#op i know you posted this like a year ago and it has . 13 notes but this series is literally the books ever so i am reblogging this

Lmao and I am just as obsessed with the series now as I was a year ago

Can I introduce you to my new hyperfixation

I’m really not a Eurovision person but my patriotic gesture this year will be to get snobby at everyone who compares Barbara Pravi to Edith Piaf (be it to praise or dismiss her) when her main influence, both in her writing style and musically, is obviously “The” Barbara :

Though she’s not as famous as Piaf abroad, she’s just as much of an institution here and one of the best songwriters ever. She wrote amazing song after amazing song and I really wish more people would listen to her music because she’s a badass I love her very much.

Here’s one she wrote about returning to the farm she had to hide in as a jewish kid during WWII

Here’s one about being molested by her father as a kid (it’s entirely metaphorical but still CW incest obviously)

Here’s one about finding out her father was on his death’s bead

Here’s a lighter one about having insomnia

And here’s one of my favourite, her telling off the mother of the man she loved who tried to keep him away from her

#SaveSheikhJarrah #FreePalestine

To all my followers who are citizens of the EU and of voting age, please consider signing and sharing this EU citizens’ initiative requesting that the European Commission stop upholding intellectual property rights regarding COVID vaccines and treatments and make them a public good instead.

In order for the European Commission to read these proposals this initiative needs a lot more people signing that it has now, so every person counts.

AND THEN, instead of saying that to my face, HE blocked me :D

I could only see this reply through my other account. Let’s appreciate its beauty before moving on forever :

- Asks me to delete his own post(??)

- Calls someone a loser for blocking them for something I know nothing about (literally, I don’t know who they’re talking about, it seems they beefed with literally everyone of this website)

- Accuses me of defending psychiatric institution, something I ALSO went through personally and had every right to talk about

- Accuses me of making his post about France... about France ?

- Calls France as a whole deranged perverts

- Freud is there because reasons

So obviously I’m not deleting anything. You can’t just appropriate shit up and then throw a fit when someone calls you out. As a final note, I find it extremely sad that this person specializes in French history yet clearly despises France. Everyone else, whether you choose to keep listening to them is up to you.

Oh and Antoine, if you’re somehow reading this, don’t bother looking for my other account, I have no desire to interact with you or your posts any further. It’s only fair that I checked this one since instead of telling me this face to face or simply blocking me (which I would absolutely respect), you chose to make it look like you were telling me off when in fact you blocked me, meaning I couldn’t even see this post. Normally I would let this slide, I don’t care about your posturing, but that was one lie too many.

And now, as I said, moving on forever.

1) We have interacted many times before. We discussed in private messages for months.

2) You are talking about an experience you didn’t have. You didn’t have to read Les Liaisons dangereuses in middle school. I did. You are criticizing something you didn’t experience. You had a horrible traumatic experience which you link to the way literature is taught to people that are not you, in a country that is not yours. You are the one appropriating someone else’s personal experience and making it about what you went through. You are the one making a post about other people’s life, and then someone shows up and says what this experience was actually like, and you tell them to shut up. If you want to make an argument about what should or shouldn’t be shown to children, I’m all for hearing it, but don’t think you can brandish my experience and say “this is horrible” and then get offended when *I* show up to say it wasn’t.

3) The scene you are talking about is not pornography. It’s literally just the back of a naked woman. That you find this objectionable says more about you than the french education system.

4) You “””quote””” me saying studying this was “interesting”, a word I didn’t use one in my post, which makes me think you didn’t care to actually read what I said.

P.S. You didn’t make a post about being traumatized. You made a post about french students reading a certain book in middle school. Then a french student showed up and said reading that book was fun. Then you got offended. Explain to me how that works. Or in fact, don’t. I’m done here.

P.P.S. You say you find it distasteful that i only interacted with this post of yours. Not everything is about you. I don’t owe you regular interaction. I reacted to this post because this post was about something I directly experienced. Also not that it matters but I reacted to one of your posts literally last week. I’ve been barely active for months because I got tired of the obvious lack of nuance and bad faith actors on this site. But thank you for reminding me exactly why I semi-left.

France, are you teaching and showing the erotic writing on a woman scene from Les liaisons dangereuses to children aged 12-14?

Oh yea I remember that, twas fun ! Turns out when handled well, eroticism in literature is just one theme among others. We just acknowledged it and moved on. Obviously there’s a lot to say about France’s culture around sexuality, but I genuinely think the way our education system approaches it is well thought out. We use the medium of school to de-mystify the topic and lay some important distinctions. In Les Liaisons dangereuses for example, we use the erotic writing scene to contrast with the relationship between Valmont and Cécile and highlight how abusive it is. And then we went on to discuss how in this book sex is used as a tool of power. At the end of the day I’d rather be shown a woman’s naked body at age 13 and understand consent and power imbalance than have teachers try to frantically hide anything even remotely sexual from me well into adolescence.

France, are you teaching and showing the erotic writing on a woman scene from Les liaisons dangereuses to children aged 12-14?

Ngl he’s announced he was closing ENA so many times by now I sort of thought this had become a “closing Gitmo”-type inside joke but this appears to be actually in the works, I find it funny that the only reform Macron did that the people actually wanted was the one that allowed him to close the door on the superhighway to power he himself used

The violent gilets jaunes protests with another victory

Maybe we should have a series of violent protests in the UK so they close down Eton

Thank you @pastelpinkette for this great insight. I see a lot of discussion of this topic on my dash, and I always struggle to put into words why it bothers me from a legal standpoint and I’ve never weighed on this topic because as someone who has never been a victim of csa and who’s never been a part of the shipping scene, I didn’t feel legitimate commenting on it, but this cleared up a few things for me.

But if you’ll allow me to add another legal point : I really think we are missing a step in this discussion. Because essentially, there seems to be a definition problem here. Whenever I see people use the word “ship”, I always wonder : well, what does that mean ? The problem here for me is that under the “ship” moniker, we are conflating widely different degrees of involvement in fostering a dangerous and predatory network.

If you boil down what seems to be the “pro” argument, it would be “well, it’s my freedom of speech to ship whatever I want, plus it’s a coping mecanism”, and I would like to seriously consider that argument by deconstructing it.

- first, we should be clear that if “ship” means “enjoying thinking about such and such ““““relationship”“““ (fully objectionable otherwise we wouldn’t be here), then obviously there is nothing “wrong” with that in the sense that thought crime doesn’t exist and while entertaining such thoughts is most definitely hurting you (as Pinkette explained), it’s ONLY hurting you. You’re not doing anything criminal, and yes, people are allowed to have horrible coping mecanisms. It’s incredibly sad and shouldn’t happen, but that’s not really for anyone else to object to aside from your therapist.

- but that’s not really what “anti’ are objecting to, is it. “Pros” have shifted the discussion onto “shipping” meaning the soliloquial act of enjoying certain things and creating certain content, but that’s not what the core discussion is about. This isn’t about “ship and let ship” in a vacuum. It’s about SHARING and DISSEMINATING expressions of this thing. If you’re making pedophilic “art” in your bedroom and never showing it to a living soul, I’m not gonna congratulate you, but also there’s no reason I should be able to stop you. The problem is that “shipping” is clearly largely not a solitary activity. Shipping is sharing and disseminating such content, and fostering a community. And that’s where creating such content stops meaning only hurting yourself, which is your right, despite being sad, and starts being a felony.

This is a distinction the law very acutely makes. 18 US code §2252 makes it a federal offense to

- produce with intention to distribute

- knowingly receive or distribute

- possess with intent to sell

- knowingly access or possess

any visual depiction of pornography involving children that has circulated online. The law is about similar in France. That should make it clear that the law isn’t concerned with what you do with your free time. The law intervenes at the precise moment your “enjoying” of such content becomes a cog in the circulation of such content, because inevitably, that’s the moment such content will risk causing harm to others. That’s the law’s job.

(Side-note : i’m not qualified in us law, so I couldn’t find similar provisions concerning non-visual depictions, but this is about illustrating an ethical debate with a legal standpoint anyway. If someone more qualified can add to this, much appreciated.)

- and that’s also where discussion of the “motive” should come in. It breaks my heart if some people genuinely think this is a coping mecanism, but also I should point out that your motive has no place in this discussion. In the digital world, content doesn’t come with an asterisk explaining why and how such content can ethically be enjoyed. Your motive is irrelevant. What matters is the effect. And the effect is that the more people creating and share this sort of content, the more the risk increases that such content will end up directly causing harm to someone.

So that’s really what it boils down to, imo : as @vampireapologist said, “pros” have shifted the debate on a field it has no place being. The problem with “shipping” isn’t what individual people do or don’t enjoy, it’s that the major part of “shipping” isn’t “enjoying” specific content, it’s about sharing and disseminating such content. Child pornography isn’t protected by free speech. This isn’t about self-expression. This is about fostering an online environment that is ripe for the abuse, trafficking, and exploitation of children.

I’m going to say something that fellow “antis” might get on my case for : I don’t think enjoying objectionable content makes you a bad person. Human psychology is complicated, so is human relationship to fiction. On that topic, I recommend everyone to view this Dan Olson video on the 50 shades of grey controversy. But if you do think you are enjoying this content for “defendable” motives, and not just appropriating the language of therapy, then you should be able to see that your particular motives should only ever be second to the real harm your particular way of coping is causing. You should be able to understand your need for solace in balance with the way your behaviour might cause others to end up with the same pain you are suffering from. And if you can’t do that... well, there is a word for people who cannot stop themselves from producing, sharing, viewing and disseminating pedophilic content despite being aware of its fundamental immorality.

Being an anti has nothing to do with your stances on shipping minors/adults or anything like that. An anti is someone who will either outright attack someone for shipping something or goes into a ship tag that they don’t approve of and either put hate there or something nsfw imagery. Essentially if your a ship and let ship person, nmw u ship ur not an anti, but if u deliberately go after peeps who ship ur NOTP and attack them an stuff, ur an anti. Idk if u care but I just thought I’d clear it up

Okay but I’m not ship and let ship when it involves minor/adult pairings. Minor/adult ships are my NOTP and I do think minor/adult pairings and the people producing that content should be actively shamed out of fandom spaces so. by definition if that makes me an anti I’m cool with that.

I came to your Tumblr to thank you for injecting nuance and intelligence into a particular discussion and then found that you make a practice of doing so in general. So thank you lots and lots for doing so!

Well thank you, I’m touched !! I was a bit embarrassed looking at the new followers I gained with this last post, because I’m not exactly active right now (I’m hardcore focusing on my masters’ thesis atm) and I really don’t follow any kind of ethos with this blog and I certainly don’t mean to be lecturing people, I just try to talk honestly about whatever catches my attention. It’s only really the combination of immigration law and disinformation that makes me lose my shit to the point I have to drop everything to make a post (my #lawstuff tag is basically nothing but rants at this point). But if people gain something from it, I couldn’t be happier. Thank you for your kind message <3

While I don’t disagree with the Elisée (forgot an i here bud) Reclus quote, it has no place in a post that peddles such blatant misinformation.

1) This tweet comes after a thread that starts like this :

2) Goes on to condemn the carceral framework of immigration policy as a whole :

3) And as for the tweet screencapped by op, it’s a response to this :

So here’s what AOC, quote-unquote “cannibal”, is actually saying in that tweet :

- no immigration facility should be carceral

- immigrant children who come in the country alone (which is a situation which has always existed and. will. always. exist.) and/or children who’ve been torn apart from their families should be taken care of in (separate) facilities which need to go through a tougher vetting process

- none of these facilities should be sub-contracted by the gvt

- and some facilities which have had problems in the past should maybe just be closed

- all of these solutions should be short term before a deeper reform can occur.

ALL. OF. THESE. ARE. VALID. AND. PERFECTLY. NORMAL. POINTS. TO. MAKE. NONE OF THEM ARE IN CONTRADICTION WITH AOC’S EARLIER TWEET.

Seriously some people have this idea that advocating for radical reform means you’re exempt from thinking about the meat-and-potatoes day-to-day inner workings of any policy. You’re all for immigration ? Great, me too. How do you plan to house migrants when they arrive ? What kind of facility would you need ? Who would run it ? How do you survey and vet the people running it ? What extra services do you need to provide for immigrant minors who come in unaccompanied and need to be protected in a country they don’t know ? And how do we deal with the damage already caused by the current system ?

AOC is absolutely not saying, as the framing suggests, that “concentration camps” would be fine with a few tweaks. She is saying that such a system is not okay and that deep change is needed, while providing concrete solutions to the most pressing issues with the current way the system works. These two statements are not incompatible.

I understand that we are basically all traumatized with the way we cannot trust any fucking politician, but behind every post calling out AOC as a “corrupted idol” I detect a real anxiety of being “ahead of the curve”, of denouncing progressives for “selling out” before they actually do, so we can’t be disappointed if and when these progressives water down their ideals. AOC is not perfect, nor should she be treated as such. But what’s happening in this post is disinformation, pure and simple. It’s twisting someone’s words for the pervert pleasure of making people feel disappointed and betrayed and dividing us. It pains me to see people fall for it when the tweets in actual context are only a click away. Be better. If we take this shit at face value and discard allies so readily, what chance do we have against people who actually want to cause us harm ?

I hate these fucking cannibals so fucking much

Astounding details in the Regeneration trilogy that i can't stop thinking about (spoilers) :

- The first time Prior (who is revealed in The Eye in the Door to be a victim of child sexual abuse) opens up to Rivers at the hospital is after his parents' visit, when he is alone in the living room while all the patients are watching a Charlie Chaplin film. Though it wasn't known at the time, Chaplin, just like Lewis Carroll (who is hinted as having molested Rivers' sister Katherine) was a child molester.

- Prior's nickname in the army is "the canary" because of his asthma ; munitionnettes like Sarah were known at the time as "canary girls" because of the yellowing of their skin. Meaning Billy and Sarah effectively have the same nickname.

- Moreover, in The Eye in the Door, Sarah says her "favorite bit" of Billy are his ribs, to which he responds his favorite bit of her are her hair. Billy's weak chest puts him at a disadvantage in combat, while Sarah's strange hair due to her work makes her "undesirable" according to her mother. What Billy and Sarah like best about one another is effectively the physical manifestation of their respective failings to conform to the gender roles of the time.

- despite the fact that it is only "revealed" in The Eye in the Door that Billy is bisexual, he actually already uses gender neutral language in Regeneration to talk about people he's attracted to.

- When her mother decided to convert the family to anglo-catholicism to encourage her daughters to marry up, Sarah notes that she didn't understand her mother's true goal and instead "fell in love with the Virgin Mary". Given the many parallels noted above between Sarah and Billy and the peculiar phrasing, it's entirely possible this hints at Sarah being bisexual as well.

- we never actually do find out who was threatening Charles Manning via letters. However, when Billy visits him at the hospital, he signals him that he could blackmail him if he doesn't agree to help him free Beattie. It's possible that Billy was the one sending Manning the messages, since they stopped after he agreed to help. (I dont think he did it, but it's interesting how the book manages to convey the paranoia of the era so well that i cant dismiss the idea completely either)

- Mac and Billy are perfect opposites : Billy fails physically to meet gender expectations yet enlisted the first week of the war, while Mac is noted to be incredibly tall and strong, yet is a pacifist. Additionnally, Billy's father despises him (Billy recalls an incident in which he was disgusted because Billy wouldn't eat unappetizing parts of meat), yet will give Hettie (and so, Mac) meat to help them survive. Mac is the incarnation of everything Billy's father wishes his son was.

- Mac says derogatorily that Billy can talk in a "public school accent". However, every upper class character who gets to comment on said accent (Rivers, Manning), notes that his working class origins are still quite obvious. This is another illustration of Mac' s point that Billy is equally at home and not at home with each social class : his accent is enough to set him apart from Mac, but not good enough for him to "pass" among the upper class.

- in The Eye in the Door, Billy is shown to be the only character who can read Rivers' handwriting effortlessly. In their very first meeting in Regeneration, Billy gets Rivers to provide a sample of his writing style on Billy's notepad.

- Both times Rivers analyses his own dreams, there is an obvious sexual interpretation of them, yet both times Rivers dismisses it with no further explanation. Similarly, in every conversation with or about Billy, Rivers always tries to dismiss sexual topics (when Willard suggests Billy might be gay in Regeneration, and again in the Eye in the Door when Billy interprets Rivers' mind blindness. On top of that, in a conversation with Manning, who was sent to Rivers to "cure" his homosexuality, Billy remarks that It's "convenient" for Rivers that Manning is shell-shocked, so he doesn't have to talk about sex.

AND THERE IS SO MUCH MORE THOSE BOOKS ARE INCREDIBLE

This is a great idea but also I’m fascinated by the concept of foreign speakers learning french from the elderly, meaning they would hopefully get to learn the badass insults and accents french speakers had like 70 years ago and think this is how we all talk

Here is the link! What an amazing idea ❤️

My sister was telling me the dad from Haunting of Hill house was the kid from E.T and then this happened

Only valid Napoléen pic because Justine sucks

Young Napoleon throws a book into the fire because he dislikes it (Justine by the Marquis de Sade).

[From Le Marquis de Sade, ses aventures,ses œuvres, Fayard, 1885]

Another thing I'd always like to remember about SJ, is his age. He was not yet 27 at the date of his death. He was certainly quite opinionated, enthusiastic, and radical, but his writings are still those of a very young mind. I certainly know that the beliefs and opinions I held in my mid 20s, are quite changed now! As I've aged, I've learned more, educated myself more, etc. Like you said, all we know are frozen moments in time, not more.

This ! And I do think that’s a big part of our fascination with Saint-Just and generally every “died too young” historical figure/celebrity. They’re the perfect recipient for our own projection and hopes and generally have a legacy that is less complex and detailed, allowing us to fill in the blanks. I think human imagination is perhaps the greatest thing about us, and that we’d rather imagine who someone might have been than really narrow down who they were. None of this is to take from SJ’s complexity or achievements even at a young age, but I don’t think it’s an accident that his modern appreciation is generally so lacking in nuance compared to even slightly older figures of the revolution like Danton, Desmoulins or even Robespierre to some degree.

Thanks for your super fast reply on Saint-Just! I'll do my best to go of anon at the first possibility, for better communication. I actually appreciate your non-historian POV (will talk more as soon as I fix the account issues). Speaking of which, I browsed through your SJ tag, and there's a mention of his (I might be paraphrasing) "strange attitude about virgins". May I ask what you had in mind? Once again, thank you for that super-fast, detailed reply!

No problem ! And I don’t mind the anon as long as it’s not a way to be shitty while hiding behind it :)

And yeah there’s some value to being a simple enthusiast, I don’t want to look down on my own point of view but it’s no substitute for actual scholarly perspective so I always take care to mention it.

The reference I made was from the Fragments d’institutions républicaines, SJ’s personal notebook I mentioned which you can find in french here.

Anyway, about virgins, you can find this passage in the chapter on education :

“Les filles sont élevées dans la maison maternelle. Dans les jours de fête, une vierge ne peut paraître en public, après dix ans, sans sa mère, son père, ou son tuteur. “

“Girls are raised in the maternal home. On festive days (a reference to national celebrations I believe), a virgin cannot show herself in public past her tenth year, without her mother, her father or her tutor”.

And again in the chapter on celebrations :

“Tous les ans, le 1er floréal, le peuple de chaque commune choisira, parmi ceux de la commune exclusivement et dans les temples, un jeune homme riche, vertueux et sans difformité, âgé de vingt et un ans accomplis et de moins de trente, qui choisira et épousera une vierge pauvre, en mémoire de l’égalité humaine.”

“Every year, on the 1st of floréal, the people of each town will choose, among those in the town and in the parish, a rich, virtuous young man with no disability, between twenty-one and thirty years of age, who will choose and marry a poor virgin, in memory of human equality”

So yeah, as the kids say, not a great look, not absolutely reprehensible either (which is something, I guess). This is where my lack proper knowledge fails me, because I am not sure “virgin” in the context of SJ’s writing isn’t simply a common term from the times to talk about a young woman who’s never been married. Still, it’s hard to read these as anything that would reflect positively on SJ. That said, in the same notes we do find passages such as this :

“[Si les époux] se séparent, la moitié de la communauté leur appartient ; ils la partagent également entre eux.”

“If a married couple splits, half of their estate belongs the them. It is split evenly between them.”

So SJ is in favour of equal separation of estate in case of divorce. Each spouse has equal authority on their children, btw.

We have also :

“Une fille a le droit de faire demander dans le temple un autre tuteur sans en expliquer les motifs.”

“A girl has the right to ask the parish another tutor without explaining why.”

Or again :

“ Celui qui frappe une femme est banni.”

“Whoever hits a woman is banished”

Note there’s no exception made to this rule for the spouse.

Those are only a couple cherrypicked lines, and I don’t claim to be making any kind of general appreciation on SJ’s ideas as a whole. Outside of virgins there are some truly bizarre precepts in there, and I highly recommend you check the whole thing for yourself. But I think we can say without much risk that while there is some stuff in there, for example the virgin stuff that’s pretty representative of the ambient sexism of the times, there are just as many lines in there indicating that SJ, albeit clumsily and sometimes misguidedly, does demonstrate a concern for women and girls’ wellbeing. Being in favor of divorce, women owning and managing their own property (you have to remember his mother managed the family estate for the better part of his life), women choosing their spouse and having an equal say in the marriage, condemning violence against women... That’s significant. I think I said that in the last ask I received on the topic, but while it’s pretty obvious that women and gender equality was not SJ’s pet issue and he doesn’t seem to regard it as a priority (he never publicly pushed for it either), in particular having nothing to say on women’s place on society outside of the home, he could at least be considered progressive on women’s issues within the restricted confines of the role that was allocated to them back then.