Mm. Read something about the ethics of what gets depicted in media, and it's not the worst take ever but I think it's still a little off. Or at least, it's not really how I see things.

My basic perspective is exposure to ideas is always good, and the answer to exposure to bad ideas is exposure to better ideas.

(Maybe not for very young children, I don't know, maybe three year olds are more likely to punch someone if they see a movie with someone punching someone, I don't know enough about early childhood development etc. I will concede that if young children hear slurs, they will probably repeat those slurs.)

By the time someone is a teenager, and certainly when they're an adult, exposure to sex stuff in general or weird sex stuff is not going to be harmful if they have the ability to avoid it if it's too much for them. Plus a lot of times teens find a way to look at porn whether they are allowed to or not. The answer to degrading porn or porn where strangers fuck without condoms or whatever isn't making sure impressionable young people never see it. It's the same thing as the answer to Disney romances where the heroine marries the prince immediately after meeting him, you expose people to other narratives and other information. Safer sex information. Ideas about getting to know someone for a while before marrying them. Ideas about consent.

I personally have a grudge against It's Cold Outside, for personal reasons that I've gotten into previously, but I don't think people literally rape other people because of a song. If someone gets exposed to a lot of ideas about how it's normal for women to say they don't want sex when they do want sex, and/or ideas that women never want sex and it only ever happens by men tricking or forcing women into it, but also gets exposed to a lot of ideas about consent being important and sexual violence being harmful and direct communication and what women want out of sex when they do want it and what gives them reservations when they kinda want it but aren't sure -- chances are that person is going to end up OK.

Just like how, for instance, someone might get exposed to "Indians" in the most stereotypical way possible in stories like Peter Pan and horribly sanitized Thanksgiving stories, and grow up to support Land Back after getting exposed to enough other concepts. And lot of other people might not get quite to Land Back but will at least know better than to dress up as an "Indian" for Halloween. It's not about 100% avoiding the shitty ideas and the harmful stereotypes, it's having something to counter them.

I kinda liked older stories growing up, and a lot of the older stories had stereotypical gender stuff, with girls aspiring to be mothers over any professional ambitions and whatnot, and that was never really going to have that much of an effect on me because I lived in a world where all the mothers I knew also worked. And all the adults who asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up assumed I was going to work. It wasn't even necessarily a feminism thing, it was just how the world was. Houswives weren't real in an immediate way that was relevant to my life any more than kings and knights were.

And here is another concept. What is in your control, what is not in your control. What a stranger writes: not in your control. What you write, what you read, what you recommend: in your control. When it's professional media, what you spend money on directly or indirectly (paying for a streaming service and watching a show, checking out a book from a library) is in your control, what other people spend money on is not.

I do not have the power to stop everybody in the world from buying Harry Potter stuff. I just don't. So once I stop spending money on Harry Potter stuff myself, that's pretty much the end of the line for me as far as what I can reasonably do about JKR's horrible transmisogyny and whatever term you'll tolerate to describe when people descrive adult trans men as "girls" and argue that they shouldn't be able to decide what to do with their own bodies. I can talk about it with people who aren't already thoroughly saturated in understanding the problem. And that's it. That's all. Done. Trying to go harder is not going to do much. Sometimes it doesn't actually matter how substantial the problem is, there's still limits to what one person can reasonably do about it. And I hate that tumblr has a much stronger culture of tearing down the people we hate than lifting up the people we love.

i’m always 2 exhausted even by thinkng about it to even begin discussing At Length what’s So Exhausting About Billions’es Handling Of Their Trans Character (which is way way better than it could be) but like, some of the main points of it are

taylor can outright say that they’re nonbinary One Time, but otherwise their gender can only be Made Relevant via other people misgendering them and/or by being transphobic towards them, and this happens like. loads of times. and sometimes in ways that feel a touch excessive / kind of indulgent in reminding us like haha don’t forget this character Is Seen As ___ by people and their body and presentation is a matter of Fascination for cis audiences, but not necessarily respected, and we can see the character navigate this but they won’t discuss it at length b/c why would any trans person Want to talk about being trans OR have another trans person in their life to talk to, cuz what are the odds of That. 

in relation to that last point: taylor can’t talk about their Not Cis experiences / reality, or even hardly mention it directly / by name, but the show can keep writing them as reaching out to random useless cis people in their life when these cis people are having some kind of super particular individual problem, and taylor laying out some really REALLY watered-down, vague, indirect version of their being trans as a way to show they Relate to whatever dumbass situation this awful cishet person has gotten themself into. being in some kind of frustrating situation? feeling alienated or isolated or undermined or misunderstood or judged? well i guess you’re experiencing a tiny bit of the trans existence! except you are not. and like, of Course a character would look like an asshole if they were like “boy taylor, now that i’ve had a rough week due to some really dumb problem, i think i understand what it must be like for you to be nonbinary!!!” but it’s fine if Taylor Chooses To Relate Their Transness to whatever some cishet loser is dealing with. no, being #outed as i-do-bdsm is nothing like being an out lgbtq individual. and like all these people in taylor’s sphere are nightmare people who don’t deserve their sympathy in the first place but that’s another gripe lmfao

can’t believe that was the “brief overview” version lmao but anyways, i was thinking about another weird and kinda frustrating thing that someone brought up on twitter

well actually it was kinda what two people were talking about on twitter, and the first thing was how like, yknow in a show like this where the ppl focus of the series (supposed to be axe and chuck i guess like eugh can you even imagine) are Supposed To Be Assholes? it’s always like, how those main chars in “prestige drama” are generally men who are *meant* to be seen as shitty and probably dumbasses, and yet like, there’s an inherent Sympathetic Treatment in focusing on them and in having their godawful exploits drive a lot of the plot and action and suspense and etc, and it’s not exactly enough to just say like “oh but you’re suppoooosed to Know that they suck”

but the second thing was how in “Prestige Drama” Tv With Shitty Protagonists, there has this tendency to have the crappy usually-cishet-white-abled-men main chars be like, not ever really display any “””especial””” level of bigotry?? saying something how like, any big -isms or -phobias seems to be reserved for the “”””real”””” bad guys. and that kinda ties in a bit i think with how, even if there’s the “well they’re supposed to seem unsympathetic” justification, they’re still........not really supposed to seem too unsympathetic. and it’s not that anyone would ever think it’s ~realistic~ for a nonbinary person to be in the world of High Finance and be able to announce their pronouns and have their identity for-the-most-part respected by everyone right off the bat, and i sure don’t want billions to be going for that ~realism~ on this one thing (especially when it doesn’t exactly try to strictly hold itself to Realism in plenty of other regards) and have taylor dealing with constant misgendering and likely no one with authority consistently watching out for them in this manner and people telling shitty jokes behind their back and etc etc etc which might be more ~realistic~ but please don’t.........

but at the same time it’s awfully convenient that apparently everyone at axe cap is such a committed Trans Ally that even when taylor defects by the end of s3 and everyone is like “booo hiss we hate taylor” they all feel free to disrespect taylor in pretty much any way Except for showing any signs of transphobia, ever. very nice that none of these characters have to bear the burden of being labeled A Real Jerk for insulting taylor on the grounds of their being trans (other insults are fine). like the guy on twitter said, bigotry is only for the Really real bad guys who really only need to be one-dimensional or in the background or otherwise not given that much attention.

like it exasperated me So much when there was some scene with axe and wags and wendy (like, scream. already i’m in hell. for gods sake) where wendy’s getting the green light to try to sabotage taylor’s relationship with their dad (to.....destabilize their fund?? just kinda bum them out, possibly??? it seems to be the latter 9_9 ) and axe is like “yeah fuck it, go for it, grrrr i hate taylor >:| “ and wendy says something in which she then Pauses and adds a footnote to her sentence, in which she clarifies that by “them,” she is referring to taylor, not taylor and [someone else she’d mentioned in the same sentence]. it’s just exhausting, ugh. like, yeah yeah believe me everyone who uses singular They pronouns knows allll about how oh no, there’s the chance for Ambiguity now!!! we never have that problem with other pronouns ever!!! and it means we deserve to force people to pick He or She! and it’s just like, ugh. yeah thank you for reminding us that these three bastards who are currently plotting how to permanently destroy a familial relationship of tay’s are nevertheless being sure to Respect Their Pronouns while doing so!!! not that they *shouldn’t* but like, as fucking though. and it’s just so......fucking unnecessary ugh. you don’t have to awkwardly make sure to point out you were using ~the singular They~ right then just as this clunky reminder that oh i’m not Transphobic @ them tho........like shut up thanks so much. i would like for taylor to never have to interact with wendy again, but god knows im sure that wish won’t come true. like, you didn’t have to clarify in the first place. and it’s so nice that all these nightmare individuals are such committed #allies. ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

My muse is:   canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless /

Is your character popular in the fandom?  YES / NO.

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK.

Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK.

Are they underrated?  YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main character?  YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG.

Are they widely known in their world?  YES / NO.

How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL.

How strictly do you follow canon?  — I’d like to think I follow canon fairly decently in regards to Giselle’s powers but then again there really isn’t much to follow. So we’ll go with a shaky ‘ehhhh’.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.  —  She’s one of the most objectively fucked up Sternritter. Her powers completely spit in the face of everything the Soul Reapers try to abide by and their cycle of life and reincarnation by basically crushing it under her heel and refusing to allow the process of death to run its course. She’s also just such a cheery and utterly irredeemable villain which is so refreshing sometimes. None of that brooding ‘woe is me my powers and situation makes me so sad’ no no no, she is here to FUCK shit up for everyone and laugh while doing it. Also the whole idea of forcing someone to fight against their will is just so supremely fucked up but always interesting to see in action. She could have singlehandedly turned the tides of the Quincy invasion if she got her hands blood on the right people and that’s a terrifying though. Also a lot of her motif and powers link closely to the sort of biblical fucked up imagery of angels that you can see in novels like Paradise Lost or Dantes Inferno or the Old Testament, that just themeatic attitude of like show no mercy even to the weak and how morals are meaningless in the face of war and if you’re doing everything in the service of god then even the most fucked up actions can be justified, so if like me, you’re a huge nerd for that shit, she is PERFECT.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).  —  She’s one of the most objectively fucked up Sternritter. She’s annoyingly over powered in the sense that she just doesn’t die, which can really be a sticking point for some people because it just seems like there’s no threat present when she’s around. I also don’t blame anyone for being disinterested with her portrayal and character as it is in the manga since her whole identity seems to just be a shitty allusion to predatory lesbian trope and god awful transphobic jokes, so seeing those it can be easy to think that’s all there is to her character and not even want to entertain everything else she has to offer. Also the way that she treats Bambi, turns even my stomach, so I absolutely do not blame anyone who might want no interest in any of that and the implication of those scenes.

What inspired you to rp your muse?  —  (Kaiman lol) She was one of the femritters I naturally gravitated towards because of her fight with Mayuri and I fucking hate Mayuri soooo, queen rights! Also I just love characters who can like puppeteer and control others against their will, there’s something so really interesting about that power in fiction and it always gives way to tons of angst and sadness which is absolutely my shit. I also had a ton of issues with the way that Kubo presented her in canon, especially in regards to her trans identity and I kept obsessing over that and wanted to kinda push away from all those shitty moments and try to focus more on her powers and attitude as a young Quincy who was eager to join a war and murder her way up the ranks. 

What keeps your inspiration going?  —  My love for evil women. But you know, mainly music and goth aesthetic posts. Also other pieces of gothic literature and undead monster lore and mythos. If there’s a will and way, I will always find a way to bring it back to Giselle.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO.

Do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO.

Do you sometimes write drabbles?  YES / NO.

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day?  YES / NO.

Are you confident in your portrayal?   YES / NO.

Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO

Are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO.

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?  —  Haven’t gotten any yet but I am always open to it. I know there’s a ton of choices I’ve made in my portrayal that are open to heavy scrutiny, like making her very young contrasted against the other Sternritters, making her a serial killer, making her a self declared man eater etc etc. Even though my main goal with rp is to just have fun, I’d never want to do so at the expense and well being of others, so if anyone has some serious critiques to make about Giselle or to say that she’s making them feel uncomfortable, then it’s the absolute bare minimum for me to listen and be considerate about that criticism! 

Do you like questions which help you explore your character?  —  If I say no that makes me look like a mad woman and an asshole but like GKJLASDKDJSA look its really hard to try to explore a lot of the inner depths of a character like Giselle who just joyfully takes pleasure in others suffering. Like she’s just here to kill and eat people, trying to explore the why and how and who led her into that way of thinking and informed her deeper beliefs, high key gives me a headache. Sometimes she’s just evil and a dickhead for the sake of being an evil dickhead. I have to be in a very specific headspace and mood to want to discuss in detail her attitudes and beliefs and how certain personality traits of her came to be and even when I do that, it’s not usually public. As I write with more and more people, her views and ideals begin to reveal itself in the threads and situations so I prefer to do the exploration that way via my writing and threads. I’m always open to questions which help me explore her ideals and beliefs and reckoning with her past but because I haven’t made any plans for her to really confront or express those beliefs directly yet, it’s hard for me to explain them accurately or correctly.

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?  —  Yes! I’d never declare myself as an expert on Bleach since I learn a lot of the nitty gritty details through osmosis of people who do know more than me, so if I get something wrong or a headcanon is a little bit far fetched, I’m always open to hearing the details as to why and how I can improve it. Also a lot of my headcanons are just stupid jokes so if you have one that’s funnier, then I will always love to hear it.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?  —  In my stride. I always say this Giselle is mainly just a goof so I don’t take it too personally if someone thinks I’m doing her wrong, half the time it’s just be making bad jokes about murder and maiming and cannibalism. There are about a hundred different ways to approach someone like Giselle and mine is FAR from being the most accurate or correct one.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?  —  I can certainly understand why considering her actions in canon and how brutal and cruel she was. She kinda is a figure made to be hated and disgusted by and in certain threads I do really lean into her more ‘evil’ side. So I’d never take it personally. 

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?  —  Dear god please do it. I’m dyslexic and English technically isn’t even my first language I struggle with this VERY bad. Let me know please please PLEASE.

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?   —  I think sooo? I’ve never rushed anyone for replies, I take my own sweet time to get stuck into threads and I approach any headcanons or ideas people have for Giselle with a sense of optimism and good faith! I’m always down for some silliness but I’m always cautious about how far to go with her considering that the way she acts can be triggering in some regards so I like to think I’m both pretty careful and laid back!

That’s about it, congrats for filling out!

Tagged by:  @windstormwielding cheers my dear !! Tagging: @fleshpurifies @bazzardburner @hyouketsu @oscuras and YOU!

so this is something I've been mulling over for a while now - do you reckon it'd be possible to make a version of a/b/o that isn't fundamentally transphobic, or would it reach the point of "this is so different that you might as well not call it a/b/o" before that? off the top of my head you'd have to take out all elements of g!p, mpreg, and biological essentialism, and it'd probably be possible to write a version of a/b/o with that framework, but I don't know if I'm missing anything.

a/b/o is a reactionary trope that relies on cissexism-derived biological essentialism to function. Like, that’s the engine that powers the bdsm/power dynamics, cisheteronormative breeding/family building, “dub/non-con”, etc. elements that draw people to it, and led people to create it in the first place. 

Like, my best attempt at describing a non-transphobic, non-shitty typical a/b/o adjacent fic would include:

Werewolves (let’s face it, werewolves can be really cool if written well, and there’s a lot of really good ways to write them, a lot of ways to subvert tired subtropes within the trope)

Found Family-focused family/pack building (because wolves often adopt wolves from other packs into their own, blood lineage isn’t really a thing; much like vampires being created, newly turned werewolves of any age can be considered their sire’s child; if it needs to have a pregnancy arc between two men or two women, there’s IVF/IUI, or magically/spiritually-induced pregnancies, and of course writing a fully fledged complex trans character with their own non-pregnancy arc and virtues/flaws/goals/etc. and getting relevant trans beta writers who aren't your friends to keep it on track if you’re a cis writer)

A flexible, non-binary gendered society (rather than the rigidly structured biology-is-destiny a/b/o society) that’s trans inclusive either explicitly, or implicitly if it’s a new social universe with different rules. 

If mating seasons have to exist, they’re cultural more than biological, and no biological processes that could impede or trouble a person’s ability to properly consent. 

No inherent, glorified or reified power dynamics, certainly none rooted in or fostered through biology. 

That doesn’t seem very much at all like a/b/o to me. It’s a werewolf AU, which is the reason why a/b/o was created in the first place. It wasn’t enough. It needed something more than just a supernatural bent

I’ll continue on below for a bit on some simplified functions of a/b/o, but it’s mostly just some ramblings.

-

Like, to quote the originators of the genre/trope:

I'd like to see Alpha male Jared, and Bitch male Jensen. Jensen is a snotty prude (think Lady from lady and the tramp) he may be a bitch male but he's not just going to let anybody take a go at his sweet little ass...until he meets Jared...then prudey little Jensen turns cock slut for Jared. Bonus points for J2 being OTP, Jensen was a virgin before Jared, and now that they met each other, it's for life.

...

There are three types of men, alpha males, beta males, and omega males. Alpha males are like any ordinary guy with the exception of their cocks, they work just like canines (the knot, tons of cum, strong breeders, etc) The beta male, is an ordinary guy without the special cock. Omega males are capable of child bearing and often called bitch males.

Like, I want you to look at that real close and see what’s going on in there.

This was created to be a trope where there’s a world where women, as we explicitly know them, don’t exist, but where a subgroup of men take up the functional role of the woman in the heteronormative social structure of the world. It’s also not surprising that (assumedly cis) women created and initiated the spread of this trope.

Look at the language used. This is heavily, explicitly gendered for a reason. If you’ve read much of anything about how the male gaze impacts female sexuality, you’ll know a common response is for women to position themselves out of the proverbial frame entirely, so that no part of them can explicitly exist as an object, where they can take on the role of a subject. There’s no women whose experiences will directly link to her own and her own perceptions, comfort/discomfort/etc.

However, many of these women also have been heavily affected by the male gaze and heteronormativity, and that combined with not knowing what a real gay male relationship is like, what it looks like, what experiences might be unique to it...they fill in the blanks with their own conditioning. 

And maybe seeing a lot of that toxic masculinity in media content was unsettling because of how women get treated in that content, and how they in turn might feel in those shoes. But if a MAN, even if it’s a heavily female-coded man, were to undergo that...well, it’d be easier to appreciate those tropes and dynamics they’ve been force-fed to believe were arousing, hot, desirable. Especially if they can have two hot men in it. They can enjoy that self-created taboo, bypass their own discomfort and insecurity, and project it onto a type of person different enough to suspend their disbelief and maintain that difference, even if they’re pumping that guy full of all the typical misogynistic tropes and experiences they’re not comfortable having directed towards them and other women.

In short, it’s a way to get off on heteronormative norms/tropes, using another as a vehicle in order to keep up their cognitive dissonance.

Of course, this eventually spilled out into the Het fandom (makes perfect sense, since many of the a/b/o originators and proponents were het women), and then worked its way into Femslash fandom by piggybacking on g!p in order to meet the necessary criteria for PiV sex. 

Just, in this case, you necessarily shift some of the puzzle pieces around. Trans women take the place of the “alpha”, acting as an acceptable vehicle for a toxic masculine cis man, since lesbians aren’t into men. Even if the trans woman is generally written, in nearly every way aside from part of her body, as a toxic cis man. The original a/b/o’s “Bitch Male”/Omega Male is swapped out for the  Omega Female, usually a spunkier, more in your face version outside of romantic/sexual contexts in the media content, but let’s be real here, she’s still by and large submissive when it comes down to it. 

In a world where more wlw grew up feeling predatory for their attraction to other women, for feeling sinful, for being rejected from female intimacy het women enjoyed with each other after coming out, etc., it’s pretty common for a lot of lesbians to lack initiative, not be able to read or communicate romantic/sexual cues between each other...to essentially be “useless lesbians’ as the joke goes,and to feel isolated and undesirable. 

So writing a F/F fic where some hot woman modeled in the image of some hot cis woman pursues you? Takes the initiative sexually/romantically? Doesn’t beat around the bush, but is blatant? Who can’t control her lust around you? Who can give you the perfect nuclear family you’ve been conditioned to want in order to feel value in our heteronormative world, but were told you weren’t worthy of or could never feasibly attain? Who gives you a sexual encounter you have some education in and some emotional stake in due to common conditioning of PiV sex > all else? Who can give you plausible deniability for a number of contexts due to a lack of ability to explicitly consent? etc. etc.

Like, yeah, that’s going to feel comfortable for a lot out there. That’s going to seem pretty hot/arousing. It’s a way to get off on the norms and expectations thrown on women in society, but in a way that lets them distance themselves ever so slightly from men by shifting it from text to subtext, explicit to implicit.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Here’s a few snippets from one of the most popular g!p/omegaverse femslash writers (if not the most popular) that help illustrate how/why this trope has found an audience

Why Do I Write G!P?The elephant in the room. It arouses me, but it’s also a form of self-comfort. I grew up in a very fundamentalist home. Women being with women was at first unspoken, and then derided, both by my church and at home. I felt insanely guilty for my attractions, so I developed ‘cheat codes’ to deal with it.

It was okay if the woman I had sex with in my dreams had a penis, for example. It was okay if she forced me to have sex with her. It was okay if we basically simulated heterosexual sex.

Because of my childhood (which included conversion therapy), I found myself falling into heterosexual roleplay patterns, at least sexually. It was a lingering thing from my childhood.

It’s still there, and I know I’ll never be rid of it.

...

I associate penetration with power. You know, being steeped in sexism from an early age turned some problematic thoughts into kinky lemonade. And since I’m a femme sub, taking power away from the top by ‘penetrating’ them can ruin the mood for me. I mean, I can write power bottom scenes with the best of them, and I enjoy them, but… *shrug* if I’m going to write omegaverse or g!p, someone’s getting fucked, and it’s not the top.

There are rules to a/b/o. There are specific reasons it’s sought out, read, and created, and that’s why it’s hard to imagine a version of it without those harmful elements, because the trope requires them for the audience to be satisfied.

It’s why all gay male a/b/o fits a pretty specific pattern. it’s why femslash a/b/o fits a very specific pattern. There’s nearly no deviation as a rule, because there are so many parts that have to be in play and functioning in a specific way in order to get the desired result. 

I could go on for hours about this, and the above is all a pretty damn simplified take of what’s going on in a/b/o for it to exist in the way it does and meet the needs of the audience, and I’ve already written a lot about this in the past, so I’ll try to cut it short here.

I’m so tired of Centerists

LE SIGH I am exhausted.  As a liberal, it is not easy trying to get equal rights and treatment for those not as advantaged as me.  And make no mistake, despite what our many enemies will try to get you to believe, this is what our goal is.  The main difference is most of those who are disadvantaged in comparison to me have stopped being willing to give up any ground.  So they come across as hostile.  They don't want to compromise.  They want the center and the right to see the error in their ways and let them exist with the same rights.  Some also want repayment for their mistreatment.  That's fair, since one of the chief reasons that Black- and Native- American's are at a disadvantage is because of economics.   I am not an economic scholar.  I can't site the numbers and show you how slavery and the trail of tears and reservations and indentured servitude have evolved into years of conservative policies in order to further keep them at a disadvantage.   But that is what greed-based capitalism does; it takes advantage of the less fortunate in order to profit.   So while I can understand being challenged by the left, to attack them feels like you aren't really trying.   And the Center is this group of people who keep spouting on about compromise, but they are only ever trying to compromise with the right.  Typically these Centerists are concerned about things that directly themselves.  As traditionally White, mostly affluent, often male folks.   They often will typically defend social freedoms to an extent.  The extent is key because they will only defend it until it directly impedes their life or they are expected to do anything. I.e. they are all for equal rights for women, except when it means that they get called on their bullshit when they make a shitty joke.  If they start dating a right wing person, suddenly their slack for the left is gone.  If a demand of the left would start impeding their personal lives, they will step away from defending the left.   The center are the ones who are quick to say it's just politics. They are the ones who defend the rights right to fight against civil rights by attacking them through fiscal means.   But what really is starting to bother me is just how much they don't like to be identified that as being the Center.  This is because they are like Laci Green and are too busy trying to pretend they are left-wing in order to have an audience.  Or they are too busy being Phillip DeFranco and pretending they have an impartial edge.  Or they are Colin Moriarty who just hates fucking labels.   They are the kind of people who show their true colors when they are pushed too far.   Recently Phil was pushed too far when students at Evergreen College in Washington State rallied against a teacher for being against a push for greater diversity.  He even decided to just ignore the students and pretend like their side of the argument was that diversity trumps qualifications.  Fun fact:  The students want teachers who are qualified AND come from a diverse background to represent the students.  When clips of typical tense meetings between students and teachers, Phil railed against them as being aggressive because the teacher was white.   And not because they were aggravated in general and had a point to make. Laci Green recently decided she might be able to get a bigger audience by reaching out to the "Red Pillers" aka the Alt-Right and Centerists.  She also started dating a right wing guy, but I think that just opened the door.  But it became really telling when she put out the second video explaining that the reason she was turning against the left was she had "seen some shit".  She then complained that a supposed trans person was mean to her.  That's what set her off.  She couldn't take trans people seriously as people because one person was mean to her.  She couldn't keep siding with the left because it was starting to  hold her accountable for her actions.  She seems so fake with her "red pill status"  that it seems obvious she is desperate for an audience. Her schtick has always been white feminism, and with the majority of feminists moving away from that she has found herself in need of a new audience to feed on.   So she has to take on this new,weird audience.   As an aside, is Laci okay?  Looking at the previous videos and the Red Pill videos she looks really strung out like she is in withdrawls.  She seems to talk like she is coming down off something and in general seems rattled.  I'd say shes being forced against her will, but she is normally such a willful person that it doesn't seem likely she is trapped by addiction or abuse.  I'm not sure.  That's just wild speculation on what could just be she was tired.   I don't really want to get into Colin Moriarty.  He's an asshole who thinks his opinion matters and that no one should be accountable for things he agrees with but that no one should be responsible for taking care of the country.  He is so entitled he doesn't understand that being Fiscally Conservative means that you can't be Social Liberal.  That Fiscally Conservative creates the disparity that causes the ones who need social liberation to be further disadvantaged.  I can't stand his politics, which is annoying because he's usually a good researcher and interviewer when it comes to stuff that is not relevant to real, living people.   The fact is, that if the Center is trying to take advantage of the gullible in the right and left who don't have the conviction to stand for their morals. They are emerging as third, stealth party whose opinion is to just fuck everybody.   But the Center needs to start standing up for something.   They need to start making friends with the left and start right against the Alt-reich or they will find themselves engulfed in the same war we all want to avoid.  Do not forget, silence is violence.  If you don’t stand against injustice you are supporting it. 

Intercommunity Jargon Bargain

Our characters (in order of appearance):

metagameface :3 is @metagameface Hive is Hive 微梦 is @somnilogical Serei c: is @serinemolecule kerapace :s is @kerapace

All have given their express permission to be quoted under these names. The following is a complete transcript of the discourse. Enjoy :3

metagameface :3 - 昨天晚上9點01分 Like, having a term for women with penises, is making it more of a category than it probably needs to be, because the contexts in which you need to specifically talk about women with penises are few, compared the the contexts in which you need to talk about women, or talk about people with penises. Hive - 昨天晚上9點07分 Something tells us any such term would be worn out in seconds on the euphemism treadmill. metagameface :3 - 昨天晚上9點10分 Right, but my point is that the desire to have a term seems suspect, because why are you singling out women with penises to the point that you need a quicker way to refer to them as a group? 微梦 - 昨天晚上9點18分 because futa are hot and sex is important to people? Hive - 昨天晚上9點21分 Considering all the trans people we know irl experience a good deal of like, discomfort and distress w/r/t their genitals, putting them in a group that defines them specifically by genitals seems really shitty. 微梦 - 昨天晚上9點25分 yeah different people have different needs and the needs of pervs is outweighed by the needs of innocent victims. IDK this is probably not a thing to say in public with people who are not your friends. Arguing over which priors to use for generic [member of class] isn't fun. metagameface :3 - 昨天晚上9點28分 nods 微梦 - 昨天晚上9點28分 Just like give a survey or something maybe. Hive - 昨天晚上9點33分 We think that's just it though Somni, at least from our experience, like, trans men for instance, don't want to be in the set of [trans men] they want to be in the set of [men]. They don't want to be treated like a special case distinct from the generic [men] set.  Most people don't transition from like, male to transgender, they transition from male to female. 微梦 - 昨天晚上9點43分 Not all trans people want to assimilate into social structures for the gender they transition to, but for ~90% probably. Trans people, however aren't the only morally relevant agents involved here. The people who creep and perv on trans people (including pervs who are trans) also have experiences and emotions. And being able to talk about what you like is important for them emotionally. When interacting with trans people who are not a part of their subculture using the distinction is probably a net negative utility wise. I see not problem with these people having and using terms with these distinctions within their own subculture. And I think this is a ~motte and bailey. A bit here or something. The conversation started vague and now I am talking about specific solutions. So we should probably refresh and update when these things happen to see if we still disagree. I disagree with you if you say that a distinction between [girls] and [girls] with dicks is a net negative for the world. Serei c: - 昨天晚上9點46分 @metagameface :3, having a term for women with penises is quite relevant when you're, like looking for porn of women with penises which is the context in which this was brought up 微梦 - 昨天晚上9點48分 ^ Serei c: - 昨天晚上9點49分 also futas are different from women with penises, or at least the Japanese term 'futa' is 微梦 - 昨天晚上9點49分 eh yes but also it gets applied to trans girls people have arguments about this on like 4chan metagameface :3 - 昨天晚上9點50分 @Serei c: Ah, I missed that context 微梦 - 昨天晚上9點50分 Okay I mean grrr maybe I am being 2edgy but this is What Somni Actually Believes. And I may be being more forceful on this point because it brings up a rhetorical thing that has been annoying me for a while I both want to reject the point and the technique. Which is gerrymandering morally relevant agents to make your proposal come up with positive net utility. I think this is done when there aren't separate stages for expressing your needs and collectively trying to figure out what is best for the benefit of every agent who is affected by the choice. ~ And people present what they need and their concerns as a "plan that helps everyone" because they don't want what they care about left out of consideration. Instead of what should be protocol which is everyone stating what they want and are sensitive to and then discussing the situation and then brainstorming a solution. In discrete steps. Hive - 昨天晚上9點55分 Something something Moloch kerapace :s - 昨天晚上9點56分 I mean, I think we already have different terms (non-offensive ones, even) for people and pornography, and I think that's probably as close as we're going to get to a nice compromise one can talk about people, the other can be used to talk about people's sexual preferences Hive - 昨天晚上9點57分 Isn't that literal objectification though? 微梦 - 昨天晚上10點00分 But yeah if your plan makes excuses for omitting a class of people because they are serial killers or unintelligent or have a different political philosophy or have money or just leaves them out of consideration entirely, it is probably because including these people makes figuring out a solution that benefits everyone is a hard problem and the planners do not want to cede power because ceding power is painful and might give their ground fewer nice things. When you measure the goodness of a plan ideally you estimate what it does to all morally relevant agents (not non-computing rocks etc.) who are affected by the change and see how to fit everyone's needs together. When making a choice the chooser should desperately want to live in a world where every hair is numbered and every grain of sand. Hive - 昨天晚上10點07分 Unless you can actually do that math and show the positive effects outway the negatives then all of that is just talk though. 微梦 - 昨天晚上10點13分 It is talk which gives us the heuristics that of you omit a class of people affected by the thing from your considerations, you cannot knowingly converge on the correct answer even if you have all the exact numbers. Hive - 昨天晚上10點15分 Okay sure but in that case Chesterton's Fence. 微梦 - 昨天晚上10點16分 It is strictly worse for working out a solution that actually works for all parties if just drop a class of people from consideration. Unless information about them is smuggled in through other avenues. Hive - 昨天晚上10點17分 Okay like, fine, we're not saying 'ignore perverts values' or anything. As a pervert ourselves that would directly effect us. But like, show us the math. kerapace :s - 昨天晚上10點17分 somni I am very confused at what you are saying 微梦 - 昨天晚上10點21分 If "Chesterson's fence" points to the argument I think it does, then I don't think it is even applicable. I know why people are dropped from consideration and I have seen it cause dysfunction and failed plans. I am not saying "why are perverts not being taken into consideration here it seems like and arbitrary hold over from barbaric times". I am saying that omitting people from consideration causes specific harm and is done because people don't want their group to be shafted at the negotiating table so they draw the line around who matters such that there is little uncertainty over whether they will "win" the resources. @kerapace :s Then I shall dispel your confusion! A questioning technique from debates in the middle ages: Can you write out what you think I am saying so far and what part is the Region of Confusion? kerapace :s - 昨天晚上10點27分 so you're saying that the feelings of people who are attracted to trans people need to be taken into account when making the calculus of what language people use when talking about their gender and genitalia 微梦 - 昨天晚上10點38分 @Hive :3 There is a reason people use mathematical models for things that are messy and hard to quantify and this is because they are kind of useful. Thinking about things in terms of utilitarianism even though the numbers are hard to locate instead of just doing what just feels right on an intuitive level at least prevents people from donating to things like the Make A Wish Foundation. Which is clearly not effective at all according to pretty much any metric of charity evaluation that cares for maximizing happiness per a dollar. But the thing is a lot of people don't even think of evaluating this class of things in a considered way as a thing that is done. So even though many of the people who are donating to EA things aren't actually doing any math they still do better than people who use no framework at all and wing it 100% on impulses like guilt or desire to help cute kids. Even if they have only rough numbers, using the model that dominates intuitions under perfect information out performs the the intuitions when both processes are given approximately correct information. There are times when over analysis harms people and the intuitive processes of the brain dominate because they are more efficient than formalized processes using imperfect information as inputs. But I do not think [neglecting to include members of a class of people who are not you in a choice of who should get what resources is a time when intuitive biases do better at locating solutions that are good for all parties] is one of the situations that is easier to reason about when given over to human intuition. @kerapace :s This is correct! Hive - 昨天晚上10點47分 Fine, but we're arguing that in such a situation, doing nothing is a better option then messing with the status quo and adding words to the language that might be harmful. We're arguing for the status quo, unless you can actually do the math that shows that changing the language the way you're proposing will do more good for people attracted to trans people, then it will do harm to trans people (who are already disproportionately marginalized already). Unless you can actually show us the data on that, we're not going to find your argument particularly compelling. Chesterton's fence! basically. 微梦 - 昨天晚上11點02分 Ah! I kind of agree with you there! I think the current direction of word use is good and words shouldn't be regulated and communities of people perving on trans girls should be allowed to use whatever words they want in their own communities. However the phrase "maintain the status quo" is weird and like "act natural". I mean what actions do and do not maintain it how do we measure the difference between how we would act with no agreement. etc. What if without being told to maintain the status quo someone goes out and says that all trans girls are traps and gay. Is that maintaining the status quo or not? Assume that none of us did anything and in fact were locked in a room away from the rest of the world. (Although that would be changing the status quo.) I'm not you, but I think that maintaining the status quo in this case would call you to make a positive action to tell the person saying that to stop advocating for this or to write letters about why they were wrong because they were doing was changing the status quo. If by maintaining the status quo you mean let the communities hash it out between each other with good negotiation norms where everyone's concerns and needs are heard and navigated around so that they fit together in a positive sum way, then we agree on this!

Hive - 昨天晚上11點06分 Realistically communities aren't going to neatly hash it out between each other in every case. Within communities definitely, smaller ones specially, but yes.

微梦 - 昨天晚上11點37分 Yay! Our views have contracted together!