#you have always more in common than that which divide us with other women

[butchazepam]

10 months off t. Just 8 to go to match the time i was on 🙂

[princessbellecerise]

Sweet Like Sugar

──── ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧ ────

summary | In which you’re Coryo’s sugar baby

warnings | smut, sugar daddy!coryo, slight public sex

this is an eighteen plus fic. minors do not enter

divider by @princessbellecerise

You’re not sure what to say at first when Coryo proposes this idea to you, but you have to say that you’re shocked

You’re nothing more than a district girl, having been raised in not quite poverty but not abundance either

You’ve never had anything other than the bare minimum, so when Snow offers to give you the world and to take care of your family as well?

Well, it’s obvious what you choose

Quickly, you end up being transported from your district to the Capitol in no time. While your family is given a high rise apartment and grocery deliveries every month, you’re given your own space; a house not too far from his own mansion

Snow likes to keep you close, as he does with all of his prized possessions

And first things first, you’re spoiled

There’s no one in Panem that has more than you, no one that has more jewels, clothes, makeup, etc. Not even Coriolanus himself

He takes such good care of you, making sure that you want for nothing and that you have everything you need

He’s surprisingly generous; but you both know that it doesn’t come without a cost

The world outside of the capitol is a harsh one; one that you desperately don’t want to experience again. You’ve seen people starving to death or being maimed by wild animals in your district and you do not wish to live that kind of life. You’re content, comfortable with how you live so any price he states, you pay

Usually it comes in the form of Coryo being on top of you, a hand around your pretty little neck while he fucks you on his desk

Or, sometimes it’s in his room, with your face stuffed into his luxurious pillows as he fucks you from behind

One way or another, he uses you like you use him. Whenever and however he pleases

You don’t mind of course, loving the way you’re bouncing on his cock one minute and then the next he’s buying you a diamond necklace

He likes for you to get dolled up for him, so he can show you off and make everyone around him jealous

He sees the way they look at you, and the way other men and even women envy him. He knows that they’d give to have you but they can’t. They can’t afford you

Sugar daddy!Coryo that always makes you call him ‘sir.’ He tell you that it’s the proper way to address him as he is the president, but really he just likes the way it sounds coming from your pretty little lips

Often times, he’ll call you nicknames such as ‘Doll,’ or ‘Pretty Girl’

They’re fitting seeing as you’re always dressed up, whether that be in fancy dresses or silk night gowns that he’s specifically picked out for you to wear

Sugar daddy!Coryo that takes you out for fancy dinners, only to end up fucking you in the bathroom like he’s a commoner. He always hates when he looses his self control like that but fuck—sometimes you just look so good that he can’t help but to stoop to that level

Sugar daddy!Coryo that kisses you desperately in some random bathroom stall, that has you pressed up against him and can’t stop rambling about how hard he is

Coryo that has you stepping out of that expensive dress in no time, even tearing it a little so he can reveal your pretty cunt

You’re always wet for him, always so eager and that’s what Coryo loves

He loves the feeling of you wrapped around him, moaning his name and begging him to let you cum

Of course, before it even reaches that point, he also has you on your knees, sucking him off to try and relive some of his desperation

Even after everything, Coryo likes to think that he’s a gentleman, so of course he lays his jacket on the floor so your knees won’t be hurting

It’s the least he can do because fuck—you always have him cumming in no time, and again once he’s fucking into your tight cunt

He never cums inside of you, always on your tits or in your mouth

He just loves the way that you look up at him, pretty face coated with his seed. He always take a few seconds to admire you before cleaning you up, making sure you’re presentable once again before finally settling down at your table, thirty minutes later

And of course, before he takes you home for the night, he also makes sure to fuck you one last time in his fancy limousine, windows fogging up and all of Panem having no clue what’s happening behind those tinted windows

[10101]

An Indian man recently committed suicide because of a demand of alimony from his wife who wanted to divorce him. But the specifics of the case and the demand of alimony being valid aside, the common reaction of the Indian man has been insane and I wanted to share some of it here. I need feminists here to please read this and spread this around.

For context: dowry is (mostly) a Hindu Indian system in marriage whereby the bride’s family gives a certain amount of material possessions as a “gift” to the bridegroom’s family. In India, even now, marriage is explicitly or implicitly considered “marriage of two families” rather than “marriage of two individuals”. But dowry deaths often result from the in-laws perceiving the dowry to be less or it not existing because the woman is poorer or easy to exploit. In many cases, the in-laws burn the woman or severely abuse her until she commits suicide. There are laws protecting against this, but sometimes many cases aren’t reported, and many do not receive adequate punishments (a similar case with rape)

How do Indian men react to this information? With the idea that Indian laws favour women. How interesting. They believe that a woman can use these laws to ruin any family or man. Besides the whole fake case fallacy, this also shows just how wilfully ignorant or straight up evil these men are.

Moving on to the reactions

Exhibit A:

Here, khap panchayat usually means a certain caste’s “panchayat” (a rural governance body) that is not recognized under Indian law. It continues, in many cases, to protect caste-based discrimination and misogynist practices

You might think these men are just reactionary so it doesn’t matter. But this is unironically how many Indian men think, and it is abundantly clear they act on it or intend to do so

Exhibit B:

“Pooja paath” basically means saying a Hindu prayer everyday with (usually) a small temple in your home. In other words, this man believes men must force their wives to become religious. Because a good Hindu woman would supposedly never fight for her rights

“Kutai” means beating.

The photo is actor Ranbir Kapoor in the Bollywood movie, Animal, which is essentially a misogyny manifesto at this point and highly acclaimed by Indian men despite its extremely low IQ reactionary content

As per the latest reports I could find, 30% of Indian women face domestic violence at the hands of their husbands or in-laws. But there is always an underrepresentation of the facts of rape and domestic violence rates in India. A large part is because much of it goes unreported. I can attest to this as someone who has heard of at least 3 such cases of extreme domestic violence where no action was taken purposefully. Additionally, the last report I remember reading mentioned at least 82% Indian men have raised a hand at their wives. I think that should tell you everything about an actual possible domestic violence rate.

Exhibit C:

The man who still likely has female friends and a girlfriend. Or his liberal sister following his account. Inside group chats and their own circles, we are all aware of how awfully these men talk about women. But on the outside, some trying to appear more friendly to women try giving placating statements like these. This is, as should be obvious, factually incorrect. There is not a single country in this world that favours women in law in a way that they are more privileged than men. Equity as a principle demands that the oppressed be given laws that seem to be privileging them, but in reality are an attempt to put them at least at the same functioning position as the oppressor group. This is basic liberal politics and an average man in India does not even understand this

I don’t have much words anymore. The Indian feminist movement is extremely weak and fragile. It is as liberal and as divided as you can get. We are not equipped to fight with this the way Korean women have been strong enough to. I’m not sure what can save my Indian sisters, but I want more people around the world to at least understand the sheer depravity of Indian men. We have to deal with this dehumanisation on a daily basis, on top of the threat of being raped and mutilated, or burned by our in-laws if we’re married off. There is a reason why Amnesty once called India the worst country to be a woman, despite all the opposition to this mere idea.

[asoif-fics]

Dangerous Temptations

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Context- With the realm on brink of War, Robb Stark calls in his Best friend and The Lady of Ramsgate Lady (Y/n) Manderly to advise one of his council meets at Winterfell; However she finds herself drawn to an unusual ally.

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Lady (Y/N) Manderly, Lady of Ramsgate,the solider announces as you enter the great council chamber .  Though many men dismissed the counsel of women, Robb knew you were not just anyone, you were someone even Arya looked up to in terms of being a warrior and intelligent strategist, a trait not unnoticed by those assembled.

Finally as you approached the gathered lords, you gaze swept across the room, finding Robb’s reassuring nod. As you were acknowledged him and greeting Lady Stark with a faint smile you noticed someone staring at you.. before you could begin  Lord of the Dreadfort, Roose Bolton, spoke up looking directly into your soul with his grey eyes. 

 Roose Bolton had a reputation that preceded him—cold, ruthless, and deadly in his silence. He was a man who wore cruelty with pride, but you had somehow always fancied that older man. He inclined his head slightly in you direction, his eyes narrowing in a way that felt like both an acknowledgment and an unspoken tension…“Lady Manderly, I hope your travels were safe, after all its not common for a Lady  to ride in the middle of the night to answer her king” his words and the way he spoke to you sent a shiver down you spine.

You Responded as Confidently as your heart allowed you to “Thank you Lord Bolton, but now we have other matters to attend to, What is our standing?”

With That Robb  who looked with approval as lord bolton reveals the ally’s and Foe’s “The Northern men are 50,000 including the Karstarks, Bolton and Stark Banners, followed by our alliance with the Frey’s and the River Run gives us an additional 30.” You nod your head as he proceeds to show u the map. “Our enemies?” You asked coldly as Lord Bolton moves closer to you.. “The Lannisters army.. The Baratheon’s are divided among Renly and Stannis..” 

He says as he moves closer to you. 

“Renly is fickle”, you replied as you look towards Rob, who listened intently, his brow furrowing as the sheer scale of the enemies surrounding them became clearer. “This was no simple battle,Rob but a war on all fronts. if we can convince him that the North will support him and his claim as Robert’s heir, when it comes to the iron throne, he will side us.. But but our enemy right now are the Lannisters.” Catelyn Stark looks and nods towards Rob.. as they discuss the proposal.

Roose Bolton edged closer, his presence looming over you as he leaned down to close to you to examine the map spread across the council table. His fingers traced a careful line along the Riverlands, as he sees your hand above Bluespine. 

“Renly may be fickle, as you say, Lady Manderly. But he commands a large and unified force, which is more than can be said for most men seeking a throne.” He replies as his voice was low, barely above a murmur, but there was something undeniably sinister in it, as if every word held a subtle threat.

You met his gaze unflinchingly, refusing to show even a flicker of discomfort. “Every alliance comes with risk, Lord Bolton. If we are to even match the Lannisters, we must take calculated risks. If Renly can be swayed, and he is stupid enough if he wants that throne, then he is worth considering—provided he is kept in check by a firm ally.” 

Robb nodded, his expression thoughtful as he weighed your words. “I trust your judgment, Lady Manderly. If we can gain Renly’s support and use his numbers to distract the Lannisters, it could buy us the time we need to strengthen our forces here.” 

As you were about to reply Lady Stark,interrupted you “It is the wolf’s hour, everyone lets discuss about this tomorrow, Rob let Y/N rest as well”

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As the council room emptied, the soft echo of footsteps faded down the hall until it was just you and the older man who you had fancied. Roose Bolton both of you were left in a tense silence, alone by the glow of dying candlelight. You turned, meeting his penetrating gaze once again. Something in his eyes gleamed, as you stepped closer, to him  his presence magnetic in a way that unsettled you, even as it drew you in, and his lips drawing you in, you wanted him…

“Lady Manderly,” he murmured, his tone laced with a rare softness. “I don’t often see such… Authority in a council hall full of men. Certainly not from a lady.”

His words held a dark allure, and you knew his compliments rarely came without motive. Yet, beneath his gaze, you felt a thrill—a tension and some sense of pride that went beyond words . You straightened, determined to keep your composure. “It is a necessity, Lord Bolton, Especially when I have people depending on me.”

He inclined his head, Roose’s smirk deepened, his eyes glinting as if he could sense the crack in your calm. “I’ve never known many ladies,who carry themselves with such… authority,” he said softly, moving closer still, his voice a dark whisper. “Tell me, Lady Manderly, does anyone share in that dedication of yours? Or does Ramsgate command all of your devotion?.”

You resisted the urge to shift under his intense gaze, forcing yourself to meet it steadily. “My dedication is to my family and my duty. There is little time for… other pursuits unfortunately or maybe it’s that no man wants to be stationed beneath his wife” you replied. But even as you spoke, you felt your heartbeat quicken at the way his eyes traced over you, lingering with what felt like genuine admiration.

A glint of something wicked sparkled in his eyes. “A pity,” he said, his voice barely more than a murmur. “Such a clever mind, with no one to share it with. It’s rare, you know, to find someone so… worthy of conversation.” He tilted his head, his gaze tracing the line of your face, lingering on your eyes as if trying to read the thoughts hidden behind them.

Against your better judgment, you felt yourself drawn to his closeness, the weight of his attention making it difficult to maintain your facade. You wanted him, His admiration—though unsettling—was strangely flattering. “I find the right conversation partner can reveal more than words alone,” you replied, your voice softer now, almost challenging.

There was something almost tender in his tone, a side to Roose Bolton you suspected few ever saw. Against all caution, you felt the urge to close the distance he’d left between you, to reach out and uncover the man beneath the cold, calculated facade.

But with a quiet smile, you nodded, your voice barely more than a whisper. “Perhaps… we shall.”

As you both started walking out of the hall to your chambers , you kept glancing back at Roose as he walked besides you, when you last saw that man he was talking to you father and even then you wanted to be his..as you walked in silence Curiosity got the better of you, and you broke the silence…

“I hear congratulations are in order,” you said with a soft smile, glancing at him. “Your new bride… Lady Walda, isn’t it? Walder Frey’s granddaughter ”

Roose’s expression shifted slightly, a flicker of interest in his cold gaze. “Yes. Lady Walda.” His voice was matter-of-fact, revealing little, but you noticed a hint of amusement in his eyes as he continued. “A match sealed for… advantageous purposes, of course. I got silver for her weight, she’s made me rich…”

You raised an eyebrow, your lips curving into a small smile. “How romantic, Lord Bolton.”

He chuckled softly, a sound that was low and surprisingly genuine. “An Alliance, needed- perhaps a means to an end.”

You studied him carefully as you walked. “And yet, you seem perfectly content with it,” 

Roose paused, looking down at you stopping and getting closer to you“You are a woman like no other,” he said slowly, as if each word held its own weight. “Perhaps a woman who knows swords instead of Sewing.”

You shrugged, feeling the warmth of his attention  and his lips ever close to yours even as you turned toward your chamber’s door. “ Swords have been my ally, since my birth Lord Bolton.…what does a man have a woman doesn’t? A cock?”

Reaching your chamber, you turned to face him fully. “Would you like to continue  our conversation ?” you offered, hoping he would agree as keeping your voice casual though your heart was pounding. You weren’t entirely sure why you’d asked, only that some part of you wanted him closer.

Roose inclined his head in agreement, his eyes never leaving yours. “I would be honored.”

Inside, you poured two goblets of wine, handing him one before settling into a chair across from him. He raised his goblet, his expression intrigued. “To the North,” he murmured, his voice filled with an unexpected warmth, “To You Lord Bolton.” You replied 

The two of you sat in comfortable silence for a moment, letting the warmth of the wine and the flickering candlelight fill the room.

Roose took a sip of his wine, watching you over the rim of his goblet with a gaze that lingered—thoughtful, intense, his tone softening his eyes refused to leave you taking in your features and body. The distance between you felt smaller now, the warmth of the fire casting shadows that danced across his sharp features. You couldn’t deny the allure, the thrill of sitting across from him with the kind of attention he offered so sparingly.

“(Y/N),” he murmured, his voice low, almost a whisper.

You felt a shiver at his words, noticing how he set his goblet aside and leaned in, his gaze tracing over you with a strange reverence. “You think differently than most, Lady Manderly,” he continued, his voice softer. “Not like a lady raised to know only courtesies and pleasantries, but as one who has tasted the same bitter steel as her father’s men.” His eyes locked onto yours, and the weight of his words settled over you like a secret shared.

You took a slow breath, feeling the tension in the room rise, the energy between you too intense to ignore. “Perhaps.. I did not want to subject myself to the same fate my mother had.. births.. dead babes and being looked at like a possession,” you said, almost a whisper, but you knew he heard every word.

Roose’s gaze darkened with something both thrilling and terrifying as he shifted closer, his hand reaching up as if he might touch your cheek. He stopped, though, his fingers hovering just inches from your skin. “It is rare, to find someone who is different from the duties that are given to woman, birthing and giving heirs to houses, thats all” he said as you focused on him completely 

As he was going to lean back and take a sip, Something inside you snapped. Unable to hold back, you closed the gap between you, your heart racing as you reached out and pressed your lips to his, the taste of wine and the cold edge of his presence mixing with a heat that surged through you both. He responded with a surprising gentleness at first, his lips moving against yours with an unexpected softness that contrasted sharply with the dangerous aura he carried.

But then, his hand moved to the back of your neck, and he deepened the kiss, his fingers threading through your hair with a hunger that left no room for questions. You felt yourself melting into the moment, losing yourself in the thrill of it, his grip grounding you and making it impossible to pull away.

As the kiss broke, he lingered close, his lips just a breath away from yours, his gaze flicking over your face as if committing every detail to memory. “Perhaps I was wrong, Lady Manderly,” he whispered, his tone rougher now, more vulnerable than you’d ever imagined. “You are… unlike any woman I have ever met.”

The tension between you both crackled like fire as Roose's words lingered in the air. Before he could say another word, you closed the small distance between you, your lips crashing back into his with a fervor that surprised even you. His arms encircled you, pulling you close, and you felt the heat of his body pressed against yours, the cool exterior he wore finally melting under your touch

You reached blindly for the goblet in your hand, only for it to slip from your fingers, wine spilling across the floor in forgotten as you gave in to the moment. Roose didn’t seem to care, his focus completely on you as he deepened the kiss, as he got on top of you with his hands sliding up your back, holding you as though he had no intention of letting go. He broke from your lips to trail kisses along your jawline, then lower, his lips grazing the curve of your neck, and you shivered at the sensation, feeling his breath hot against your skin, as you melted in the pleasure.

Your heart was racing, your hands finding their way to the edges of his collar, tugging him even closer. His grip on you was so tight that you could feel his fingers digging into your skin, as his he continued to up your back and leaving a tingling warmth in their wake kissing you softly as he looked directly into your soul, you continued to lose yourself as,his hands and lips explored with every inch of you both hunger and restraint, as he guided you back onto the bed, you felt a sense of thrill  With a soft, breathless laugh, you pulled back, as your hands traveled to his shoulders, fingers tracing the fabric of his cloak before slipping beneath it to feel the warmth of his skin. His lips moved against yours, his pace slowing, as though savoring each moment. His hand caressed your cheek, his gaze fierce yet filled with an unspoken warmth as he looked down at you, his thumb tracing your jaw.

As you reached closer to your bed, his touch growing bolder, his mouth tracing a heated line from your neck to your shoulder, his hands gripping your waist with a strength that made your heart skip. Every brush of his lips, “You are a dangerous temptation, (y/n),” he murmured, his voice barely more than a whisper, each word carrying the weight of a man who rarely allowed himself to indulge. But tonight was different; tonight, there were no roles, no strategies—just the two of you, lost in each other’s presence.

In response, you pulled him closer, your lips meeting his again, the world around you fading entirely. In the quiet moments that followed, he held you close, and the two of you remained entwined, neither wanting the night to end.

(A/n- that was kinda long but I flowed through it.. XD hope u guys like it and happy reading and do drop in requests or feedbacks XD

[mightyflamethrower]

Former president Barack Obama, the man who salvaged Joe Biden from the ash heap of political history (an unfortunate move which in turn sadly revived Kamala Harris’ DOA career), continued with his unifying ways Thursday by shaming black men who don't think that Harris is a great choice for commander-in-chief.

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It reminded me of Joe’s infamous line, if you don’t vote for me, then “you ain’t black.” Obama:

And you're coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, I've got a problem with that. Because part of it makes me think -- and I'm speaking to men directly -- part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you're coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that… That's not acceptable. 

He sounds like a mob boss.

Just disgusting, divisive rhetoric from the man who said in his first acceptance speech, “We have never been a collection of red states and blue states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America.”

Unless you disagree with him, of course.

Do it my way or hit the highway: 

Turns Out Those Obama Remarks Got Worse—He Even Insults Black Men Who Are on the Fence About Kamala Scott Jennings Cooks Obama for Chastising Men Over Harris, Reveals Big Issue for Democrats

I’ve always hated the left’s use of the word “community.” The “black community,” the “LGBTQ community.” As if, just because people have one thing in common, they all have the same viewpoints on everything. Is there a “white community?” A “heterosexual community?”

Sure enough, it turns out that plenty of blacks were capable of their own thoughts and found the former president’s remarks to be belittling and deeply obnoxious. Former football great and one-time Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker was less than impressed, calling it a step backward:

We need unity brother, not division!

Well said.

Meanwhile, as a RedState man, I’m obviously not a Bernie Sanders fan, but his former campaign co-chair and former Democratic Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner nevertheless had it right when she asked, "Why are Black men being belittled?"

She absolutely nukes Obama’s race-baiting narrative and stuns the CNN hosts in the process:

"Now, a lot of love for former President Obama, but for him to single out Black men is wrong, and some of the Black men that I have talked to have their reasons why they want to vote a different way, and even if some of us may not like that, we have to respect it," she said. Turner explained further, "So unless President Barack Obama is gonna go out and lecture every other group of men from other identity groups, my message for Democrats is don’t bring it here to Black men who, by and large, don’t vote much differently from Black women."

The reactions from the CNN crew are some of the most priceless I've ever seen. Truth is being spoken to them, and they absolutely cannot handle it.

These are just two examples, but there are plenty more out there of people who were deeply insulted by being told they had to vote a certain way just because of their skin color. (As of this writing, a search on the social media platform X for "Obama" turns up an untold number—but an unquestionably large number —of black people angrily teeing off on "hopey-changey" Barack's comments.)

Obama has been one of the smoothest politicians in the land since his meteoric rise from obscurity in the mid-2000s, but there was always a darker presence lurking underneath his big Hollywood grin.

He showed it loud and clear with this belittling speech, and he lost a lot of his luster in the process. Kamala Harris is 100 percent correct: we need “a new way forward,” but that way should not include race-baiting, the failures of Obama-style progressivism, or the constant attempts by leading Democrats to divide the nation.

[ellevandersneed]

Posting this essay I wrote separately on here so that it's not just tagged onto an already popular post. I'm responding to this specific comic and post. It's about common sense.

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to be honest with you most of the people reblogging this (the comic in question) will have an invisible dividing line between what they think is unacceptable normality and what is the "true" acceptable normality for queer people, where "the statement of the 4th panel is absolutely untrue *except* for these exceptions to the rule" and a large percentage of those people will still apply the christian moral metric of goodness and of sin to those behaviors rather than a materialist perspective where behaviors are understood within an individuals wider context (how these behaviors have been shaped by family, friends, society, how these things have shaped mental health, how mental health shapes behaviors, how the individual reinforces their own behaviors through their own interpretation of their own condition, how all of these things shape how the individual interprets concepts like family, friends, society, mental health, etc.).

there always seems to be a disconnect between the concepts "bad behaviors are always wrong" and "pathologizing people is wrong" to the material conditions of the material world, where these are merely philosophical interpretations of material conditions (though their consequences can be very real for individuals or groups of people), more often than not themselves having been born from deeply religious societies and interpreted from institutions that were developed from already racist, sexist, ableist societies (psychiatry as a practice). not to suggest an inherent power of the concept over the individual, as this itself is just an interpretation of material conditions, but a critique of the ability of the individual as some kind of ubermensch meant to inherently make the "right choices" and rise above all of these material conditions, and that any person failing to do so is a "bad" person.

I think what makes the "Christian Moral Fascism" what it is is less due to the pressure it exudes towards individuals in the hopes of conditioning their behavior to match that of larger society, but that it supposes the individual is meant to rise above their material conditions completely in order to guarantee their place in heaven. Any given grouping of individuals with a particular philosophical framework that has not developed a state that is in complete service to that philosophy, where the state creates and either constructively and/or violently maintains a social system designed to conform individuals to its standard of morality, will place the onus of conformity onto the individual.

In the US, Project 2025 obsesses over the sanctity of the family because the intent is for the family to "return" to its position as a department of conformity, a microcosm of reality where women and children live in service to patriarchy. The US state's historical racist christian moral background suggests that the US collectively has been trying to evolve out of this framework of conformity, though due to differing interpretations of various moral and natural philosophers of the era in which the founding documents of the US were written, in addition to the US as an emerging dominant force of capitalism and it's population of slaves and immigrants, as well as its development alongside several industrial revolutions that allowed for ever faster transfers of an increasing pool of information, have made it difficult for the state to act as this apparatus for strict conformity, thus allowing for many differing moral interpretations of the world to develop, albeit most of them adopting some level of moral conformity to that which the state apparatus (education, etc), the "popular" image of the family, and pop culture help defined for them. These things, of course, shape and maintain each other.

A state is only as strong as its material conditions allow it to be, and it can easily be argued that no state on earth, now or in the future, can successfully enforce a complete moral conformity of all its citizens. Project 2025 intends to attempt this by, again, recentering the family as the mode in which social conformity will be administered, but it is doomed to fail in its aims, as reactionary social theory tends to get caught up in its own contradictions and delusions of grandeur. 1984 is easily the most famous example of the phenomenon of the fear of a state apparatus that has complete moral control over its population, and anarchist thought seems to be built heavily around this fear. The concept of the preturnaturally powerful state has, itself, been subsumed into popular culture at various levels and at verious points in history, and has been disseminated and reinterpreted countless times, formulating into new philosophies (US Libertarianism, for one).

The idea of a conformist culture as inherently fascist leads itself to a particular understanding of the state, or if I can be a little opinionated in my long ass tumblr essay, a liberal-developed anarchist understanding of the state: education has often historically been taught, as exampled by the University of Jena and its adoption of Kantian Thought, as something that follows a preexisting philosophical framework. "If we teach things in this order, from these perspectives, within this schedule, X will develop in the students." Schools themselves have predominantly been used as modes of moral conformity, through shaming, physical punishment, and isolation. Lenin interpreted the writing of Marx and Engels to mean that the ideal socialist state would exist as a method of oppression against the bourgeoisie class, in order to suppress the old heirarchy of power and philosophy in order to develop the new, communist society of the future.

Fascism is an evolving concept, developing alongside Marxist thought but always in a disorganized manner, not dissimilar to Anarchist theory. It can be interpreted as the extreme application of the more regressive, conformist aspects of an existing culture, compiled into one large, violent attempt to stop the march of human progress in regards to social, economic, and moral development. It has been used to describe the application of colonialist imperialism by the state onto its own citizens, though I think this still limits the scope of what that would mean, as what is defined as a "citizen" under a state changes shape when that state shifts over to fascism, and what is defined as a "citizen" often changes shape both de jure and de facto all the time under states that are not popularly defined as fascist.  Fascism can also be used to describe microcosmic manifestions (physical discipline in schools, the banning of books of evolution, certain individuals being passed for promotion because of the color of their skin or the presentation of their gender, etc.). To me Fascism is less of an easily identifiable phenomenon (at least if I stick to trying to write about all of this within the confines of a tumblr essay) and more of a thing that is intertwined in nearly all culture, and is present in nearly all states. This is not to suggest that all states are evil because they are fascist, or that to eliminate the state altogether would somehow eliminate fascism (sorry to my followers with anarcho- in their user handles), but that the philosophy of the state must be aware and critical of its own fascist tendencies in order to successfully administer itself as something legitimately separate from fascism. In Marxist theory, good Marxist theory anyway, the state is intended to wither away, dissolve essentially, upon the complete distruction of class difference (thus bringing about a communist society). I do not believe the state will successfully do this unless it can be aware and critical of its own fascist tendencies. But I digress. (I've always wanted to say "but I digress.!!!)

What makes the above comic work (this is, in spite of its length and in spite of me sort of actively figuring out what I want out of this essay as I write it, not a total condemnation of the comic) is that, ultimately, there is no common sense. Common sense is a manufactured entity,  not necessarily intentionally, but it is an individuals interpretation of the unspoken or alluded to "rules" of a wider culture, which is itself a collective interpretation by many individuals attempting to interpret either intentionally or unintentionally (or the near infinite processes of human behavior that exist within those two extremes) a set of rules for life (a philosophy). Because western hegomonic power is the current, dominant hegemonic power (though this is, hopefully, waning, evidenced by the Trump administration gaining power a second time(one last big hurrah for western fascism!)), and because western hegemony has to define itself as something quantifiable, and because that manifests itself as the direct descendant of "Greek thought compounded by Roman application (the father), helmed by ancient Israelite moral philosophy "perfected" into Christian mythology (the mother)" - common sense, within a western hegemonic context, becomes a strange bastardization of Christian morality.

Hell, even marxist theory falls victim to this line of thinking. Stalin's description of the development of history presupposes that each new stage of humanity is a direct evolution of a past stage (a development from the simple to the complex) - which draws from the same base that was used to determine that Christianity is the "perfected" evolution of Judaism, and Judeo-Christian thought is the "evolution" of religion in general and thus the "most correct" development in human culture, with the effects of this racist ideology being seen today with the latest genocide against the Palestinian people. The search for "the first religion" and western fixations on the concept of animism as a primitive cultural form (and thus non-complex, simple) arise from this basis.

This has been the historical justification for western hegemony as a whole, even beyond a religious perspective. The concept of Moscow as "the third Rome" following Rome and the Holy Roman Empire, is an idea that materializes in Russian pop culture from time to time, even appearing in Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished epic, Ivan The Terrible (1945).

Marx himself failed to fully contradict this theory of Christianity being a higher evolution of western culture compared to Judaism when composing his (pretty good until the final stretch where it gets embarassing imo) essay, On The Jewish Question, by giving the target of his critique, Bruno Bauer, credit by shifting the focus away from the religious Judaism to the "practical, worldly" Judaism, suggesting that Jewish practical thought (the application of moral philosophy towards affecting the material world as opposed to the application of moral philosophy for the sake of gaining a seat in heaven) has corrupted Christian society via its "hucksterism" and is thus the element of western society that needs to be abolished in order for human progress to develop further. Bauer suggests that Christianity can be defined as "the development" towards perfecting Judaism, that in order to achieve full emancipation from religion, Jewish people must not only break with Judaism but with the more developed Christianity, whereas Christians, having supposedly achieved the higher state of cultural development between the two, only have to break with Christianity in order to enter "the next phase" of human history. Again, Marx doesn't question the fundamental framework of this argument but shifts it towards a "materialist" perspective concerning Judaism as a material practice and the material conditions created by the application of its philosophy. He acknowledges the potential for Judaism to have evolved over time, but only in the practical sense. He argues that Judaism is limited in its scope because its morality is tied directly to material desire, and since material desire is easily fulfilled, it cannot develop on a theoretical basis (this he reserves for Christianity) but only on a practical basis. Marx fails to understand that he is limited by his own understanding of Judaism and his own biases concerning the development of human culture. This doesn't mean that his other theories should be discounted, a lot of marxists are already aware of the fact that he too, is a product of the context within which he existed. On The Jewish Question is useful because of its application of his materialist theory, as a means of identifying the development of ideas within society, how they shape society, how they are developed out of material conditions and subsequently shaped by conditions, and how the liberal secular state presupposes religion and abstracts individuals from it without abolishing religion, but it is much less useful in terms of where the problems of an abstraction from religion manifest from (Jewish culture being the root cause of capitalism, "Money is the jealous god of Israel..."). Thus, dialectical and historical materialism show their biggest weakness, in the fact that the applicators of materialist theories are themselves subject to the contexts in which they exist. The solution is in the problem though, and is why self critique is necessary and thus, a state can only achieve this "withering away" status towards communism by being aware and critical of its own limitations and its own fascism. Anyway...

What makes the comic fail, like how anything that's 4 panels long struggles to capture nuance, is that does not make the effort to dismiss or disprove the idea that "Christian Moral Fascism" is a separate phenomenon from "common sense" as opposed to "common sense" within a western hegemonic context (and I feel comfortable assuming this since I'm responding to an edit of a winnie the pooh parody comic on Tumblr) descending predominantly from a "Christian Moral" context.

Something I legit believe is an occuring phenomenon is that a lot of queer people regard themselves as being separate (queerness as a preternatural occurance) from the socioeconomical conditions they exist in, whether that be ultra-religious parents, Fascist government, or "common sense." I think a lot of people in general, beyond the umbrella grouping of queer think this; it seems like a pretty common thing to blame the preconcieved notions of wider culture on its more marginalized subsections (trans women getting shit for their "orientalism" towards Japan, is one I've seen in the past), but I still think it's worth recognizing since the comic I'm responding to itself suggests that queer people should themselves know better when they end up drawing from "Christian Moral Fascism," so fuck it I'll do it too. More people actually should take necessary steps towards knowing better, though again, we are, all of us, productions of the conditions we exist in, and a lot of people will have to work to achieve a deeper understanding of the world around them in spite of their conditions. A lot of them will fail, either intentionally or unintentionally or in one of the near infinite combinations that exist between those two extremes. Anyway, common sense is bullshit, a large chunk of the people reblogging this comic are actively re-enacting the comic in all levels of their own lives, and, in spite of its supposed flaws, historical materialism (and marxist theory as a whole) is the best philosophical framework we have for understanding the world.

[nothorses]

hi! this is a question about pansexuality that i fear asking. tbh i don't really care what anyone identifies as. everyone's part of my community to me. i am trying to wrap my head around bi v pan stuff as someone who is neither. i know bisexuals who are critical of the pan label because to them it distinguishes bisexuality as starkly Not being pansexuality. when definitions of bisexuality have included "attraction regardless of gender, or to all genders (and including trans and nb people)" for many bisexuals since like the 70s which is how i see pansexuality defined a lot of the time

i know that bi and pan have always been concurrent labels and they have a lot of overlap and that some ppl use them interchangeably. and i truly don't care that ppl id as pan. but i do feel weird seeing it juxtaposed to definitions of bisexuality that aren't inclusive of all bisexuals? (ie that bisexuals aren't attracted to ALL genders, just two or more.. when many bisexuals Are attracted to all genders! part of bisexual history is that people have been fighting to let others know Bisexuality is more inclusive than the literal like latin meaning of bi = two). i don't know where to stand on this divide. i love pansexuals and the pan label and the right to self determination in identity but i do understand the argument that it feels hurtful in a biphobic way to say it is inherently a distinct sexuality from being bisexual when it's. like. many bi and pan ppl would define their sexuality in the exact same way other than a difference in specific label. i feel like people hate this opinion lmao!!! please help! even if you hate my opinion too i literally feel like i need guidance KDBDBS

Tbh I think there's a lot of historical context to this whole convo, and I don't think you're alone in being confused. And honestly given the amount of info you have, I think you're in a pretty respectable spot about it. (And I say "historical" here in the sense that I am. 25. and I'm mostly talking about the things I have either seen firsthand, or read about/heard about from others.)

So like- when I was a Young Queer, it was very common for people to define "bi" as meaning "men and women" (or even "cis men and cis women"), and thus "pan" rose to popularity as an alternative to essentially mean "everyone, including trans and nonbinary people".

This was like, early 2010's? And I'm talking about other Young Queer spaces and interactions. And you kind of have to remember that in that time, it was kind of radical to tell people not to call things "gay" if they didn't like them. Joking that people were trans (usually in terms like "lol Justin Beiber is a lesbian") was common even in progressive spaces. I was stunned when a friend of mine asserted that they were just gonna stop using the r-slur, like, at all.

So I can kind of understand why "pan" might have felt like a needed thing at the time. I think it felt like a kind of shorthand for "I'm cool with trans people", and at least from my perspective, that was something you very much needed to state back then.

I think there are a lot of people my age who, if they don't still understand "bi" and "pan" that way, at least kind of "get" where that definition is coming from. And yeah, it's ahistorical as hell! "Bi" has always been inclusive of trans people. Not to mention people have been defining it all sorts of ways for a long time now; there are a ton of definitions out there, and how the word is defined often depends on who you ask.

But then you ask: if we know "bi" is and has always been trans-inclusive, why does anyone still need the word "pan"? And I think the answer is... complicated. And extremely personal, tbh.

This happens with queer language all the time; as terms are cycled out in favor of new ones, people who've been using them hang on regardless. Sometimes they don't know the language has been updated, but usually it's more than that. Usually they have more of a personal relationship with the word, and the community, that they can't just give up in favor of a new word.

Maybe some people who do understand that "bi" is not actually a transphobic term also still view "pan" as shorthand for "I'm cool with trans people", and that's important to them. Maybe they grew up with that word, formed relationships under it, and came out with it. Maybe the pan community impacted them in some profound way, and rejecting it over shifting definitions just doesn't feel right. There could be any number of reasons.

The other part of this is that much as people have come to understand the original definition of "bi" more widely now, the definition of "pan" and "bi" both have taken on multiple definitions as well. I've seen a lot of definitions that seem to exist just to differentiate the two. For example:

Bi: attracted to multiple (but not necessarily all) genders Pan: attracted to all genders

Bi: attracted to all genders, but in different ways, or with preferences Pan: attracted to all genders essentially the same

Bi: attracted to multiple (or all) genders Pan: attraction regardless of gender

I've also seen people use "bi" as the umbrella term, and "pan" as a more specific label beneath it (often with one of those pairs of definitions).

And you mention that "bi" has a lot of different definitions and understandings- so does pan! How a person understands those words, particularly when they identify with them, is going to be deeply personal and very likely very different from the next person. I think a good rule of thumb is to assume that whoever you're talking to may just have a different definition and understanding of the word they're using than you do, and try to ask them about it if it concerns you.

[bleeding-star-heart]

Roddacember (Belated) Day 8: Swindle

A small AU based on three things. One: Endon died a few days after a (genuine; Prandine had zero involvement) horse riding accident. Two: in the days before his death, Sharn was the one to shoot the golden arrow and team up with Jarred. Three: Since this all happened slightly earlier than the canon Shadow Lord invasion, Jarred was able to successfully steal the Belt with Sharn's help. *** Women, in Prandine's opinion, took entirely too long to give birth. Ideally, of course, Prandine would have preferred to simply sneak into the queen regent's bedchamber, disguised as a servant or physician or midwife or something, and then quietly ensure that Sharn did not survive the birth. Unfortunately, the Queen Regent was not giving birth inside the palace. Instead, she had chosen to visit a midwife in the city, one who was too poor to have any servants and whose only assistant was her granddaughter. That, plus the dozen guards surrounding the midwife's house made infiltration difficult. Thus, Prandine was forced to wait in the tavern next door, surrounded by common drunks and worse, a small crowd of ambitious nobles. The former was one thing; the latter was just insulting. Thanks to the Queen Regent, who had exploited her widowed status-and the Rule's lack of instructions for it-to essentially abandon the Rule and do whatever she pleased. And the ambitious schemers at court-always difficult to control on a good day- had thus concluded that breaking the Rule was the best way to gain her favor-and by extension, power.

And wait Prandine did-for the Master had a different plan. As soon as this bitch was done whelping Adin's newest, accursed heir-and said heir had been put down to sleep-Prandine would sneak in and snatch the child up. After which, one of his agents would put a different baby in the crib-a little orphan girl. Prandine would then take the true heir and dispose of it-with the Queen Regent none the wiser. At last, at long last, one of the guards-a Lt. Barda, Prandine believed- stumbled into the tavern and cried: "It's a girl-the Queen Regent has given birth to a princess!" The crowd of drunks burst into raucous cheering-something they never would have done for any previous royal heir. Yet another thing that was unraveling thanks to that bitch's schemes. The Belt, wherever it was, was undoubtedly strengthening. "There's more," Lt. Barda added- "Chief Advisor Prandine-the Queen Regent has summoned you-she wants you to be the first one to see the new princess." Prandine smiled. Well, well. It appeared that luck was finally on his side. Ignoring the groans and complaints of the disappointed nobles-all of whom had aimed to be the first to see the new heir-Prandine followed Lt. Barda out of the tavern and across the street into the new midwife's house. Inside, the Queen Regent lay on a blood-stained bed, an exhausted, half-asleep mess. Behind her was an enormous, shabby gray curtain dividing the room in half, behind which another woman's soft breathing could be heard. Some common woman, no doubt, Prandine thought. Or maybe the midwife herself. It didn't matter. For, much to his surprise, Prandine's agent, Doom was already standing over an empty crib, a baby in his arms. "Where's the other one-?" Prandine started, not sure what to think. Either his underlings had done something very, very wrong, or they were unexpectedly efficient. "Dead," Doom replied, his voice muffled by the cloth mask over his face. "My comrades in the other room took care of it." "Took care of it…how?" "There's a woman on the other side-the midwife's granddaughter was tending to her. We paid the girl to switch babies-this one here belongs to the other woman."

"Is too old," Doom insisted as he lay the child down in the cradle. "Besides, this way, the woman on the other side will dispose of Endon's brat for us-after all, even paupers deserve a funeral."

Prandine grinned evilly. 

"I like the way you think, Doom." 

______

"People of Deltora!" Sharn cried as she held Jarred's infant daughter in her arms. "Today I present to you my husband's daughter, princess of Adin's bloodline, and your future queen! All hail, Princess Jasmine!" "All hail Princess Jasmine!" the crowd outside the palace echoed, buzzing with sheer delight and adoration. Adoration which quickly devolved into a series of whoops and cheers. A sound which, according to Jarred, was an accomplishment in and of itself. Prior to her ascension, he'd said, the people had hated the royal family, hated because of the centuries upon centuries of neglect they'd endured. Nevertheless, the cheers of Del's people grated against Sharn's ears, their happiness almost mocking her. Because she should be doing this with Lief, the baby boy she'd actually given birth to, her true flesh-and-blood child. It was Lief that the people of Del should be cheering for. But that was foolish. Even if Prandine had been planning to let Lief survive and grow up in the palace, it would only be so he could turn the boy against her. Something he was undoubtedly going to try and do with Jasmine. As it was, without Jarred's intervention, Lief would not have escaped the birthing room alive. For under Sharn's orders, Jarred had infiltrated Prandine's little circle of traitors, under the assigned name of Doom. In his spare hours, Jarred had spied and cozied up to Prandine, and in doing so, had discovered Prandine's plan to kill Lief and replace him with another child. "Thank you," Sharn had said grimly when Jarred first reported the news. "I will alert the guards to Prandine's treachery and have him arrested." "Hold on," Jarred had insisted, stopping Sharn right as she made to leave the forge. "I don't think you should do that." Sharn let out a bitter laugh. "Why not? You've just handed me proof of a damning conspiracy, that, if exposed, will allow me to strip Prandine of his power-which, I remind you, has been our goal for-" "Yes," Jarred had said, "But the nobles at court are used to the chief advisors being in power. You've amassed a great deal of support, yes-more than I thought possible-but the Rule has been in place for centuries." Sharn had hated to admit it, but there was sense to Jarred's words. The royal court was obsessed with tradition; just the idea of a widowed queen "sharing" power with the chief advisor was controversial for many.  Even with legitimate proof and Jarred's testimony, deposing a chief advisor-whose job was to rule in all but name- would be a massive break with tradition. Enough of one that Prandine could easily convince many of the more conservative nobles-and even some that were on Sharn's side-to revolt against her.  "Well, we can't just let him kill my baby," Sharn had protested. "No," Anna had agreed, looking up from her knitting, "But perhaps we can allow him to believe that he did." And thus, they had come up with the plan to switch Sharn's child for Anna's. Sharn would create a potion for her and Anna to drink that would ensure they both gave birth on the same day, at near the same time. Both Anna and Sharn would be attended to by a local midwife and her granddaughter; Sharn publicly, Anna secretly. Jarred would then infiltrate the midwife's house, making sure he was the only "agent" of Prandine's to do so. The midwife's granddaughter would then assist Jarred in switching the babies, and Jarred would tell Prandine that Sharn's baby was dead. And thus, Prandine would believe he had successfully killed Endon's child, and replaced it with a fake. Meanwhile, Lief would be raised by Jarred and Anna, well away from Prandine's influence, unconcerned and unrestrained by the Rule.  And meanwhile, Sharn would not see Lief for a long, long time-if they were lucky. And Anna-poor Anna-would never get to get to see either. They were each raising another woman's child. Lief would grow up ignorant of his true heritage, and Jasmine would suffer all of Prandine's manipulations, endure the machinations of court, all for a lie. 

    They might have won, they might have successfully swindled Prandine, but it felt more like a defeat. 

[pokegyns]

A major pet peeve for me is when I see women arguing about being gender conforming vs nonconforming as though one of those choices inherently grants women more privilege than the other. Some people think being GNC gives women “masculine privilege” and some people think being feminine gives women “gender conforming privilege”. These are both stupid in my opinion because under patriarchy we are all told to behave in ways that are harmful to us and then punished if we resist. It is stupid to divide ourselves between the people who risk punishment and the people who don’t, and then argue over who is “privileged” over the others. We all make choices every day to either resist or comply, none of the choices are easy, none of us resist 100% of the time, and there is no obvious “correct” choice.

Women are supposed to always prioritize men, which hurts us, but if we shift our priorities men will attack and punish us, which also hurts us. We are all put in this situation and forced to choose between two options that both suck, and it is ridiculous to act as though people who choose Shitty Option #1 become privileged over people who choose Shitty Option #2. What do we gain from trying to make our level of acquiescence to gendered expectations into such a big part of our identities, and attacking other women over it? It makes me so sad to see this.

women cannot ever have “masculine privilege”, but i do genuinely believe gender conforming privilege is a thing. i understand that gender conforming women are still risking punishment & face misogynistic struggle, but gender conforming women aren’t always centering men in their lives, and gncphobia is a legitimate form of oppression on the gender axis. choosing to conform to gender expectations & performing excessive femininity is painful, as are all choices under the patriarchy, i have no doubts about it– but you just have to understand that gender nonconformity is uniquely punished under a patriarchal society, and we aren’t trying to “divide women” based on this. we are simply stating the obvious. trying to imply how gender conforming women face more struggle due to oversexualization (i know you didn’t say this, though a lot of people do, so i feel it is necessary to dissect) is a common argument, which is very easily debunked– gender nonconforming women face struggle regarding oversexualization just as much, often being punished for stepping out of gender expectations. this is also where pretty privilege comes in play– i’m not trying to say that gnc women cannot be conventionally attractive, however they most of the time are not patriarchally attractive (conventionally attractive & patriarchally attractive are two different terms), and a lot of times feminists will try to argue how pretty privilege is not a thing since patriarchally attractive/women who excessively perform femininity will face hypersexualization. but this ignores the unique hypersexualization of gnc women, which often has unique ulterior motives & serves to degrade gnc women in a very specific way, the goal being pushing them back into performing femininity for the pair of male eyes.

– mod zoroark

[haggishlyhagging]

The situation in NYRW probably would not have deteriorated so rapidly were it not that the Atlantic City protest flooded the group with new members. According to Baxandal, the sudden growth was “too much for us.” The fluid, unstructured meetings to which the regulars had grown accustomed no longer worked now that there were fifty to one hundred women crammed into the tiny SCEF office. The "mob meetings" that fall were, by many accounts, unwieldy and frustrating, made infinitely more trying by the sectarian left women who began frequenting NYRW meetings in the wake of the protest. Their relentless attacks on radical feminists as "man-haters" convinced many in NYRW that the leftist newcomers were more interested in disrupting the group than in building a women's movement. In fact, many NYRW members believe that these women had been instructed by their leftist groupuscles or possibly by some agency of the government to obstruct NYRW. Barbara Mehrhof, who joined the group immediately before the pageant action, claims that "there was always a provocateur who would get up and berate us for being so self-indulgent [as] to talk about our situation as women." To Patricia Mainardi it seemed that

“As the movement grew, so did the number of women whose commitment to the women's liberation movement was more tenuous. Your feeling was that these were people who were there to stop anything from happening. I would not be the slightest bit surprised [to discover] that there were agents and reactionaries there.”

No doubt, some of the left women who showed up that fall at NYRW meetings had been ordered to direct or, failing that, to subvert the group. Much of the left felt that the growth of the women's liberation movement could only weaken the left. Nor, according to Mainardi, did it require much finesse or skill to obstruct a NYRW meeting:

“It was a problem made worse by a superdemocratic structure where we would have to listen to the [left women] forever. And, the next week somebody new would come in. You'd have to say, ‘the floor's your's. Bore me again.’ . . . If you were committed to letting everybody talk, that's what you got.”

Dissatisfaction with the meetings was considerable, and by mid-December a number of women proposed dividing the group into smaller groups. The majority of women voted to reorganize into three groups which would be randomly configured by lot. However, not everyone was concerned about the group's swollen size. Hanisch contends:

“Almost all the founders wanted to keep the large group, or split along lines of the people one wanted to work with, if such a split was necessary. . . . [But] people were afraid it was ‘elitist’ to want to work with certain women with whom they shared a common political direction.”

Indeed, Anne Forer recalls that "nobody had the nerve to say that they didn't want to do it by lot, that they wanted to be with their friends." Rather than challenge the division by lot, many women simply ignored their lot assignments. But, as Forer observes, it made little difference whether or not women were abiding by their lot assignments because at that point NYRW ceased to exist as a single organization. Mainardi suggests that splitting by lot was "an attempt to avoid splitting on ideological grounds." Moreover, it was probably a way to prevent members of the old guard from grouping exclusively with each other—a scenario that would have formalized the hierarchy, which, despite their efforts, already existed, and that would have concentrated all the power in one, or possibly, two groups. A number of women also suspect that left saboteurs played a role in the reorganization of NYRW.

Many women believe that the division had a deleterious effect on the group. Although the meetings may have been less chaotic after the split, they lacked the vitality of the big meetings. Hanisch wrote that the split divided the “original militants into several groups where we were less effective.” Peslikis argues that it "reinforced sectarianism because [NYRW] was the one place where any woman in New York was welcome." Mainardi maintains that although “people had different positions before [the split] . . . they were at least talking to each other.” Another woman who was active in the group claims that "it was a movement at that point; but when it broke up into groups, you became this little group that didn't relate to anything."

But while there may have been a movement in New York, it was a seriously fractured movement. There were tensions between politicos and feminists, WITCHes and more traditional leftists, advocates of consciousness-raising and proponents of action, pro-woman radical feminists and advocates of the conditioning thesis, and, finally, those who defended the "quiet women" and those who wanted to talk at will. NYRW survived only about six months after the reorganization. After the formation of the radical feminist action group Redstockings in early February 1969, NYRW was reduced to an umbrella group for the growing number of feminist groups. But at least some of the women who formed Redstockings had been dissatisfied with consciousness-raising as early as November 1968, suggesting that the problem was less the reorganization than proliferating political differences. While the decision to reorganize undoubtedly hastened NYRW's demise, left obstructionism, the group's cumbersome size, and, perhaps most important, the growing polarization between politicos and feminists were already destroying the group. But, as Mainardi points out, there was a silver lining to this cloud. For "in falling apart [NYRW] seeded itself."

*********

From the beginning, the women's liberation movement was internally fractured. In fact, it is virtually impossible to understand radical feminism without referring to the movement's divided beginnings. Radical feminism was, in part, a response to the anti-feminism of the left and the reluctant feminism of the politicos. Radical feminists' tendency to privilege gender over race and class, and to treat women as a homogenized unity, was in large measure a reaction to the left's dismissal of gender as a "secondary contradiction." Moreover, the politico-feminist schism was so debilitating that it seemed to confirm radical feminists' suspicions that difference and sisterhood were mutually exclusive.

-Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America: 1967-75

[theriu]

Ok but like, what is a Mennonite?

Great question! I’d first like to preface that I am far, far from an expert on this; I go to and was raised in a Mennonite Church, but we are a little odd because we’re the only Mennonite church around (you often find several in a community) and we don’t uphold the typical dress code of head coverings and skirts. Also my mom was the daughter of an army chaplain, so because of her experiences growing up and being around people of many Christian groups combined, we are pretty comfortable with many denominations. Here are some basics, though:

Mennonites are part of the Anabaptist movement, which is largely noted (among other things) for believing that people should choose baptism as adults as a sign of their commitment to Christ, rather than be baptized as infants.

We do still do dedications, which is where the parents and baby go up front at church and oil is put on the baby’s head and the congregation verbally commits to helping raise the child to know the Lord - basically showing they plan to be a good and supportive church family for this new member and the family.

Another notable difference is peaceful noncombatance. Mennonites generally hold that using force is wrong and that we shouldn’t join the military because it divides our allegiance between God and our country. This is another one that my church, at least, is more relaxed on - at least one of our members is a police officer, and my brother wanted to join the national guard (he couldn’t due to a minor but chronic medical issue). Also, as mentioned, my grandpa (who was not a Mennonite) was an army chaplain. I support my brothers and sisters in Christ who choose military service, but I also respect those who feel they should stay apart from it (and count myself one of them).

Fun Fact: Mennonites and German Baptists and other Anabaptist denominations are often confused with Amish because we are all Anabaptists and we all have a tradition of the women wearing head coverings and old-fashioned-ish skirts/dresses. However, the Amish came after the Mennonites, and Mennonites aren’t against using electricity or owning technology and such. I wont speak further on that because I am even less of an expert on Amish customs. (I mentioned German Baptists because I see them frequently around where I live; I know little of their differences from Mennonites except their head coverings are typically a cute boxy shape instead of the flat lace circle traditional Mennonite women wear.)

These next ones are, I think, pretty common across many or most denominations, and they are what I consider the core tenets of faith in Christ:

Jesus Christ is the Son of God and part of the Trinity (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all one God but are also distinct persons).

Jesus came to Earth as both fully man and fully God, He lived a sinless life and died on the cross to pay the debt of our sins so we could be reunited with God, and He rose from the dead to defeat the death that is the just punishment for our sin.

The Bible is the Word of God and it is true and good for guiding, teaching, comforting, and correcting.

We all have free will, and while God desires all people to be saved, the gift of salvation is freely offered, and we must choose to take it. We are saved by accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior and asking forgiveness of our sins, accepting his payment of our debt.

We cannot “earn” our salvation through good works, but genuine faith in Christ should lead to doing good works as a demonstration of our love for Him and of His love for others.

The Holy Spirit is the one mediator between us and God, and we can ask the Holy Spirit to pray through us when we don’t know how to express what we want to pray. God always answers our prayers, even if the answer is “No” or “Wait,” and we can trust that His answers are for our good and His glory, even when we can’t see how from our limited perspective here on Earth.

I think that’s a decent summary, but let me know if you have questions or are interested in the Bible verses that support the different points. And thanks for asking!

[blackbirdv98]

No somos histéricas, Somos HISTORICAS.

This was something I did last year, noticing the lack of changes in this broken system and the lack of interest from the government, I decided to post this here.

(Si abres el enlace puedes leer el artículo en español. Lo publiqué en inglés aquí porque no me he topado con muchos hispanohablantes y en inglés puedo llegar a más personas)

I'm a photographer, not a journalist but I live here, I'm mexican and since I was 14 I got used to always telling my mom where I was and when I arrived safe at any place.

Why? Because as a woman in Mexico, you know you are in constant danger.

So this article is timeless even if I took the pics and wrote it last year.

I really hope you enjoy it and I beg you, please share this post for all the girls and women that never arrived home. Don't let them win. Don't let their names be forgotten. Let the world know what is happening here.

Don't let them die in vain.

Atte. Una Mujer Mexicana.

-------------------

On Wednesday, March 8, 2023 in Mexico City, approximately 90 thousand women marched towards the capital's Zócalo for Women's Day. Divided among various contingents, from schools to more than one batucada, thousands of women, teenagers, little girls, elderly women, as well as relatives of victims of femicide and disappearance, marched towards the Zócalo, supporting the different protests, but each of them had a common goal: To feel safe in a country where, as a woman, you have to be brave to go out on the streets. And while it was not a movement exclusive to the CDMX, it is the movement I have portrayed here. 

Many of the signs and banners were accompanied by choruses and shouts. Among the most common were: "They took them alive, we want them back alive!" and "If they touch one, they touch us all!", among others. There were also signs with photos that read "until we find you, mom" or "give me back my sister" or "may my daughter's death not be in vain". And crossing the generation gap, little girls shouting at the protesters: "those gals do represent me!"

The protests were varied. While many demanded equality and equal pay, most of what could be read on the signs were calls for attention to the femicides that, statistically, have been increasing during this six-year term compared to previous years.

According to data disaggregated by gender from the Executive Secretary of the National Public Security System, which gathers the complaints filed in the Prosecutor's Offices of the 32 Mexican States, explains that, only in the first half of the year 2022: 2,831 women have died violently, 50,000 were physically assaulted, 2,000 were raped, 497 were victims of trafficking, 120 were kidnapped and there were 258,700 calls to the emergency service for being physicaly violented.

By the end of 2022, 948 femicides had been committed nationwide, 3,000 disappeared, equivalent to 2.6 women murdered and 8.37 disappeared per day. Most of them between 15 and 19 years old. Of course, these are the registered cases,there are missing cases that were not reported or that the authorities did not register the complaint correctly.

A couple of years before, in 2018, 898 femicides were registered and in 2021 they rose to 978. The state that, without a doubt takes the first place, is Estado de México with 120 Almost twice as many as in the CDMX with 54 femicides until September 2022 and just like the previous figures, impunity reaches 95% leaving most of the cases without culprits.

On Wednesday, March 8, 2023 in Mexico City, approximately 90 thousand women marched to the capital's Zócalo for Women's Day. Divided into several contingents, they marched towards the Zócalo with a common goal: To feel safe in a country whose president is more concerned about the press seeing the palace burned and not the obscene number of femicides that occur every day in the country. A country whose president cannot recognize that he is afraid of women who are definitely angrier than the opposition for a problem that he has ignored since the beginning of his six-year term. 

A country where being a woman has become a death sentence.

CDMX, Mex.

March, 2023

[tooshytoexistproperly]

Thunderfall Official Lore Post - 1

This is the first lore post of many, believe me. I have plenty of worldbuilding to lay out on the table! This is likely the first of two I'll post before Chapter one.. (of course that's not cemented as a timeframe, but it's a loose estimate.)

If you have any questions, or smth, feel free to comment or toss an ask in my inbox, and I will reply if/when I can.

So, with all that laid out in the open– without further adieu, enjoy!

@jakersdaboss (other names can be added, just ask 💜)

⚡️===================== ===================== ===================== ============= ⚡️

(Vibrutian official height ref + gender size differences)

The giants of Vibrutas, the Vibrutian’s, were a primarily closed off race (atleast to any other intelligent life-forms besides themselves), until Earth’s satellite dishes shot a myriad of signals and messages into the vaccum of deep space.

They are not a friendly sort, or most of them prefer not to be. They are divided up into a multitude of cultures, and some pay tribute and thanks to different deities from their homeworld. (Which will be explored in a different post, once I sort out the details.)

Vibrutian’s have sexual dimorphism displayed in their race; with the females usually being bigger, and having brighter coloration, and the males being smaller and having duller colors. Of course that is not to say that sometimes, in some cases, men could have more vivid coloring, and Women could be more de-saturation; but it isn't common.

Most, if not all Vibrutian’s have very sharp canines, since they are primarily carnivores, Although omnivores are quite common too for the more rustic folk that prefer to live off of farmland. But, they have a unique little quirk; the more predatorily inclined vibrutian’s, have their teeth needing “maintenance” every couple days, or they will get dull. So to prevent this, they usually gnaw or chew on hard objects to sharpen them.

They have bioluminescent markings that span most of their bodies, and change as they get older, becoming more and more intricate with time. These markings are capable of flashing on command, which has made another sub-communication for their kind; and the markings shift between colors depending on how they feel. Like..mood lights!

They are extremely vocal, and often more than not, have special sounds they reserve for being affectionate with a partner, ex- trilling, purring, or even a low growl. So, a growl that a human could perceive as aggressive, is actually more of an "I love you!" sound for them.

Vibrutian’s have complex language all their own, but when speaking to other lifeforms they usually just use a small translator that they can clip onto their helmets or uniforms. But these translators don't tend to be used often..

Minor addition, there are several kinds of dimorphism in their species.. Ex: rare eye-colors, the women actually have lower pitched vocalization than men do, and some markings are more common in certain genders than others.

They have INCREDIBLE hearing, a great sense of smell, and stellar night-vision! Their ears are extremely sensitive though, and a loud noise can easily stun or incapacitate a Vibrutian.

They're fantastic trackers and usually always find what they're after, which is how humans were rocketed to the brink of extinction so quickly.

Their pupils and markings reflect what kind of behavior they will have, but their pupils also contribute to their rarity, as some pupil types are rarer than others. For example, there is one pupil type that is so rare, it's considered a mere legend.

Their teeth also have a lot to do with the individual giant’s behavior; Dulled, rounded canines are mostly for less predatory, and less aggression prone giants, or perhaps those more adapted to eating plants than meat. Sharper, curved or jagged canines are more common in the aggressive sort.

Vibrutian’s are one of the biggest races that exist in the world of Thunderfall; and their heights vary depending on the age of the giant. Adults are in the ranges of 100–120, Teens are from 90—100, etc.

Last but not least, a deeper lore teaser: They are very reverent of the moon, even when it is not the same one from their homeworld.

[graylinesspam]

Happy June everybody!

I've seen some really good discussion on my dash the last >24hrs, about labels in the lgbt community and the use of queer and reclaiming slurs and identifying turf rhetoric.

I'm gonna put my 2¢ into this discussion real quick because I think some of us are missing a big base concept of the LGBT community.

The community is wide and vast and diverse as it should be. And no matter your involvement in it, your label, your age, your race, there is one defining sociopolitical stance that makes us who we are. And that's simply being different.

I know that sounds fucking cheesy but stick with me here. Queerness intersects with so many other social struggles, struggles with class and religion, race and disability. And as any struggle it is a fight for freedom from the preset social structures.

Queerness (and yes I'm using that umbrella term for a reason) is about not being hetero-normative more than it is about anything else. It's about choosing to live your life against the social structures. It's not about the specifics of how everyone does it so as much as it is that you do. Trans lesbians and cis-Ace guys are always going to have more in common than they will with any hetero-normative person.

Don't misinterpret me, this isn't a 'straight people are the enemy' argument. This is an argument against rigid definitions and labels. Because the structure itself is what we're fighting. The structure that tells us that one man marries one woman in a Christian ceremony and they settle down into a white picket fence three bedroom home with their two and a half kids. And they better be white and conventional attractive and fit perfectly into their assigned gender roles. (and everyone else can suffer)

That is the enemy.

When you try to bring those kinds of structures into the community you fundamentally undermine the entire purpose of it. There are no good gender roles here. There are no roles of any kind. The strict definitions you're trying to assign to each label are hurting your community. Labels are a good tool for identifying people who may have similar life experiences as yourself. Or as a medium to communicate with straight people, but they are not lines we draw between ourselves.

We cannot survive divided. We must support and protect each other. That's the point of the community.

No more discussions of who can use what labels, no more fighting against 'slurs' that people have been using since before you were born. No more excluding sex and attraction and kink. And no more relying on it either. Sex cannot be a taboo in our community. And it cannot be the aspect from which we define ourselves either.

No more morally policing people who are just trying to live their lives, no more stepping on each other and throwing 'gross and weird' queers under the bus so you can virtue signal as the "Good gays".

No more telling people who they can be based on their genitals or their sexuality. No more telling lesbians to cut men out of their life because that's how we 'fight the patriarchy'. No more telling trans people how they should transition. No more allying with people based on their bodies, their looks, their health.

Asexuality is queer because it's a fundamentally different experience to build a relationship that isn't based on heterosexual attraction. Since sex is the basis by which straight people seem to couple, by not doing that, by connecting through other factors, you differ.

Queer men, or trans women, or others born male are welcome in our community because they are fundamentally choosing to be different from the role they were cast in by the social structure. Now does that include a lot of work unlearning their societal programming? Absolutely. But I welcome my brothers and sisters regardless of their gentitals.

And let's not for a minute pretend that queer 'males' are any more dangerous to us than terfs and the distructivly sexist (and blatantly racist and classist) roles they try to pigeonhole women into.

Other alt communities are our allies. Anyone fighting moral conformity. Anyone fighting racism and sexism and ableism and classism.

If your way of trying to obtain the life you want to live consists of trying to look good to the oppressors so they give you a pass, then your doing it wrong.

Use a hundred different labels to describe yourself. Use neopronouns. Base your relationships off of how well you can support each other. Practice your religion in a way that fulfills you and your identity. Cut off your shitty family. Or don't. Keep your elders close so that you can learn everything you can about how the world has changed, then figure out how to change it more.

Society as it stands will crumble in our collective grasps. We just have a break a little bit of it everyday.

(that being said, general advice, educate yourself on lgbt history, talk to our elders, educate yourself on intersecting struggles. Rascim, ableism, and classism. All of that is required reading babies.)

(((Do not come into the notes saying some shit like, Yeah, everyone is our ally except____. At best it'll be fucking obvious that we don't align ourselves with seriously bad people like pedos or something, and at worst you'll say someone we specifically do ally with and I'll be forced to publically shame you.)))

[magnoliamyrrh]

okay enough of the rants im logging off last thing ill say is that identity politics is largely a disease 👍 its point with the extremism its been taken to in part due to cia postmodernism being to wreck class conciousness though the wokeificstion of fragmentory policies and identity👍 bipartisan politics also serve to divide the country (all countries) incresingly so that people cant come together👍 having the worlds most stupid useless fragmentory identity politics discussions doesnt help it keeps us from coming together and focusing on real shit 👍wars pit the resources and labour of the working class against each other for the benefit of the rich 👍"im iranian youre american, you and i have more in common with each other than our governments with us, and our governments are more similar etc etc."👍 if racism stopped and if sexism stopped and if classism between the working classes (which, everyone has forgotten what the term "working class" means, its not abt economic bracket, low, middle, and higher class can all b working class yes including the doctor whose making a lot of money bc it is the exhange of labour for wages) stopped the working class could stand united not divided aginst the system 👍differences in race, class, and sex have Always been used to pit the working classes against each other, and to give people a sense of "well at least were better than Those people" (opressed middle class disdain for lower class, opressed mens disdain for women (at least they have power over someone!), opressed peoples disdain for other opressed peoples)

i may bitch and complain about kinds of people on here bc its a way for me to get my frustrations out, but ultimately i do think it is vitally important to have hope and to try to bring unity between people. ultimately i think it is unity which is the only way this planet, species, and every other species on this planet may see a better futute. ultimately, more than anything, i think despite everything we, for everyones sake, have to understand the deep interconnected nature of everything, have to truly understand that one cannot be free without all, and have to try to build bridges.... it is very easy both as both members of the opressive and opressed class (and yes most ppl occupy both in some way) to fall into disdain, fear, and wants of separatism. ive done it plenty myself and at times i still do. trying to "be better" is absolutely exhausting. but. i do truly believe that we have to try. i do not believe hatred is forever. not classism not racism not sexism not abelism not anything. it is not a curse people are doomed to from birth. people can change, we all can. we at least have to try

[hesitationss]

it should be said that when protecting against both state actors and non-state actors against doxxing, it is important know your enemy. and not just generally, because the police in every city has their own tactics.

more details and info.

(these are loosely based on the experience of various comrades in other cities) in mtl they are prone to tear gassing protesters, this doesn't really happen in ottawa, toronto, or vancouver, etc. mtl is prob the most outwardly aggressive cities toward protesters and i heard j Trudeau's riding is an absolute shitstain with little social resources LOL

in toronto and other cities in ONT, protest arrests are the primary way in which they identify protesters so it is ESP important in that city to have a lawyers number on hand, to hide your identity, and to avoid arrest. they also do this really insidious thing where they move protesters from one precinct to the next in discreet civilian black vans when people protest outside of their buildings. they do this so that they can announce that the prisoner in which protesters are seeking to be released is no long at that location. they will be buying time for HOURS to do this. it's a divide and conquer strategy. it's meant to disrupt protest and organizing but it's primary purpose it to ID + impose restrictions rather than actually incarcerate anyone.

winnipeg has the second highest police budget in canada, they have a helicopter that they fly over a predominantly indigenous community every night, and they frequently racially profile so that they can beat any native man or women or child without impunity. they do not use tear gas, because they don't need to. they can mobilize white supremacist communities to commit crimes instead. i learned in like 2018(?) that most of the employed police in winnipeg are undercover and that many of them have never even been seen in uniform (since they're duty is as plain clothes officers) i also learned from s worker community members that it is a common occurrence for police to send reports of all the details of their surveillance something that not even my communist student organizer friends at one of the universities didn't know in terms of their deep level of surveillance. the police their are more likely to straight up steal from you too.

in vancouver, the police show up in huge numbers to intimidate. their mayor is sponsored by fucking white supremacists ?? and i have heard about SO many bad faith actors within the movements like more so than the average chauvinism issues... the police presence in vancouver is actually insane. like a public park without protests happening are filled with officers looking to hit homeless people. vancouver police are notorious for wrecking property and acting violently in hopes of baiting protestors and then lying about who did the damage. the entirety of north vancouver is so racist that you will get kkk level hostility there.

also if you are worried about doxxing, similarly with stalking, it is always going to be someone who knows you or has access to you in some way! like yeah you can lock down your social media and be relatively anonymous. but the ppl who are most likely going to fuck with your life by is going to be like a bad faith actor/devil's advocate, zionist, or white supremacists you went to school with or has worked with you in some capacity... and the scary thing is that it is all too easy for these people to access your full name, email, phone number, and address. like there is so much to think about in terms of security and privacy but mostly you need to know what you are up against, and figure out the best preventative and safety measures.