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trans-advice · 5 years ago

Note

Hey, for the past 5 or so years I have privately identified as nonbinary or not conforming to any gender, and even recently requested that my boss and coworkers use they/them pronouns. About a month ago I stumbled across a "gender critical" blog and started reading it. I know it's a bad idea to engage with trolls, especially when it will impact your sense of self, but I felt restless that my existence was being debated and wanted to hear the other side. Now I am feeling confused (1 o 2 asks)

I’m feeling confused and gross, wondering if all this time I have been actually working against my own feminist beliefs, or if I’m just being naive and getting indoctrinated. Like,I worry about me being a female who simply didn’t subscribe to gender stereotypes, tricking myself into thinking I"wasn’t like the other girls". I have also been wondering about what it means to identify into an oppressed group, and why we can’t talk about it without being dismissed as a dumb TERF. (1 o 2 asks) Thx

— Eve: CW: long post, possibly rambley, could’ve used better editing, transphobia, “gender critical”, recuperation, discussion of “terf” politics, recuperation of liberation movements, politics, oppression, rape culture, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist,

So basically I have tried for almost 4 weeks to write a response detailing this stuff. however it’s gotten too unwieldy. i tried to condense it, but this was as close as i got. it’s practically like 3 drafts back to back. I couldn’t figure out the differences & when i saw similarities it seemed significantly different enough. so I’m not editing any further. here’s a mindvomit. i wish i had this more polished but I can’t do that & i didn’t get a response.

however I’m going to make a history book recommendation, a referral to gendercensus2020, and i need to emphasize that these are much more like personal beliefs & not generally the tone of this blog which aims to give advice & positivity, while this is inherently political, the good bad & ugly. and there are trans people of various persuasions so I don’t want alienate them. i dissecting some ideologies that are transphobic, how they became that, how they got recuperated, and how you can find the same concerns being addressed. I’m answering this because it totally makes sense to me that this is asked in good faith & I want to respect your concerns & show that there are better methods of liberation activism that are trans affirmative, or at least must become & develop into such.

So I’m going to recommend the book “Transgender History (Second Edition)” by Susan Stryker, which I have put on our blog’s google drive account, so hence a link. It goes into the historic common ground between the feminists & LGBT+ peoples. It also gets into historic movements. And on top of that, the first chapter is literally a list of terminology deconstructing gender, which is also helpful for analyzing topics feminism analyzes..

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IvCwNvCJ_EiDmOer4zS8SbFGz4m-WDJ1

another thing you need to know regarding the label lesbian back in the day is that it was a catchall for any woman who didn’t have sex with men. now granted, this was a cisnormative understanding, but basically lesbians included celibate women, asexual women, and of course bisexual women in addition to gay women.

basically the normal advice of wait til you have your own money to have sex, wait til your mid 20s, don’t rely on a man to pay your bills etc, all of this comes from political lesbianism, which was like be celibate or else have sex that doesn’t involve sperm. (granted, communities cannot be monoliths if they want to be ecosystems, like any movement label there are different interpretations made by members of it, and therefore there are some strands that uphold a homonormative appreciation for conversion therapy. perhaps a middle ground for understanding how that happened is that joke about macho sexuality purity “if a man masturbates with his hand, he’s using a man’s hand to get off, then it’s gay.” granted, there was of course a political/economic reason to this, but still, it seems in terms of history that this joke was considered actually legitimate.)

“lesbian” was a catchall for women who didn’t have sex with men. this included ace, celibate & gynephiliac women. part of the reason these communities were conflated again had to do with the economic pressures to get married which I’ll detail a few paragraphs from now. (while this next thought could be incorrect because I did just learn about ‘compulsory heterosexuality" a month ago, I think the vestiges of those economic pressures are basically the gist of “comphet”.) the goal of political lesbian as well as lesbian separatism was to build an economy/get money that didn’t require submission to patriarchy, via marriage, pregnancy etc. so basically in an effort to build like support networks, “men” were shunned as much as possible.

however these networks ended up replicating capitalism, (partly due to oppression against communes & other anti-capitalist activities) which then replicated the oppressions of capitalism. it makes sense that transphobia had formed of assimilation/respectability politics for such feminists. To quote from the criticism section of the Wikipedia article on the women’s liberation movement.

> The philosophy practised by liberationists assumed a global sisterhood of support working to eliminate inequality without acknowledging that women were not united; other factors, such as age, class, ethnicity, and opportunity (or lack thereof) created spheres wherein women’s interests diverged, and some women felt underrepresented by the WLM.[208] While many women gained an awareness of how sexism permeated their lives, they did not become radicalized and were uninterested in overthrowing society. They made changes in their lives to address their individual needs and social arrangements, but were unwilling to take action on issues that might threaten their socio-economic status.[209] Liberationist theory also failed to recognize a fundamental difference in fighting oppression. Combating sexism had an internal component, whereby one could change the basic power structures within family units and personal spheres to eliminate the inequality. Class struggle and the fight against racism are solely external challenges, requiring public action to eradicate inequality.[210] >

birth control helped to liberate women & that accommodation/handicap for reproductive health disabilities (disability is merely inability to do something that’s Normative. so if having a uterus, pregnancy/menstruation/having breasts etc aren’t considered normal, which is especially common in a patriarchal society for these examples, then it’s disability.) It should be said that due to the desire for bodily autonomy to regulate our own body parts, as well as a desire to manage our fertility & sterilization, the transgender movement has a lot in common with feminism’s female-as-disability movement.)

it should also be noted that before the medical transitioning became accessible that us trans people relied a lot more on social transitioning than medical transitioning. it should also be mentioned that the medical procedures are available & used by cisgender people too.

that being said, since both cis females & transgender women were denied birth control etc, there was a very intense fear of impregnation happening & trans women going back in the closet not only to get money under patriarchy but also because life raising a kid is hard. like if you’ve ever seen “the stepford wives” & look at how the ally husband betrays his feminist wife, then that should clue us into how a lack of birth control scared us.

the problem with the school of feminism that emphasizes physiological sex over gender identity (in order to deny the existence of trans people with female-organs or not) is that it doesn’t account for birth control & how that’s affected the landscape, the economy etc, the revolutionary impact of birth control basically. it also ignores that trans people & cis women feminists have the same goals when it comes to getting freedoms about reproductive rights & bodily autonomy. therefore it ends up being transphobic & wanting to run back into the times when we didn’t have abortion access because they want to hurt us.

That being said though, we need to have birth control & more in order to help liberate trans people too, so if somewhere doesn’t have birth control, then we’re not doing well either because it’d pay a lot more to be transphobic (which of course it doesn’t now when we have birth control & various medical & other technologies). i think what I’m trying to say is that similar to disability accomodations clashing with each other, if we of the women’s liberation, the trans liberation, and the gay & lesbian liberation, and the bisexual & ace liberation get stranded then we’re all doomed. granted we might be doing that due to defensiveness with hostility similar to how in the 1980s feminism got very conservative in USA & how some transgender people get spared in systems with strict gender conformity & anticolonialist values, it’d be wrong to say that all our liberations are in conflict with each other. they can be mishandled, but ultimately, safety still tends to favor cisheteropatriarchal people. internalized patriarchal thinking is like internalized queerphobia, and so forth.

I want to emphasize that it is relatively easy for transgender people especially nonbinary people to find gender critical discourse somewhat appealing. Here’s why: TERFs & Gender Critical discourse is agender-normative disability discourse regarding reproductive health & other AFAB organs. (a disability is being unable to do things that society considers normative. so if you can’t drive & your locale de facto requires it, then that’s a disability. also in usa you’ll find that pregnancy & disability are the main things welfare programs prioritize. a pregnancy can be harmful, but can be easier with the right monitoring etc. which again is the same with disability.)

the problem though is that they then insist on misgendering you as one of the binary genders based on objectification of your body (specifically, “morphology”). point being, because you feel dysphoric over being misgendered as something nonbinary as being mislabeled as cisgender, this implies that you are indeed transgender.

https://gendercensus.com/post/612238605773111296/the-gender-census-2020-is-now-open

—

Now to be clear, there are historical economic considerations that made the decisions to specialize on the intersectionality of cisgender AFABs, but the economy & technology has changed. Basically marriage back in the day was economically necessary because there was effectively no birth control available. Therefore, to get child support etc, required getting the father to pay the consequences. However, marriage was very much a chattel property institution, marital rape was still legal, and women couldn’t get credit etc in our own names.

At the same time, similar to birth control being unavailable, hormones & other procedures for medically transitioning trans people were unavailable as well, which meant social transitioning & wardrobe etc were the main methods of affirming our gender. however, we sometimes got lucky & had a doctor write us a note affirming our gender & sometimes we got even luckier & govts accepted this. this however required getting labelled sick & begging doctors to give us treatment & getting money for this since insurance companies etc still discriminated against transgender people even when we agreed to have our gender identity situation labelled as sick & medically necessary. (similarly insurance companies still refuse to cover abortions & so do some doctors & hospitals.)

So this meant that AFABs were concerned about getting hijacked via impregnation. Because of the patriarchal economics of the whole thing, people were afraid of “the stepford wives” repeating itself in their own lives, where the mind can only handle what the ass can stand would mean trans women would go back into the closet.

Granted, that’s a bit misrepresentative of trans women & trans people because trans people & cis women who can get pregnant do have a lot more in common. we take the same meds, go to the same clinics, menopause etc gets taken due to distress over how our bodies work, etc. then again, how would trans AMAB people have gotten the money for child support?

historically & still to this day we basically had to beg doctors for the ability to get hormones to get a surgery to get a gender marker change & so on, which granted, what we trans people had available to us varied from locale to locale because it required collaborations of trans people, doctors, and the local govts & especially their police stations. again, before roe v wade abortion providers were super underground & secretive & there were specialized units at police stations for hunting down patients & providers under the charge of “murder”. it’s the same dynamics.

seriously trans people & people with bodies that can get pregnant, menstruate, menopause, etc, we go to the same clinics! women’s health clinics take trans patients, planned parenthood takes trans patients, do i need to go any further on how trans people & feminists have the same interests regarding reproductive health?

—

as for political lesbianism:

basically the normal advice of wait til you have your own money before having sex, wait til your mid 20s, don’t rely on a man to pay your bills etc, all of this comes from political lesbianism, which was like be celibate or else have sex that doesn’t involve sperm. (i’m not sure what the conditions were like surrounding not piv sex among the straights, and therefore what the likelihood of avoiding piv sex was. I do know that rape culture was much more heavily normalized than it is now.)

“Lesbian” was a catchall for women who didn’t have sex with men. this included: - ace, - celibate - bisexual - gay women. Part of the reason these communities were conflated again had to do with the economic pressures to get married, (while this next statement could be incorrect because i did just learn about ‘compulsory heterosexuality" a month ago, i think the vestiges of those economic pressures such as weddings are basically the gist of “comphet”.)

The goal of Political Lesbianism as well as Lesbian Separatism was to build an economy that didn’t require submission to patriarchy, such as that of marriage, pregnancy etc. In efforts to build like support networks, “men” were shunned as much as possible.

However these networks, (partly due to lacking radicalization) ended up replicating capitalism, (partly due to oppression against communes & other anti-capitalist activities) which then replicated the oppressions of capitalism. It makes sense that transphobia had formed of assimilation/respectability politics for such feminists. To quote from the criticism section of the Wikipedia article on the women’s liberation movement.

> “The philosophy practised by liberationists assumed a global sisterhood of support working to eliminate inequality without acknowledging that women were not united; other factors, such as age, class, ethnicity, and opportunity (or lack thereof) created spheres wherein women’s interests diverged, and some women felt underrepresented by the WLM.[208] While many women gained an awareness of how sexism permeated their lives, they did not become radicalized and were uninterested in overthrowing society. They made changes in their lives to address their individual needs and social arrangements, but were unwilling to take action on issues that might threaten their socio-economic status.[209] Liberationist theory also failed to recognize a fundamental difference in fighting oppression. Combating sexism had an internal component, whereby one could change the basic power structures within family units and personal spheres to eliminate the inequality. Class struggle and the fight against racism are solely external challenges, requiring public action to eradicate inequality.[210]”

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polarishq · 5 years ago

Photo

Meet SHILOH POWELL. They are UNKNOWN/THIRTY TWO years old and hail from JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY. Shiloh embodies the constellation, PHOENIX. They use she/her pronouns. Their faceclaim is EMMY ROSSUM.

Phoenix reminds me of Hey What’s Up You Guys, Welcome Back to My Channel, imposter syndrome, only knowing second-hand love, the sterile smell of a hospital room, can’t do math (both because of the gay and because she’s never had a formal education), trying to navigate the terrifying world of Instagram notoriety, a sudden shift in the mannerisms of someone you’ve known your whole life, private hobbies learned in rare spare moments, an unwilling devotion to the stars, the story of Sisyphus, an attention to detail, beanies. Beanies in every color. So many beanies, universal across time and space and identities. A secret beanie cove. Beanies!!!!!!!!

BIOGRAPHY

Major TWs: Various terminal illnesses, and talking about them in a somewhat casual manner.

When Shiloh wakes up as Shiloh, she comes to know herself as a twenty-nine year old Twitter-famous witch with a heart defect, and the first thing that springs to mind is: “Well, at least it’s not another brain tumor.” When you have a mission, particularly when you don’t know what that mission actually is, brain tumors are problematic; they affect your mood, and your memory, and as they grow, your cognitive functions begin to slow, making your already limited time on earth more difficult to navigate. For someone like Shiloh, who has a short yet undetermined amount of time to fulfill a task, staying in operation until the end is imperative. Of course, heart problems come with their own set of complications; namely, she doesn’t know when time is running out. One day she can be out on the town, smokin’ cigarettes and fucking strangers and having a grand ol’ time, and the next—boom, dead.

Shiloh has been a puppet for the stars for centuries, now, as have all who have been cursed with the Phoenix sponsorship, and it’s frankly a pain in the ass. When Shiloh first came into consciousness, it was somewhere in the astral plane, face to face with the former Phoenix—a boy with bags under his eyes, a failure, tasked with passing the torch onto his successor before their spirit dies permanently. The message was simple: “To live, you must complete the task before your current body dies. Your time is limited, you do not know what it is ahead of time, but it is a significant goal that impacts the world in some way, even if you cannot see that in the moment. If you succeed, you live out the remainder of that body’s life before you move onto the next. If you fail, you get no second chances. You die, and that is it.” … Load of fucking bullshit, if you ask her, because who does that? But sure enough, Shiloh blinked and woke up in the body of a young girl with tuberculosis, and from that point on, it’s been nonstop.

It’s also worth noting that Shiloh is not really Shiloh, though for the sake of this life, she is. She actually doesn’t know who she is, as she’s constantly assuming the identities of others and must step as seamlessly as possible into their lives without drawing a great deal of attention to herself, which is neither easily said nor done. She has formed hobbies that follow her from one life to the next, has developed her own set of moral standards, but there is not much freedom in the way that she lives. Sometimes she is born a wife, or a grandpa, or a moody teenager. Sometimes she has a week, or several decades. She’s not always born into the body of a witch, but her powers seem to follow her where she goes—occasionally they coincide with the original host, but not always. Mostly, she doesn’t know why she continues to live life the way she does. There is nothing to gain aside from the possibility of perhaps one day finding peace, or happiness, or love, which Shiloh has only come to know second hand (waking up in the bed of someone’s lover, feeling the way they touch her and knowing that person was loved so deeply, but it’s not her, she’s merely an intruder, always an intruder). It’s a thankless job (congratulations, you did it, have an autoimmune disorder as a display of our undying gratitude!). Every life she comes to realize more and more what she will never have, but for now, she continues to fulfill her duties as though something might one day change.

Anyway, when Shiloh wakes up as Shiloh, not only can she tell she’s a twenty-nine year old witch with an ungodly amount of Twitter notifications, but she’s quick to find out she’s famous this time. Not, like, Angelina Jolie with the paparazzi kind of famous, but Youtube famous, with a boisterous channel with millions of followers and daily content, an aesthetic Instagram and—for the love of God—a fucking TikTok account. This comes with the perk of being able to review hours of content of the body she’s inhabiting, picking up quirks and mannerisms and speech patterns, but also with the added complication of being under the scrutiny of a lot of people. Documented slip-ups are never good. Shiloh also comes to find that she can’t just disappear, because she’s the oldest of a large, loud Jersey family who depends on her income to keep a roof over their heads, so it’s not like she can exactly start a scandal and get herself “cancelled” as was her original inclination. Fine.

What she does do is eventually take her channel down to weekly posts, boosts her acceptance of Instagram ads to supplement the income (those are pretty easy), and enrolls at Polaris, where she’s found her missions take her often these days. It’s always weird, seeing people she knows and has formed relationships with under different identities, but it doesn’t take her terribly long to adapt, as it’s not the first time she’s had to wrestle with this notion.

Although her first few months at Polaris were uneventful, the day Shiloh met Light, who introduced her to a famous serial killer group called the Lunatics, she felt the first piece of the puzzle click into place. She’d like to say she fit in like a glove, but that’s only an accurate depiction if we’re talking about that OJ Simpson glove; suspicious, divisive, and enigmatic. Her appearance caused problems from the get-go, though that was likely because she’d infiltrated their ranks and was the one who felt most comfortable calling Light out on their abusive bullshit. When Light began to abuse her too, locking her up in rooms, staving her, putting her though physical and mental trauma to try and beat her in line, Shiloh only felt like she was getting closer and closer to what the stars actually wanted. Maybe Light needed to be handled, or perhaps the others needed to be freed, or perhaps the Lunatics would lead her to a certain mark. Whatever it was, Shiloh felt confident that she was on the right path.

—Light’s dead, now. No matter the who, or the what, or the why, for this immediate bullet point, and things are in disarray. Shiloh hasn’t received any indication that she’s solved her mission, and with this new distraction, she’s terrified that her clock is running out and she’s been wasting her time with a group that has nothing to do with what Phoenix actually wants from her this go-around. But she can’t just disappear, because some of them suspect her as it is given her newcomer status, and Shiloh’s got too much at stake in this current lifetime (the Powell kids, the fact that she finally got James Charles to follow her back on Instagram, having no other leads), so she remains in it. Might as well see this through until the bitter end.

INCLINATION

Those with the Phoenix sponsorship are not truly people, but simply a consciousness; meant to be a foot soldier for the stars, Phoenix is always a passionate, cunning individual with an affinity for fire magic, though sometimes they inhabit bodies of witches with different inclinations and can pick up some of those skills, though they lose them again as soon as they’re reborn. These individuals wake up in the body of a person, always with a limited lifespan (often a terminal illness, though occasionally death is destined another way) and is given that limited time on earth to fulfill a certain duty for the stars; if they succeed, they are reborn, but if they fail, the torch passes on. Phoenix is one of the more cursed constellations, despite most people thinking its’ representative of second chances, but with the right person at the helm, Phoenix makes more of an impact on the world at large than most people will ever know.

CONNECTIONS

In the Know: This is either a Polaris staff member/professor, townsperson, or someone who’s been around for centuries that knows the nature of Phoenix and is the one common thread who has known Shiloh throughout multiple identities/rebirths. They might be helping Shiloh try and find a way to keep one identity and be able to live life the way she wants, so she seeks them out early so they can continue their work.

Fan: Someone who’s been watching Shiloh’s channel for years and picked up on the shift in her demeanor. They’re likely nosy and Shiloh avoids them at all costs.

Sibling: Fuck it, a younger sibling who’s also at Polaris and is probably also low key suspicious of changes in Shiloh’s behavior. Bonus points if it’s Jeremy Allen White.

Filling Maryanne Brooks’ #WifeGoals.

Filling Ethan King’s Bad Influence.

Filling Izabel Navorra’s You Spin Me Right Round.

Penned by Ashley★

#phoenix.#fire.#student.#taken.#ashley.

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mikami · 6 years ago

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What do you think about Light's death in Drama Death Note ? Could you do a comparison with Light's death in anime/manga/movie ?

Light’s drama death is…. well, I can see what it is setting out to do, I just think its goals are boring and it accomplishes them pretty poorly, haha.

Rewatching all adaptations of Light’s death for this ask really made me appreciate once more why the manga death is so brilliant. The absolute raw-ness of Light begging for his life is something no adaptation has ever recreated or come even close to replicating in impact. The anime takes most of the same scene and then opts for sentimentality instead of raw pathetic emotion - it cuts Light begging and instead makes him run away and face his past self before dying relatively peacefully - it’s effective in an anime-typical sterile kind of way. A very conservative set-up for a death that is guaranteed to make people cry but that doesn’t offer anything especially new or bold. Good, but not nearly as good.

The movie meanwhile banks more on a tension aspect than a pity aspect overall. It lets Light laugh along with Ryuk for a bit, allowing both Light and the audience to believe Ryuk is helping and killing the Task Force before flipping this around. Then it dramatically drops Ryuk’s “no heaven nor hell” line in order to further raise plot-related dramatics. When Light dies, it’s in his fathers arms, but he’s still insisting he was right all along and it’s not too much of a tear-jerker.

The drama… Well, I am going a bit more in depth here since that’s the main medium you asked about.

Where the manga’s focal point is Light’s raw humanity and fear of death, the anime’s is the solemn sadness of a life gone wrong and the movie’s is plot tension (and fatherhood)… the drama banks more on “the Death Note corrupts”.Which is… let’s be real, kind of lame a focal point.

The final scene in the drama is leaning pretty heavily on the scene structure from manga and anime but adapted to the drama’s more emotional and ‘relatable’ rendition of Light (drama!Light is the only one who doesn’t cite percentages when explaining why Kira is good because he’s gay and can’t do math). This Light starts unraveling and talking highly emotionally before he’s getting shot already - manga and anime Light don’t do that and movie Light gets shot pretty early on so comparing him is hard here.

This Light is also the only Light to not get killed by Ryuk.

Instead Mikami just sets him on fire WHILE TRYING TO HELP. Because setting the room on fire for a diversion is a great idea when the one person you’re trying to save has been shot in the legs and literally cannot leave right now.I know that this is irrelevant to the point but it’s honestly my favourite thing - drama Mikami kills both Light and L and it’s amazing. He’s so funny.

Anyway, this Light’s death is largely a drawn-out sequence of Light crawling over the floor trying to reach the Death Note - he repeats over and over that as long as he has the Death Note, he can’t be stopped and all will be fine. There’s no introspection, no acknowledgement that he’s definitely going to die, just a one-track mind obsession with the notebook that drags out for so long that I was genuinely getting bored watching him crawl around like that.You don’t NEED that much to drive the point home that having the notebook was a bad thing for Light. The drama just needlessly keeps pushing the whole ‘this notebook ruined his life!!’ thing and imo it gives very little emotional pay-off.

Light’s final plea is begging Ryuk to give him the eyes, which is… funny because the shinigami who is, rule-wise, in the position to give him the eyes here is not Ryuk but Rem. It is also funny because the eyes are literally useless to him in this situation and since he’s dying naturally either way, halfing his life would only cut it down to like… a few less seconds than before. Whoa.

I suppose this is supposed to show us how irrational he’s getting in his despair, but honestly? That was clear 5 minutes earlier already. Light’s death in the drama drags out and out and out without actually adding anything new or meaningfully closing Light’s character arc. Random flashbacks to better times that are spliced in between do little to give the empty dialogue more depth.

Combining this with the fact that the CGI fire he dies in looks absolutely ridiculous and not even remotely realistic, I think the impact of the scene falls flat completely. Kubota is doing a great job with acting, but that isn’t saving the bad script and the horrible special effects.

His death in the drama is the most unique take on his death technically, but it manages to just… not do anything that’s even remotely powerful or interesting.

#IF YOU SEE MORE MEANING IN IT PLS ENLIGHTEN ME #death note #answers #luna thinks

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nabateann · 8 years ago

Text

to all the horrible people on my gc who need to chill and give me time to proofread for capitalization, this is for you.

my askbox is open and depleted so maybe consider dropping a request in?

kid!flintwood with a treehouse, which was made into a muggle au because reasons and ended up having very little treehouse, regrettably

Marcus and Oliver live in a backwater town called Green Billows

there was this kid named Tom years ago who was obsessed with (but bad at) french, so the town was immortalized as “Gonfler Vert” which modulated to “Goinfrer Verrue” which mean “Hog Wart” and damn if the children didn’t find that hilarious

and so the town is called Hogwarts, now, at least by the kids

the grown ups hate it so much but what can they do

the teenagers are too “cool” for that, but they ironically call is “Hogs Mead” because they are lit as shit man they’re Grown Up and Too Cool

they think they’re original & edgy

(no one corrects them)

teenagers, am I right

there are 4 schools in the town, they’re all very small

Small Town Drama happened and no one would talk about it

and everyone involved is now dead but they keep the drama Alive bc honestly their lives are kinda boring

Oliver goes to Godric’s Primary, the elementary school for Gryffindor’s Academy of Excellence

he’s on the little league soccer team as the goalie

it’s his favorite thing to do

little 6 year old Oliver is toddling around with his soccer ball when suddenly a boy grabs it from him

Oliver is stunned

instead of a rational response, he turns to the boy and goes, “do you know how to play?!?” really excited because he wants to play with someone and he thought no one would play with him but now there is someone who wants to play and this is so cool

and Marcus just

“you… want me to play with you?”

he’s ready to scorn Oliver on the first sign of rejection

Oliver just blinks up, wide-eyed, and nods enthusiastically

of course, Oliver’s mother sees him be pushed over, and is slightly worried, but Oliver and Marcus play “soccer” for a good 2 hours, until they really should be heading home for dinner

and she goes over and Oliver’s so excited because he made a new friend, and “where are your parents, Marcus?“

he bites his lip and shuffles his feet and "well, they’re Out Of Town on a Very Important Trip”

and she looks at him and says “well, who brought you here, then?” and looks around and realizes, there is no one else at the field. it’s just the three of them

he explains that his nanny stays at their house but lets him run around while she does the chores, and she let him go to the park today

Mrs. Wood looks at Oliver and decides that this boy is not walking back to his house alone so the three of them go together

Marcus ends up going to Oliver’s for dinner and they have such a Time and it’s wonderful

they play against each other in little league and they’re best friends

when they are like 8 they build a treehouse with Oliver’s father

the Woods kind of surrogate Marcus, who’s a little abrupt, a little brash, and a lot angry, but a genuinely good kid

it makes coming home to an empty house slightly better

because when Catherine had quit his parents hadn’t bothered to find a new nanny, just made sure the groundskeeper would check in with Marcus every few days

they have sleepovers in the treehouse and they are so close

when Oliver’s 11 (Marcus is 12) Oliver realizes that he’s never met Marcus’s parents and–oh God, does Marcus even have a home?

so Marcus takes Oliver over to his for a “play date”

the house is huge and imposing and spotless and dead

Oliver hates it so much

Marcus’s room isn’t much better

it’s sterile, all freshly pressed, with neat corners and white walls and not a thing out of place

Oliver almost makes a joke about ocd until he looks at Marcus, who looks like he’s about to be sick, right there on the pristine hardwood that probably cost more than Olivers entire house

Oliver decides “fuck this” and drags Marcus out of there with his soccer gear

they play until Oliver forgets that horrible house and that horrible silence and sterility and that look on Marcus’s face that he never wants to see again

Marcus hits puberty first, and shoots up

Oliver is pissed because damn it, Flint, I liked looking at your face when we had conversations

to which Marcus looms over him or exaggeratedly crouches with a smirk and his shoulders shake when he laughs and his eyes crinkle in such a cute way and Oliver must be going crazy because Marcus is terrifying and there is nothing cute about his penalty shots

when Oliver hits puberty he gets taller but not as broad and boom! hormones come in and Fuck Up his life and Flint is really weirdly attractive and–shit, Oliver might be gay shit fuck damn he

gay?

cue crisis. his parents aren’t homophobic, neither are his classmates. he doesn’t think.

he starts hanging out less with Marcus, starts hugging him a little less, because damn, what if someone (Marcus) found out that would ruin everything

meanwhile Marcus is on the team at Slytherin Secondary School (SSS, pronounced “(hisses like snake)”) and trying to convince his friends he’s Cool

he starts being a little meaner, a little rougher, starts pushing Oliver away more

and even though they’re both pushing the other away they also are hurt

because the other is pushing them away, and God, are they no longer the most important people in each other’s lives?

Oliver’s freshman year, his first match on Gryffindor’s varsity team against Marcus, they do what they’ve always done

go out for cheap, greasy food after the match, what they’ve been doing since they were 7/8 and playing little league against each other

but talking about this game is dangerous they’re both sooo defensive about it

and worried about what their teammates would say walking in on them like this, eating together, on what looks suspiciously like a date

they explode. right there. in the fucking 5 guys and

its nasty

Oliver says things like “I can’t solve your abandonment issues, Flint, it’s not my fault your parents didn’t love you enough to stick around”

and Marcus says shit like “at least I’m not an annoying little twit who can only talk about one fucking thing. God, you’re such a boring person, Oliver, is anything in your brain not soccer” and

that’s not all but its where each of them hurts most from and they

they’re fierce to each other after that

but not only did Marcus lose Oliver, he also lost any sort of parental figure he may have had

the Woods still invite him over to dinner and Mr. Wood takes him out to baseball games

he and Oliver’s dad got really close bc Mr. Wood was always around the house when Marcus stopped in and stuck around because he had nowhere to go

and so Oliver feels betrayed by his parents and Marcus feels betrayed by his friend and alone

he starts pushing the Woods away and, well, there’s not a whole lot they can do, and as long as he’s happy then it should work out

it doesn’t work out, at all

Marcus and Oliver are vicious to each other during that time

absolutely horrible

until Marcus’s junior year

Marcus’s dad has a heart attack and has to recover

so he’s at home

it’s what Marcus has always wanted, except it’s

it’s horrible

his dad yells and is violent and completely out of control and Marcus has no idea how to deal with that

Marcus is a very confrontational person

eventually they get into a fight so bad that Marcus ends up in the ER with 2 broken ribs and a bruised jawbone and a broken nose after his father pushed him down the stairs and Marcus,,

Marcus swings into a depressive episode

because he’s disappointed his dad when his dad came home to see him, finally cared about him and all he could do was disappoint him

like he’s disappointed Oliver

he stops doing his homework, stops going to practice, even long after his ribs heal

after he spends a week in bed, staring listlessly at the wall, Oliver marches in, shoves soccer gear at him, and says “get up, loser, we’re going running”

Marcus cracks an eye open

“in cleats?”

it takes three hours for Oliver to get Marcus showered and dressed, but they finally make their way down to the soccer field and Oliver plops a ball down at the edge of the penalty box and says “when you get it in 5 times we’ll go home” and Marcus

Marcus is so confident. he’s the starting striker, en route to an ivy probably, he can do this easily

but he hasn’t worked out in a month and a half, and his feet are not listening to his head

it’s fucking brutal, and it takes him two hours to score the required five goals

once he does, he falls down into the dirt

Oliver leaves him there, saying “same time tomorrow, don’t be late” over his shoulder as he leaves

Marcus does not get up the next day, and Oliver comes and drags him out again

and again

until Marcus is getting up on his own and to the pitch

he even starts to look forward to these practice sessions with Oliver

he doesn’t think about the stack of work on his desk getting steadily bigger

(he does, and he starts to work through that, too, but damned if he was going to tell anyone)

eventually he goes back to school, back from “medical leave,” but shooting with Oliver continues

it’s just relegated to the weekends

they’re not fixed

they don’t talk to each other, for one

but it’s an improvement

anythings an improvement to the radio static that had been driving Marcus crazy

and it works

Oliver realized last year that he was hella gay

he tried messing around with his lab partner, Percy, but nothing had come of that

Percy really wasn’t his type anyway

broad shoulders came to mind, but were quickly shoved out

he’s not out, but he’s dealing with the fear, trying to bring it up to his parents slowly, because it’s

it’s hard and anyways it’s not like there’s a reason to at the moment, he’s not exactly dating anyone

Marcus is just trying to avoid his dad but he’s so upset

there must be something wrong with him if the people in his life keep leaving

we all know about what happens to gay men who feel alone

hookup apps in strange cities and high-risk behavior

at the away games during the tournament, Marcus goes completely off the rails

he tries to drown this loneliness in meaningless grindr hookups and alcohol but its not working and he can’t handle this

and then he gets home to find his father in the hospital after another heart attack

the man dies that night and Marcus is selfishly slightly relieved and not much else

and he’s spiraling fast

so is Oliver

nothing in his life is working out

he’s gay

his stats are not where they need to be for recruiters

none of his teammates like him

his grades are subpar

he has like one friend

two if you count Marcus, who still hasn’t forgiven him about the stupid fight his freshman year

and so Oliver is just so alone he throws himself into soccer and ends up almost bowing out his knee

he gets a stern talking-to by his coach

because a blown-out knee is the end of any shot he has at a career and he can’t afford that

the team can’t afford that, not with championships so close

he goes out to their treehouse to sit and look at the stars and think about why

why he’s here, why he’s doing this

it’s intense he gets vvv existential and it kinda hits him that holy shit he’s in love with Marcus

like my boy Oliver goes all the way with all his self-examination and he just realizes it out of nowhere

he doesn’t really do anything about it, but it’s kinda nice to know

their teams play each other in semis and Harry, Oliver’s new midfielder, manages to score the winning goal and they knock Marcus’s team out of the running

Marcus wants to be pissed but honestly? Oliver deserved it

anyways they start patching things up now that it’s the off season and they’re back to their regular off season practices

it’s really lowkey and Marcus stops trying to lose himself in far away cities and starts focusing on the now

and a week after semifinals Marcus gets a call, from Washington can you believe it Oliver they want me

and Oliver’s so happy for him but

he’s not good enough yet for washington, or anything like that, so he throws himself into practice

they become practically inseparable again

everyone on Marcus’s team either hates him or fondly thinks he’s an aloof, avoidant asshole so him not socializing doesn’t do much to morale

one night they’re in Marcus’s house’s kitchen and Marcus is trying to teach Oliver how to cook chicken and all Oliver can see is how good Marcus’s shoulders look in that shirt and shit that’s Oliver’s shirt shit shit and on the one hand it’s so warmingly domestic and on the other hand it’s possibly the most erotic thing Oliver’s ever seen in his 16 years of being on this earth

damn its Flint in a shirt and sweatpants get it together

but he can’t because he’s so Goddamn sappy

then he thinks about how someday there’ll be a woman who gets to see Marcus like this every day, the way he looked when it was just the two of them or at the dinner table, when the weight of the world falls off his shoulders and he lets himself want to be happy

there’s a woman who will get to sit at the counter like Oliver is doing and watch the shifting muscles in Marcus’s back as he cooks

maybe a little girl will run down the stairs laughing with bouncing pigtails and her father’s dimples and Oliver

Oliver wants with an aching that leaves him breathless and hollow and he thinks he chokes something out about the bathroom but he has honestly no idea and he gets the fuck out of there

because it hits him, suddenly, that Marcus is going to have this happy future without him and

Oliver takes the fuck off, runs out of there, and sprints to the soccer field, realizing when he gets there that he’s barefoot, wearing jeans, and phoneless

he sits there and just sobs, and then it starts raining, and he’s miserably sobbing in the rain and damn if that’s not the perfect accompaniment to his thoughts at the moment

after some amount of time a door is flung open next to him and he is bodily hauled into the backseat of a car

Marcus, looking intently forward and very noticeably not at him, grinds out “strip” and what the fuck

this is hardly the most appropriate situation but Oliver gives no shits at that point he’s exhausted

so he does as he’s told and Marcus shoves blankest back at him and he cocoons himself in them, still sniffling as they drive home

he falls asleep on the way back, probably, because the next thing he knows is that he’s waking up in Marcus’s bed and Marcus is reading a book on the sofa with the light streaming in behind him and that really didn’t help anything did it

why was Marcus so unfairly attractive it was, frankly, inconsiderate

anyways they stay at Marcus’s house for a while because “soccer, mom! soccer” and well

soccer

they practice but it’s domestic bliss and hell and Oliver is letting himself hope and it’s so painful and so hard and how the fuck is he supposed to deal with this

meanwhile Marcus is just Shook that Oliver hasn’t left yet, that his sunshine boy (the second he thinks this he decides to never use the term again, and to possibly rinse his brain with bleach) actually wants to spend time with him

Marcus is a puppy underneath all those layers of angst and they gripe at each other all the time and they’re grouchy but

they also have stupid inside jokes and they laugh about dumb cat videos online (although neither will admit to watching them) and they watch shitty action movies to critique them together

Marcus is just so enamored and terrified

he cares about Oliver so much and he knows that Oliver will leave him, just like everyone else, just like he did before

but he’s ignoring that and trying to enjoy the time he has with Oliver right now

anyways their spring break is disgustingly couple-y and the way they act is so gross and it’s just nasty and sweet and all those good things and they just decide to take what they can

they take walks and hold hands and they go to a carnival

they only go on the terrifying roller coasters though because they’re adrenaline junkies and hardcore men who Aren’t Gay

ok maybe not but if anyone says anything then they vehemently deny it

when they get back to school very little changes and no one really mentions anything but??

Marcus picks up Oliver every day???? so theres gotta be something right??????

Oliver looks at them blankly. “yes, we practice soccer together, I told you that.” “right, soccer” “yes, that is the sport I play”

no one’s stupid enough to say anything to Marcus

except Malfoy, the twat, but Marcus knows Oliver knows Potter, so it’s all good

but there’s a $467 pot riding on when they’ll admit they’re dating (winner-takes-all)

Oliver gets shitfaced and confesses to Angelina, Katie, and Alicia one night, and then his entire soccer team knows

they’re creepily good at keeping their mouths shut, but he suspects that’s because Harry’s still too busy with his legal issues to notice anything

one day he’s complaining to Angelina about how unfair it is that Marcus has attractive abs and an attractive personality, because what the fuck Ang that’s so unfair

and Marcus overhears their phone call and is like “ok that’s definitely platonic I mean he’s jealous obv no need to get my hopes up” and

it gets progressively gayer and gayer

they probably end up saying “I love you” to each other or something

every time this happens they think to themselves “I know I mean it romantically but Straight Man McHeteroson does not so don’t make it gay dammit”

and it gets so, so bad that all of their teams are so fed up

cue Operation: Bonfire

Ginny came up with the name. it was the best thing they didn’t all hate, so they kept it

their teams try to get them together, obsessively, and they’re just taking it the wrong way

honestly the Slytherins get in on it because God damn it it’s getting kinda pathetic and it’s not good to have a pathetic loser as your team captain

nothing works

school lets out, and preseason starts in a month

Oliver’s family (his parents and younger siblings) go to Scotland to visit relatives, but Oliver stays behind for soccer

of course, Mrs. Wood sighs, before kissing Oliver’s head and giving Marcus a hug

and Marcus and Oliver are living together again and it’s so disgusting and domestic

Angelina comes over for breakfast and she’s appalled at these two oblivious idiots and gives up on them

she texts Oliver “jesus this is nasty u 2 better work ur shit out”

Oliver sends back a string of emoji that she’s fairly sure were just a keyboard smash

Oliver cracks halfway through week 3

after two and a half weeks of this he’s so fucking done he can’t do this anymore

it might ruin everything but he can’t stand the constant picturing of this woman and their daughter and a happy, middle-aged Marcus being an attentive father and a doting husband and–God, he’s gay

so he kinda blurts it out one day

he still has no idea what he said

Marcus kinda blinks at him

and Oliver runs

but only upstairs. he learned his lesson last time

Marcus stares at the doorway for a good 5 minutes, processing

the first coherent thought he has is “damn, Montague’s going to lord this win over Malfoy for a good year. serves the prick right”

before he realizes what just happened and

why did Oliver run? what??

he’s too tired/hungry for this, so he goes back to sleep like the clueless asshole he is

Oliver tries to avoid Marcus, but he doesn’t have his license yet and he doesn’t want to run the 30 miles home so he just sulks around the house all day

finally Marcus catches him in the kitchen, crowding him from behind and sinking his nose into the crook of Oliver’s neck

Oliver freezes, his finger hovering over the buttons on the microwave, and how do microwaves work, again?

more importantly, why was Marcus????

Marcus mutters, “is this okay?” into the crook of Oliver’s neck and Oliver lets out this super embarrassing, breathy moan

it gets kinda nsfw and I’m too lazy to write that now but I totally will

they don’t fuck then though because it felt kinda like,,, rushing it? and they really didn’t need to

they spend so long at the beginning of their relationship making out and just learning each other’s bodies

neither of them ever thought that they’d get this, so they savor it

honestly they don’t really have sex for like a good 2 years because there are so many other interesting things to do together

like soccer

its gross & nasty just like them

anyways they go to the same college and are gay & happy

Oliver does end up blowing out his knee halfway through his professional career and they adopt a little girl

then another kid

then another

wow suddenly they have like 5 where did they all come from?

then it becomes dogs, and cats, and Oliver never knew what it was like to not live with a loud, happy family and Marcus never wants his children to know a silent house

but he still complains, because dammit Wood we’re not a walking, talking, adopting machine!

thx for listening to this radio broadcast brought to you by me, an independant au machine supported from contributions from readers like you

#flintwood #flintwoodnet #verypotternet #lgbthpnet #harrypotternetwork #hp #oliver wood #marcus flint #mine #my writing #headcanon #ughhh this is crap #im so sorry #hprarepairnet #slytherdornet #hprarepairnetchallenge #slytherdorchallenge #um friends-to-lovers anguished declarations mutual pining hs au this is the tropiest thing ive ever touched tbh

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weekendwarriorblog · 5 years ago

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30 Minute Experiment: Marriage #30ME

Okay, let’s do this. I promised/threatened that some of these ramblings might get very personal, so at a certain point, you might be reading this experiment as my personal diary blog where I’m talking about whatever’s on my mind at any given time but always geared towards one topic. I also have decided to create a hashtag for this experiment, #30ME, short for “30 Minute Experiment” (duh), but also because it’s mostly about me, there’s a “ME” in there. I haven’t been 30 years old for a very VERY long time.

Let’s get to today’s topic, and as my friend David Kwong says in his show, The Enigmatist, “This is where it gets good!” (and I’m totally paraphrasing his act here, but hopefully it’ll get to start its run at the Geffen Theater in L.A. so people on the West Coast can see it and love it as much as those in and around New York! Shameless plug and link! https://www.geffenplayhouse.org/shows/the-enigmatist/)

So today’s topic is MARRIAGE, and it’s impossible to write about this topic, let alone for 30 minutes, without it getting personal. Obviously, I’m not married, I’ve never been married and I probably will never get married.

It’s not that I’m against the institution of marriage per se, as I have many friends who are happily married and that union has definitely made them better people, and they all generally seem happy. Sure, I’d love to have that kind of happiness myself but I have this weird thought in my head that I’ll never be married, and it’s something I’ve said SINCE I was actually 30 years old. I remember when my friend and Magic Shop buddy Joe Warda was getting married. It’s how I got the apartment sublet where I now live. He was a little older than me but he met a woman at a wedding and when they got engaged, I told him “I’ll probably never get married,” and he’d respond with a smile, “That’s what I said!” (Note: Joe is no longer with that woman. I doubt he’ll read this but if he does, I hope he’ll understand that I’m not stating this fact as judgment. I just remember those conversations fondly.)

You have to understand that when I was younger, say 11 or 12 years old, I was already a dreamer, and back then I dreamed of being married and having a family, particularly kids. My family was a bit dysfunctional, and in some ways, it still is, but it probably wasn’t nearly as bad as I remember it. Sure, I had problems with my Dad and my younger sister, but they were all things we got over once we got older and grew apart by distance.

So here’s this 11 or 12 year old Ed thinking about having that house with a white picket fence (or in my case, black!) and being able to show that I could be a better father than my Dad. I even set a DATE for when I wanted to get married by, and that date was 1/1/00. I was going to be married and with a life partner before I was 35 years old, which seemed like an honorable enough goal.

The problem is that in the time before and since then, I never met anyone who I felt that I could spend the rest of my life. That’s a lie. I met one or two but our relationships never got anywhere to the point where I could propose the idea of even living together. I mean, anyone who has seen my apartment knows that it’s not a place where ANY human should live... let alone TWO humans. I also used to make a joke when I moved in here about how happy I was to not have a roommate after about 6 years of roommates. I would say that I’d never have another roommate... and that was even if I got married! Can you even imagine two people being married but not living in the same place?

So there’s that... the apartment but in the last four or five years, there’s also been the matter of money, because I would want to be a responsible spouse and contribute to the household. I couldn’t imagine being married and not being able to do that, but I also wouldn’t mind marrying a rich superstar with so much money they can take care of me. I doubt that would ever happen, although it’s a nice pipe dream.

There’s also the matter of kids, and though I haven’t really told a TON of people in my life, that stem cell transplant I had over six years ago of the leukemia? I was told before it that I wouldn’t be able to have kids afterwards. It was suggested i might want to freeze my sperm just in case I ever find a partner and want to have kids. So I found a sperm bank to do just that but quickly learned what I already knew... that the five months of chemo treatment I’d been getting to be put into remission had pretty much sterilized me. The transplant took that to the Nth degree, and I feel like the doctor should have mentioned this months earlier rather than waiting so long. I know that when women get stem cell transplants, they’re put into early menopause killing their ability to have kids, too. So imagine being MUCH younger than I was when I was told I couldn’t have kids and know that you can never procreate or give life. Fortunately, anyone my age who went through that may have already been married and already had kids, but not m.

Back in 2013, I still thought that I would find a partner and have kids some day despite my advanced age, and that was already over six years ago! So there’s that... impoverished men who can’t have kids are not exactly ideal husband material.

There’s also the idea that as I get older I would want to have someone there for me as a companion and to help me if I needed it. In the last five years since I’ve been back in New York, I’ve had a few procedures that require anesthesia, and those require you bring someone to take you home. I have a limited number of friends to call on for something like this, as I may have mentioned in my “Friendship” piece last week. Imagine if I’m still living in the same situation I’m in now when I’m 70, I’m probably gonna want or need someone around. I know what my Mom’s been going through since my Dad died in 2009, and honestly, I don’t blame her for being depressed.

And now on top of all that, we’re all in quarantine. We’re afraid to go out. We’re afraid to be in public with many people. I’m sure it’ll be a long time before anyone will be comfortable getting close or intimate with a stranger.

Oh, and that brings me to another point, and I’m sure this might come as a shocker to some but not to others... I’m asexual. I was already veering towards this before I got leukemia but the radiation I got before transplant was so damaging that it pretty much neutered and sterilized me, so I don’t even seek any sort of partnership for sexual pleasure. It’s just never something that crosses my mind. Again, anyone who knows me (especially the more attractive women around me) may have already figured this out. Who knows? Being a declared asexual is nothing that’s quit as socially acceptable as being gay or trans... but I’m starting to get off topic here.

I should also mention that if my brother, Rob, is reading today’s piece, he probably will text or EMail me saying that I’m oversharing, that I’m revealing parts of my life or lifestyle that should be kept private. You know what? Fuck that shit. (Sorry, Rob, and anyone averse to profanity.) We live in a world where everyone has to conform to certain social norms, and that includes the expectation that men my age will already have found someone to marry. My father started later and only found my mother when he pushing forty, which I always thought may ave contributed to the differences between us because by the time I was 15, he was already almost 60 i.e. older than me.

The idea of me getting tomorrow and having kids right away is just not something that crosses my mind... that is, other than when I decide to make the topic of today’s #30ME be “marriage.” I think a smarter or less brave person might immediately scrap everything I’ve been writing for the last 25 minutes or so, but maybe it’s because I just don’t know what the future brings, I want to get some things off my chest.

And I say it again... I have absolutely zero issues with the concept of marriage, and I love all of my friends who have found someone, and I love all of their partners and spouses, too. Marriage is right up there with birthdays and funerals in terms of something I like to celebrate. If I know when your wedding anniversary is, you are likely to get a YouTube video of the Flintstones episode where they sing “Happy Anniversary” to the tune of the William Tell overture, something my brother and I loved to do ever since we heard it.

I guess there’s still a chance I might get married someday. I’ve spoken to one of my female friends about possibly marrying when we hit a certain age... maybe I said 50 or 60, I can’t remember... but a lot would have to change in my life (and hers) for that even to be feasible as a marriage of convenience to make sure we both have someone in our old age.

We’re going through a lot right now, and believe me, going through it completely alone really sucks but also knowing how moody I can be, I can’t even imagine someone else living here with me without us driving each other crazy.

I’m not sure if this will be the last I talk about this topic. It’s actually the first I’ve ever broached it in my life since hanging with my Magic Shop pal and colleague, Joe Warda. I have a lot of friends that I can get real with but this topic rarely if ever comes up, even with my friends who did get married and ended up splitting, something that’s happening way too much right now.

And with that... my time is up. Another #30ME tomorrow!

#30MInuteExperiment #30ME #Marriage

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yuppiefail · 8 years ago

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What Liberal Equality Looks Like and Why We Need it More Than Ever

I’m not sure what you’d call the people who oppose “black sites.” For those unfamiliar, the Central Intelligence Agency has operated secret bunkers in major cities on US soil. Operatives disappear people who haven’t been charged with any crime to these sites. These detainees don’t get a phone call so their families can know where they are, a lawyer, or due process. They are sometimes tortured.

I’m not sure what you’d call people who oppose arresting journalists for reporting on a protest and then charging them with felonies. And I am not sure what you’d call people who oppose bans on immigration based on nationality.

I’m not sure what you’d call people who oppose starting a trade war that will hurt every American who buys things, along with the 80% of US workers in the service sector to protect the 10% who work in manufacturing whose jobs will be done by robots within ten years either way.

You might have, at one time, called these people libertarians. Unfortunately, that label has become less accurate as many libertarians have openly supported these policies and the candidate who pushed them.

The word I now use to describe the people who reject authoritarianism, whether nationalistic, socialistic, or both, is “liberal.”

Deirdre McCloskey is emerita professor of economics, history, English, and communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She recently wrote for Reason, “Adam Smith defined liberalism in 1776 as the shocking idea of ‘allowing every man [or woman, dear] to pursue his own interest in his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice.’”

Liberty and justice might seem like more pressing issues today. But I believe the liberal vision for “equality,” often slandered or ignored by libertarians, is foundational to the liberal plan.

On equality, economist Friedrich Hayek wrote in the Constitution of Liberty:

From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.

Hayek preferred equality before the law to material equality. Libertarians have shortened the goal to “Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes.” The purpose of this pitch is to delegitimize state efforts to rectify inequality.

The problem is that libertarians have traditionally de-prioritized the “equality before the law” portion of Hayek’s quote. Whether it’s voting or marriage rights, or sodomy laws, many self-described libertarians support the continuation of unequal treatment before the law for certain groups of citizens.

The Federal Housing Administration was created to give white Americans home loans at below-market rates for the purpose of excluding Black Americans from home ownership. Owning a home is the biggest contributor to household wealth for the middle class.

Which libertarians railed against the FHA for denying Black Americans both equal treatment under the law and equal opportunity to build wealth?

Visions and interests compete. Smart, well-meaning people disagree about how to live. Poverty and Welfare Policy Analyst Sam Hammond lays out a future for liberalism by taking on the “facile” libertarian view that freedom of expression is a “negative right” while voting or marriage rights are “privileges” conferred by the state. Liberalism means consistently applying the rules about who can vote, marry, and speak to everyone regardless of who they are or what they plan to do.

Liberalism does not engage in identity politics to perpetrate tribal warfare via the state. Liberalism advocates equality before the law and equality of opportunity. It rejects bigotry as a legitimate basis for lawmaking.

Another important difference between liberalism and libertarianism is that liberalism rejects bigotry, full-stop. True equality of opportunity for all races, genders, religions, and so on requires more than equal treatment under the law. It requires equal treatment in the private sphere as well. The opportunities I want extend very far beyond the (too broad) scope of the state. I want the same opportunities to live and work and buy and sell regardless of my identity.

Liberalism says government should apply its rules consistently to everyone regardless of who they are or what they believe. Liberalism goes further than that, though. Everyone has a floor for how poorly they are willing treat the people who look, sound, act, and believe like them. Liberalism asks people to apply that floor equally.

There’s a reason white people haven’t spoken up much about discriminatory FHA home lending. There’s a reason native-born, white, Christian people aren’t up-in-arms about CIA “black sites” or country-based immigration bans or trade wars. There’s a reason the US turned away Jewish refugees fleeing certain death. Because we too often see the world as “us” versus “them.”

These lines are important to some people. Liberalism does not advocate fighting bigotry with authoritarianism. Liberalism recognizes that forcing a bakery to serve a gay couple is lowkey sectarian violence.

But liberalism seeks to get everyone cooperating in the market economy regardless of their tribal affiliations by de-emphasizing division and advocating the prosperity that results when people go along to get along.

Decreased sectarian violence and increased cooperation across ideological, religious, racial lines resulted in a Great Enrichment. Defined by McCloskey, it is “A rise in Europe and the Anglosphere of real, inflation-corrected incomes per head, from 1800 to the present, by a factor, conservatively measured, of about 30. That is, class, about 3,000 percent.”

Economists estimate that the cost of rejecting TPP to the US is $131 billion annually in real incomes. And this is just the beginning. In addition to trade, this administration has free speech, the right to protest, and due process in its crosshairs. As long as we continue to consider Americans who don’t look, sound, or seem like us as deserving less protection and opportunity than those who fit in our tribes the gains we’ve made from liberalism will continue to erode.

McCloskey:

What to do? Revive liberalism, as the astonishing successes of China and India have. Take back the word from our friends on the American left. They can keep progressive, if they don’t mind being associated with the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, and its eugenic enthusiasms for forced sterilization and for using the minimum wage to drive immigrants, blacks, and women out of the labor force. And we should persuade our friends on the right to stop using the l word to attack people who do not belong to the country club.

Today, more than ever, we must decrease division so we can enjoy the freedom and prosperity that cooperation can bring. Before the state and in our private affairs, we need liberal equality.

What Liberal Equality Looks Like and Why We Need it More Than Ever was originally published on

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