I think the victim complex so many leftists have comes from the villification of privilege. If you are not oppressed then you are inherently the oppressor, and no matter how much you help and support you'll never be as justified as the people suffering more than you. If you have not been wronged that makes you the one in the wrong. And you must atone.

I'm sorry, but actually I'm not over that comment whining about how several of the JVP ritual, uh, practices and bastardization of Judaism are being excluded and how we can't police people's identities.

Actually yes we absolutely can.

[Rant incoming]

Listen, I hate exclusion, alright? Inclusion is always the answer when it comes to people knowing who they are. Every obnoxious identity policing thing in the queer community that has divided us and ripped apart communities has been cruel, counterproductive, given platform to bigots, a distraction from the real issues bearing down on us, and honestly just dumb as a box of rocks. Okay? Okay.

But Jewish identity works differently, because it isn't about YOU. Becoming Jewish is about taking on Jewish culture and religion, a closed ethnoreligious culture, through the narrow path consented to by the collective Jewish people. There IS a path, but it is a highly supervised one. Otherwise it's just appropriation and cultural theft; something Jews have been subjected to for millennia. And if you do legitimately convert you do so because you love the Jewish people - the whole Jewish people - and want passionately to be a Jew for its own sake. You want to join our nation-tribe. You want to join our family.

And the crazy thing to me, the thing that still blows my mind, is that this is allowed! Even after millennia of appropriation, oppression, violence, expulsions, and genocides, Am Yisrael still accepts genuine gerim. It would be so understandable if they had closed the path entirely and tried to shut out outsiders who might bring in danger on their heels even if they themselves were not dangerous.

But they didn't. We didn't. To me this is a miracle, a blessing, and sign of true faith and hope. It is a privilege to be here.

Yet in the same turn, you gotta respect the process! You can't just declare yourself a Jew simply because you feel like it — it doesn't work like that. You can't just declare yourself an Argentinian one morning either without becoming a citizen first, even if you have Argentinian ancestry. And sure, if you do have some of that ancestry, you are connected to the nation, but that's different from being given a vote y'know?

Using a totally unsupervised, totally unsanctioned, brand-new neo-pagan ritual to unilaterally declare your membership in a tribe does not make you one of us. If anything, it proves why you never will be.

Now! Let's assume for a moment that we are referring only to the provably halachic Jews whose connection and backgrounds are beyond reasonable questioning.

You can never really leave the tribe, but you absolutely can apostasize. Plenty of Jews do it. There are plenty of Jews who find that Judaism is not spiritually fulfilling for them but something else is, and they convert out. There are halachic Jews who have walked away from Judaism in order to practice any other number of religions: Christianity, Islam, Neo-paganism, Hinduism, etc.

That is their prerogative, but by doing so they turn away from their people in a serious way and cannot be said to be practicing Judaism. There is of course room for many different types of Jewish practice, but conversely, there are practices that are too far removed from Judaism to meaningfully be considered as such. Otherwise, it's no longer a coherent group identity. And because Judaism is a collective identity, that actually matters.

The Jews as a people have decided that worshipping gods that are not Hashem is not within the realm of Judaism, which is why messianic "Jews" are not practicing a valid form of Judaism even if they are halachicly Jewish and/or have Jewish ancestry. Worshipping Jesus makes you a Christian or at least adjacent. That is a hard boundary.

And yeah — if you change the basic meaning of holidays, if you bring in lots of practices that are brand new and have no halachic or even historical basis, are often highly individualistic, and would not be accepted as Judaism by the vast majority of Jews, then it absolutely falls outside it. If I started practicing a religion that made little icons of Muhammad to pray to once a day and celebrated my ingenuity with pork roast and a nice glass of wine, I don't get to say that I'm practicing Islam.

These people are doing the Jewish equivalent. It is something else entirely. Especially because so many of these practices spit in the face of major tenets of Judaism and go against Jewish values.

To treat it otherwise is to treat it as an absolutely meaningless aesthetic rather than a living breathing ethnoreligious tribe of people who get to decide our own community's boundaries and practices collectively.

And for the naysayers who still disrespect Judaism and Jewish identity and peoplehood so much that they think that they get to define Judaism more than actual rabbis? Look, we can't physically stop you from calling yourself Jewish, but by the same turn, YOU can't force US to recognize you as one of us. You can be mad, but that's the thing about group cultural identities — that cultural group gets to decide whether they claim you or not.

[To be clear: this is not about politics — there are plenty of Jewish non-Zionists and anti-Zionists who are 100% Jewish. This is about this one specific shitty organization and this particular type of behavior.]

The rise in popularity of single childfree women should signal that we need to start preparing. I've spoken about this before but want to address a common concern of safety regarding maIe retaliation. At this point some women may think they'll be safer trying to get a maIe but the statistics show otherwise. There's a reason women fought for rights in the first place, we all know that maIes as a collective are horrible beings. If maIes were pleasant to be around & reproduce with, they wouldn't need to force women into it.

Now I dont have all the answers in terms of what to do in the face of maIe retaliation but where to start:

1 - Move in silence. MaIes dont need to know our every move. MaIes have enough power as is, them knowing our strategy on top of that wont help. Hell, play dumb sometimes. This also applies to other women, if they push marriage & kids bs be measured in your response, in the end you know your truth. At the end of the day most of these women are also aware of the danger maIes pose.

2 - Organise. This is tough, extremely tough i can't lie. For one we're scattered all over the world & people in our real lives wouldn't have the committment to this nor believe in deviating from the nuclear structure but it is something needed. Even if it's just online, find or build networks with likeminded women. I say this as a lone wolf but infrastructure & network is needed because the government will make it harder to survive alone so some would need to be able to lean on each other for support even if it's just verbal. Practice separatism as far as you can. Take up learning how to defend yourself. If you're serious about this; be prepared to break the rules at some point because playing nice & by the law wont work. These things are set up by men for men and it wont help us. I'm not saying go out there & purposefuly break the law or put yourself in harms way, just saying prepare. It sounds far out now but the current system cant be counted on, blind eyes are turned when maIes abuse women, women are punished for defending themselves under the system. Even if you dont want to go down the route of community, learn to take care of yourself & hold your own down.

3 - Stop arguing with maIes. This doesnt mean that xys are right, I say this a lot but maIes are fully aware of everything. Arguing with maIes online is a waste of time, time that can go to building for yourself or likeminded women. MaIes denying female oppression is part of the game to keep you wasting your energy on them as opposed to working on yourself. It's to keep you in their hands; doesn't matter whether you're right or not, how many statistics you throw at them, you're still biting their bait.

4 - Stack up on resources & money. If you have resources & money and the priviledge to save then start now. If/when things go downhill it wont be a snap thing but a transition so this window needs to be used to the best of our advantage. Take advantage of the privileges you have now to set yourself for the future because that could very well be gone.

I doubt we'd win tbh but I'd rather die trying than live submitting. I will mention that I know it's scary but we have to think forward. Bear in mind the system has never worked for women, some will say things like "but when women leave maIes get more violent" but there is no safety in the first place. Women are sexually harrassed & assaulted any where at any time with no protection already. Women are constantly told of all the things they should or shouldn't do to avoid maIe violence and it doesnt work anyways, maIes will continue to abuse women & girls. No amount of listening & obeying has helped women because it doesn't matter what the reason for maIe violence is, if they cant find a reason they'll create a reason because their motive is to make women suffer in addition to reproduction & having labour.

Now I know many will speak about the violence of maIe retaliation which I'll address in part 3. This is part 2 of 'the rise in single childfree women' group of posts.

Part 1

Okay I’m just going to say it: I always found the take that “Fenris and Anders’ relationship is wasted potential” kind of irritating. At least in the way most people mean when they say it: Anders and Fenris never found common ground, and that is a waste of potential

I do agree that there are some writing let-downs in their relationship, I just don't agree that the fact that they never reach a common ground is part of it.

It is true that Fenris and Anders have more in common than differences, their trauma is ultimately based in the same thing: being held and tormented against their will by an oppressive system. If you pay attention, the narrative, the characters, and Fenris and Anders themselves are aware of this. Here's a little snippet of it shown in this Legacy dialogue

The game knows they're alike. It's not that they can't see there's common ground between them. They can. The problem is: Fenris is healing, and Anders is not

I'm going to show you more banter screenshots now

Specifically of Fenris and Anders' banter with Varric, in acts 2 and 3

Just bear with me, we'll start with Fenris

Fenris and Varric in act 2

Fenris and Varric in act 3

Now Anders

Anders and Varric in act 2

Anders and Varric in act 3

There are more banters that illustrate this point but I think these four are the strongest and also I would like to go to sleep at some point tonight.

Fenris is healing from his past, if you look at his banters as a whole, you can see across all characters he gets more open, humorous, and talkative throughout all acts. Anders does the exact opposite. Anders gets more closed off, cold, and in act 3 you'll notice he rarely speaks before being spoken to unless he's following up on a previous conversation.

It makes sense, to me at least, why they never become friends. It isn't because Anders is a mage, Bethany is a mage, anti-circle, and Fenris loves her. Don't believe me? Look on the wiki or search "Bethany" on my blog and you'll find some of their interactions. They're adorable.

It's because Anders is getting worse and Fenris is getting better. That's why all their conversations are just an exhausting loop and why they never seem to connect. To me, that is the story being told here. It was never about them finding a common ground, it was about paralleling two people and one who heals from their past, and one who does not. Making them on opposite sides of the mage/templar debate is meant to emphasize this.

I do want to state that I have mixed feelings about this. While I think it's a neat idea, it does also feed the "You were hurt by a system but now your hate for it consumes you" trope which I am. Not a fan of. You can also talk about how the world itself plays into this in that Fenris can escape from Tevinter but Anders can't escape from being a mage. That's all a retrospective for another day, I'm just talking about the intent behind the relationship here.

Basically what I’m trying to say is: A story may not go in the direction you want it to but that does not make the story bad, it just makes it the story you didn’t want. That is fine, but I take some issue when people treat it as an actual fault of the story rather than a matter of taste.

Like I said, there are plenty of actual writing issues in Dragon Age 2, and I do think that there are some wasted opportunities in Fenris and Anders' relationship. My biggest problem is that it doesn't go far enough. We see Anders spiral until he hits full rock bottom and destroys the Chantry. We see Fenris... go play some cards with his buddies. I think it would've been more effective if Fenris got a little farther in his healing, namely his relationship with magic. I've said that I don't think Fenris would ever fully trust magic and I don't, but it would've been neat to at least see more progress made than is actually made in the game. This I think is the consequence of Dragon Age 2 being a first draft like David Gaider said, I think if they had more time, they could've pushed this further and made it more interesting, but I do genuinely like what's there like I genuinely like the entirity of Dragon Age 2.

Anyway, that's why in my opinion, Anders and Fenris never finding a common ground isn't a problem from a narrative perspective.

Melanie Phillips: Why Israel must win | The Brendan O'Neill Show

Melanie Phillips: Dead Israelis disturb the narrative. They upset the narrative. By which I mean that it's not just a view, it's become a kind of-- not even just a cause, it's a kind of article of faith among the progressive West that Israel was created by the Jews through Western guilt over the Holocaust, being parachuted in to a country called Palestine and uprooting the indigenous people of Palestine who've been there since time immemorial and taking over and booting them out and then oppressing the rest who remain. And who wish to expand their territory as a result.

Every single part of that is untrue. It's a lie. It's a falsehood, okay. But that is the narrative. The narrative is of oppressive Israelis and oppressed Palestinians. And therefore, because in our victim cultural world, if you are a victim and you are oppressed, you are given a moral free pass for anything that you do. Anything that you do that's bad, cannot be-- you cannot be morally responsible for it. It must be the result of what's been done to you.

So, Palestinian terrorism has been regarded as, okay we don't-- we don't approve of it, we can't bear violence but nevertheless it's resistance, it's understandable given the despair that they are in.

And conversely, anything the Israelis do as the oppressors cannot ever-- they cannot ever be victims. They cannot ever be victims; they can only be oppressors.

Suddenly one has, suddenly, people with this mindset have been faced with the appalling visual proof that the people and the cause they've supported resulted in acts of barbarism, of a kind that nobody ever thought they would see again after the Holocaust. And it's been perpetrated by people that they have broadly supported and a certainly a cause they have absolutely supported. And suddenly the cause turns into something which is genocide.

But they've been accusing Israel of genocide, which is amazing considering the population of Gaza and the Palestinian territories has increased by what, three times, four times since 1948 when Israel was created? That's some genocide. But put that to one side.

So, it's to serve the narrative and they can't have that. Now, why can't they have that? Why can't they say, okay it's a bit embarrassing to have to admit that the cause I've pinned my idealism on for the last 30 years is actually fake, but nevertheless, I have to agree, um, uh you know, uh, right.

Now, why can't they say that? And my view having been part of that way of thinking for a long time and certainly having had all my friends and colleagues as part of that way of thinking for a long time, and studied them up close, my view is that they can never say this to themselves because it's not simply a question of saying they're wrong, their belief system is based on the fact that every single thing they believe encompasses and embodies moral virtue.

They believe in the betterment of society, they believe in creating a better world, they believe in standing up for the oppressed against the oppressor, they believe in justice against Injustice, they believe in in all these wonderful things. And consequently, anybody who stands up and says anything against them, against any of these wonderful things is not only wrong but evil and has to be stamped out as basically an enemy of humanity. Now, we see this in our domestic politics, victim culture and all of that, over a range of domestic issues.

But it is absolutely part of their moral personality. What they dread more than anything else, the worst thing in the world that could happen to them, is to take a position which in their minds would make them a right-winger and therefore evil, or evil and therefore a right-winger, because all evil comes from the right and all right wingers are evil.

And consequently, faced with this situation that they saw on October the 7th unfolding in front of our horrified gaze, they are faced with the challenge in which they say to themselves, you know am I supposed to junk what I've believed? That will make me an evil right-winger. And that's so terrible to them because they think that will disintegrate their entire moral personality.

So, they're going to find a way of dealing with this. So, we hear, for example, on the one hand the silence. The silence from so-called "feminists" who have told the entire male population of the world they are intrinsically evil because they're all intrinsically potential rapists and therefore, you know, "the patriarchy" and all the rest of it you know.

Untold numbers of men are unable to have proper relationships with women because of that. All those feminists are silent. Well not perhaps all, perhaps some have come out. Silent when faced with the appalling rapes of women in that October the 7th atrocity. And the way they deal with it is by saying saying, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. Regardless of what we've all seen and heard.

So, there's those people who are silent. And then there are people who try to invert it. They say, well, I mean it was terrible, yes and of course I abhor these brutal things, but nevertheless, but, but, but...

As soon as you hear the "but," you know. The cause, the cause. And when you say to them, as I have done over decades, what are you talking about, the cause? What cause of despair? You're talking about the fact they don't have a Palestine state? They have been offered a Palestine state over and over again from the 1930s onwards. The last offer consisted of approximately 95% plus of the territory they were demanding, and their reaction has always been to refuse and to start murdering Jews again.

And when you say that to them, they say, no, no that's not true, that's not true, and they bring up a whole load of chaff, verbal chaff. In other words, their reaction is, it's not true, it's not true, I'm not believing what I'm seeing in front of my eyes even.

Because they cannot ever tolerate this idea that their moral personality was based on a monstrous inversion of morality.

I believe a woman is a human being who belongs to the sex class that produces large gametes. It’s irrelevant whether or not her gametes have ever been fertilised, whether or not she’s carried a baby to term, irrelevant if she was born with a rare difference of sexual development that makes neither of the above possible, or if she’s aged beyond being able to produce viable eggs. She is a woman and just as much a woman as the others.

I don’t believe a woman is more or less of a woman for having sex with men, women, both or not wanting sex at all. I don’t think a woman is more or less of a woman for having a buzz cut and liking suits and ties, or wearing stilettos and mini dresses, for being black, white or brown, for being six feet tall or a little person, for being kind or cruel, angry or sad, loud or retiring. She isn't more of a woman for featuring in Playboy or being a surrendered wife, nor less of a woman for designing space rockets or taking up boxing. What makes her a woman is the fact of being born in a body that, assuming nothing has gone wrong in her physical development (which, as stated above, still doesn't stop her being a woman), is geared towards producing eggs as opposed to sperm, towards bearing as opposed to begetting children, and irrespective of whether she's done either of those things, or ever wants to.

Womanhood isn't a mystical state of being, nor is it measured by how well one apes sex stereotypes. We are not the creatures either porn or the Bible tell you we are. Femaleness is not, as trans woman Andrea Chu Long wrote, ‘an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes,’ nor are we God’s afterthought, sprung from Adam’s rib.

Women are provably subject to certain experiences because of our female bodies, including different forms of oppression, depending on the cultures in which we live. When trans activists say 'I thought you didn't want to be defined by your biology,' it’s a feeble and transparent attempt at linguistic sleight of hand. Women don't want to be limited, exploited, punished, or subject to other unjust treatment because of their biology, but our being female is indeed defined by our biology. It's one material fact about us, like having freckles or disliking beetroot, neither of which are representative of our entire beings, either. Women have billions of different personalities and life stories, which have nothing to do with our bodies, although we are likely to have had experiences men don't and can't, because we belong to our sex class.

Some people feel strongly that they should have been, or wish to be seen as, the sex class into which they weren't born. Gender dysphoria is a real and very painful condition and I feel nothing but sympathy for anyone who suffers from it. I want them to be free to dress and present themselves however they like and I want them to have exactly the same rights as every other citizen regarding housing, employment and personal safety. I do not, however, believe that surgeries and cross-sex hormones literally turn a person into the opposite sex, nor do I believe in the idea that each of us has a nebulous ‘gender identity’ that may or might not match our sexed bodies. I believe the ideology that preaches those tenets has caused, and continues to cause, very real harm to vulnerable people.

I am strongly against women's and girls' rights and protections being dismantled to accommodate trans-identified men, for the very simple reason that no study has ever demonstrated that trans-identified men don't have exactly the same pattern of criminality as other men, and because, however they identify, men retain their advantages of speed and strength. In other words, I think the safety and rights of girls and women are more important than those men's desire for validation.

J.K. Rowling

Is Zoya really a YA gregverse version of Daenerys? I haven't read RoW and from what I've heard Leigh seems to have taken too much from Daenerys's story for Zoya.

well, lets just say the similarities are there and they aren't very subtle. see:

both zoya and daenerys were child brides.

both are associated with dragons.

their aliases: daenerys stormborn vs zoya stormwitch. and of course both bear the title of "dragon queen".

zoya's internal line "do not look back at me" looks like a rehashed version of dany's "if i look back i'm lost".

both become queens. though dany rises to power mostly on her own right while zoya's crown is sort of handed to her by her boyfriend.

the funniest part about all this is that lb hates daenerys but apparently isn't shy about taking inspiration from her to build her own heroine. she hates dany because she's a character that actively seeks power to achieve social justice, just like the darkling. and when dany achieves power she struggles a lot with it because things like systemic oppression and prejudice are very complex issues to deal with. these are things that can't be solved by simply putting the right person on a throne. lb introduced a very complex issue into her work but she wasn't very interested in exploring it with the nuance and care it required (and no this being YA is not an excuse. there can be depth in simplicity), so that's why she made a character like aleksander the villain. because despite zoya's comments about power meaning protection this is still the grishaverse where passivity is glorified lest the oppressed become as bad as their oppressors for daring to strike back and stand up for themselves.

I'm really fucking tired.

All I wanted was a space to obsess over a fictional man, who brought me a ton of healing, in peace.

This group has made it their mission to chase not only me away, but anyone associated with me. They called me a rape fetishizer for writing CNC fic. They called me a pedophile for making an omega Halsin headcanon. They called me a self-hating lesbian/lesbophobic for saying it's TERFy to demonize queer male sexuality. They mocked my abuse by my mom, and when called on it, laughed that I deserved it for saying how Mint's actions remind me of her sometimes. They accused me of retraumatizing myself because of the fic I wrote, when THEY were the ones who retraumatized me by causing me to have a flashback to my mom abusing me. They accused me of absolutely vile things, and today they questioned if I even was "really" abused because of the fic I wrote. They repeatedly mocked my special interests and then got offended and played victim when I said this was ableist. They've sent suicide bait to me and my friends.

They've harassed others: they harassed a bi SH fan for asking them to stop saying it was icky to ship her with men until she left the fandom, they harassed someone who made a mod to turn Scratch into Astarion so they could see the animations (even calling this person as bad as Cazador), they harassed someone for making a headcanon about Astarion dancing with Tav, they harassed a lesbian who herself headcanons Karlach as a lesbian and doesn't like Karlach/Dammon but explained why others do, they harassed my friend Mish for saying she was okay with me writing CNC, they sent suicide bait to another friend of mine and said she deserved to get raped so she would sympathize with Mint, causing her to have a mental breakdown and have to go to the hospital for 24 hours, and every time someone pushes back against them, this group weaponizes their identity by saying that person is bigoted against their identity- while ignoring (at best) the marginalized identities that person has, or at worst, furthering oppression against them (I.E. their repeated ableist comments, including one of them snarling at another user about "enjoying your grippy sock vacation")

And despite all these vile things this group of people have done, people are still believing them and sending more harassment to myself and my friends in their defense.

I'm fucking tired.

I'm tired of defending myself. I'm tired of losing people I considered friends to their lies. I'm tired of having my inbox invaded by these vile people.

They are wearing at my mental health and this already made me relapse on one of my addictive behaviors and I am fighting really hard not to do the other one. I'm tired. I loved this fandom and I loved contributing my ideas. I get so many messages from people saying I made them feel seen or made them connect to Halsin's character, and getting a message from a survivor that my posts gave them the words they were lacking for what happened to them and they were able to work through it in counseling was honestly one of the best things to ever happen to me. I really don't want to lose that. Ever. But I can't keep doing this.

I'm not bigoted to my own identity. I don't hurt people. I don't fetishize rape. I'm tired of being a broken record and not being believed because that group is so good at fragilizing themselves. I can't do it anymore.

I just wanted to share my thoughts about a fictional bear man because it made me happy and so many parts of him gave me courage. I wanted to give up cynicism like he did. I wanted to find his strength to take care of people.

But I am honestly very close to regretting ever joining this fandom. I have gained so much from it, it helped my mental health immensely, but this shit has put me in an even WORSE place mentally than i was before I joined.

I don't know what to do. I'm just tired of the way, no matter how much I epitomize "living your best life" I get treatment from these people that I honestly wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

I have a lot of painful feelings right now and I don't know what to do anymore. It just hurts and I think everyone would be better off if I'd never made this blog to begin with.

Twig Liveblog for Arc 8

good arc! of course the main downside is the absence of mary and helen (and ashton i guess) 😭 you can't split the lambs up it's like sawing a child in half!!!!!

the main thrust, for me, was seeing how lillian and sy would work as a couple--it turns out the answer is: poorly. they do NOT belong together ‼️ they are adorable though. i posted about it some but it is nice to see him happy and horny, albeit abnormally horny. that was an insane fucking scene where sy and lillian happen to catch emily and drake "in the act," it's written with such intensive detail, sort of a "primal scene" for the two. but it can only end in catastrophe. i said this in the last liveblog but it bears repeating: lillian's goal is literally to become an important figure in the institution that is oppressing, abusing, mutilating not only the lambs but like the entire civilian population. (that was another funny scene where lillian gets confronted about the atrocities of the akkkademy and she's like "erm akshually it's not as bad as you think, they were doing the best they could," like hmm where have i heard that one before 😐.) i certainly understand why they like each other, but cmon sy, GET OUT OF THERE!

i appreciated the sy/neojamie sections too. the chapter wherein neojamie reveals that there are secret codes in jamie's old notebooks was quite powerful. perhaps they could... i mean... i know there's baggage but wouldn't it be cute if they... jamie is sort of like young f!mauer if you think about it. anyway.

i find the idea of the "primordial experiments" interesting. they're dangerous, but i suppose the question remains as to whether they're dangerous in and of themselves or only dangerous because of the response from the academy they necessitate. that is to say, is it only life over which the academy can't exert control that is "dangerous"? yeah, i guess you could say i'm a mauerist. he's just so.... he's just like me fr fr (sexy).

i am also like the duke. i found his interlude fascinating: the intranobility conflict, the experience of being "superhuman," the description of the Twins (😳), and the vague threat against the lambs. it's hard to say which one he wants: my first thought was sy, due to the focus on "developing a new brain," but this could also apply to neojamie, who is after all a newer model. i'm excited to read more!!!!

I can't find it but I'm pretty sure it was you who asked someone to define womanhood outside of gender roles/oppression, vibes/mysticism, and some third thing, with the argument that in a post patriarchal world women wouldn't exist but like. I think grouping "vibe" and "mysticism" is doing a lot of work. We can consider something being, say, "goth" as a meaningful term even though I'd say it's comparably difficult to delineate what is and is not "goth". I don't think the chain of people seeing each other describe themselves as some gender and some of it resonating with them and getting internalized and remixed will ever really end so like. Yeah I think I don't think saying womanhood would continue as a vibe is comparable to the other explanations you reject

Apologies if that post wasn't from you lmao

[about this post]

The critique I was trying to make in the post that started this conversation was of people who refuse to interrogate the ways in which categories such as "race" or "gender" are historically constructed (& currently contested, recontested, mobilised, reconfigured, &c.) out of / in order to justify and naturalise power, exploitation, & violence, and who also go so far as to claim that you're doing some kind of violence (material or epistemic) by pointing out that these categories are constructed.

The conversation about whether and how gender would exist without patriarchy and gendered violence is ultimately speculation about something that will not occur within our lifetimes—I don't think it's possible for us to know what "gender" (or "womanhood") might look like at that point, & the question of whether such a concept can meaningfully be called "gender" or "womanhood" in the same way that we understand those words to-day deals heavily in, like, the ontological branch of philosophy as well as semantics and perhaps semiotics. For my purposes, because I'm trying to describe the world as it exists to-day, I define "gender" in such a way that would make the answer to that question "no"—beyond constructing that neat little semantic tautology, it's just not a question that has any bearing on organising right now, so it doesn't really interest me.

I will say, though, that people who are convinced that there must be some kind of organisation of people into different categories based on commonly-cited aspects of behaviour such as clothing, mannerisms, personal grooming, rôles and other assorted habits (or at least, organisation of those behaviours into different categories), or who cannot consider any human society without such a thing—or for people like the anon who asked the question you're referring to, who go even further in being unable to imagine a world in which some people are not categorised specifically as "women"—I would ask why that's so unthinkable.

I also think there might be a bit of myopia involved in some people's conceptions of which clothing, mannerisms, rôles &c. would be associated with which "gender" (or would be associated with "gender" at all) and why—dominant concepts of which "gender" is associated with which clothing, mannerisms (arising from which essential "natures"), jobs, whatever, is subject to shift radically and rapidly based on factors including whatever myths are most useful for power at the time (besides being subject to significant amounts of internal tension and contension even within one given place). What would sort behaviours into different categories, or pin shifting beliefs about the categories a given behaviour falls into to a concept of "gender," absent the power that drives this myth-making? What would be motivating any of these beliefs? Why should we call it "gender"?

I see the comparison to "Goth," other than the fact that it is also a category, to be beside the point—it's not a category that is in our present context coercively assigned & policed by white supremacist partriarchy, that seeks to organise people from the level of the family to the level of government along lines of violence and capitalist exploitation. It is also, compared to "gender" (even if we restrict ourselves to a modern, Western context), associated with a far more specific set of aesthetics, moods, gestures, clothing items &c.—rather than a set of aesthetics and ideas that can shift so far as to utterly reverse themselves, and yet still be conceptualised as meaningfully belonging to the same 'system', because they seek to organise and justify the same types of power (which is the situation with gender).

Here's something from my brain:

Telling transmascs they shouldn't go on T because they'll "become ugly" is still rooted in patriarchal ideals & expectations. It's why every TERF is hard to take seriously when they insist they're trying to fight sexism.

What's the ugly part? The body hair? The balding? The deepening voice? The potential for weight/muscle gain?

So, by that standard, cis women with body hair, cis women who are balding, cis women who gain weight and/or muscles, and cis women with deeper-than-average voices are, BY TERF'S OWN LOGIC, ugly.

Oh? Do you think that all women are meant to be frail? Thin? Hairless bodies? Thick head of hair? Wispy "feminine" voices? What are you trying to say about how women's bodies are supposed to be? Do you think ALL women have the same body type? The same standards of beauty? Is beauty every woman's top priority? Should it be?

You know who else freaks out about "manish" women? Basically, all the people who think women are objects to be seen & not heard. All the people who think women are their sexual playthings and little more. It's a trope throughout literature & media to paint strong, outspoken women as manish & undesirable. A trope that TERFs seem happy to exploit for their own ideals. Because if they want to prescribe womanhood onto us, they must also accept that they are unhappy with the way we are living through our womanhood, and think it's reasonable to control and legislate our bodies based on their personal belief about how women should behave & think.

Being a woman is not about how pretty you are. It isn't about what you owe to the people who would rather you shut up and be demure. And for TERFs to use these insecurities that the patriarchy instills in young girls to dissuade them from making choices for themselves is honestly a disgusting tactic.

I don't even care if you (wrongly) connect biology to gender. If someone looks at me, a trans guy with ~2 years of hormone treatments under my belt, and decides that I'm an ugly woman based on the vagina they're assuming I have and probably the tits that I definitely still have, fine. Maybe it's the nonbinary in me, but if you wanna purposefully (incorrectly) call me a woman, then that shitty decision is yours to make. Now, ask yourself.... why are you mad that a woman (by your own standards) is choosing something for her own body?

These are the same people who get mad when trans guys claim historical figures like Dr. James Barry as one of our own. There's no way to tell how he'd identify if he was using modern language to describe himself without resurrecting him and asking directly. But, in the end, whether he was a woman seeking to break through barriers of sexism or whether he was a trans man in a time before we would have called him that, he chose to live a life that is similar to the one many transmascs choose for themselves. He expressed himself in a way that is familiar to transmascs. And I have no doubt that these fucko TERFs would try to belittle and tear him down just the same as they do any of us. In fact, it was a woman who undressed him against his will after he died and exposed him as a "woman" postmortem. We can't say for sure if she'd identify as a TERF if she were using modern language to describe herself without resurrecting her and asking directly, but we can safely say that she's not the kind of person I'd like to know either way. Her mother should have taught her about consent.

If I was a woman trying to escape the patriarchy by transitioning (a common, completely stupid ass take btw since everyone who isn't at the very top of the power chain is a victim of the patriarchy (among other things)), would you mock me? Admire me? Sympathize with me? Tell me I'm delusional? Call me ugly? Tell me I should think more about my ability to bear children with my womb? Would you join me in trying to escape oppression? Would you hate me for trying? Have you decided that men are the enemy, and therefore I've betrayed my sisters in a war I reject wholeheartedly? Would you hold me down? Get your friends to beat me up? Tell me I deserve the violence in my life? Undress my dead body? Tell me I'm crazy? Force me to put on a dress? Force me to shave? Tell me to brighten my voice? Tell me it's a shame I've destroyed my feminine smile? Would you dare try to drag me back to the patriarchal depths like crabs in a barrel?

At the end of the day, it's all about telling people how they should live their life. How they should look, which beauty standards they should care about, which roles they should identify with, who they should be beholden to... And if those people disagree, maybe they're just hysterical mentally ill or being manipulated. Lock 'em in a room with some yellow wallpaper to keep it cheery until they change their minds!

Do you see? The parallels? How, even if we accept that your fake science is actually real science, and claim womanhood based on our vaginas and tits and ability to sometimes bear children, you are still denying us agency by taking away the right to express our gender however we choose. If I'm a woman who looks like a man, or who acts like a man, why is that a problem for you? Why do these gender barriers matter to you? Don't you see that in taking control of gender, we defang a critical branch of the patriarchy?

Sexist ass cult mindset, -10/10.

I've seen plenty of people call RWBY hopepunk or existentialist but...

Correct me if I'm wrong but... Doesn't setting your work in almost completely perfect utopia kind of go against the idea of "hopepunk" ? Sure you can see themes that could fit it what's with multiple characters wanting to change something or themselves but if Remnant has no oppression or bigotry or strife beyond Faunus stuff (which in on itself is treated as solved by merely not doing anything and achshually the oppressed minorities trying to stand against it are the badguys) and Evil Scorned Lover? Where's the struggle to change things that's not a fantasy RPG subplot? Where's the thematic struggle? Fighting monsters is not enough to be hopepunk - LOTR ain't hopepunk just because everyone fights Sauron.

And doesn't undermining the idea of free will and free choice (and treating doing that as a good thing) undermine the idea of existentialism? Doesn't having gods and the Divine Greater Will From Ever After and the four godsent relics drive the plot and development of civilization itself go against the idea of story being existentialist? Doesn't stating that our actions and world around us CAN'T affect us and we are unchanging and flawless (and that that's good or if you deny that you are evil) go against the idea of existentialism? Doesn't Divine Greater Will giving meaning and purpose and direction go against it ?

For RWBY to be hopepunk Remnant HAS to be imperfect and flawed even if it's trying to be better. That's not true in Mileswby according to showrunners.

For RWBY to be existentialist the focus has to be on the importance of our own actions and decisions and deriving meaning from those actions rather than a Greater Force. Existentialism requires exploration of agency and putting agency first and foremost and agency being GOOD quality. We make our choices and bear the consequences. We make our paths and we build roads in the whichever direction we want.

Thus MilesWBY is neither. With it's gods lore and v9 denial of trauma and agency itself it can't be either. It has no themes and at best is (maybe unintentionally) anti-existentialist pre-deterministic utopia.

The only existentialism is in an unintended meta way OUTSIDE the story - where a bunch of people without any clearcut ideal or drive are trying to make a work, whose themes they don't understand or care or believe in (or even tend to go against, why hello there crunch and employee abuse), continue at all costs.

i mean as an indigenous person, the domari people and the armenian diaspora in palestine are just as indigenous as palestinians. indigneity is produced via a relationship to an oppressive, colonizing entity, not "who lived here the longest"

I don't disagree with you exactly, but colonization is also layered.

So bear in mind that my knowledge of decolonization is specifically subaltern (as in the Indian subcontinent) and patchy (disabled my whole adult life and a very start-stop-stagnate tertiary education). The Americas might be different. I'm completely open to being wrong.

In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese and Eelam Tamils are "natives" while "indigenous" are considered the Adivasi and Tamil Indigenous people in the North (I'm sorry I can't remember their names, only found out about them last year). The distinction arises because they were Austroasiatic people (and the Tamils were maybe Dravidians? Wow, ethnosupremacist black hole discovered) who arrived in migrations millennia before they were colonized by later migrants from the Indian subcontinent about 2500 years ago. Those are the progenitors of both the later Sinhalese and Tamil kingdoms. (Obviously both intermarried with the indigenous populations; ethnic identities are cultural). The Adivasi never assimilated into the Indian migrants' agrarian societies. They still engage in hunting and subsistence agriculture rooted in the ecosystems of their ancestral lands. Unlike the rest of the population, being transplanted from these lands to anywhere else in the country would result in a devastating loss culture and community.

"Indigeneity" is an extremely fraught topic in post-colonial nations when conflated with being "native". It erases the actual pre-agrarian tribes that were victims of colonization two or three times over, and is used for nationalist ethnic cleansing and the creation of ethnic underclasses. The myth that all Tamils were descendants of "Chola invaders" that arrived only a thousand years ago is foundational to Sri Lanka's Tamil genocide. Eelam Tamils themselves heavily discriminated against the Malaiyyah Tamils the British enslaved and exported from India to work their cash crops (Indian Ocean slavery is as brutal and horrific as the trans-Atlantic one). The persecution of Muslims who migrated here the last few centuries from South India, Afghanistan, Turkey and Malaysia also involves seeing them as interlopers, even though they never claimed to be native because their ethnic identities are shaped by their migrant roots and the unique ways they assimilated into Sri Lankan society. They still have ancestral lands here from which they've been ethnically cleansed and are still under threat by both Sinhalese and Tamils.

I'm not sure whether this is something unique to countries where the Europeans actually did fuck off forever. But if even if they never did, how do we discern our layers of colonization and oppression if we all believe we're indigenous? Do we ignore that the pre-agrarian societies* here are rooted primarily in the custodianship and protection of their ancestral lands, unlike the rest of us that thrive in mono-agriculture, industrial encroachment and urban sprawl (and constant ethnic violence)? Do we have to center European violence in our own understanding of ourselves and our responsibilities to acknowledge the histories and rights of minorities vulnerable to us?

To my understanding, the difference between "anti-colonial" and "decolonial" is that one is conceptualized as "resistance" and the other as "re-existence". What I've been taught is that seeing our place in the world through the white colonial lens and defining ourselves by colonial proximity is to give up our power of self-determination. We were native to this island before these violent borders imposed on us by the British ever existed, and we were native whatever kingdoms configured and reconfigured themselves over millennia. But we have also been violent colonizers of the people who were here before us, even during and after the Europeans came and went. Indigeneity afaik is acknowledging their identities and respecting the history that formed them, and the restoration of their long-obscured sovereign right to their lands independent of the nation state.

*I can't remember whether pre-civilization was a problematic term or not. I took like two modules on subaltern indigenous peoples five years apart lol.

How the Kendom's Patriarchy Reflected the Patriarchy Within Ken

I know the title sounds stupid bear with me

I noticed the film made a point to show how much shittier the Kendom was to the Barbies than Barbieland was to the Kens. in the world we live in, women are conditioned to be considerate of others, sometimes at our own expense, while men are conditioned to conquer and pursue their goals without considering who that effects. This is what caused patriarchal ideals of women being something for men to "pursue" rather than people. We talk about this when discussing the male vs female gaze, how the male gaze objectifies while the female gaze aims to humanize. The Barbies simply ignored the Kens, the Kens could've made their own society if they chose too, while the Kens brainwashed and subjugated the Barbies. While the movie makes a point to say neither gender group having power over another is good and the gender field should be equal, patriarchal teachings have resulted in way more harmful consequences for women than anything to come out of the femcel/radfem sphere considering patriarchy is the current reality we live in.

Usually this would be enough to make its own point, but Greta didn't include this just to make more commentary on how the patriarchy effects women, but to specifically show what it does to the men within it. Ken's final arc revolved heavily around the idea of men "getting the girl" and feeling useless after Barbie rejected him, because that's a huge part of patriarchy. Patriarchy tells men that women are objects to be won, and that once they win a woman they are true men who have achieved their life goal. Many men base their entirely personality around being attracted to women, and it shows in how they talk, their jokes, how much they sexualize, etc. And when these same men fail to "get a girl" (because we are, in fact, people with our own wants and desires) they feel useless. That anger often leads them to the incel pipeline of thinking they are owed women's time, attention, and bodies, but above all it leads to them feeling hopeless and failed by false promises. The Kendom was fueled by that rhetoric, with Ken breaking down when he realized he couldn't make Barbie love him because that's all he's ever wanted. He was taught that was his life purpose, and he didn't know what to do when he realized Barbie is a woman who exists outside of him, and that he can't seem to do the same.

By doing this, Greta shows the nuance that comes with systemic oppression. Ken's arc is something that holds men accountable and doesn't make them seem like some untouchable and unavoidable boogeyman, but as people who make deliberate choices that negatively effect women. Similarly, because they are people, and because systemic oppression is never good for anyone, the movie shows how the Kens were also brainwashed by this system, and how its hurting them as well. The Kens, and really men, are pumped full of the same lies as women, and the movie calls for them to work on themselves to unlearn these teaching so that they can be better people to those they hurt, and be people to themselves. Not a conqueror, not a mate, but humans who don't need to obsess over their sexuality and ability to get female partners to be worth something. Men's worth doesn't rely on their interactions with women, just like women's value doesn't rely on their interactions with men. The two groups exist and need to start co-existing, because the gender divide has made all of us treat each other as another species rather than a person like anyone we'd find in our families, friend groups, etc. Gender should not be a roadblock, nor a source of fuel for how you interact with people; it should just be, in the same way hair color and height are. This message is not something that will resonate with all, but its important, and Barbie very effectively made it for all those who needed to hear.

After I've scrolled through your Tumblr for a bit, a question came to my mind, and I'm curious about what your answer to it is going to be.

Why is it that many - if not most - men somehow don't seem to be able to treat women like the people they are, much less treating women like the equals to them that they should be, but instead treat them like... I can't even think of an appropriate word, so why do they treat women like this?

This is very obvious, but there are many good individual men. As a group though, men fail to hold each other accountable. It's hard to know why exactly a lot of men don't treat women as people, but here's what I think pretty accurately explain this phenomenon as a trend (not as individual choices).

Firstly, most men don't have a lived experience of sex discrimination and they also haven't really learnt the facts when it comes to sex inequality. Some people (even women) aren't even willing to acknowledge that sex inequality is a problem. Despite well documented cases of sex discrimination, National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey (NCAS) found that 40% of Australians think women "exaggerate how unequally women are treated in Australia". 50% said that women "mistakenly interpret innocent remarks as being sexist" (I know this data isn't global but I'm pretty sure we can see similar trend in other parts of the world). This means holding men accountable for misogyny wouldn't be an easy thing to do for men and women, and hopefully I shouldn't explain why it's even harder for the latter to do so.

Secondly, men who don't deny the existence of sex inequalities struggle to reconcile the link between their own individual actions and these bigger gender issues, thus they get defensive. When men respond by saying, "I'm not murdering women' or 'I'm not underpaying women', we're seeing a tendency to conflate interpersonal discrimination and prejudice with the broader structures that privilege some communities and marginalise others. This kind of defensive stance isn't restricted to debates about sex inequality. It tends to pop up whenever we discuss the oppression of marginalised people by more dominant ones. People tend to identify with their group, and admitting the flaws of their group can feel like acknowledging their own flaws, which is difficult for many people.

Thirdly, men as a group hold all the cards in society. Men who treat women poorly often find it easier to gather social resources to shield themselves from consequences, whereas women who are mistreated might struggle to find support. This refers to everyday mistreatment that isn't necessarily criminal. People's responses to actual crimes would, of course, be quite different.

TLDR; Men either aren't aware, refuse to acknowledge the problem, or doing it on purpose—all three actions bear little to no consequence for men because they're enabled by patriarchy.

AUTHOR EXTRAORDINAIRE

1. On individuality: 'Everybody has at least one story to tell.'

2. On interruptions: 'The only thing that’s bad for writing is being interrupted. You have to have time to write. And while that seems obvious, you're probably living a life with a lot of interruptions.'

3. On unused writing: 'Writers are like cooks. They keep everything in the refrigerator and put it all in the casserole. What doesn’t go in for dinner tonight, well, it’s gonna show up next Sunday.'

4. On staying engaging: 'There's only one rule of show business, or writing. And that's don't be boring.'

5. On brevity: 'If you can tell a story as briefly as possible, it's more dramatic. If it's too long, then it has the problems of pacing, it could get a little slow. But the shorter you can make a story, the better.'

6. On writing from diverse points of view: 'It's very important to project your own imagination into someone else—for instance, if you're a fairly young person, to write from the point of view of an older person. It's so much more interesting.'

7. On reading: 'I would say almost dogmatically that you can't be a writer unless you're reading all the time and reading with purpose.'

8. On experimentation: 'Writing is a matter of experimentation. And all writers do a lot of revision. So, first you might write a paragraph, and then you might rewrite it, and you might rewrite it again, and then you might write a page. And then basically you keep rewriting to find the rhythm and the voice that's suitable for that story.'

9. On building an audience: 'I think it's very important for writers, whether young or older, to have an audience—to have people who are sympathetic and supportive, but also fellow writers who have critical ideas and constructive suggestions.'

10. On having fun: 'I think one of the main things to remember when you're writing is that writing should be pleasurable. It should be fun. It should be exploratory. You should be writing about things that surprise you.'

11. On looking within: 'Writing is like a spiritual manifestation of something deep within us we don't really know is there.'

12. On giving a voice to the oppressed: 'Another very strong motive throughout history is bearing witness, particularly for people who can't speak for themselves—writing about people, telling the stories of people who have been muted or silenced or even exterminated, and being the one to tell their stories in some historic forum, or as journalism, or as fiction, or poetry. I think that's a very strong impulse.'

13. On playing with structure: 'It's very exciting to experiment with structure. I think that many stories are best told in some elliptical way or some unusual way.'

14. On journaling: 'Keeping a journal sharpens our senses. It's like an exercise in writing. If you're describing a scene, you are practicing the act of writing—which is very important—and thinking in language. Otherwise, you just sort of go through the day with stray thoughts floating around in your head of no particular distinction. But if you're writing things down and really thinking about something and observing, that gives a certain sharpness to your powers of observation.'

15. On the necessity of storytelling: 'There is an instinct in our species to tell stories. It's a way of explaining the universe and explaining our world.'

16. On learning from masters: 'You may want to read Faulkner, Hemingway, James Joyce, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf. You may want to aim very high because the more you read and the more you're absorbing. When you start to write, you're gonna write on a higher level than you would be if you didn't read these people. It's like the old saying, ‘If you want to learn how to play tennis, you play tennis with somebody who is better than you.'

Author Extraordinaire Joyce Carol Oates

16 quotes on writing

source: www.masterclass.com