#we are all individual people not a monolith

[chapscher]

Also came here to talk about The Will To Change

If someone grows up in an environment where they are told by parents, teachers, friends, community leaders, and neighbors that they are not supposed to express their emotions (save for anger) it fucks them up. bell hooks' thesis is that this is traumatic and limits the ways in which someone is able to understand and react to their own emotions. While other marginalized groups experience this to some extent, this kind of abuse is often experienced by men and is patriarchal in the sense that it is meant to reinforce gender separation, which leads to a gendered hierarchy, which benefits the patriarchy.

Anyone can reinforce this line of thinking. "Man up, boys don't cry," "Stop being such a girl. You bitch about everything," and "Don't like what I said? Well you're a man, so deal with it" are all patriarchal sentiments. This line of thinking, if internalized, leads to a lot of men not seeking help for illness, addiction, abusive relationships, and can lead to isolationism. Anyone who is isolated becomes vulnerable to those peddling cult-like thinking because those peddlers are also offering a sense of community.

So what do we do about this? Even those who try to raise their sons without gendered expectations still find their son shamed into repression by those outside the family. One of the ways to address the prolonged trauma that leads to isolation is to make sure that men have a space to talk about their emotions. When feminists encourage this it's not them saying "We must coddle the most misogynistic of men" it's them saying "There are men who want to escape repressive rhetoric and we should offer a space for them to do that." And it is feminist to acknowledge that those who reinforce a gendered separation (e.g. talking about men as if they are monolith/hive mind that must be severely punished for the patriarchy) are actively making things worse.

When it comes to an individual's trauma, other people don't get to decide when or how that person acknowledges it or heals from it. That traumatized person needs to acknowledge that they have been hurt and decide what they are going to do about it, if they will continue ignoring it or if they will try to heal. Those who try to heal should be given the space to do so, and creating this space is both a feminist and humanist endeavor.

Nooo mutual don’t put that “men fall down the alt-right pipeline bc women/feminists are too mean” post on my dash nooo mutual don’t try to say women need to be nicer when dealing with misogynistic men nooo mutual nooo

[jmdbjk]

So can I ask do you think they are a couple or not ? Your own opinion?

Because I saw you mentioning whatever it is many times lol usually Jikookers here does that when they feel they were/are not a couple.

Hey, Anon.

For one thing, it is none of my business. They are the ones who have the right to say anything about something that personal.

I only say things from what I observe. I'm not in their bedroom.

But I will say this much: over the years I have seen Jimin and Jungkook's behavior toward each other occasionally step over the line of "bro culture" skinship and more into a grey area of "what was that? that was not heterosexual behavior" I don't care how much you buy into skinship, some of their behavior is not that either. There are moments of tender touches that are somewhat ever so slightly too tender for it to be in the friend zone when Jungkook massages Jimin's neck... or lips touching necks (after hours, not in front of a camera) and we find out about it later? lips on ears? If you think that is something your (hypothetically) straight brother and his straight friends would do, you will probably come to a certain conclusion that straight guys do that. If your straight brother and his straight friends would NEVER do such a thing... that's different conclusion. Am I right?

We all bring our own life's experience into this thought process so I encourage everyone to watch original content and draw your own conclusions without listening to people pushing a narrative.

I also think if Jimin and Jungkook did not want us to think certain things about them, they would cease behaving certain ways. So my thoughts there are that they are secure in whatever their relationship actually is so they don't care what we think. But it is still their choice whether to publicly state whether they are or aren't.

For myself, I am not going to declare something like that to the world about them when its not my place to do so.

I am curious as to why my opinion about it is important? Who cares what I think? You gonna write me off because I've not declared which side I'm on?

[snekdood]

bitches be like. i hate vegans so much that i’ve decided i like killing animals and its fine and i dont feel bad and animals dont have feelings and its fine and im cool subversive and different and edgy and like to post fucked up stuff to make vegans uncomfortable bc im just so cool

[satoriberry]

tha terf paradox of promoting acceptance of oneself's biological nature and not changing it for societal ideologies but then turning around and criticizing any person that has a different perception of their biological nature that doesn't immediately enter the "male or female" binary hmmm,,,,

[rametarin]

Also I'd like something clarified VERY FUCKING HARD

Calling something "actually just christofascism" is such a dodge to say, "you can't be part of our ideology because you have a bad take, and our ideology can't have bad takes. Bad takes means it's not our ideology" is just No True Scotsmanning, and it feeds into this idea the plan can't be lead to a wrong result, or it must not be the plan and other people may have just tried to institute "other disgusting plan"

No. TERF logic is ONLY different from Intersectional Feminist logic in that TERFs do not consider you a woman just by your self-identified gender, and treat being a woman as something static and biological, not a mutable fact. They otherwise maintain everything else about Class Struggle Theory, greviance studies, and the idea of Critical Gender Theory.

They still hold that we arbitrarily live under a "patriarchy" because, "the nature of conflict is one must oppress and the other be the oppressor- woman is inarguably oppressed because they aren't in control, and as the designated oppressed demographic, that makes their intrinsic relationship to men as one of oppressed to oppressor."

It is the nature of this absolutist "IF X IS Y THEN Y MEANS Z ABSOLUTELY" of Class Struggle Theory that is the problem. It is the "lens by which to analyze" (a stupid truism pretending to be anything scientific whatsoever) that is wrong. And it's the same lens they hold up to the issue of why BDSM is wrong.

These people believe that you cannot allow something to exist in fiction, because they believe culture is more or less monolithic and society is this hivemind of intellectual objects. If you let a bad object into this collection, you "taint" or "poison" what they think society is- which is the great big metaphoric monolith that we all draw our perceptions and understandings from. Which is asinine, because this is not how individual human beings work, this is how sycophants and people with broken social wiring try to emulate one another to fake understanding things, the way sociopaths try to mimic emotions and their appropriate use without actually feeling or understanding them.

So they dogmatically approach this idea of how culture absolutely works, and they tie it into the idea of policing it to keep it "healthy." They maintain this convenient top-down idea of authority and the idea good-authority still uses power to police the dangereous or bad stuff from people "for their own sake." And they believe NOTHING can exist in fiction that doesn't count as something "Society" (capital S), the embodiment of the collective of what is Right(tm) and Acceptable(tm). In short, they believe the fact rape fiction exists, is why some random person will just suddenly feel like raping another human being. Because, "that's part of our culture, he's just acting within how the media and literary culture of our people are told they are allowed to operate," look you in the eye when they say that, and say THAT is the reason why you shouldn't be allowed to write spicy fanfiction if you happen to like sexual assault themes.

They will act like your very input of spicy smut has poisoned the culture, like chat GPT learning to use slurs and inappropriately using them at every opportunity. They argue their censorship and policing are required to prevent sexual assault and rape by sanitizing "the culture".

Do you understand how draconian and collectivist and psychotic that is? Do you understand how it's similar, but SO VERY DIFFERENT in origin, source and scope from the justification theocratic authoritarians operate?

Calling it just "another form of christofascism" deflects the true horror of what is being done here, and fails to really address how horrifying the implications are to this ideology. Akin to seeing something like a movement in, I don't know, Southern India to oppress and deprive North India of civil rights, property and life, and calling that, "another form of White Supremacism." (I chose South doing it to the North for a reason- because calling it white supremacism when it is a different source to a similar outcome is what it has in common with calling godless Marxist philosophy operating like theocratic Christian authoritarianism, is just like when you use call a browner demographic white supremacist for acting in its own demographic interest over another demographic.)

terfs are incredible

> “it doesn’t matter if they consented, you’re a bad person if you get off to causing other people pain”

so you agree? you don’t actually care about consent and you just have moral standards for what people do? you don’t think their consent matters because they’re doing something you personally find gross? that’s what you’re saying there?

damn girl hows the christofascism taste

[pally-plate]

Actually, I AM trapped in the wrong body.

I AM a boy trapped in a girl’s body.

I WAS born in the wrong body.

I DO hate my body.

I DO want to change it FOR ME and NO ONE ELSE.

I AM distressed because my body ISN’T right.

And I’m definitely not the only one.

It’s ok if you, as an individual trans person, hate the “born in the wring body,” thing. But stop trying to convince people that every trans person hates that way of describing our experiences.

You are 100% allowed to use whatever descriptions you want for your experiences, but so are we. We who WERE born in the wrong body and feel most comfortable describing it that way.

This is in no way a call-out post, or trying to offend anyone. It’s simply a request to stop acting like trans people are a monolith who ALL prefer the SAME EXACT terms.

[zeitztun]

ik this is known but no successful settler colony has reached relative "internal stability" without genocide. north america is the first example of this that comes to mind: during the early years all up to the 19th cent., wars and attacks between native americans and settlers were frequent. and yes, while the settler armies were more well armed and more powerful, the native americans were a great force against the european invasions and did cause casualties among white populations, "including civillians", and halted expansion and development for many of the colonies.

this was met in 2 ways:

federal programs sponsored by the colonial states (violent deculturation, seperation from families through residential & boarding schools, expulsion from ancestral lands and destruction of the indigenous identity)

and unofficial, "individual" settler and enlistee actions of massacres upon indigenous populations. these events obviously were never prosecuted because they worked in tandem with the colonial powers, supported and encouraged by them.

the extermination of the american indigenous people wasn't just a facet of american success but the foundation of it. if they weren't subject to the genocide, the wealth and vast land in north america wouldn't have reached the white populations and the continent would be unrecognizable today, with canada and the united states not slightly as globally influencial as they are today. imagine a usa reliant on tourism.

and ik this is all elementary level information, but israel mirrors this entire process in eery similarity, with ancient, ancestral lands seized from palestenians exploited and destroyed for capital gains following violent expulsions (the nakba created israel). palestinians remaining within the israeli border endure lynchings and attacks by settlers as well as repression and persecution under federal law. israel was founded on the same colonialist principles that america and other european settler colonies (algeria, mozambique, kenya) were: their survival just depended on how far they would go to destroy the indigenous population.

what im dreading is that israel is on course to go further and proceed with that destruction. we are currently is a uniquely horrifying moment: 2,600 dead palestenians and 6,000 in hospitals with 0 supplies and 0 power - and the ground assault following the impossible evacuations is looming. the massacres about to sweep palestinian lands with the gifting of the ten thousand rifles to settlers. the unprovoked, unwarned and constant airstrikes. the monolithic, hysteric nature of mainstream western media. the army's sentiment of hunting animals. the global unrepentant backing. the repeated promise of complete victory.

what would complete victory mean? you cannot quell palestenian resistance without exterminating palestine. the palestenian people are a tortured people, hungry, radicalized simply from their day to day life: not one gazan hasn't watched corpses being pulled from the rubble, not one gazan doesn't have murdered family, not one gazan doesn't have something to mourn. their friends and family disappear or lose limbs on the daily now, building on grief from the previous 7 decades deep destruction. the homesickness is constant. the sounds of explosions is never far. of course there would be resistance movements, of course there would be revenge attacks, of course it will be bloody, because no humans in the world could silently endure these conditions. if hamas was entirely destroyed tomorrow, the next generation of palestinian youths would simply form another. for a complete, permanent victory, you would need to raze palestine.

this is why i balk at people hoping for coexistence. coexistence goes against the very founding strategy of israel. it goes against every principle and long term plan israel has for itself. israelis themselves do not want coexistence, they want gaza flattened and the west bank annexed, they want palestine destroyed and the palestenian people extinct. any sympathy with israel is a transgression on humanity.

[notherpuppet]

Do you think there's a right and/or wrong way to handle QPR? I know it's a tricky relationship, but it feels like most/some people kind of just slap the label onto a ship while depicting the ship as just romantic/having no difference with a romantic relationship. (this is why I was a little surprised when you said you do radioapple qpr when it reads a lot more like normal romance). Not meant as an attack or anything on anyone, just genuinely curious more than anything. Again, tricky relationship

So Imma put this link to info at the top of this post: https://taaap.org/2022/07/16/qprs-part-one/

Alright, so please take what I say with a grain of salt, because that's exactly what it is. One small bit of perspective in a mass of many people who experience QPRs in their life and/or are on an aro/ace spectrum. I also have NO QUALIFICATIONS on gender/sexuality theory, so my opinions are shaped by what I've learned and experienced personally. While people may identify with the same term, we are all still individuals with our own experiences. Words can help describe a phenomenon, but it doesn't make everyone who identifies with the word into a monolith.

So I've stated a few times that I navigate shipping Alastor similar to my own experiences as an aroace person. (I guess I'm sharing about myself with this post, but I think that can be helpful to just spreading awareness of an "alternative lifestyle"). So I'm romance-repulsed and sex-repulsed LOL but I'm also "positive" about those things. Like I view romance and sex as lovely, fun experiences people can have, but I've never been into it personally. It's fun for me to consume media about romance/sex, but yknow, it's also fun for me to consume media about violence or isolation. Doesn't mean I want to experience or engage in any of those things lol.

Anyway, I'm a huge people person and I love to party and yknow it seems most people are really wanting to fall in love or fuck or whatever pretty much all the time, but especially at parties hahaha. Normally, I'm pretty touch-averse, but I love dancing so much and it's a blast to dance with a partner (salsa especially!! i don't care for grinding for probably obvious reasons). And to connect the two previous sentences, people (whatever gender they are) would be very kissy-touchy on the dancefloor. Which i honestly dont really give a fuck about hahaha. I don't really get anything out of kissing but I also don't mind it. I just like to dance. It's all a pretty superficial--but still genuinely fun--experience for me.

When it comes to my deeper or more intimate connections, I have had friendships that have felt SO on the line of what was viewed as a romantic relationship. They were exceptional friends and we connected on a level that was deep and true, but it wasn't romantic. Sometimes we'd slow dance, sometimes we kissed, and it rocked. But it wasn't more than that, it was all that it needed to be. I didn't want more and neither did they (except one situation and so we had to stop being friends lol whoops). From the outside, people would even refer to us as partners in a half joking way, but we really were just friends. And I love those friends!! And a huge part of what made those relationships (which at the time were described as 'situationships' because we didn't know any of these terms haha) was their convenience. We either lived in the same building, worked together, or were neighbors LOL. I'm still friends with those absolutely lovely folks, but we don't live around each other, so our QPR just appears a lot more like any ole regular friendship. But it's not like there was a feeling that we transitioned into something different than before. It twas what it twas! (Had to take a pause while I was typing to reminisce fondly for a second, okay back to hazbin hahaha)

SO, whenever someone asks or it comes up, MOST OF THE TIME I do ship alastor through an aroace lens and experience with QPRs (specifically, MINEE because they were fun and I've never felt like doing this before I met a character like Al). And my XP is: "this isn't gonna be a partnership and we ain't fucking" LMFAO. so yeah!

When it comes to using a queer term like QPR, I just hope folks are considerate in their writing, but I also am inclined to just believe them if they say that's their intention because QPRs can look very different. Again, aroace and ace folks are not a monolith. The terms help to describe a human's experience. I'm inclined to think people are writing in good faith.

And all this being said, I want to just emphasize that I really don't think it's necessary to consider any of this shit if you want to ship a fictional character. I understand wanting to be protective of a character who shares an identifier with you (I personally don't wanna see romance/sex with Al in canon). But shipping is a fun thing a fandom does that often does ignore canon. Tale as old as time. I don't think anyone needs to be beholden to canon when they're writing fanfiction or having fun. If we did, I would have like--5 artworks on this blog hahaha. These characters are like dollies, do whatever you want. It's cool if people don't like it and I think it's cool if people do. It's just not that serious. There are ships I'm not particularly into or dynamics that I am not enchanted by, but whatever. I can just scroll or close my eyes.

TLDR; shipping in fandom doesn't need to be taken seriously at ALL. It can just be fun way for someone to play with fictional characters they like. That being said, I think it's good practice to use queer terms thoughtfully.

[rachelamberish]

nevermind i tried to write my thoughts in the tags but it became way too much and i had more to say so all this:

…and then, yeah, I think maybe OP puts it best with the point about Mythal’s non-apology. When it comes to radical change, there are questions the series asks that we in turn have to ask ourselves about what does more harm than good and if the harm of something is ever worth the price of change that will (potentially) make the world a better place. Or if any one, mortal person ever has the right to make that decision for others on their own, in a vacuum. Is the desire to do good enough? Is feeling sorry about something enough when you believe you are still doing what is right for the world at large, even when your actions have unintended consequences?

Accountability is important but regret doesn’t allow you to move forward, which is necessary for any meaningful change that isn’t in and of itself regressive. So in that sense, Mythal’s non-apology is…kind of that to a T. It’s not about her or her guilt in that moment, if she even feels any. Solas doesn’t need to hear that she regrets what she did to him. What he needs is exactly what she gave: “I did these things. Now you live with them. But you don’t have to anymore. I release you.”

Progressive, radical, systemic change and the methods we use to get there just isn’t a monolith because it comes from people and people are fallible. It’s nuanced and every instance is different. Anders was both right and wrong. The Inquisitor was both right and wrong. Solas was both right and wrong. Change and its enactors is less about always doing the right thing and never making mistakes and is, in fact, more about these personal stories and reconciling with *why* we as individuals make the choices we do and what gives us the right to make them in the first place. That’s why that balance that Dragon Age has *previously* held was always so important, between grand stories about big things and intimate stories about small things. The combination of both is what life is.

more me verbally processing my feelings on this game and it's story that i sent in discord but i know reading these things can be helpful to others processing so im sharing them here <3

even though i think i personally am able to find coherent meaning in solas's ending, specifically the status of the veil, and i do think its good and i like it, i really have to work to do it. the way its written is kind of confusing because the message is like ok. let go of your regrets. but you also have to atone for your mistakes. but solas believes he is atoning by taking the veil back down and bringing immortality back and making sure more spirits are not turned into demons? but the story tells us that version of atonement is Wrong, but why is it wrong? because people will die? but people also die because of the veil? mages are mass incarcerated and lobotimized bc of the veil, elves have been enslaved for millenia, PEOPLE AGE AND DIE, BECAUSE OF THE VEIL? so he isnt supposed to atone for that mistake by fixing it he's just supposed to accept it and let go? so are we supposed to atone for our mistakes or not? what determines whether or not we need to atone? he has to atone for what he did to the titans but not what he did by accident to his own people i guess? and he is going to atone by maintaining the status quo that he created because people have gotten used to it?

i think the answer based on the regret prison scene with rook escaping with varric's help and that banger line of varric's is to take accountability and own up to your choices, they are yours and no one can take them from you. rook says something to one of the regret statues (for me it was harding) thats like "i made a choice and so did you and you knew the risks" or something so i think that is the key. solas cannot accept his choices and so he is desperate to undo them no matter what kind of harm it may do. he is trapped in regret and the past to the point that he cant accept them and move forward, and varric is the perfect contrast of this with how readily he accepts his death as a consequence of his love and hope for his friend. even mythal accepts her own choices when she tells solas that she turned him from his purpose. and she doesnt apologize or even express regret at all, partly because shes a crazy bitch (affectionate) but partly because i think her quiet, cold acceptance is part of the lesson solas needs to learn in that moment. solas is constantly saying, "im sorry, but", "ir abelas, vhenan, but i cannot". mythal just states her actions plainly; i forced you to take a body, i brought you into war, these burdens are ours to bear together, i release you. no apology, no rumination, she is at peace with her decision even though it is wrong. i think this works wonderfully on a personal individual level of personal regrets. it is a good lesson; regret does not serve any purpose other than to hurt you. it brings no one back, it helps nothing, it does not make the world a better place. solas has to let go of his regrets so that he can become the hero that varric sees deep down in him. it is an essential part of his personal journey as a character... but it gets stickier when we are talking about systemic change. obvi a lot of dragon age's modern, young audience is very much in favor of "tear it all down!!" and i am too but i think with solas they are trying to tell a very personal and individual story of a man and his regrets rather than make a social commentary on radical change, but they also dont make that clear enough, so the two get muddied together when it comes to the question of the veil in a way that feels like they are advocating for maintaining the status quo, which i dont think was their intention.

i think this is so muddied because inquisition very much makes clear commentary on systems and institutions with the chantry, the orlesian empire, ferelden monarchy, mages and templars, and the inquisition itself being all vulnerable to corruption, and solas has a lot to say about all of this and he is very much presented as being right (like when he tells you about the corruption in your own ranks in trespasser and how hes spying on you lol) and then veilguard does not do this AT ALL, all of the issues are very personal ones of people and their identity, people and their family, people and their regrets etc. so i think a lot of us are in this mindset from inquisition of like.... yeah disrupt the status quo install a puppetmaster elf to rule an imperialist empire, make leliana pope and radicalize the chantry even if its bloody, dissolve the inquisition, abolish the circles etc. etc. and the question of the veil is very much an extension of these philosophical questions about systems and organizations. and for those of us who leaned towards dissolution of all of those corrupt structures, dissolution of the veil is the logical conclusion to a story thats sending us that message. but then veilguard just. does not even engage with these topics at all. like its not even a question. it takes the question of the veil and translates it into a personal issue of solas's psyche (which is super interesting, just different) and connects it to his past actions, his relationship with mythal, and his perception of himself, rather than a macro-level question of what is best for the world when pursuing change, and the answer for solas on a personal level ends up being different from the answer that inquisition was asking us, but it feels disjointed as a result.

so the veil staying up was the right decision because it forced solas to let go of his regrets and the game is about him. so it was an exercise in his therapy session with his two ex-gfs and some annoying kid who wont leave him alone. but the problem is it doesn't answer or engage with the greater questions and themes about systemic change that the series has been building up to.

veilguard is interesting because it wants to be dragon age 2 so bad while simultaneously being terrified of dragon age 2. solas bringing down the veil would have been the answer to the question that anders blowing up the chantry asked, but veilguard decided to ask a completely different question instead. and i think it did a good job in that specific goal, but it doesnt satisfy 15 years of build up and instead just throws it out the window in favor of something else.

[mesetacadre]

So, like, have any of you actually ever had a conversation with a fascist offline about what they believe? I have.

To be clear, this wasn't a sit-down-let's-talk conversation. He (the only one) tried to start shit, and we (me + 2 comrades) confronted him in the act and regrettably got into a 30-minute "conversation".

Fascists, individually, are very mentally feeble. They are cowards who always seek to start conflict while trying to make themselves out to be the victims. This is, of course, until they gain enough popularity and canon fodder to throw 20 unstable fascists at anyone they don't like. But until this exaltation occurs¹ and their organizations enter a relatively stable cycle (in contemporary liberal democracies, they last between 2 and 7 years before disintegrating), there remains a contradiction between their aggressive desire to seek confrontation and their individual and collective insecurities. Fascist ideology is mostly not rooted in reality (more on this later), and it also has an important component of self-hate. They are an inferior specimen, unable to achieve what the fascist martyrs before them achieved (in Spain, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera usually occupies this position), and to add injury to insult, it's those who they perceive as weak and undeserving who rule over them. They ignore this perceived inferiority by joking about being chads, the superior race, or non-degenerates. But behind their rhetoric and "humor" there is usually a tinge of insecurity and hate against anyone who doesn't fit their increasingly narrow standard, including themselves.

This fascist we talked with kept referring to Jewish conspiracies, to the freemasons in every position of power, to old Falangists, to fascist "theorists", to some kind of esoteric spiritualism within the bounds of Christianity, somehow, and hyperborea. He talked about communists, how they were already in the government (referring to the social-democratic PSOE), how we were degenerates, how the day will come, etc. He attempted to scare us by saying that he was an ex-member of this more notorious fascist party and that they were looking for him to beat him up, which isn't something you admit to people you're trying to start conflicts with. After a while of his ramblings, one of my comrades couldn't help but laugh at him. It was all very ridiculous; I don't remember exactly what he said that made my comrade laugh. He got slightly more agitated, and the conversation ended in ~5 minutes.

Individually, fascists are also not the brightest people you'll encounter. For somebody to internalize fascist beliefs, they have to be unconsciously willing to never dig deeper about their beliefs, to contrast them with one another, or to contrast them with other fascists. They'll read a text (they may be stupid, but a lot of them do read more than you'd expect) about, say, the concept of race, and never really address the fact that it contradicts their own beliefs, or a fellow fascist's beliefs about the nation or about Europe.

And a really interesting thing is that fascism is far from a monolith. It's more akin to an entelechy². The specific contradictions of fascism manifest themselves much more between individual fascists than within a single individual. Like I mentioned before, there are contradictions when it comes to race (racialists like the nazis vs anti-racists like Falange Auténtica), to Europe (the idea of a Great Europe vs every idea of Nationality/Empire, which generally coexist poorly), to the nation (its intersection with race and/or Europe and how it interacts with these), to the reaction against progress (a conception of fascism as progressive, reactionary, or neither³), to science (a realist position based on scientificism such as race science and Kameradschaftrecht (nazi feminism) vs metaphysical conceptions, such as esotericism or the Thule society, reliant on aesthetics and mysticism), or to the economic policy (bourgeois positions, corporatism, vs workerist positions such as Strasser or Bombacci).

These contradictions aren't unique to the contemporary fascist situation of fragmentation and the peculiarities of social media either. Back in the 30s and 40s, there was a lot of disagreement on who counted as fascists. On one end, during the rise of the NSDAP, there was a small cadre of orthodox fascists who narrowed fascism "a la Italiana", and did not consider nazi-fascism to be fascism because of its differences on the scientificist conceptions of race. The Nazi party repressed this small wing. On the other end, it was a prevailing position in the USSR to not consider fascism to start with Italy's fascii di combatimento, but rather in Russia's Black Hundreds, having a broader conception of fascism.

This fascist we talked with considers himself a Carlist⁴, while another member of his groupuscule considers himself a national-socialist, while being Moroccan, and a third is a run-of-the-mill reactionary concerned with the 2030 agenda, globalism, immigrant invasions, the great replacement, that sort of thing. When fascist groups are relatively small and lack any form of inertia and/or formalized structure, their activity is extremely sporadic. There is no discipline to be found, no real planning or broad strategy, they are, rather, a group of similarly-enough-minded friends who sometimes like to do some vandalism or threaten/agitate leftists of any stripe. Their only method of growth is to generate controversies, fights, have a provocative tweet go semi-viral, to generate noise. When it comes to agitation for the fascist, concrete ideology is not relevant. They appeal to both rage and the satisfaction of, for example, seeing x annoying leftist org get their posters ripped off. Discussions of fascist theory rarely, if ever, influence their pragmatic activity, sometimes it's more similar to a circlejerk to see who has the most esoteric, exaggerated and offensive positions.

This is not to say fascist infighting is irrelevant, far from it. Fascists have their own petty disputes between groups, periods of extreme fractionarism, inter-fascist and intra-fascist violence. But when it comes to the philosophy of action, to how they apply all these beliefs, you'll be pressed to find meaningful, material differences. Some might be more or less aggressive, more or less esoteric, more or less contrarian, more or less effective. But they all rely on building that momentum, that controversy -> confrontation -> growth -> controversy cycle. The moment fascist groups lose that momentum, or one too many campaigns fall flat and fail to garner attention, they'll start to turn against themselves, to deteriorate their own structures in the permanent search for conflict that their beliefs demand. There is no way to hold the belief that, for example, race is a scientific category that makes the white/national/aryan/european/whatever race constantly threatened to disappear without exhorting you to seek conflict, whether it's against immigrants or other fascists who don't place as much importance on race.

If you find yourself in the context of a few small fascist groups festering and seeking conflict, it is a strategic error to confront them outright. Unless you're willing to downright kill them or injure them severely enough (with the bigger threat of legal repercussions that entails), fascists will be able to turn your explicit opposition against them into ammunition to attract more reactionaries to their own ranks. The best you, as an organized communist, can do in the period before exaltation, is to quietly collect information about them, study their patterns, and exert as much opposition as is possible without letting them turn it into a visible confrontation. If you're going to cover up their symbols and posters, do it when they can't film you or try to start a fight. If they're threatening someone to provoke them to then cry and hue about the rabid leftists, use the fact that they have low numbers, record them, and intimidate them without physical violence. Even if you can leave them writhing on the floor in a fight, they can use that as ammunition, but they can't use a video of them putting their tails between their legs and running off. You can't debate with fascists, this much is clear. You also can't just use violence to scare them away, because they'll use that violence to gain momentum, and then you can end up with an actually decently-sized and consistent fascist organization.

This is how we have been opposing these small groups of fascists attempting to grow through controversy. We opposed them non-visibly, effectively and professionally. When this group of about 15 fascists total (they never appear with more than 4 at a time because of their inconsistency) encountered this, they were at one point scared enough to stop all activity for about 2 months, and after that have yet to appear again. Meanwhile, other, more infantile orgs, overreacted by opposing them with full force and very publicly, which only encouraged the fascists to keep going and wasted energy in a futile back-and-forth, as well as putting their members in unnecessary risk by engaging in unplanned situations.

¹ Throughout this entire post, all analysis of the behavior of fascists offline assumes this exaltation has not occured

² Entelechy here means an impossible ideal, built entirely in the imagination, or with an unstable and shoddy manifestation.

³ Fascism often positions itself as a revolutionary movement, while other times it places more importance on the opposition against progress.

⁴ Carlism is a Spanish political current originating in the rejection of Isabel II as a legitimate heir to Fernando VII, it became very intertwined with Franco's dictatorship and the Falange during the Civil War

[edenfenixblogs]

Let’s put some numbers to Jewish fear right now.

In news that I’m sure will thrill all antisemites, it would take startlingly little effort to foment widespread violence against us and cause another genocide of the Jewish people.

I have had many fellow Jews express to me how overwhelming it is to see the rising antisemitism. I have seen many Jews express fear at being drowned out of public, online, and IRL spaces due to dangerously violent vitriol.

I have also seen people who claim to advocate for Palestine—especially western leftists—openly mock Jews who express this fear.

Finally, I and my fellow Jews have often expressed that, while we wholeheartedly support Palestinian freedom and self determination, it is exhausting to have to say so repeatedly, especially when we are trying to advocate for ourselves. This is not due to any latent or widespread hatred of Muslims, Arabs, or Palestinians. It is because we are an extremely maligned and marginalized minority that is fighting to be heard against strong, hostile forces that at best wish we’d shut up and at worst want us eradicated from the planet.

There is a disconnect about how much harm people can do to Jews by spreading antisemitism and refusing to dismantle their own internalized antisemitism—and everyone has internalized antisemitism. It is one of the oldest forms of prejudice in the world and is found in almost every single culture. It is as, if not more, pervasive than white privilege. Yes. You read that right. And if asked to elaborate, I will provide numbers on that to the best of my ability. For the purposes of this post, however, I want to focus on the global distribution of religious groups only.

Specifically, this disconnect is between Jews who are fully aware and feel the affects of this damage and goyim who simply do not comprehend our marginalization.

To help, let’s put some numbers to this. In this post, I’ll be using the Pew Research Center’s survey and findings on the Global Religious Landscape. This is the most recent data from a reputable source that I could find which surveyed every world religion at the same time. While the Jewish population has grown slightly in the intervening years, so have most (if not all) other religious populations around the globe. I wanted to use figures measured at the same time to avoid bias for or against any religious group.

For the purposes of this post, I will not be discussing folk religions or other religions. This is not because they are not important. This is because they are not a monolith and individual folk religions and other religions may have even fewer adherents per religion than Judaism. I am currently only focusing on religions and religious groups who have more adherents than Judaism.

In descending order of adherents, there number of people in the world belonging to these groups:

2,200,000,000 (2.2 Billion) Christians

1,600,000,000 (1.6 Billion) Muslims

1,100,000,000 (1.1 Billion) Religiously unaffiliated people

1,000,000,000 (1 Billion) Hindus

500,000,000 (500 Million) Buddhists

14,000,000 (14 Million) Jews

Reduced to the simplest fractions there are:

1100 Christians for every 7 Jews

800 Muslims for every 7 Jews

550 Religiously unaffiliated people for every 7 Jews

500 Hindus for every 7 Jews

250 Buddhists for every 7 Jews

Combined, there are 6,400,000,000 non-Jewish people in religions or religious groups (including religiously unaffiliated people).

This means that for every 7 Jews there are 3200 people in religious groups who outnumber us.

Jews are 0.2 % of the global population.

When we tell you that hate is dangerous, it is because…

It would only take 0.21% of 6.4 Billion people to hate us in order to completely overwhelm and outnumber every single Jewish person on the planet. In other words, only 67.2 out of every 3200 people.

And given how violent and aggressive people have become toward us in recent weeks, that doesn’t seem far off.

No, most Christians, Muslims, Atheists/Agnostics, Hindus, and Buddhists do NOT hate Jews.

But if even 0.21% of them do hate us, Jews are at a legitimate and terrifying risk of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

It is not possible for Jews alone to fight this rising tide of hate. There simply aren’t enough of us. And many of us are too scared to tell you the truth: if you don’t vocally and repeatedly stand up for Jews (and not just the ones you agree with) you will be complicit in the genocide that follows. Police your own communities.

Nobody acting in good faith is asking you to abandon Palestinians or their fight for self determination and equality in their homeland. All we are asking is for you to learn about antisemitism, deconstruct it in yourself, and loudly condemn it when it occurs in front of you. We are asking you to comfort us and not run away when we are scared or even angry at you. Because a lot of us are angry with you, because we are extremely scared right now and many of you are not helping us. Many of you are actively and carelessly spreading dogwhistles that further the global rise in hatred against us.

You can support Palestine AND avoid Islamophobia WITHOUT making antisemitism worse. But you can’t stop antisemitism by staying silent in the face of it. And if you don’t speak up, you will get us killed. Silence, in this case, is quite literally violence.

Many of us have armed guards posted at our synagogues and schools and community centers because of this. I certainly had times where my synagogue and school had to have armed security for our safety.

The only reason more of us haven’t died already is because we have millennia of experience in confronting this kind of hatred and guarding against it.

But in pure numbers, if you don’t speak up for us now, we don’t have a chance at survival without support.

So, what can you do, specifically?:

* Make a stand or public statement about condemning antisemitism without mentioning another group. Acknowledge Jewish fear, pain, and current danger without contextualizing it in someone else’s. It could literally be something as simple as “Antisemitism is bad. There’s never a reason for it. I won’t tolerate it in presence in real life or online.” If you cannot bring yourself to publicly make this statement, you should have a serious look at yourself to understand why you can’t.

* Learn about the six universal features of antisemitism and the many, various dog whistles affecting the global Jewish community

* Do not welcome people who espouse rhetoric that includes any features from the above bullet point in your community unless you are able to educate them and eliminate that behavior.

* Check in on your Jewish friends, regularly and repeatedly. Do not wait for them to reach out to you. They are scared of you. Even if you don’t have the emotional space to have conversations about antisemitism. Just send a message once in a while, unprompted, “Jfyi, antisemitism still sucks. I support you.”

* Redirect conversations about which “side” is “right” to how to attain peace. Do this by saying that this line of argument is not conducive to peace, and link to a well-respected organization not widely accused of either antisemitism or Islamophobia that is devoted to achieving a peaceful resolution, increasing education, or providing humanitarian aid to relevant affected groups—including Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs. You can find over 160 such organizations at the Alliance for Middle East Peace https://www.allmep.org/

* Look to support experienced groups without widespread and verifiable claims of prejudice against either Jews or Muslims or Arabs or Palestinians. Many of these organizations can also be found at the AllMEP link above. Avoid groups on the shit list as well as unproductive and harmful movements.

* Do not default to western methods of political demonstration. Specifically, protests are not useful in attaining peace in western nations at this time. Israelis and Palestinians can and should protest to the best of their abilities in Israel and Palestine so as to pressure their own governments. However, protests in western nations have proven to be poorly regulated and to further the spread of bigoted rhetoric and violence against Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians. Furthermore, there are nearly as many Palestinians in the world as there are Jews. It is extremely easy and common for the voices of bad actors and bigots on all sides to completely drown out Jewish and Palestinian voices and concerns at these events.

* Spend more time listening and learning than speaking and acting. Anyone who tells you this conflict is simple is someone who is lying to you. Take the time to learn the ways in which your actions and words can get people hurt before joining the fray.

* Stop demonizing Zionism as a concept, even if you disagree with it. Understand that it is a philosophy with many different movements that often conflict with each other. The Zionism practiced by Netanyahu and the Likud party is NOT representative of most Zionists or interpretations of Zionism. It is an extremist form of Zionism known as Revisionist Zionism.

* Don’t deny Jewish indigeneity to the levant. It doesn’t help Palestine and hurts Jews by erasing our physical and cultural history as well as erasing the Jews who remained in Israel even through widespread diaspora.

* KEEP THE HOLOCAUST OUT OF YOUR MOUTH

Things That Are Always OK

* Denouncing Antisemitism loudly and publicly

* Denouncing Islamophobia loudly and publicly

* Telling your Jewish and Muslim and Arab friends you support them and won't abandon them

* Elevating the work of respected, widely accepted people and organizations devoted to attaining peace for all, rather than just one group of people.

* Develop media literacy

* Understand what aspects of the current western leftist movements Jews are criticizing, rather than assuming our criticisms are motivated by hatred for Palestine or Palestinians.

* Expressing sorrow for civilian deaths regardless of religion or nationality.

* When you are not Jewish and you share a post about antisemitism from a Jewish person, please say you’re a goy. This isn’t because you’re not welcome to share. This is because it is indescribably comforting to know we aren’t just talking amongst ourselves and screaming into the void. Let us know you are supportive of us. It doesn’t mean that you or we hate Palestine or Palestinians or that we oppose their full and equal rights in our shared homeland.

[spaceysoupy]

So apparently it’s that time of year again where I have to post about this.

On lesbianism, white queerness, and 2S identity

Text below readmore

I am a two-spirit. My identity is specific to my Tribe and Clan, and even more specific to my family. I am not a man, I am not a woman, and I am not nonbinary; I am not defined by what I am not.

I am a two-spirit and I am a lesbian. That's not debatable.

But I am not a non-man.

There's an idea of two-spirits that we are just the ethnic version of non-binary

We're not. The reason you're so comfortable calling us nonbinary is because your idea of queerness is centered around the binary&what you are not: you're not cishet, you're not the oppressor, etc

White queers like to speak about 2S identities constantly as if we are monolith. "It's just a gender" "it's not a gender"

"they're not trans" "they're not queer" "they don't belong here"

The community tries to decide for the individual and that's so weird to me.

So much of white queerness is inherently about exclusion.

You need strict labels to exclude the people you fear. You write your definitions around your fear of intruders and by consequence you exclude the people that need your support the most.

You need people to "prove" they are queer before you let them in. You're like a fortress and you let vulnerable people drown in the moat; ignoring that the real oppressors don't need to be a Trojan horse to do damage, ignoring they are actively burning down the castle.

It's very sad to me, because it's ultimately tearing the community apart even further.

I've never felt very welcome in white lesbian circles and they've never understood my experience of gender, but it's gotten worse in the past 5 or so years.

As TERFs start to revive gold star lesbianism and center hatred of men as their definition of lesbianism, you start to get these younger lesbians that don't know history that start to parrot the rhetoric. First it's "non-men loving non-men" then it's "you're too close to Man™"

For many two-spirit lesbians like myself, this is very concerning. White lesbians are historically not the ones targeted by radfems.

Now we've gotten to the point that there are people denying that lesbian is an spec (multispec) identity while including (white) nonbinary people

White nonbinary people (usually AFAB nonbinary people) are seen as woman lite and are welcome in white lesbian spaces while queer Indigenous people are considered dangerous because white lesbians can't understand their gender.

When did understanding become a requirement?

We're getting very dangerously close to "lesbianism is ONLY attraction to women" and very close to "lesbianism is only attraction to *a very specific type of (white) woman*" and I really need young white lesbians to read about political lesbianism so they can see this

I don't want to hear "not all lesbians" or "well then they aren't welcome" because every time this rhetoric goes unchallenged you are actively welcoming these people to continue it and make it more and more extreme. Yes, even the kind that seems to have nothing to do with racism

Almost all of your exclusionary rhetoric is based on the racist ideas of political lesbianism and I do not know why you all cannot see that they want to move goalposts. It wasn't just bi lesbians, it wasn't just he/him lesbians, it wasn't just nonbinary lesbians. It's a tactic.

It really feels like young lesbians are not only letting us go backwards, but encouraging it. And that's thanks in part to the historical racism of political lesbianism, but many of these people ARE old enough to think critically and talk to people who've been through this.

So far I've seen this in younger lesbian spaces; the ones with older generations (the ones that don't welcome TERFs) have been pretty welcoming even if not totally understanding, because they at least recognize that you don't need to understand someone's experience to validate it.

But I'm really concerned for the young Indigenous lesbians who don't feel comfortable around older people and are going to these younger lesbian spaces only to be indoctrinated with thinly veiled TERF rhetoric. It makes me very concerned for our spaces as well.

So I'll say again

I am not a non-man and I am not a non-woman. I'm not defined by what I am not. I do not ascribe to your binary-centric definitions of queerness. I experience queer attraction to women. I'm a lesbian. You do not get to use community to decide my individuality.

Thread by ~Alitsanosga

Pronouns: hi'a/vsgina/utseli/uwasa

[tiredandoptimistic]

No but listen. Abed sees Britta as "Britta Bot" while everyone else describes him as cold and robotic. People assume that his problem is being distant and lacking empathy, but that's Britta! We see it every time that Abed has a breakdown, she stops treating him as an individual and instead defaults to what she thinks is the appropriate response. It's all therapy talk with no understanding of who Abed is as a person or what would actually help him, because as soon as he starts displaying symptoms he stops being her friend and becomes a person she must help by picking the correct responses out of her psych textbook.

I am not saying this out of hate for Britta! I love Britta! I just think it's really interesting that one of the things she struggles with most throughout the series is her inability to be empathetic, and no one sees it but Abed. Her focus on political correctness and activism seems emotional, but it's more often about her wanting to do The Right Thing (which she sees as a monolith) than her actually feeling invested in helping individual people.

What's especially interesting is that Abed characterizes her weakness as "no faith in herself or friends," which implies that one reason she's so focused on doing the correct thing is that she doesn't trust her genuine responses to help anybody. She's afraid of making things worse, so she goes with what she's been told she should do in high stakes situations (like her friend hallucinating stop motion dolls or lava floors). In season one especially she always baby-talks to Abed, because her brother works with autistic kids so that's how she thinks you talk to autistic people. She's trying so hard to be accommodating, but it's from a perspective of "I know The Correct Way To Talk To Autistic People" rather than "let me learn how to best connect with this person." It could be called robotic, following her memorized paths for interactions even when they're clearly hurting people she cares about.

Then there's Abed, who does have some troubles with empathy which often show up when he manipulates people around him in order to achieve his goals, (ex: "Introduction to Film," "Contemporary American Poultry," "Anthropology 101"), and is always seen as cold and distant, safely removed from thr situation. He leans into that intentionally, acting as though he's "not in this scene" or giving logical trope-based reasons to avoid facing his fears (like when Troy wants to move in with him and Abed calls it "jumping the shark"), but deep down he's incredibly emotional. He's the one who willingly risks his life in "Epidemiology," he and Troy give up their bedroom for Annie, he lets his friends matchmake for him because he knows it's important to them.

Even when he is being all supposedly logical, it's often because he doesn't want to acknowledge his own feelings and feels safer acting as though sitcom tropes are the only thing making him act that way. In the argument about living together, Troy was right that they could just not put a line of tape down their floor, Abed knows that real life is different from TV and doesn't always escalate to the most dramatic possible conflict, but he doesn't want to say that he's afraid of Troy getting sick of him so it's easier to use shark jumping as an excuse.

They're such interesting foils; Britta who flaunts how much she cares to conceal how insecure she is about not caring, and Abed who puts up his lack of investment as a shield to protect him from how deep his emotions run. I don't think it's accurate to describe either of them as robots, but that metaphor really does ping off both of their insecurities about not performing humanity correctly. They both just want to do the right thing and help people, even if they get it wrong sometimes.

[the-microphone-explodes]

So recently this Tweet went viral on Twitter, which is generally stating something that is rather common that I have also noticed on the app. (I will say that I do believe antisemitism and anti-black racism to also be extremely normalized as well, perhaps to an even greater extent).

That being said this was the general response (found in the quote retweet and the comments) to the above tweet:

I wanted to put this together and show it to others on here because it seems that it is strongly indicative of how hated Indian people are in progressive spaces. And before someone comes after me to say this is largely online, I will state that this rhetoric is eerily similar to the discrimination I faced growing up as Indian and that I continue to face. Additionally, people online are people in real life, they carry this rhetoric in the real world too and Indian people exist online too, we see how people dislike us.

To dissect and debunk all the sentiments in the tweets above would take an immense amount of time and energy that I do not have. Even archiving and collecting these tweets caused me to fall into a spiral of stress and tension. You don't have to go through all of it, much of what is expressed is vile, but I am trying to point out something. And it's that racism against Indians has become normalized, perhaps even encouraged, obviously in right-wing spaces but in progressive and liberal-left wing spaces as well. If you click on the accounts of many of these people, you can see them advocating against other forms of racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Palestinianism etc. These are progressives, not your run-of-the-mill conservative bigots. Hostility is growing against Indians, out in the open, and it seems that not many are willing to combat or acknowledge it.

The tactics are the same of course, to take a vocal minority of a group of people and paint the vast majority as the same, effectively portraying the group as if it has monolithic ideas. This is obviously a ridiculous thing to do, but even more so when one realizes that India is home to 1.4 billion people, not counting Indians living in other countries. These are all individuals who hold their own complex ideologies and beliefs, it is not possible to condense them down to one stereotype.

Am I denying that Indian people have our own issues and bigotry (to say the least) surrounding anti-Black racism, misogyny, islamophobia, casteism etc. Absolutely not! I have spent much of my life trying to unpack these sentiments drilled into me from a young age, and I have tried to help my peers do too. I have also spent time in real world activism combating such issues, because it is the only way forward to a more equal society.

But just because our society has prejudice does not mean we should be subjected to such bigotry from other progressives or have the discrimination we face not be taken seriously. Even the worst among us does not deserve to have racist sentiments spewed against them because bigotry is wrong, point blank. We don't deserve to be called rapists, to be accused of all being racists, and say that racism against us is "self-inflicted". Indians do not deserve that, we just don't.

[aro-culture-is]

cupioromantic culture is feeling like you’re betraying the community by having & loving your boyfriend. am I even aro ?? 😭😭

you're not betraying your community by being part of it! time to bring back a favorite phrase of ours here:

aro culture is not a monolith. (definition 3)

there are so many ways to be aro. we are not one singular people with the same experiences, and we will always be stronger together than apart. You are aro because you are part of the aromantic spectrum. If you in good faith (ie, not "attack helicopter"-ing) identify as somewhere on the aro spectrum or questioning it - you belong. You are part of our people. Your experiences are important and should be listened to and respected, even if we don't all understand or empathize with specific elements of it. How can we ever claim intersectional solidarity if we can't even handle differences among us? I'd call that sus :P

aro culture is understanding we are united, not as individuals with one singular experience, but as a people who share an identity.

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! So I’m writing a non-verbal autistic toddler. I wanted to ask about large stereotypes I should avoid? Part of my writing him is making him have some of my experiences (such as the “gifted kid”) but also some of the experiences of other autistic individuals such as being put into therapy as children and being raised by parents who were given terrible coping skills or just adults with terrible coping mechanisms for the child )such as restraining them when they have a meltdown). I’m not sure if there’s anything I should be avoiding but I don’t want to make a mistake and end up never writing an autistic or disabled child in general

Hi asker,

I want to start off with a note about stereotypes about autism, specifically. Some people will tell you to avoid 'stereotypical' portrayals of autism, like intellectually disabled autistic people, or ones who can't have jobs, or ones who stand 'weird,' or ones who are very obviously visibly disabled, or ones who need caregivers, or ones with no empathy. What I want to say about this is that there are autistic people who are these things, maybe all of them even. And that's fine. It's one thing to say "don't write every autistic character this way, which is true – the experiences of people with autism are very, very varied, and not a monolith. But it is another to say "Never write an autistic character who [insert common characteristic of autism here]," because that's harmful and disingenuous, and often just done as a way to distance oneself from those more affected by their disability.

Now that I'm off my soapbox, onto your actual question.

One stereotype I would urge you to avoid is "Everyone around them sees their autism as negative and no one supports this kid how they are." Does this happen in real life? Unfortunately, yes. Do we already have enough of this in stories? Also yes. The kid's parents can have bad coping skills. They can put them into various therapies to try and help or maybe even to try and make them more typical, not just to help them gain skills and get support, because that happens. But I would urge you to include at least one or two aspects of their autism that their parents appreciate and support. Maybe they stim with the kid, or maybe they really truly find it endearing how much their kid likes lining things up, or maybe they're really determined to get their kid an AAC device because they're okay with their kid being nonverbal and just want them to be able to communicate in the best way possible.

Another thing I would ask you to consider is: when it comes to referencing terrible coping mechanisms that are actually harmful, like dangerous modes of restraints, it's important that if you are going to be depicting them in the first place, you make sure it's not posed as a good idea – this is the kind of thing that can kill people. When Sia's Music came out, the character gets put in a dangerous restraint and within the movie it's posed as the right thing to do when it is actually potentially deadly. No one in the making of the movie condemned it outside of the movie's canon, either. That's dangerous.

Also, how old is your toddler character? Were they diagnosed recently, or is it more like the character is almost 5 and they were diagnosed at 18 months? Parents will deal with a diagnosis a little differently when they just get it as opposed to when they have had a little more experience with it, and have gotten to know more about why their kid does what they do.

Lastly, something I'd ask you to avoid as well is for the autistic character to be nothing more than a plot device to make others look good (or bad). Now of course I don't know your story, but even if the toddler character is a minor character, they should have a little to do in the story that isn't just be there for others to look like better or worse people. They can have scenes with other characters that help progress the story forward, even if it's just a scene or two. This really depends on your story and plot, though, so you have a lot of leeway.

Hope this helps!

– mod sparrow