to get back at the ex, but Depp sued the Sun in the UK. He does sue newspapers.

And this is another facet of the larger phenomenon where all those big Western values of liberty and individualism, the personal pursuit of happiness, civil liberties for everyone etc etc etc - is and always have been directed at (white) men, with anyone else being granted some of that as a concession. So many of the lauded works in our literature are about how any person has the right to take charge of their own fate and needs civil liberties to be able to take responsibility for their lives - but at any of those points of time, it was always clear that this does not apply to women.

That since men have decided that women are happier as housewives, they have to be housewives, it had to be made law and there had to be social pressure. Since men have decided that women are better wives if they're uneducated, they barred them from education. That since men had decided that women cannot handle stress, they have to be banned from all sorts of things. And so on. The ideal of self-determination has always been a gendered one. It is about the man as the special crown jewel of creation, the being of infinite value, intelligence and depth, alleviated to personal power by the Enlightenment - and the woman as the NPC beside him. The rib. Remember, the same phase in history when male philosophers and scholars started to push for the idea that every (white) man is created equal, has the same abilities barred by circumstances - that was the same time that othering was more and more transferred from a religious rationale to a scientific one.

And much in the same way, if a man - any man but especially a white man - had lost a defamation trial on such shaky, shaky grounds, men would be taking his side, sharing 1984 quotes or whatever and consider it a dark day for human rights. In fact, think of all the male pundits who will spin outright lies about some celebrity being part of a cannibal paedo cult - and when they're found out to be lying, their fans defend them and say that "well it's their freedom of speech!"

For the public, there is no urgency to defend women's right to freedom of speech, especially when they're talking about gendered issues, because quite classically, they think a woman has nothing meaningful to say and "should be seen, not Heard".

[the-frosty-mac]

*leftist infighting voice* (I’m a communist don’t take this as commie bashing)

[yuriartillery]

it must be extremely tiring to be a real anarchist on tumblr. imagine having coherent beliefs but being forced to share a space and labels with idiots who say vote blue no matter who. id be looking for the nearest bridge

[thekimspoblog]

Demon trying to feed on my insecurities: "You're a bad driver"

Me: "Of course I am. I hate driving. Going 80 mph surrounded by tons of metal is nerve-wrecking. I try to do it as little as possible. Of course I'm bad at it"

Demon: "You're a bad writer"

Me: "Well that part's simply not true. I never claimed I was the greatest author of my generation, but when I put pen to paper I know what I want to communicate and I usually do it well. If someone isn't impressed with my work, that's unfortunate but they're entitled to their opinion"

Demon: "You're a bad leader"

Me: "Well I don't know about that! I mean there was that one time when... Ok look just because people don't see me as an authority figure doesn't mean... 😠 You know you can be a real asshole, demon!"

[zukkacore]

The Fountain Of Magical Brethren statue in the 5th Harry Potter book really was the Rosetta Stone for me understanding that Jk Rowling really has always just been a White Man’s Burden kind of freak

[vanilla-voyeur]

I don't agree with defund the police or ACAB

Or at least I don't agree with the terms. The underlying message is good. The problem with these terms is that they obscure what we really mean in a way that makes us look more unreasonable than we really are.

Take "defund the police". What we really mean is "fund social services". @theabigailthorn made a video on policing in the UK that shows that regardless of whether the police budgets are cut under Austerity or whether police budgets balloon out of proportion like in the US, the outcome is a shitty system so long as funding for social services is low. Without funding to social services, the police wear too many hats. There is no possible way that one single group can handle all the different problems we place on the heads of the police. And that's completely ignoring that they're a white supremacist agent of state violence. Tbh when I first heard about "defund the police" I mistakenly thought that it was supposed to be some sort of punishment for the police being racist. On its surface, that sounds like the wrong approach. I'm pretty confident that that reading is what many conservatives take away when they hear "defund the police".

And then there's "ACAB". What we really mean is that "all cops are complicit" or "good cops don't last". I can't stand when people smugly say that of course ACAB is obviously not literal. If you expect the group that thinks we're all batshit insane and wholly divorced from reality for the most common sense takes to parse the nuance behind the blanket statement then you're batshit insane and wholly divorced from reality.

This is not even a bad optics argument. This is why in the heck are we spreading misinformation about our own dang beliefs that make us sound completely unreasonable.

[thedragonagelesbian]

head in hands why did i do this to myself*

*make my canon inquisitor a trevelyan

[somerandomg33k]

I have a soreness pain in my feet. I feel it more so on work days that I walk a lot. I have PTO I could use. But if I do, I clock in less overtime that week. Less overtime means less take home pay. Means less money for me to give to my disabled friends in need. Meeting everyone basic needs of food, healthcare, shelter, transportation, education, entertainment, internet, electricity, heating, & water will improve everyone's health and mental health. But the leadership of our society don't want to do that. Capitalism requires there to be an underclass. Capitalism requires poverty to exist to be a threat to those who don't want work the terrible underpaid jobs. "Sure you can choose not to work. You can choose to live on the streets." Making a choice between living or dying is not much of a choice. It is coercion.

Capitalism is a coercive unjustifiable hierarchy.

I didn't choose the job I have. I have to have a job to pay rent. And life is terrible for those who can't work. My disabled friends can tell you.

[geoffrey]

just read the first snowpiercer comic. that was literally one of the worst things ive ever read

[the-avaricious-meddler]

Also speaking of the great chain I'm drawn to Hell specifically. And the bit in Heart's Desire where Beechwood is put on trial for going *down* the chain, because to Hell only going *up* is allowed.

And it makes me think: Hell, in all its stated rejection of Law, still wants to use The Chain for its own benefit rather than get rid of it. They claim to be subverting it, when in reality they just want to do Unjust Hierarchies but in a different flavor.

No wonder there are groups of Devils who want to rebel against Hell.

[flango87]

Everyday I think of the time I was watching the hunger games and my dad came in and I was explaining where I was in the movie and what snow was doing and such and he went “oh yeah bc snow is doing that communism thing like Trudeau is” and I just. No Sir. You Must be Confused.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

There is no magic "abolish the state" button, which is why I'm an anarchist, as "when the state has socialismed enough it will just magically poof away in a cloud of smoke" is the leninist position.

That is not the Leninist position, the Leninist position is and always has been that the state cannot disappear until the material conditions for its disappearance are achieved. The withering away of the state, first outlined by Engels, is not a magic process but one that proceeds from the abolition of class and the dissolution of the bourgeoisie.

How are you going to get rid of the bourgeoisie without a state? Are you going to simply ask them nicely to leave you alone? If you are organized and if your organization is suppressing the bourgeoisie as a class, then you have created a state, you have created an authoritarian imposition on the free organization of some section of the people. If you are not doing any of this, then the bourgeoisie who you have left unmolested will invariably come to dominate you once more.

Anarchists have always played word games to get around these simple facts. There are the practical anarchists who will admit to some amount of authority, but always with the caveat that theirs is *just* authority, *necessary* authority, and that is is the *unjust* authority that they condemn. Just authority is not the State, because the State is unjust, and so if they see an authority as just then it cannot be the State. Fair enough, you can call things by whatever names you like, but if you put these ideas in practice you basically end up with Leninism. You want to create dual power? You want to abolish the bourgeois state and replace it with a democratic organ of the working class? Well so did Lenin, and now you know why the Mensheviks accused him of anarchism.

Then there are the quite impractical capital-A Anarchists, who are adamant that anarchy means anarchy and that even voluntary hierarchy and submission to democratic authority is impermissible. Whether pacifistic or militaristic, they are generally unremarkable and ineffective at their goals because they eschew most effective forms of organization as ideologically impure. Even the most advanced anarchists, the CNT in Spain and the Maknovists in Russia, were plagued by economic confusion and disorganization. Their lack of discipline led to their downfall.

If you want to read more, here are some pertinent links: