#why we use violence

[sissa-arrows]

Rereading Fanon’s speech at Accra in Ghana (March-April 1960) and I had completely forgotten that the French colonizers used the exact same argument as the Israeli colonizers. “They hate peace that’s why we have to fight them”

I love Fanon’s answer to that argument.

“No, the violence of the Algerian people is neither a hatred of peace nor a rejection of human relations nor a conviction that only war can put an end to the colonial regime in Algeria.

The Algerian people have chosen the unique solution that was left to them and this choice will hold firm for us.

De Gaulle said “We must break the Algerian people”. We reply “Let us negotiate, find a solution that is commensurate with contemporary history. But know that if you want to break the Algerian people, you will have to accept seeing your armies break themselves against the rampart of the glorious Algerian soldiers.””

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[whotfelsewantedtobelynnyx]

Chat, I regret to inform you that I have added a new hyperfixation…so…

Agatha All Along Incorrect Quotes!

Alice: Hold the fuck up.

Also Alice, crawling into Lilia’s lap: It’s me. I’m the fuck up. Hold me.

Rio: I have an idea!

Jen: No murder.

Rio, sighing petulantly: I no longer have an idea.

Lilia: I have a bad feeling about this…

Agatha: What do you mean?

Alice: Don’t you ever get that little voice in the back of your head that tells you if something is going to get you in trouble?

Agatha: No.

Jen: That actually explains so much.

Lilia: As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had this little voice in my head telling me to “live it up today, because there’s not gonna be a lot of tomorrows”.

Agatha: You do realize there’s medication designed to get rid of those kinds of voices, right?

Teen: A bird flew in through my window and I’m trying to befriend it.

*later*

Agatha: Why don’t you quit bothering me and go talk to your bird friend?

Teen: Matthew and I are not speaking at the moment.

*the coven, huddling together behind a makeshift shelter to shield themselves from repeated gunshots*

Alice, hastily shoving the others behind her so she can return fire: Agatha, do you have any idea who would want to shoot you?!

Agatha, squashed between Jen and Rio: Many people want to shoot me. I take great pride in that!

Jen, glaring at the group as she hands over bail money:

Alice, tapping her shoulder: What about Teen?

Jen, glaring more: I’ve got to bail him out too? Where’s Agatha?

Teen: No one called her. We used Lilia’s phone call to call Alice and Rio’s to call you. Then Rio used my phone call to vote for American Idol.

Rio: :)

Jen: Rio isn’t answering her phone.

Agatha: Here, I’ll try.

Jen: Alice and I have tried six times each, what makes you think that-

Rio, picking up on the first ring: Hey, sweetheart.

Agatha: The ends always justify the means!

Jen: Do you know who said that?

Agatha: Was it Oprah or someone nice and great like that?

Jen: It was Machiavelli. A decidedly non-Oprah like person.

Jen: I bet you didn’t even finish the thing I asked you to get done!

Agatha: For your information, I most certainly did! Got it done last night!

Teen, whispering to Agatha: You didn’t get it done, did you?

Agatha, whispering back: I don’t even know what she’s talking about.

Lilia: I am at a loss for words!

Teen, glancing at the camera like his mom like he’s on The Office: Despite being lost for words, Lilia yelled at us for the next 45 minutes.

Agatha, carrying Señor Scratchy out of the room:

Señor Scratchy: *snuggles under her chin*

Agatha, kissing his head: You are being punished. Please stop being adorable. I love you.

Teen: I got a trampoline tent for summer sleepovers!

Jen, whispering to the other adult witches: …think of all the sex.

Alice: There are two types of people.

Rio: If you wanted to eat someone, you could put a fire under it and slowly roast them :)

Lilia: …three. Three types of people.

Jen, cautiously: I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before, but…Teen, you are a little crazy.

Teen: Aren’t we all a little crazy here, Jen?

Jen: No, I mean you’re aging-ballerina, child-chess-prodigy, professional magician kind of crazy.

Teen: It’s my mom’s fault. You know, we come from a Jewish family, but she used to tell me the reason Santa didn’t come was because my room was too dirty.

Rio: I’ve come looking for trouble. And if I can’t find trouble, I WILL create some.

Alice: Do you trust me?

Lilia, smiling proudly at her: Yes.

Alice, who has been completely panicking: Wait, what? Why?!

Agatha, awkwardly glancing around for help: Er…Alice, I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know what to say to people who are crying. So I’m just gonna hope that the tone of my voice makes you think I do, okay, sweetie?

Alice, sniffling: …thanks, Agatha.

Agatha, patting her on the back with a bit too much enthusiasm: No problem, kid.

Lilia: I told Agatha about it weeks ago!

Teen: She WHAT?

Agatha: What??? Lilia says insane shit all the time, how was I supposed to know this one was true?!

Lilia: Bank accounts are a sham created by the shadow government!

Agatha: SEE?!

BONUS:

Wanda, watching from the afterlife: so…when exactly do kids grow out of that whole emo, rebellious stage?

Lorna, shrugging: I don’t know. Alice is still in it.

[dxxtruction]

Louis' "You're boring!" Could mean so many things, but I think what's most apparent about that line is that Armand takes no initiative just for himself. He's not really anybody, because he never goes out and finds himself or gets attached to anyone but Louis. Without Louis as his guide he's literally just sitting on a couch picking lint! That's the thing.

He orbits constantly around what would make Louis happy, and never really fully going what would make me happy? Ultimately that drive to please Louis is what drives him to torturing Daniel, not so much that he'd care to just do it. Ultimately, not giving proper care to Louis is just a way to make sure Louis knows he has to orbit around him as well, with shoving Lestat onto him just that other nail on the coffin. So, even if he fails to figure out how to make Louis happy with him, he still knows what Armand is good for, and better than.

That dependency is what drives Armand's abuse. It really just comes down to that. Armand doesn't even realize how suffocated he is by his own dependency. This is just how life is to him. (It shouldn't be lost either that dependency is a theme considering this episode also deals with addiction).

Daniel's fascinating because he's just so driven to be somebody. He's largely independent, he seeks things because he wants them. It's his drug to poke and prod at all the things that he shouldn't. Daniel's exciting because he lets Louis in to something different, lets him in to all this potential in another person that he can also do the same with for himself. It's a real connection. A two way street. It's easy to tell how Armand can be smothering then because he's never introducing him to anything really new, and most the ways both of them connect are all painful and traumatic. It's never just fun because there's always that layer of that pain. Fun died with Claudia.

50 years on they've gotten to a lot better place, both of them, but it's still that same shit. No seriously, "How is this any different from last time, Louis?"

Well... Because Armand's going to be, at the very least, making one [1] decision only for himself - and that's to hold power over Daniel's life. Fucking sick foreshadowing.

They aren't driving each other to the brink anymore but "The vampire is bored" STILL. Maybe it's even worse, despite being in better places, because Louis' sort of just been defeated by it. (I mean, can he even really leave this either?). He's accepting the dependancy cause he kind of has to. He'd literally ended up letting all the enjoyment be up where he can't reach [The book shelves]. Armand so desperately wants Louis happiness but what really ends up happening is that Louis ends up having to give Armand all his own. He's got no one or anything else to get it from. But like an iPad and an over the top eating ritual. Two extremes of what's just more lint picking.

This whole relationship is one I find just tragic inside and out. You have to just pity it, really. There's ways in which you can find yourself feeling bad for both of them. But you can only really be mad at Armand for any of it. Armand, who isn't even 'free' in any sense, having so little concept of his own independence, but is at the same time so controlling over other's. It's a tragic cycle. It's an infuriating one.

Louis at least has the mind to know when enough is enough. If just needing that extra push to get there. Armand's too scared of it being over to even try.

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[primus-why]

I Feel TFOne Could've Handled This Better...

Hot take but I feel like folks have been really generous with the take that OP was unable to find ~the perfect words~ in the heat of the moment (and thus should be given some grace) when he told D to stand down and "not be like Sentinel"... namely cuz I don't feel that the narrative supports this?

Like-- after all is said and done, OP doesn't reflect on that part of their split. He doesn't have a moment where he seeks validation or voices his regrets over the choice of his words, it's actually cut-and-dry. The narrative (as it stands) supports that OP saw D-16 acting up, so he called him out and stood on business, down to the last scenes where he's basically like "yeah it's a shame but y'all knew I had to do it to 'em."

It didn't have to be much! I'm not saying to absolve Megs, just show OP looking at things from a different perspective/contemplating a bit on that tough choice and the morality of the moment. Some examples of what I wish we had:

B-127 straight up blurting the obvious by later chatting with Orion like, "Wait so you told your best friend that he was acting just as bad as the guy who enslaved us for our entire lives and was torturing him like an hour ago? Oof. Seems kinda harsh." Then have some of OP's regret show on his face.

OP asking Elita-1 after Megs is banished if he did the right thing. Have Elita back his choice up, saying, "You should have seen what he did after you were... gone. It was terrifying. I know it was tough, but you made the right call." OP is grateful for the support, but a conflicted look still flashes across his face before he steels himself to look out towards the horizon... and the future.

Have OP walk past other mechs/former miners who didn't go with the High Guard saying stuff like, "Wish I could've given Sentinel a piece of my mind!" "Yeah, but I'm glad he's gone for good." "Ugh I miss everything." "Oh, it was crazy! Megatron picked him up and then he rrrrriiipped-- oops, hey there, Mr. Optimus... Prime... sir?" And have OP wave hello, looking a bit sick when they leave.

Post-credits scene with Starscream going on and on, asking Megs when they'll be back to teach the upstart Prime a lesson. Megs grabs his face to shut him up. "Patience, Starscream. The Prime thinks I'm no better than Sentinel... but I'll show him. He wants Iacon? He can have it. In the meantime we'll take the rest of the planet! Then I'll come back, crush Prime under my heel, and we'll take Iacon too. Sentinel's reign will barely be a footnote, because I'm about to become Optimus Prime's worst nightmare." The vocal performance would really need to sell this-- like picture Megs saying something like that from a place of anger and hurt, not so much a place of genuine evil or malice.

Basically instead of Orion's assertion being backed up as black and white/good vs bad, I wish we had some different opinions/reactions from the characters sprinkled in there. Like you can't tell me out of allllll the miners who weren't strong enough/willing to go with the High Guard and ended up sticking around that NONE of them were like "eyyo honestly?? Kiiiiinda glad Sentinel is dead. Wish I could have helped, tbh." like come onnnnn...

And you can't even argue that he's not an active threat-- I don't think everyone would see things that way! It's not just about the threat he physically has, but the threat he represents and is very likely to act upon if given the opportunity! He has a proven track record of not only being sneaky and conniving, but also capable of dealing some serious damage/killing people bigger and stronger than him, plus he has the backing of the Quints. All he'd need to do is wriggle his way out of jail and run off to his sponsors, then he'd probably be back to hurt more people! (If the Quints didn't just kill him out of incompetence lmao). There's a lot of "ifs" here, but I think it's a valid argument that not everyone would agree on what is the right or wrong way to handle Sentinel once he was down long enough to, like, do something about him.

I feel the situation needed a bit of nuance. In some way I wish they had kicked the can and had D and Orion bicker while Sentinel escaped, then have D get frustrated enough by the loss of Sentinel to point fingers (and his fusion canon) at Orion, who then falls and becomes OP. (Megs could still show some of thar emotion/remorse right after he does it too.) Not only would this open the door for a sequel, but tbh the Quint might have just killed Sentinel anyways and sought to deal with the miners uprising themselves lol. (Maybe that could have been an after credits scenes too instead of the B-127 bit??)

Would love to see a moment in a sequel where they have a calmer moment after arguing for a bit. Have OP mention how Megs was out of line, that it hurt and even scared him to see him act that way, and Megs can quietly point out "you said I was as bad as Sentinel... is that really how you see me? After everything we went through?"

Then OP can fumble the bag again lmao like "D, I... I'm sorry, that didn't come out right... but you still took things way too far..."

"Why am I not surprised-- your opinion is what matters the most! Maybe that's why you became a Prime, since you're so good at acting like the world revolves around you--!"

*gets interrupted by someone else before another yelling match ensues*

[moeblob]

Rey, who is in my very biased opinion, one of the funniest "girls" I have because she's just a guy, truly. Like Rey is just short for Reynold because he was recruited by a a goddess to help the hero she selected and the hero is conveniently Reynold's younger brother. So he agrees to help under the condition that the goddess gives him a female body for the other world. She's like "really odd flex but whatever" and gives him a female form and he's like "you know. I can't really blame anyone but myself for not specifying 'please don't turn me into a Lisa Frank personification'."

[still-breathing-au-p3r]

At first Minato thinks the sound he hears is his eardrums popping, but a moment later he realizes that it came from a distance– a distance they’re closing as they sprint onward, in fact.

In front of him, Sanada stops short. “What–?” Minato can barely hear him. “Dammit… Both of you, hang on!” He takes off again, not even short of breath. 

Minato is almost jealous. Despite all of his time spent with the track team, he feels dizzy and ready to collapse by the time the alleyway behind Port Island Station comes into view. Every breath might as well be filling his lungs with tar instead of air.

The shadows in the alley sharpen and focus into human shapes– not two, but three of them: one sprawled on the ground; one standing as tall as it can; the third looming over them both, arm extended towards the smallest figure, taking aim–

“Takaya!” Minato’s voice sounds foreign in his own ears. He wouldn’t have guessed he’d be able to speak at all, much less shout.

Everything happens all at once after that.

Takaya’s whole body jerks towards Minato’s voice. 

The shape on the ground lunges up and forward, taking the smaller figure crashing back down with it.

The gun goes off with a sound like–

Like a gunshot.

It isn't a clap of thunder. It's not at all like the crack of a whip. 

There is no metaphor that can soften the truth. 

The noise that tears open the silence of the Dark Hour is a gun being fired: a spark igniting powder propelling a bullet at shattering speeds towards the soft, vulnerable bodies of his friends.

Speckles of something dark and reflective fan through the air, glittering obscenely where they catch the light of the moon. Takaya almost seems to glow under that sickly light; pale skin and hair and eyes and shining silver gun gleaming ghost-bright in the murk of the alley, in stark contrast to the dark shapes huddled on the ground.

He meets Minato's eyes briefly. His expression is openly astonished for less than a moment before it shifts to fury, then is immediately papered over with a mask of calm indifference. He says something, but Minato is still too far away to hear. The Dark Hour swallows him up faster than Minato would have assumed possible.

He isn't terribly preoccupied with Takaya's Houdini act at the moment though, because–

"Shinji–!"

Aragaki lies prone on the pavement with Amada pinned underneath, whose breath is coming in shallow, panicked gasps, his face pale under dark splotches of blood. The bullet intended for Amada has shredded Aragaki’s right shoulder into a confusion of gore and torn wool and glimpses of pinkish-white that Minato tries not to think too hard about.

“Hang in there, Shinji!” Sanada hauls him off of Amada and onto his back, revealing another wound in his gut, a black well of blood. More of it dribbles sluggishly from the corner of his mouth. Aragaki doesn’t cry out in pain as Sanada and Mitsuru rearrange him in their hold, lifting him off of the cold concrete and supporting his head. He hardly makes any noise at all.

Minato feels like his ears have been jammed full of cotton. He can tell people are talking, but he can no longer pick out any voices or words. His vision tunnels, phantom colors chewing at the edges. 

He stands there and watches as Yukari frantically tears out of her jacket and hands it off to Mitsuru, who packs it hard against Aragaki’s ruined shoulder. 

He stands there and watches as Junpei unties his own jacket from around his waist and uses it to dab gingerly at the side of Amada’s face– it’s only now that Minato realizes that not all of the blood that Amada is wearing is Aragaki’s. The shape of Amada’s left ear is all wrong, like some of it is just missing, but Minato only catches a brief glimpse before Junpei presses the jacket over the injury and holds it there, hiding it from sight.

Yukari tries to summon her persona. Io flickers above her like a mirage for less than a second before vanishing. She pulls the trigger again, but the result is the same. She pulls the trigger again and again and again, face contorted and body heaving with sobs that Minato can’t hear. Io stops appearing at all. He stands there and watches.

It’s no use. They’re too far from Tartarus or any powerful shadow that could be harboring a piece of its influence. They’re too close to the end of the Dark Hour. Minato has two personas that can cast Recarm, but they wouldn’t be of any use even if he could draw his evoker, if he could move at all.

He stands there. And he watches.

Aragaki is saying something to Amada, and Amada answers through his sobs. Their mouths are moving, but Minato still can't hear. Why can’t he hear anything? Why does it feel like his mind is clouded over in static? 

Something jabs hard into his side and suddenly Minato’s ears work again, like a loose wire has been jarred back into place.

“--ato! Minato! Hey, are you listening?!” He blinks, dumbfounded, and turns to the source of the voice. Junpei is staring at him. Minato has no idea what he’d call the expression Junpei is making at him, but it’s not one he’s ever seen him wear before. “Give Sanada-san your coat, man! We need to stop the bleeding!” 

Even though he can hear again, it still takes him far too long to actually comprehend what’s being said. Junpei starts to repeat himself before it finally clicks and Minato shucks his jacket and hands it over. Junpei passes it off to Sanada, and Sanada presses it against the hole in Aragaki’s stomach. Aragaki doesn’t even flinch, just looks over at Koromaru gently nudging his hand. He pets him weakly. It’s probably the most movement he can manage.

“Just a few minutes–” Fuuka says, nearly hysterical. “The Dark Hour ends in a few minutes. As soon as it does, I-I’ll call an ambulance!” 

“Did you hear that, Shinji?” With the hand that isn’t leaning on the makeshift bandage, Sanada grabs Aragaki’s, gripping tight. Aragaki grips back, much weaker. “Just hold on for a bit longer!” 

“Aki…”  Aragaki’s voice is quiet and thready, but everyone falls silent at the sound of it. “Take care of him…” He slowly inclines his head towards Amada. 

“Don’t talk like you won’t be around!” Sanada says through gritted teeth.

“Pr…promise me, Aki.” 

Sanada’s breath hitches and he bites his lip against it. “…Alright. Alright, I– I will. I promise I will.” 

Aragaki smiles and Minato’s heart lurches. It’s sad. It’s final. 

It’s relieved. 

Aragaki is smiling like a weight has finally been lifted from his shoulders. He looks so content that Minato almost envies him. “This is…how it should be…” he sighs.

He slumps in Mitsuru and Sanada’s arms. Minato’s ears ring. There is a chorus of strangled cries from his teammates. 

Amada chokes like he’s been stabbed. “No–! H-he can’t–!”

“Is he–?” Junpei’s voice shakes.

“He’s alive,” Sanada gasps, still clutching Aragaki’s hand. “He’s still breathing–”

“I can feel his pulse,” Mitsuru affirms, pressing two fingers gently to Aragaki’s neck. “It’s weak, but it’s there. He’s only passed out, but unless he gets medical attention soon…” She can’t even finish her sentence, but she doesn’t need to. The implication is heavy enough. 

“Still breathing,” Sanada murmurs to himself. “He’s still breathing–” He says it again and again, as though he can force the words to remain true through sheer repetition.

Without fanfare, the green glow of the Dark Hour vanishes. The murky clouds that had blotted out the stars disappear and the moon returns to its normal size. 

“Yamagishi!”  Mitsuru exclaims.

“R-right!” Fuuka is already dialing. Her voice is strained and thin but steady as she relays the necessary details, and the person on the other end of the line thankfully seems to understand. It isn’t until she closes her phone that Fuuka allows a choked sob to escape. “Th…they’re on the way,” she says, her voice breaking. 

All they can do now is wait. Nobody speaks. Most of the team crowds around Aragaki, if nothing else to assure themselves that he’s still alive. Only Amada stays off to the side, until Junpei breaks away to crouch next to him and speak quietly. 

And Minato. He’s frozen in place, staring at the battered body of a man he’s come to greatly respect as the life slowly leaves him. His eyes burn, but it doesn’t feel like the sting of tears. They don’t feel wet at all. Has he been blinking? 

A hand rests on his shoulder. “Minato-san,” Aigis says, her vocals strangely gentle. How does she feel about all of this, Minato briefly wonders. “Are you alright?” 

“...No,” he answers, voice barely audible even to himself. Minato hasn’t felt like this since… not since Back Then. Not since the bridge, and the car.

Aigis’ face remains as impassive as always, but somehow she still looks sadder than she ever has. Sadder than Minato thought she was capable of. “I am here if you need me.” The compassion in her voice feels like a brick thrown against his chest.

It’s only a few minutes until they hear sirens, but it’s the most agonizing few minutes of their lives. Even in Tartarus, where a minute can stretch like taffy, time has never seemed to creep by so slowly.

A group of punks has started to gather, trying to gawk at the sprawled figure hidden within the protective ring formed by his teammates. They scatter as soon as the ambulance pulls up, stopping right next to the huddle. Four paramedics pour out and swarm around the injured parties as fast as they can. Two police cars arrive moments later. Officer Kurosawa steps out of one of them.

The alley is filled with disorienting pulses of red and blue light. Minato almost misses the sickly haze of the Dark Hour.

There’s a whirlwind of voices– explanations and questions and medical jargon– but Minato absorbs none of it. He just watches (again– again, he just watches, and does nothing) as three of the first responders transfer Aragaki onto a stretcher and load him into the ambulance. The fourth gently guides Amada inside as well. 

Everyone wants to go with them, but there’s only enough spare room for one more person. Minato isn’t surprised when Sanada insists it be him. Nobody argues, and the ambulance takes off the moment Sanada is inside. 

The last train has already left the station, so the rest of them will have to find another way to the hospital. And they will. They have to.

None of them can bear the idea of doing anything less.

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[sciderman]

(Idk if someone asked this already) since we’re on the topic of gender

sci what is gender to you and how do you see it in you and how you express it in your art?? (Just a young queer artist who wants some light shined upon them 🥺)

i 'unno ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[sucresanguine]

not to be throwing stones but the way people talk about having a "female" childhood as a default good thing in queer spaces is bonkers. Like the amount of abuse I and many others experienced that was directly tied to that shouldn't have to be minimized as some kind of learning experience. I don't actually think suffering in one way makes you a better person for it. I'm not out here saying No One Ever Had A Happy Girlhood but for many people that shit was traumatizing and doesn't need to be put on a pretty little pedestal nor held up as something that made you necessarily more empathetic/feminist/radicalized because imo that really does carry the connotation that all those things were potentially good for you. Being someone who went through that didn't distinctly or directly make me a better feminist or ally, it made me a very very hurt person.

[every-sanji]

[nervoustragedyluminary]

Reductress is just spreading terf rhetoric now

The "joke" is that nonbinary people are somehow escaping from violence by being trans that we can opt out of fearing violence and don't fear violence when walking at night....

Like just yuck as a transmasc nonbinary survivor whose actually aware of the stats of violence against nonbinary people this just disgusts me...

Also I'm betting they have talked to zero Black trans enbies or men or women of colour about how being seen as "scary" puts them in danger from racist white people & or they're just assuming all enbies are white idk it's disgusting... There's just so many layers to the bigotry and white fauxminism of this "joke"

They've previously made posts like this so idk if they've got terfs on staff who keep trying to slip this in to pipeline people or people who think certain trans people they dislike facing violence including sexual violence is funny and that those trans survivors are lying and shouldn't be beleived.

They're priming their audience to disbelieve and mock nonbinary trans survivors. They're literally pushing the "people transition to escape/opt out of patriarchal violence like a fun game" terf talking point which isn't reflected in the stats of violence against trans people who face higher rates of physical sexual and domestic violence than cis people

Just "it's a coin toss!"

As a survivor fuck you

Like the comments section is full of transphobia and people going "har har they think they're in danger they're delusional " or spouting transphobic BS and a trans man whose talking about how he fears violence walking at night being called 'female' and misgendered like well done you've curated a comment section full of transphobes and people who think trans people aren't who we say we are fucking yikes

None of the transphobic comments have been deleted reductress seems happy to leave up comments calling trans men "female" and saying that trans people are a danger to children

[loveandthings11]

Arian said Stewy said to Kendall “do you remember what your dad did to you as a kid? I was there.” And it was cut.

I might never sleep again.

Arian Moayed for The Prestige TV Podcast

[antifainternational]

Our 2022 report on hate-motivated, fascist, and far-right extremist violence is now available for download here. This report accompanies our 2022 incident chronology and incident map, where we tracked media reports of hate-motivated violence globally. Highlights:

-Last year, our research team documented 477 violent incidents motivated by hate or committed by fascists and far-right extremists that killed 366 people and injured 399 others. This included 112 shootings, 19 arson attacks, 55 stabbings, 218 beatings, 6 chemical weapons attacks, 2 bombings, 18 vehicle attacks, 5 kidnappings, 8 sexual assaults, 2 acid attacks, 8 incidents of torture, and 24 thwarted terror attacks.

-This was actually 40% fewer attacks than we recorded in 2021. However, the violence we recorded in 2022 was deadlier than any year since we began this research project in 2017.

-2022 also saw more hate-related shootings than any of the previous five years. -The good news: we documented fewer attacks on Asians, Muslims, Black people, gay/lesbian/bisexual people, and migrants/refugees than in 2021. -The bad news: Anti-fascists, Jewish people, and trans people were more likely to be targeted in 2022 than the year before. One in five attacks in 2022 targeted anti-fascists; one in four attacks targeted a trans person. Attacks on Jewish people tripled proportionately when compared to 2021. In 2022, 45% of the people murdered in hate-motivated attacks were trans. 2022 was the worst year porportionately for violence against anti-fascists since our research began in 2017. -New York City was the location for the highest number of hate-motivated attacks in 2022 and was #3 on the list of cities experiencing the most hate-motivated violence, relative to population. 11% of all attacks; 30% of attacks targeting Asians; and nearly half of all anti-semitic attacks that we documented last year happened in New York City with the majority of the city's anti-Asian violence occurring in Manhattan and the majority of the city's anti-semitic attacks occurring in Brooklyn. Download our report to find out more. View our 2022 incident chronology here. View our 2022 incident map here. Links to our past research and a donation page to help us continue this research project here.

[fox-guardian]

oh I love reading bad takes so early into a show's life (sarcastic) (I'm dying) (god save me)