Would it be alright if you were to share this evacuation fundraiser on your account? I already have it pinned to my blog, but I don't have many followers, so it's only gotten 5 notes since I've shared it. I don't know the family personally, but my own family is in their city (Edmonton) and I know how expensive it's gotten to establish there. Thank you so much for the help that you provide to others

https://gofund.me/133ed1c5

Hey can you send me a different link to the fundraiser, one that includes actual text? I cannot open the gfm links that have a series of numbers and letters after the slash, it gives me a 502 error.

If you’d like to support my Tumblr Blogging:

Hello.

I’m a Disabled, Neurodivergent, Trans Woman. I run 3 successful information based blogs on Tumblr: @allthecanadianpolitics, @mindblowingscience and @allthegeopolitics

I have significant student debt after 7 years of Post Secondary ($45,000 currently) and only have a minimum wage part time job. Any donations would be appreciated, but I don’t expect it. I work hard to keep all 3 of my blogs updated regularly, and will continue to do so into the future.

You can donate several different ways at the link below:

Donations will also help support the two blogging assistants who help run this blog with me.

Over 100 anti Israeli posts but not a single one condemning Hamas 🤔

That's because I don't. Hope that clears things up for you

My friend Mona has asked me to share her story with you all.

Here's the link to the evacuation gofundme. They're very close to their goal. They legitimately only have less than 10k USD left to go before all 9 of them can evacuate.

Update: North Gaza Aid!

As part of his promise, Hussam sent 20% of your HelpGazaChildren donations ($4000) to Mahmoud AbuSalama for the 5th time now, including the earlier North Gaza Campaign (as location on our notion site) to buy food and necessary products for families still surviving the dire situation in North Gaza. The food package contains, as you see in the picture below: flour, lentils, canned food, formula, diapers, and women pads!

Please continue donating and spreading the word — every penny means so much! Feel free to share our campaign link to other platforms as well!

Donate to our GoFundMe which goes directly to Hussam, who manages camps in Rafah, with NO middleman in between!

HelpGazaChildren Notion Site || #helpgazachildren tag

GoFundMe Link

[Quick ID: The video is of Mahmoud speaking in front of bags of flour and a tumblr sign. There are captions to the video in english. The image below is of groups of packages of items in front of a tumblr sign.]

How to spot Liberal Zionist Propaganda 101

This post is by no means exhaustive at all. There are many Liberal Zionist talking points but these are just some of the most common ones. While on the surface they seem a little naive and hopeful at best, they are very much harmful. If you claim to be an ally to Palestinians, this post is primarily for you!

For starters, liberal Zionists will often try to both-sides the issue of Palestine, talk about how it's complicated, they'll claim that the conflict hurts both Israelis and Palestinians, how the only way forward is one where Jews and Arabs "just need to get along," amongst other things. They also often like to centre themselves, even when acknowledging Palestinians as the victims of Israel or this "conflict." From time to time, they also like to engage in tokenising certain Palestinians whose views tend to more or less align with theirs. Here are some common arguments you may hear from them:

1. Any form of justifying Israel's existence or claiming that the only solution is two states

It does not really need to be said why justifying Israel's existence is harmful but justifying its continued existence also means legitimising Israel's land theft, its expulsions of Palestinians, and its ongoing harm to Palestinians and other populations. Reducing any sorts of “solutions” into a binary is unhelpful. Needless to say, a 2ss would not even address any legitimate concerns Palestinian have, such as the right of return, and would only legitimise Israel’s colonialism. Talking about a two-state solution also implies that the root of the conflict lies in Palestinians not having their own state rather than being an occupied people. It is very much also possible to construct a paradigm where Jews and Palestinians both live together on the same land as equal citizens that doesn't involve two separate states, much less an ethnostate.

2. Security for Israel could only come through peace

This is a similar talking point to the one above. Not only does it centre Israeli safety and security above Palestinian liberation but it mistakenly assumes that once Israel makes peace with Palestinians, it'll achieve security. The reality, however, is that Israel's imagined security has quite often come at the expense of peace. In fact, "peace" has just acted as nothing more than a smoke-screen for Israel to carry out its expansionist policies, particularly in the West Bank. When liberal Zionists talk about peace juxtaposed with Israeli security, they're talking about attaining a negative peace rather than a positive one.

3. Israelis are not their government.

This point does nothing to actually help Palestinians. It is also an incredibly tone-deaf thing to say when Israel has targeted many Palestinian civilians by having alleged proximity to Hamas, such as being family members of militants or leaders (inc. children!), civil servants in a Hamas-led government, or even any male above the age of 15 they consider to be a potential combatant! It also deliberately erases Israeli civilians' support of and culpability in Israel's actions towards Palestinians.

4. Netanyahu and/or the Israeli right are the source of conflict.

While it is true that things have gotten inadvertently worse under Israel's various right-wing governments, they are not the source of conflict, but rather a product of extremist nationalism and Jewish supremacy perpetuated by the system. Both the 1967 occupations and settlements were undertaken under centre-left governments in Israel, and Israeli policy under non-right wing governments has been just as harmful towards Palestinians and has paved the way for where we are today. Blaming Netanyahu just also obscures the violent nature of Israel's military occupation over Palestinians which long precede him coming into power.

5. Netanyahu and Hamas are two sides of the same coin

I don't think I've seen any allies give validity to this claim but it's an extremely reductionist claim and is sort of similar to the one above. Groups like Hamas are merely a response to the Israeli occupation while Netanyahu is a byproduct of it. While some Israelis may see Hamas or their actions as an "obstacle to peace," Israel's actions and policies long pre-date Hamas and how Israel is currently responding to Hamas is no different to how Israel has engaged with Palestinian militant groups in the past, regardless of political affiliations or political goals. It is also important to note that Hamas has agreed to the establishment of a state along 1967 borders while Netanyahu aims to prolong the occupation and empower the settler movement (some of whom are part of his coalition government) as much as possible.

6. Israel is not a settler-colonial state.

While it is indisputable that Jews have historical connections to Palestine, that doesn’t automatically make you Indigenous or negate Israeli settler-colonialism. Colonialism in particular describes a relationship of exploitation. There are many cases of this, but we most clearly see this in the West Bank where Israel exploits natural resources on occupied Palestinian territory for its own political and economic gains. In terms of settler-colonialism, it is widely known that Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to make way for Jewish refugees and migrants to the new state of Israel, and is still actively facilitating Jewish migration to Israel today while denying Palestinians their right of return.

7. (X) doesn't help Palestinians.

It is not up to anyone to determine whether certain tactics or strategies are helpful or not. This point only seeks to discredit pro-Palestine organising. Only Palestinians get to decide what is actually helpful for the cause or not.

8. Any sort of Hamas-blaming.

On the surface it may seem like there’s nothing wrong with this, but this point is often harmful and usually lends itself to right-wing talking points because its objective is to deflect blame away from Israel. Certain arguments blaming Hamas also aim to minimise Palestinian suffering perpetuated by Israel. It also paints Israeli violence as retaliatory to Palestinian violence which only obfuscates Israel’s (and by extension, the US’) role in its state military apparatus and the differing power dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians. In other contexts, this point seeks to also legitimise certain opposition, such as the Palestinian Authority. Hamas-blaming also tends to sometimes lead to racist diatribes about Palestinians and their culture.

9. Al-Jazeera is not a credible news source.

Al Jazeera is a news source like any other. It has varying editorial policies and therefore will have equally good reporting on certain issues while having terrible reporting on others. The difference is that Al-Jazeera's news on Palestine is credible because it comes directly from their Palestinian reporters on the ground and first-hand eyewitness accounts. Western news sources are no more or less credible than al-Jazeera. Compare this to CNN, NYT, and any other Western news sources where Palestinian voices are often entirely missing from the narrative.

10. Overemphasis of antisemitism on the left

Antisemitism is a real issue and has the potential to fester in left circles if not directly addressed head on. Combatting antisemitism is extremely important, however, it is not an issue exclusive to the left. There is also a double standard in that no one expects Zionists to call out Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. Certain accusations of "antisemitism" also seek to distract from what's going on in Palestine by making it about Jewish comfort and feelings. Combatting antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism etc is always important as the basis of good politics.

Last but not least, be wary of native collaborators or any sort of normalisers! They are Palestinians or Arabs who try very hard to appeal to Western liberal consensus and can end up perpetuating a lot of harm to the cause and/or other activists. You will know them when you see them.

Fantastic news!!! The 250,000 USD goal has been met, and there is now a third goal of 500,000 USD! The deadline has also been extended, and as of the time I'm writing this update, there is 13 more days to reach their newest goal!

The money raised so far has already been incredible. Let's maintain this energy and continue to provide support for the PCRF!

Hey everyone, please consider buying the 2024 itch.io Palestinian Relief Bundle- it's 373 games, game-making assets, tabletop roleplaying games, zines, and comics for a minimum of just 8 USD! They have a goal of 100,000 USD, and as of the time I'm writing this post, they have 8 more days to reach it.

Link will be in the reblog!

hey you might've been asked this before sorry if so, but have you read or do you have any thoughts on A short history of Trans Misogyny?

I have read it! I have a few thoughts.

I think it's a strong and important work that compiles historical archives into sharp analyses of how "trans misogyny" (using Jules Gill-Peterson's spacing) is not a recent phenomenon but a globalized structure with centuries of history. I also think it's flawed, for reasons I'll get into after a quick summary for those who haven't had the chance to read it yet.

JGP divides the book into three main chapters, the first on the notion of "trans panic". There, she traces how variants of this anxiety with the trans-feminized subject have presented—to deadly effect, for the subject—in such different settings as early colonial India, the colonization of the Americas, the racialized interactions between US soldiers stationed in the Philippines and the local trans women living there, and of course the contemporary United States itself. In every case she analyzes this "panic" as the reaction of the capitalist colonial enterprise to the conceptual threat that the trans-feminized subject poses; we are a destabilizing entity, a gender glitch that undermines the rigid guarantees of the patriarchal order maintaining capitalism. Punishment follows.

The second chapter is my favourite, and considers the relationship between transfeminine life and sex work. I posted a concluding excerpt but the thrust of the chapter is this: that the relegation of so many trans women and trans-feminized people to sex work, while accompanied by the derogation and degradation that is associated with sex work, is not itself the mere result of that degradation inflicted upon the subject. In other words, it is not out of pure helplessness and abjection that so many trans-feminized people are involved in sex work. Rather, sex work is a deliberate and calculated choice made by many trans-feminized people in increasingly service-based economies that present limited, often peripheralized, feminized, and/or reproductive, options for paid labour. Paired with a pretty bit of critical confabulation about the histories of Black trans-feminized people travelling the US in the 19th century, I think this made for great reading.

In her third chapter, JGP narrativizes the 20th century relationship between the "gay" and "trans" movements in north america—scare quoted precisely because the two went hand-in-hand for much of their history. She emphasizes this connection, not merely an embedding of one community within another but the tangled mutualism of experiences and subjectivities that co-constituted one another, though not without tension. Then came the liberal capture of the gay rights movement around the 70s, which brought about the famous clashes between the radicalisms of Silvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson (neither of whom, JGP notes, ever described themselves as trans women) and the institutions of gay liberalism that desired subsumption into the folds of capital. This is a "remember your history" type of chapter, and well-put.

I think JGP is correct to insist, in her introduction, on the globalizing-in-a-destructive-sense effects of the colonial export of trans womanhood. It is, after all, an identity conceived only mid-century to make sense of the medicalized trans subject; and "gender identity" itself (as JGP describes in Histories of the Transgender Child) is a psychomedical concept conceived to rein in the epistemic instability of trans existence. This is critical to keep in mind! But I also think JGP makes a few mistakes, and one of them has to do with this point.

In her first chapter, under the discussion of trans misogyny in colonial India, JGP of course uses the example of the hijra. Unfortunately, she commits two fundamental errors in her use: she mythologizes, however ambiguously, the "ascetic" lives of hijra prior to the arrival of British colonialism; and she says "it's important to say that hijras were not then—and are not today—transgender". In the first place, the reference to the "ascetism" of hijra life prior to the violence of colonialism is evocative of "third-gender" idealizations of primeval gender subjectivities. To put the problem simply: it's well and good to describe the "ritual" roles of gendered subjects people might try to construe contemporarily as "trans women", the priestesses and oracles and divinities of yore. But it is best not to do so too loftily. Being assigned to a particular form of ritualistic reproductive labour because of one's failure to be a man and inability to perform the primary reproductive labour of womanhood-proper is the very marker of the trans-feminized subject. "Ascetism" here obviates the reality that it wasn't all peachy before (I recommend reading Romancing the Transgender Native on this one). Meanwhile, in the after, it is just wrong that hijra are universally not transgender. Many organize specifically under the banners of transfeminism. It's a shame that JGP insists on keeping the trans-feminized life of hijra so firmly demarcated from what she herself acknowledges is globalized transness.

My second big complaint with the book is JGP's slip into a trap I have complained about many times: the equivocation of transfemininity with femininity (do you see why I'm not fond of being described as "transfem"?). She diagnoses the root of transmisogyny as a reaction to the femininity of trans women and other trans-feminized subjects. In this respect she explicitly subscribes to a form of mujerísima, and of the trans-feminized subject as "the most feminine" and (equivalent, as far as she's concerned) "the most woman". Moreover, she locates transfeminist liberation in a singular embrace of mujerísima as descriptive of trans-feminized subjectivity. As I've discussed previously, I think this is a misdiagnosis. Feminization is, of course, something that is done to people; it is certainly the case that the trans-feminized subject is in this way feminized for perceived gender-failure. This subject may simultaneously embrace feminized ways of being for all sorts of reasons. In both cases I think the feminization follows from, rather than precedes, the trans misogyny and trans-feminization, and there is a fair bit of masculinization as de-gendering at play too, to say nothing of the deliberate embrace of masculinity by "trans-feminized" subjects. Masculinity and femininity are already technologies of gender normalization—they are applied against gender deviation and adapted to by the gender deviant. The deviation happens first, in the failure to adhere to the expectations of gender assignment, and I don't think these expectations can be summarized by either masculinity or femininity alone. I think JGP is effectively describing the experience of many trans-feminized people, but I do not think what she presents can be the universalized locus of trans liberation she seems to want it to be.

Now for a pettier complaint that I've made before, but one that I think surfaces JGP's academic context. In her introduction she says:

In truth, everyone is implicated in and shaped by trans misogyny. There is no one who is purely affected by it to the point of living in a state of total victimization, just as there is no one who lives entirely exempt from its machinations. There is no perfect language to be discovered, or invented, to solve the problem of trans misogyny by labeling its proper perpetrator and victim.

Agreed that "there is no perfect language to be discovered"! But JGP is clearly critical of TMA/TME language here. Strange, then, that less than ten pages later she says this:

this book adds the phrase trans-feminized to describe what happens to groups subjected to trans misogyny though they did not, or still do not, wish to be known as transgender women.

So JGP believes it is coherent to talk about "groups subjected to trans misogyny", which she thinks consists of the union of trans women and what she called "trans-feminized" groups. If this is to be coherent, there must be groups not subjected to trans misogny. So we've come around to transmisogyny-subjected and not transmisogyny-subjected. Look: you cannot effectively theorize about transmisogyny without recognizing that its logic paints a particular target, and you will need to come up with a concise way of making this distinction. But JGP dismissing TMA/TME with skepticism about "perfect language" and immediately coining new language (basically TMS/not TMS) to solve the problem she un-solved by rejecting TMA/TME... it smells of a sloppy attempt to make a rhetorical point rather than theoretical rigour. It's frustrating.

I have other minor gripes, like her artificial separation of "trans women" from "nonbinary people" (cf. countless posts on here lamenting the narrow forms of existence granted TMA people if we want recognition as-such!) or her suggestion that "a politics of overcoming the gender binary" is mutually exclusive from rather than necessarily involved with struggles around "prison abolition, police violence, and sex work". Little things that give me the sense of theoretical tunnel-vision. But I don't think all this compromises the book's strengths as a work of broad historical analysis. I would simply not take every one of its claims as authoritative. Definitely give it a read if you have the chance, especially for the second and third chapters.

Amazing news!! They reached their goal of 100,000 USD! There is now a second goal of 250,000 USD! Remember, this is 373 games, assets, and comics for a minimum of 8 USD- a bundle of items which would normally be ~1,667 USD! Let's reach that second goal as quickly as we reached the first goal!

Hey everyone, please consider buying the 2024 itch.io Palestinian Relief Bundle- it's 373 games, game-making assets, tabletop roleplaying games, zines, and comics for a minimum of just 8 USD! They have a goal of 100,000 USD, and as of the time I'm writing this post, they have 8 more days to reach it.

Link will be in the reblog!

Link to the bundle

Hey everyone, please consider buying the 2024 itch.io Palestinian Relief Bundle- it's 373 games, game-making assets, tabletop roleplaying games, zines, and comics for a minimum of just 8 USD! They have a goal of 100,000 USD, and as of the time I'm writing this post, they have 8 more days to reach it.

Link will be in the reblog!

Hey everyone, please consider buying the 2024 itch.io Palestinian Relief Bundle- it's 373 games, game-making assets, tabletop roleplaying games, zines, and comics for a minimum of just 8 USD! They have a goal of 100,000 USD, and as of the time I'm writing this post, they have 8 more days to reach it.

Link will be in the reblog!

do people even know the extent of sanctions on the iranian people? my mom's family can't afford fruit anymore. it's a state of psychological warfare; literally nobody living there has any sort of hope for the future. added sanctions from the EU are going to destroy the lives of 87 million innocent people

if i were gru and i was about to steal the moon and i looked across the lake and i saw my ex boyfriend Dr. eggman pointing a lazer and saying he was going to piss on the moon. id kill myself infront of all my minions

you know willburt wonka is doing some Yandere GF Colonizes You [ASMR] to those oompa loompas

the stuff going on at columbia campus rn is genuinely incredible

Israeli soldiers are conducting a series of invasive operations across the West Bank, abducting numerous Palestinians, killing and injuring civillians, and engaging in destructive raids on homes and Palestinian property.

This is what happened today (April 18) in the West Bank:

At dawn - Israeli soldiers launched a widespread operation in various parts of the occupied West Bank, breaking into homes, damaging Palestinian properties, and detaining at least 26 Palestinians, including two young women.

At day - The aggression continued as soldiers proceeded to assault Adli Rayyes and his son, Hashem, resulting in various injuries to both of them. Palestinian medics had to transport them to Jericho governmental hospital for treatment.

Afternoon - The Israeli Occupation Forces moved to the central West Bank where they entered the town Deir Ballout (west of Salfit city). There, they confiscated a telecommunications car that was being used for repair and maintenance work.

Evening - Dozens of Israeli soldiers invaded the Ein Al-Sultan refugee camp (north of Jericho). They stormed and ransacked homes within the camp and abducted a young man named Nayef Abu Dahouk, taking him to an unknown destination. At the same time an Israeli military jeep rammed into a young Palestinian woman in Jenin (northern West Bank). She was taken to the Jenin governmental hospital, and is currently suffering from fractures and severe bruising.

The Palestinian Detainees Committee reports that over 40 Palestinians were abducted by Israeli soldiers TODAY alone, from various parts of the West Bank, with a concentration of these abductions occurring in Nablus, followed by operations in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jericho, Hebron, and Jerusalem.

Two homes belonging to Mohammad and Ahmad Zeidat, who have been kidnapped since January, in the town Bani Naim (near Hebron) were also demolished.

Over 8,310 Palestinians have been abducted by the Israeli Occupation Forces since October 7, 2023.

(Source: IMEMC News, International Middle East Media Center)