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cogentranting · 4 years

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Mockingjays and Roses

*Warning: Full Spoilers for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes*

Symbols are an important part of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Symbols are used to mark the identities of different characters, define relationships, and provide thematic links to the original trilogy. The symbols work to create a tension in the story, a question of whether they complement or contrast. Symbolism is used to explore two of the most influential people in Snow’s life: Lucy Gray and Katniss.

The various symbols associated with Lucy Gray are color, music, and birds. Each of these things plays a special role in the story and serves to distinguish her from Coriolanus. In a typical setting, love interests with different symbols could be understood to show how they complement each other-- opposites attract, two halves of a whole, etc. This novel lets the reader play with that interpretation for a large portion of the book; the story questions the relationship between them, wondering repeatedly how strong, or even how genuine, their love is. Ultimately, however, the contrasting associations sets them up for their final conflict and foreshadows the eventual destruction of both of them.

At the first sight of Lucy Gray, she is in a “dress made of a rainbow of ruffles” (24). In her first interview she says “the Covey love color” (53). The Covey are all named with colors. Lucy Gray wears bright colors at all times. The snakes which end up being drawn to Lucy Gray in the arena are bright neon colors. The colors represent her exuberance, her love of beauty, her eccentricity, her freedom to stand apart. But Coriolanus is white. The absence of color, the opposite of all that Lucy Gray loves and represents. However, this symbol for Coriolanus is not prominent in this book. In fact it only really exists in this book in the form of his last name-- Snow. Even that is not the name he goes by. But it is the name that forms his connection with the Capitol and all that it represents: Dr. Gaul calls him by his last name; the Capitol media makes frequent plays on his name; he is associated with the legacy of his family name; in the peacekeepers he is officially addressed as “Private Snow”. It’s also used as the voice of his ambition in the phrase that he and Tigris use, “Snow lands on top” (9). Eventually, when his character arc is complete and he has embraced evil, he switches to going by his last name, as the Epilogue exclusively refers to him as “Snow”. However, to fully grasp that a part of the symbolism of his name relates to the color white requires knowledge of the Hunger Games trilogy. There Snow is represented by his white roses. The roses are present in this book, but they are colored roses. Therefore, Coriolanus being symbolized by white is not a constant in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, it’s a progression. It is Coriolanus turning against what drew him to Lucy Gray. While the progression is ongoing, the decisive moment comes when Lucy Gray uses the bright orange scarf he gave her to set a trap for him (or at least so he assumes) (581). The shift is there as he is “betrayed” by Lucy Gray’s colors, and the fulfillment is present in the person of President Snow in The Hunger Games. By knowing the trilogy, the reader knows Coriolanus’s future and can see that he eventually eschews color, choosing the stark white which here sets him apart from Lucy Gray, but will also inevitably mark the violent contrast between him and the Girl on Fire.

The second hallmark of Lucy Gray is her love of music. Her singing is her survival. It’s how she earns her living in District 12. It’s what unites her with her family. It’s how she expresses her emotions. It’s how she attracts attention at the Reaping and how she gains enough favor to win the Games. Coriolanus does not start out opposed to music. In fact, it initially attracts him to Lucy Gray, especially since one of her songs she sings in the Capitol awakens memories of his mother and a song she sang to him that “mentioned loving him” (78). Music is associated with his mother on several occasions, and his mother is the figure who most represents love and goodness for Coriolanus. When asked how he is like his mother he replies that they “shared a fondness for music” but also internally admits to himself that “she liked music, and he didn’t hate it, he guessed” (290). Despite his positive associations with music and his connection with people who love music (his mother, Lucy Gray, and also Pluribus), Coriolanus himself does particularly like music and doesn’t really understand it. He notes that he “can’t really sing” and when he sings the anthem “his singing was more like sustained talking” (127, 129). Beyond lacking talent, it seems that music and poetry are something that he cannot grasp; all the Capitol’s songs “sounded the same to him”, and Livia Cardew mocked him for “his inability to decipher the deeper meaning of a poem” (185). This extends later into the novel when he specifically fails to grasp the meaning of Lucy Gray’s song, which he describes as “nonsense words” and “ridiculous” because he “couldn’t make sense of it” (425, 427). Coriolanus has an inability to understand something that is an essential part of Lucy Gray which represents a failure to connect to her on a deeper level. It also distances him from those characters who demonstrate positive moral character: Lucy Gray, his mother, the generous Pluribus, and Sejanus (who Coriolanus notes had “always been good at rhetoric” (427)). Livia Cardew attributes this to Coriolanus being “self-absorbed” (185). The presentation of this trait within the book represents his moral failings and his rejection of the Romanticism which defines the Covey and the philosophical rhetoric of the Rebels and Sejanus. This puts him at odds with all that the novel holds up as praiseworthy. His attitude toward music only worsens as the book progresses and he finds that he is “weary of the infusion of music into his life. Invasion might be a better word” (445). He feels the way it pushes him away from others and threatens his position. But the significance of the music does not stop with the concept in general.

The novel features the lyrics of multiple songs. Lucy Gray’s ballad is notable for the way it describes her mystery, how it shows Coriolanus’s failure to truly understand or appreciate her, and how it foreshadows his hand in her destruction. However, as he brings about her destruction, she has a hand in his eventual destruction. Lucy Gray is revealed to be the writer of the two songs from the Hunger Games trilogy-- “Deep in the Meadow” (“Rue’s Song”) and “The Hanging Tree”. “Deep in the Meadow” has less prominence in this book. The context is essentially the same-- Lucy Gray sings it as a lullaby to Maude Ivory in the same way that Katniss sings it to Prim and Rue-- so it carries the same weight initially. It is a symbol of peace and comfort and love. These are things which are mostly denied to Coriolanus and things which he rejects by the end of The Ballad, and actively seeks to destroy in The Hunger Games. However, it is eventually used against him, as Katniss’s use of the song-- her gesture of love for Rue-- is what causes the first sparks of rebellion to rise up in District 11. “The Hanging Tree” plays this role to an even greater extent. Lucy Gray writes the song about a moment that Coriolanus is present for and deeply disturbed by (350-351). The song is, on one level, about doomed lovers. Within the song you have Arlo and Lil-- two Rebels whose fate is mourned and romanticized, and whose doom Coriolanus has a hand in, already casting him in the role of antagonist. However, there’s also the speaker in the song. At one point in the narrative, the speaker is Billy Taupe calling to Lucy Gray. With him in the role of speaker the love story of the song is poisonous-- when they can’t be free together, Billy Taupe wants her to die rather than be free without him (487). After his death, the song transfers to be a call from Lucy Gray to Coriolanus. However, his character is entirely antithetical to the song. He rejects the dark romanticism that makes star-crossed lovers appealing, and rather than being willing to “wear a necklace of rope side by side with” Lucy Gray, he tries to kill her, betraying her and everything she and the song stand for. The song could also be applied to another pair of star-crossed lovers-- Katniss and Peeta. In their Games, Peeta tried to save her life-- “called out for his love to flee”-- then they try to survive together-- “I told you to run, so we’d both be free”-- and when that hope is lost they are prepared to die together-- “wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me”-- in order to deny the Capitol its victory and its ownership over them. Despite being the only couple without a literal connection to the Hanging Tree (and being a fake couple at the time of their actions) Katniss and Peeta most truly embody the spirit of the song, which Lucy Gray calls “too rebellious” (491). The song is meaningful on a broader level because it subverts the symbol of the Hanging Tree, which is meant to be an instrument for the Capitol’s control, and turns into a symbol of love and hope for freedom and resistance that would rather die than submit to the Capitol. Katniss later takes this song and transforms it into an anthem for the rebellion. In fact, it’s compared by Lucy Gray and Coriolanus to the Capitol’s anthem, saying it “has authority” like “when [Coriolanus] sang the anthem in the Capitol” (491). Katniss gives it the platform to be the rival anthem that it was destined to be, and she uses it to attack Snow. Lucy Gray haunts Coriolanus through the Hunger Games trilogy through her songs. These songs which are all that remains of the girl he betrayed and destroyed, come back as weapons against him, brandished as symbols of all that he and his tyranny stand against.

Beyond her general association with music, Lucy Gray is associated with birds. Her musical nature makes her a songbird like that of the title and her family is deemed “the Covey”-- covey is a word which means “a small party or flock of birds”. The way she is continually conscious of her appearance early in her time in the Capitol evokes a bird preening, as the ruffles of her brightly colored dress evoke feathers. Coriolanus ends up dealing with birds through his work as a peacekeeper, rounding up jabberjays and mockingjays. While his team member shows an affinity for birds, Coriolanus does not. He specifically notes that while some people “just understand birds” he is certain “that he would never be one of those people” (413). In an immediate sense, this once again signals a distance between him and Lucy Gray. She is a bird that he can never understand. In contrast, Lucy Gray has an affinity for snakes. The clearest counterpart for snakes is Coriolanus himself. His use of poison in this book and the Hunger Games trilogy creates the suggestion that he is venomous (especially when the evidence of his poisoning is found in the sores in his mouth). Dr. Gaul also breeds deadly snakes in the same way that she grooms Coriolanus into the man he becomes. Her snakes ignore him as if he is one of them. And Lucy Gray “always knows where [snakes] will be” (433). She uses her understanding of snakes to her advantage, dropping one down Mayfair’s dress, leaving one as a trap for Coriolanus, and poisoning Treech with one. The snakes in the Games end up drawn to her and soothed by her singing. Coriolanus is drawn to her and her singing in the same way, and likewise is used by her to win the Games. Lucy Gray seems to understand Coriolanus in a way that he can never understand her. However, she may have confused him for one of the non-venomous snakes from District 12, rather than a snake specifically bred to kill by Dr. Gaul. Or perhaps she subconsciously knows the truth about him since she states, “I love all kinds of things I don’t trust… snakes. Sometimes I think I love them because I can’t trust them” (441). Regardless of how his role of a snake attracts Lucy Gray, her role as a bird creates tension with Coriolanus. The wildness of the birds unsettles him. He expresses the belief that they’d be happier in a cage, but both Bug and Lucy Gray believe the birds should be free (418, 421). It reflects Coriolanus’s relationship with nature in general. It cannot be controlled and so he dislikes it. When he first sees the woods he is afraid of them; “the disorder alone felt disturbing” (348). This is a stark contrast to both Lucy Gray, who frequents the woods with the Covey, and Katniss who thrives in the woods. In similar fashion, the plant that Katniss is named for, and which aids in Lucy Gray’s survival (435, 497) grows wild, while Coriolanus’s signature flower, his roses, are domesticated and highly cultivated. Coriolanus likes only what he can control. It’s when he realizes that he cannot control Lucy Gray that he turns on her. This distinction takes on further relevance in his specific response to the jabberjays and the mockingjays

Coriolanus appreciates the jabberjays because they can be controlled easily with a simple remote control. Mockingjays, however, represent the uncontrollable. His reaction to them is immediate: “he’d spotted his first mockingjay, and he disliked the thing on sight” (352). Later he advocates killing all the mockingjays because “they’re unnatural” and “he distrusted their spontaneous creation. Nature running amok” (417). Lucy Gray on the other hand loves the mockingjays. When the mockingjays take up her song “the Covey were all smiles” and Tam Amber asserts “like sandstones to diamonds, that’s what we are to them” (439). Here Coriolanus expresses that what he fears most is that the mockingjays have removed “the Capitol birds from the equation” (439). He deeply believes in the need for the Capitol to maintain control, so something that openly flouts the need for the Capitol’s influence is both frightening and a threat to the beliefs that define him. Coriolanus eventually uses the jabberjays (a symbol of Capitol control) to betray Sejanus. In return, Lucy Gray uses the mockingjays to protect herself from Coriolanus as he hunts her (504). If she survived the encounter, it is because of the mockingjays. With his transformation into Snow complete, he is able to return to the Capitol. When he looks back on his time in District 12, he views Lucy Gray not as a lost love but as a conquered threat. Because Lucy Gray was someone he could not control he repaints her in his memory as someone who manipulated him and made him feel jealous and weak (516). But with his new power Snow is assured that “she and her mockingjays could never harm him again” (516). The memories have been twisted to associate Lucy Gray with mockingjays and in turn with harm done to him, though neither has ever actually harmed him. However, knowledge of the Hunger Games trilogy reveals the clear irony of his statement. Katniss uses the mockingjays to help her in the Games and makes them a tool for herself. They then become a symbol of the rebellion for the very reason that he initially hated them. Katniss comes to embody the things that mockingjay symbolizes and she and that symbol are the rallying point for the rebellion. Because of the Mockingjay that he can never predict, understand or control, everything Snow is and has built is destroyed.

Lucy Gray is a vibrant character that tempts Coriolanus toward a better life and a better way of being. Everything about her symbolizes a potential for good within him in his early years. However, he fully and irrevocably rejects that good. In doing so he commits his first great sin and destroys Lucy Gray. But he is unable to entirely destroy her. In fact, he’s never even sure if he killed her. Instead, she stays on as a ghost girl, her influence haunting District 12. From her influence rises Katniss, the Girl on Fire, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of the songbird Snow killed. Katniss is symbolically linked to Lucy Gray, but at the same time wholly distinct. Through her, Lucy Gray haunts Snow as punishment for his crimes. This link between the Songbird and the Mockingjay represents the way that Snow’s evil paved the way for his own destruction, but more importantly it shows that the things which he rejects and opposes and tries to kill cannot be destroyed. The spark of hope cannot be put out, beauty will not be tamed, and rebellion cannot stay dead in the face of tyranny. Those things were always destined to destroy him. Though The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes may end with “Snow lands on top,” Lucy Gray is the persistent reminder that “The show’s not over until the mockingjay sings.”

#the ballad of sonbirds and snakes #the hunger games #the ballad of songbirds and snakes spoilers #coriolanus snow #lucy gray baird #katniss everdeen

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hillbillyoracle · 4 years

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Rebooting My Practice

This is going to be pretty rambly, but I always get a lot out of these posts when other people make them so I wanted to make one too.

I hit a point earlier this year, as I started to really see what all astrology could be, when I knew I was going to need to overhaul pretty much my entire practice. For the last decade, I've focused on divination; on doing activities that sharpen my intuition, following up and checking predictions, tracking cards and results to better understand the connection, etc. I did this primarily in the service of my main deity, the Morrigan.

I still work with her, but I'm in a lurch as to how to continue my work with her. I have yet to quite figure out how to balance her general distaste for shrines (with me at least) and deepening my relationship with her in the absence of local folks to read for as I've relied on for years (thanks COVID). I've been praying the Catholic Rosary lately as a way to deepen my relationship with the Virgin Mary and the Saint I'm petitioning lately and I feel her kind of peering in when I do that so I might have to design one for her. I have a feeling whatever I come up with will likely be in a free zine rather than a blog post at some point.

But where that left me was in this weird abyss, where the only really solid things in my practice were like 3 deities (The Morrigan, Hermes, Yinepu/Anubis) I worked with regularly and tarot cards. I think for plenty of people that's fine but I wanted something deeper and more effective. It was around the time that I was rethinking everything that I stumbled on to this post about a magical routine that absolutely enthralled me. It took me another month and ultimately moving house altogether to even begin to piece something together that would set me on the road to something like this. I knew I was not ready but I finally had a picture in my mind something to work towards. Like rehabilitating after an injury, sometimes you've got to do half as much as you think you can before you really take off.

So I wanted to take some time and talk about the way my practice is changing and what the new pillars are slowly emerging to be.

Planetary Petitions

While I don't have the Orphic Hymns for each of the 7 classical planets memorized yet as per the post, I started by doing planetary prayers more days than I do not do them. Thanks to my truly godawful downstairs neighbor at the new place, who's floor shaking door slams throughout the whole night have netted me an average of 3 hours a night, I'm usually up for the first planetary hour of a given day. Hey maybe it's a sign, a big universal push to show the fuck up.

I'm also incredibly lucky I loaded up on some planetary incenses right before COVID when a local store had a huge sale. It's proved well worth it as above all I try to get the planetary incense right, though I did have to default to a Frankincense one when we were first moving in. I slowly feel like I'm beginning to understand the planetary spirits better but only slightly. I completely see why memorizing the prayer is recommended and I do feel that's standing in the way of me being closer with them.

I have not noticed a huge difference when I petition them truthfully. I get the vibe that it takes time to build up that relationship. Though I'm open to input here - for those who do planetary petitions, what made them click for you?

Saint Veneration + Christian Magic

One thing I put off for many years, though I knew it was coming, was working with more Saints. I knew it'd likely involve having to dip back into Christianity to make it work and I was completely right.

As my partner began revisiting her Catholic roots earlier this year, it got me curious about things like the Rosary, the Chaplet, and Novenas. I was raised charismatic fundamentalist Christian as a child and such things were explicitly forbidden. I remember getting a long talking to when I'd taken to reading about Sainte Jeanne d'Arc. So they aren't loaded for me the way they are for others, but they’re situated in this fundamentally familiar context that makes them feel like meeting a cool branch of the family you didn't realize existed.

I'm finishing a Novena to a Saint I've been praying to in the next few weeks. I am admittedly not as close with her as I'd like to be. I'm trying to figure out how to move forward with her as I'd really like to have her in my life. I will probably reach back out to Sainte Jeanne d'Arc as she's always felt familiar and been good to me. I also keep her prayer card and medallion in my wallet and have for many years so maybe there's more to build from there. It is my goal to have about 3 saints/Christian figures I can call on when I need help. I'm thinking of approaching Mary Undoer of Knots next but I'm worried it'll follow the same path as this current saint.

My partner and I bought Rosaries back in May and I absolutely love it. I've been saying at least a 5 decade rosary for most days but I'm regularly getting in a 15 decade rosary. I really love it and am totally convinced of the beauty and effectiveness of the system. I've come to understand Christianity in a totally different light through praying it regularly.

So that is on going and evolving and I'd love to hear from people who've cultivated close relationships with a Saint or Angel.

Ancestors

One thing that working with Christianity again has made easier is praying to ancestors. I've often felt a bit at odds with my own ancestors as they were not the most supportive of trans and queer people (and I am both of those) but in coming back to Christianity has given me and my ancestors a common language almost. As long as my disagreement with them over my attraction and gender identity is rooted in the Bible, it's been easier to work with them.

It's very early days with ancestor work. I'm slowly working my way through Ancestral Healing by Daniel Foor. But I'm feeling very heartened by it. I saw a post on twitter somewhere, if I can find it again I'll link it, where someone said that the way they started working with their ancestors was just thanking them everyday. And thanking my ancestors is complicated for me, my family like most have their own issues that also go passed on, but thanking them for what I am glad they gave me has been really beneficial.

My partner requested some divination from me when some of her medical issues were starting to get worse and part of the reading involved a strong push for her to investigate her father's side of the family. She got really into genealogy in the process and she's been teaching me a lot. Through that I actually learned my great grandfather's name for the first time - yes that's how out of touch I am with my own family history. But I was thankful to find out.

Through her own research, my partner found out that that branch of her family likely isn't German but actually German speaking Hungarians which was a revelation. She's in the process of confirming but it got us talking about foods and identity and language and how to honor our ancestors more regularly. We're going to try making a nice dinner on Full Moons with dishes that are tied to branches of our family as a way to trying to cultivate a closer relationship with them. I'll definitely update on that as it evolves.

Conclusion + Some Thoughts on Disability

I'm definitely still in the early days of all of this. It's not become quite the foundation I hope it will be yet. I still need to figure out how to continue and deepen my deity relationships. I still need to attempt some different types of spellwork I've been meaning to. And while I didn't talk about it much here, astrology has been playing a huge role in my practice but mostly in a passive way. More of that divination process I talked about in the beginning where I make predictions based on the charts I'm seeing and then double check my work.

I’ve been doing all this while in the thick of a bad flare. Moving plus lack of sleep as meant my disability has been weighing so much harder on me lately. Normally when I’m feeling well enough, I kind of roll my eyes at a lot of the “spoonie witchcraft” posts I see, but for some reason with this flare they just started making me angry and I’m still trying to parse why. I think I just feel like so many are rooted in this performative idea of “feeling” witchy rather than actually helping me with my disability. They aren’t usually focused on practices that either actually treat the pain I’m in or bring my spirit real comfort.

I’m really hoping to put together a post or possibly a zine that does provide what I always wanted those posts to be. Honestly these pillars here have proven accessible even as I’ve been in some of the worst pain I’ve been in in years. So for any fellow disabled folks who just aren’t getting much out of those posts, I really recommend starting with these. Recite the Orphic Hymn for the day in the corresponding hour. Pray the Rosary or an adapted set of prayers for Pagan prayer beads. Don’t have much money for those? Look up how to make knotted rosaries and adapt the method. Pray to your ancestors and give them some water and a bit to eat. These are doable for a lot of folks even when they’re in bad shape, especially if you take your time with it. Might not make you “feel witchy” but they do some fucking work, that’s for sure. But idk, those are just my thoughts on it.

So it hasn't all fallen into place yet but I wanted to share what developing a practice looks like in medias res. It's messy, somethings work better than others, but all and all I'm just glad to finally be making meaningful progress again.

#personal practice #witchblr #Ancestor Veneration #planetary magic #rosary

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yurimother · 5 years

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LGBTQ Game Review - Lingua Fleur: Lily

A significant part of my job is knowing the details of the goings-on in the world of yuri. It, therefore, shames me to admit that I almost missed out on the visual novel Lingua Fleur: Lily as I was completely unaware of it until Taiwanese studios Narrator and Storia, the game’s developers and publishers, messaged me. Thank the great goddess of yuri that they did, because I would have regretted missing this experience.

Lingua Fleur: Lily is a short kinetic visual novel set in a university told from the perspective of student Yuyi, the protagonist. Yuyi is a quiet and introverted student, hardly interacting with her classmates and having no close friends. Her isolated circumstances change when she is paired with the outgoing Yile, the deuteragonist of the story, during physical education. Slowly Yile beings to befriend Yuyi, helping her to come out of her shell and be truthful about her identity and difficult past.

As previously stated, Yuyi is extremely reserved and often anxious. However, she is also quick to anger, often getting short during Yile’s antics. This can make her seems stern and unlikable at moments but overall she is very realistically written. As the story progresses these moments mostly fade out and she becomes more likable and friendly while maintaining to her quiet and anxious demeanor. Her narration is the most enjoyable part of her character, as it gives insight into her feelings and her discomfort with certain situations, helping her to feel human.

In every way, Yile is the opposite of Yuyi. While the ladder is restrained and apprehensive, Yile has no such inhibitions. She is excitable and bubbly, often eagerly blurting out the first thought that comes into her mind without regard for how it makes others (specifically Yuyi) feel. This is never really treated for laughs, as this game is not in any way a comedy, but rather used to contrast Yuyi, helping develop her character by reflecting and responding to Yile’s actions. Unfortunately, most of the time Yile too easily falls into the stereotype of the naive and energetic girl.

There are however some lovely moments when Yile breaks out of this stereotype, particularly when she or Yuyi is more emotionally vulnerable. For example, at the beginning of the game, Yuyi gets slightly during physical education and runs away. Yile chases after her to comfort and care for the reluctant Yuyi. It is a touching moment that really serves to establish the dynamics between the characters.

The game is complete with full Chinese voice acting. Both lead actresses do a decent enough job, shining especially during the quieter and more somber moments (which are plentiful). The louder moments of joy or anger are a struggle for them, the actress behind Yuyi does not carry enough vocal power for the scenes in which she yells (usually at Yile) and Yile’s tends to ascend into a grating shriek. I will give credit to the game for voicing even minor character that speaks only a few lines as well as the girls though. Overall, the voice acting added more to the game than it detracted but there is definite room for improvement.

Lingua Fleur is not a story of romance or attraction but rather of self-growth and healing. For me, this is a welcome change. It is not a happy story nor an overly sad cry-fest, but rather a very grounded and bittersweet narrative. Yuyi struggles to admit her identity (as a lesbian) and the ways in which this affects here are clearly shown and communicated in all scenes effectively.

The more emotional scenes are powerful and my favorite parts of the game. Thanks to not only a solid script but because they are so realistic and relatable. Yuyi’s struggles to articulate her identity to Yile will easily resonate with experiences of queer readers. I will not spoil the ending but it appropriately matches the somber tone of the story and is simultaneously hopeful and saddening.

I did have a few issues with the game. Some of these complaints are small, a few typos, a few places where the word choice could have been a bit better (is my English teacher side showing?). I also found what I can only assume to have been a mistake due to negligence where name cards such as “female student” and “male student” were still written in Chinese rather than being translated like the others. Additionally, while the English translation is mostly excellent there were a few terms that did not work as a direct translation into the language, such as “Sis Tutor.”

This character, Sis Tutor, is actually part of my biggest complaint. She and Yuyi share a difficult past together which is hinted at but not explicitly stated and explained until the final act of the game. This trope would be fine if it was not for the fact the story is told through Yuyi’s perspective and we hear her thoughts! This made the hints about her past unbearable and annoying. When you show the thoughts of the character with a hidden pass it does not work! It breaks immersion, as one can clearly see the writers’ attempt to contort the narrative of human thoughts as they clumsily build suspense to the big reveal. And it is a good (if obvious) reveal too, giving context to the actions of Yuyi, there is no need for it to be so hamfistedly teased.

Lingua Fleur: Lily’s CG artwork has a nice soft pastel look to it, with a serene hand-drawn quality to them. The artist was easily able to transfer the personality of the characters and the emotion of the script into the CG artwork, making them add to the experience. There is even one simple but stylistic animation. However, the CGs are inconsistent, with some being of clearly higher quality than others. Additionally, some of the choices for the CGs placement are questionable. Parts of the story were crying out for a nice piece of accompanying art but resources were put into other scenes which frankly did not need them.

The character sprite’s share soft design of the CGs but often, unfortunately, have an unpolished look to them. They also clash horribly against some of the backgrounds, leading to a clear cutout effect that regularly took me out of the experience. Their design, however, is quite nice, especially Yile, who is downright adorable. There is also some great employment of lateral movement and strategic zooming on characters, some of the best I have ever seen, and certainly, the most fluid, helping to illustrate the story.

The soundtrack of Lingua Fleur proves that a score does not have to be bombastic and overly complex to be successful. Indeed, the music was one of the highlights of my experience. Oli Jan and Sorane created twelve original tracks for the visual novel each of which I adored as I played through. Often they employ just a simple melody and maybe a few delicate strings or woodwinds, creating an excellent somber and soft backdrop that perfectly complimented the game. I was greatly enjoying it right up until the finale when I fell in love.

During the game’s climax the track ‘La Robe’ plays and MY GOD!! I was struck dumb by how perfect the track was, I was at a loss for words (a rare occurrence I can assure you). It keeps the same simple style as the rest of the soundtrack but was just… stupendous. The song is triumphant, delicate, intricate, and hopeful. The victorious crescendo reached its peak at the perfect point in the story I swear I applauded. I could easily extend this review another few paragraphs filled with nothing but adjectives about this song. If you do not get the game for the love of all things gay in this world at least give the soundtrack a listen! It is a whirlwind of emotions that perfectly encapsulates the relief and sorrow felt by Yuyi in the bittersweet conclusion. It is a special thing for a piece to convey so much.

Lingua Fleur: Lily is an imperfect but meaningful journey. It does not conform to the genre standers of destined lovers and soulmates but is rather a gentle and ordinary story of healing, grief, and friendship. While it lacks artistic polish and jaw-dropping prose the emotion and humanism of the game reverberate within me. Lingua Fleur is a lovely, simple, and bittersweet experience.

I also appreciate that Narrator and Storia have promised new content for the game in the form of DLC. Lingua Fleur: Lily is available now on Steam in English and Chinese.

Ratings: Story – 7 Characters – 6 Art – 4 Voice – 6 Music – 10 LGBTQ – 5 Lewdness – 0 Final – 6

Review copy provided by Narrator and STORIA

Help create yuri and LGBTQ+ content, news, and reviews by supporting on the YuriMother Patreon

#yuri #visual novel #vn #lgbtq #lgbtq+#reviews #queer #gay #video game #game #lgbt #lesbian #lingua Fleur lily #girls love #gl #wlw #gaming

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hellzyeahwebwielingessays · 4 years

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The Not-So-Amazing Mary Jane Part 6: AMJ #1

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Now we’ve finally established all necessary contexts we can begin diving into the AMJ series proper. My intent is to break down each issue page by page.

Let’s get started.

We open with Mary Jane shooting a sizzle reel for the film’s investors. Evidently she is playing Mysterio’s super powered love interest.

Here we get into our first few problem but I admit it might not actually be a problem.

See, ASM v5 #29 established that MJ has already seen McKnight’s ‘reel’ so why are they filming another sizzle reel?

I admit to being in the dark about Hollywood practices so this might be perfectly normal and therefore not a contradiction. Let me know if that is the case.

This page introduces yet more problems though they too are rather minor.

The smallest of these is depicting Kangaroo as Australian. Last I checked (and I admit I might be mistaken about this) the Kangaroo was in fact NOT Australian. Or at least this version of the character isn’t as he is the second Kangaroo merely inspired by the original.

That’s a tiny nitpick but I thought I’d mention it. And it’s one that’s easily explained away. He could be emulating an Australian accent for effect or something like that.

The more notable problem is that MJ is deriding the script. This contradicts MJ’s statements in ASM v5 #29/830 where she is praiseworthy of the writing after immediately reading through some of it with Peter.

You could argue that perhaps MJ was commenting upon the script in general and not specifically her own part. As in her starring in this movie would be great for her career because the movie in general was looking to be great. Or alternatively the script for the sizzle reel was bad.

But consider that the script is directly based upon Webspinners #1-3, which (again I might be mistaken about this too) I do not recall ever featuring Mysterio’s would be lover as anything like a super heroine.

Again, this is reconcilable. Rewrites happen. Embellishments on the truth happen.

But to me the reality seems be that either Williams was unaware of the movie being based upon Webspinners (which is entirely possible) or that she wanted to go in another direction for the story.

Either way, it’s a weakness of the comic book but not a deal breaker of a problem.

This page also represents one of the problems from an analytical standpoint with this series.

There is a certain amount of ambiguity through the writing and art in regards to what Mary Jane (and other characters) might be thinking and feeling.

Look at MJ’s baffled face when looking at the Spider-Man actor on the above page.

My initial impression was that she could be simply weirded out by seeing an overdramatised version of her lover. In particular when he’s going over a tragic event in his and her own life (Gwen’s death).

It could just be bafflement over why that’d even be in the movie. After all what has Gwen’s death got to do with the life of Mysterio. I guess Spidey’s implication in Gwen’s death was public knowledge but it still has nothing to do with Beck.

Alternatively that facial expression might (and I emphasis this as speculation) represent MJ’s confusion and concern about that being included in a film. That is to say that’s something of a personal cut for Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s life. She could be wondering if someone knows the truth about Peter’s identity?

If the latter is the case it might go some way into alleviating and explaining other problems I have.

But I just don’t know, because the comic is not making it clear-cut. To my eyes that look says ‘this is so surreal’ and doesn’t say ‘This is concerning. Could Peter and I be in danger?’

However if that was the intention it might’ve been intended to then organically transition into the acknowledgment that there are literal super villains on set and the consequent page in which MJ comments that Cage McKnight fleeing is suspicious.

Here is where we’re starting to get into the bigger problems, but let’s start with a smaller one.

The scene implies that McKnight is a an actual person and a respected filmmaker. This is again contradictory to ASM v5 #29. There MJ referred to McKnight as very new, as someone who lacked an agent until very recently. The implication by Spencer was clearly that McKnight was a false identity that Beck invented. Williams/the editors is clearly ignoring that. That’s not a good sign, although it’s not irreconcilable. It’s entirely possible that MJ’s dialogue in ASm v5 #29 in-story was actually true.

Mary Jane comments that there are felons on set. She didn’t question this because Cage McKnight has a reputation for authenticity.

This line can be interpreted one of two ways.

a) MJ didn’t question actual criminals on set and didn’t do anything about it.

b) She phrased herself badly and what she meant was former felons, or that she presumed they were reformed/reforming felons.

The latter is a-okay, the former though....wtf?

MJ’s lived with a man who she knows spent most of his life torturing himself over allowing ONE criminal to walk free. She’s on set with a whole crew of criminals, including super villains and she’s shrugging it off? She’s not even questioning it?

‘Authenticity’ be damned, it’s illegal and potentially dangerous to knowingly harbour criminals, let alone super powered ones.*

But again, I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt on that line. Between Cage’s reputation and the fact that so many criminals are working out in the open its not unreasonable for MJ to take it on faith that everything was on the up and up (even with the presence of super villains). After all the only confirmed super villain on set is the D (or Z) lister the Kangaroo who has at times been one of the good guys.

Mary Jane though is smart, socially savvy, can get a decent read of people and did study psychology for a time (she never completed the course but still). So she can tell something weird is up and it’s clear the intention is that she’s been growing suspicious for a while now.

In this essay series I don’t plan on praising the issues as that’s not the point. Besides I do that in other posts anyway. Nevertheless it’s worth pointing out that Williams really hits the mark on MJ’s personality here.

Her statements about Cage ‘claiming’ to have written this role for her (where she conveniently plays the love interest to a super person) and simply handing it to her imply MJ is detecting a trap. This touches on what I said above about her facial expression. About how it’s possibly intended to float the idea that she’s concerned that someone’s figured out Peter’s secret.

However, she could just as easily be thinking this is a trap specifically for her. After all, she’s been targeted by stalkers before (like Jonathan Caesar). That interpretation is arguably supported by MJ’s line about being scammed with an empty promise of stardom. Even if she doesn’t think this is some kind of super villain grand scheme of any kind it’d likely ring alarm bells for any young and (by stereotypical standards) attractive person in Hollywood; at least it would nowadays.

As we move onto the next page Cage reveals himself as in fact Mysterio and confesses he engineered this con in order to tell his life story.

He proceeds to inform MJ what is and isn’t real about the film and explain where the real Cage McKnight is. In doing so he admits that the film is happening through fraud, identity theft (sorry I don’t know the correct legal terminology) and the hiring of former felons and active criminals.

More specifically he produces (what he claims to be) a live video feed of the real Cage McKnight’s location on the Falkland Islands where he will be spending around a year on a film project that doesn’t actually exist. He also claims that this project is his last chance to do something good with the ‘time he has left’ (implying he is dying) and that he wanted to give the felons and criminals a similar chance to make something good and meaningful.

After being honest with her, MJ admits this situation is insane, but then agrees to go along with it.

First of all let me get this out of the way. Mysterio has actual active criminals on set but he also wants media attention. Isn’t that counter productive? The media are going to report that (some of the crew are obvious more than human, with green skin no less) and it’s going to cause both unwanted attention from the authorities and problems in general.

With that said let’s talk about the bigger issues with these pages.

Part of the problem in analysing them is that it we have to consider things from the POVs of MJ, Mysterio and our own (which is semi-omniscient).

We know Mysterio:

Is in the employ of the demonic Kindred who’s working a vendetta against Spider-Man.

Faked his own death again back in ASM v5 #24-25

Is doing this movie to make the most out of his time before he is dragged back to Hell

Is aware of Peter’s identity and that it’s highly likely he demanded MJ’s inclusion in the movie (whether of his own volition or on Kindred’s orders) specifically because of her connection to Spider-Man

Essentially we know Mysterio’s reasons for making the movie (including his limited time) are true…but they also omit certain important facts.

In other words…he’s acting.

He has legally (and more often illegally) worked as an actor. He was able to fool executives who literally work in the film industry where actors are basically a prerequisite. He is a massively skilled manipulator.

And here, the context the audience are aware of, conveys that he’s using the truth to get what he wants but is nevertheless withholding the real truth. Maybe this will be addressed later but at the moment it is beyond unlikely that Mysterio truly felt MJ was simply the only person to play his love interest. She is obviously there because of her connection to Peter.

Me personally though, I am not exactly certain Williams wrote this moment with the idea that Beck was being actively deceptive. My personal impression is that she was writing Beck as sincere and simply vulnerable because he knows he'll be returned to Hell soon. This vulnerability would be the reason for his opting for honesty. Now I don’t have any evidence to back that up I will admit, we will have to see as the series progresses.

But the most important thing about this scene isn’t our POV nor Beck’s, but MJ’s.

She is the lead character the person the story revolves around, her actions, decisions and agency is what is paramount in the context of this series.

From that perspective these three pages alone put us several layers into serious mischaracterization.

MJ wouldn’t help Beck because he’s hurt her loved ones

Even if he hadn’t she wouldn’t trust him because of the other horrible things he has done that she knows about

Even if she didn’t know about those things she knows his M.O. and abilities and thus wouldn’t trust him

Even if she sensed sincerity she’d not help him because he’s committed and still committing several serious crimes and unethical actions in this very story

Even if she believed those crimes weren’t so bad and that he was sincere she’d be smart enough to consider the possibility that he’s tricking her and double check what he’s told her

If she presumed (not that there is any evidence of this in the comic) that Beck was out legally and she ignored him obviously engaging in identity theft, she’d still double check those fact and learn that he has in fact escaped.

No matter how you slice this Mysterio is very much in the wrong here and so is Mary Jane. She even admits it’s insane and then agrees to go along with it.

Not only is she out of character to nuclear levels but even if this was a completely new villain MJ had never heard of before the mere fact that he’s clearly committed serious crimes to get to this point and is going to continue to do so (chiefly by impersonating McKnight) should be enough to make her her to bow out.

There is soooooooooo much more I could write about this because it cuts to the heart of the problematic premise as presented by the issue. However I will dive more deeply into that in numerous future instalments once we are done with issue #1.

Moving onto the next few pages, MJ predicates her agreement on the condition that her role be rewritten to improve her character.

This is a fact that she explains will actually improve the film over all. Their discussion occurs as Mysterio gives her a tour of the set and they chat about rewriting her character.**

During the course of this tour Mysterio unveils some of his film techniques and (at least seemingly) confirms what is and is not real about the production. Among the techniques he is using are his incredible holographic technology and his robot duplicates of the X-Men from ASM Annual #1.

This tour also includes a direct reference to Mysterio’s suicide from ‘Guardian Devil’, implying the artist and editor at least are aware of the events of that story. I’d like to imagine Williams is too. Regardless it’s problematic for the comic to acknowledge those events but treat Mysterio sympathetically in light of what he did in that story. And needless to say it’s problematic to write MJ as so chill around Beck in this scene/comic given how she knows about those events because she was in the story!

Anyway, MJ gets excited by the prospect of a spin off sequel. That in turn prompts one of the crewmen to imply she got her job through ‘womanly wiles’.

This enrages ‘Cage’ who assaults the man, an event witnessed and recorded by the surrounding crew. As she witnesses these events her self MJ has a curious facial expression.

Much like her expression seeing the actor playing Spider-Man, MJ’s face here is difficult to interpret.

It could mean any number of things.

Could she be viewing Mysterio as someone she’ll have to play carefully?

Is she thinking she’ll have to do her best to ensure he doesn’t get out of hand, whether it’s for her own protection or others’?

I do not know. It’s kind of vague. Hopefully it’s meaning will become clear in consequent issues, but if I’m supposed to understand clearly what it means in this issue then Williams or Gomez dropped the ball.

Something they didn’t drop the ball on though is Mysterio’s characterization. It’s worth mentioning out of fairness that this emphasis upon Mysterio as a passionate artist is extremely in keeping with his character and Williams handles him expertly on this front.

Beck finishes up his tour with a recreation of a scene from ASM #66-67 and MJ is delighted by the fun she and Mysterio are going to have in making the movie.

Notice that Beck directly references how this set piece is recreating a trap he laid for Spider-Man, how he used psychedelic gas to trick his mind.

In essence this is Mysterio simply stating outright to Mary Jane that he once tried to harm her boyfriend and even drugged him to that effect.

And MJ’s reaction to this is…to giggle with glee.

Really?

She doesn’t even show any hint of apprehension over that? We the readers aren’t even made privy to an internal tensing or recoiling on MJ’s part to this man just casually mentioning a time he sought to end the life of the man she is in love with?

Seriously, what the fuck. You better believe we’ll be talking more about this too.

Even from Mysterio’s point of view it muddies the waters of his motivations. As we extensively examined in prior instalments, it’s very likely that Beck knows Peter is Spider-Man, and thus by extension probably knows that Mary Jane is his lover. So it’s incredibly stupid on his part to blithely mention to MJ a time he drugged Spider-Man and tried to kill him.

Alternatively let’s say Beck’s hiring of MJ was in Kindred’s orders and he is unaware of the exact connection between her and Spider-Man/Peter. It’s still stupid because he’d still be able to deduce she very probably has something to do with Spider-Man because he knows Kindred wants her out of the way as he wages war on the wall-crawler.

The fact that Beck is written this way indicates Williams is unaware of the Spencer ASM issues which set up AMJ and/or doesn’t care and/or the editors aren’t doing their due diligence . Regardless it’s a major weak spot of the story. It either breaks the larger narrative that exists between the two titles or it renders Beck out of character via his stupidity.

The latter would be true even if Beck simply wanted MJ in his movie just because he liked her as an actress. He’d still be throwing out the fact he drugged and tried to kill someone (a former Avenger no less) in his past.

As the story progresses MJ and Peter have a chat on the phone where she makes a point of alleviating any discomfort he might have over making a sympathetic Mysterio biopic, claiming it is the Breaking Bad of super hero films. She continues by pointing out the career opportunities the role presents.

Peter raises concerns for MJ’s safety, suggesting she might find herself surrounded by villains; ironically unaware that Mary Jane is in that exact situation.

MJ assuages his concerns by reminding him of the time she defeated an actual super villain (the Chameleon, though he goes unnamed) with just a baseball bat.

MJ’s statements regarding the movie are arguably contradictory.

Earlier in her conversation with Beck MJ stated that the film empathizes with Mysterio and doesn’t apologise for it.

But then at the end of the story she tells Peter that the film actually isn’t glorifying Mysterio. Rather, it is making the Breaking Bad of super hero movies with an unreliable narrator.

This isn’t necessarily irreconcilable, but it is somewhat poorly communicated on Williams’ part. Breaking Bad’s defining message was that you shouldn’t be like Walter White. That he was in the wrong, even from the very start.

Why would Mysterio ever write a film about himself in that light? It doesn’t make sense and it would contradict MJ’s dialogue about how the movie empathises with Mysterio as a villain and doesn’t apologise for that. Breaking Bad wasn’t empathetic towards Walter White, it showed him very clearly as a monster and its final episode had him admit that fact.

Moreover if the film empathises but never apologises for Beck (and is directed by him personally) then isn’t that tantamount to glorifying him?

Because of this the issue leaves us with three possible interpretations of Mary Jane in this moment.

She is either:

Blinded by the prospect of fame and/or fortune and/or excitement and as such cannot see that the film obviously is glorifying Beck. To an extent we’ll talk more about this in a future instalment. Suffice it to say that’s very out of character

She is outright stupid, which is also out of character

She is deliberately lying to Peter about the artistic nature of the film project. There is a strong case (that we will get to) for MJ lying to Peter about Beck being out of character for her. However, were this a regular film production it might not be an OOC move for her. She wants to make the movie and alleviate her boyfriend’s feelings for the moment. Fibbing to keep their long distance relationship healthy and happy and hopefully being more straight with him when it’s over is not an unreasonable thing to do.

Options 1)-2) don’t exactly paint Mary Jane in a positive light, nor does option 3) necessarily.

MJ just isn’t this stupid, isn’t this capable of being star struck (she’s seen too much serious shit in her time for that) and lying to the love of her life about something like this is questionable. On the latter point it can be argued that there’d be no advantage of her lying to Peter about the project because he’s obviously going to find out when the movie is released.

Personally I suspect Williams never intended to imply any of the above interpretations.

I think she or the editors just didn’t catch that the dialogue at the end of the issue contradicts the dialogue from earlier. Which would be bad writing/editing but not demonstrative of Williams not fundamentally understanding the character. On occasion Stan Lee himself mischaracterized Spider-Man by accident.

Nevertheless a moment that reflects badly upon MJ.

The last moment from this scene involves a ’20 second dance party’ between MJ and Peter.

Its only relevance to this analysis is to exemplify some ways in which Williams nails Mary Jane’s character.

She’s flirtatious, she’s vibrant, she loves to dance, she loves to party, she can get the overly serious and often angst ridden Peter to emerge from his shell. Combined with MJ’s savvy earlier in the story, her tenaciousness and references to old continuity I can absolutely understand why Williams seemed like a good pick for the project.

But it’s moments like these that frustrate me about this comic (and I suspect the series going forward). It’s not that Williams fundamentally misunderstands Mary Jane but she drops the ball in a few places. Unfortunately those include drops that are so huge that they break the entire story. At least that will be the case if she doesn’t fill in the holes in her narrative.

The end result though is an extremely mixed bag wherein you have logic holes and mischaracterization so bad it debatably counts as (unintentional) character assassination but at the same time some of the absolute best Mary Jane or Mysterio moments ever! The 20-second dance party is going to be fondly remembered by every Mary Jane fan and MJ/Peter shipper forevermore, and rightly so.

But equally, unless properly justified in the future, MJ knowingly teaming up with Mysterio deserves to go down as one of the all time worst out of character moments for her ever.

The final relevant thing from the issue to talk about is the last page. It entails the Vulture’s gang of villains (the Savage Six) reading an article about the Mysterio biopic and deciding to head for L.A.

This is only really relevant for two reasons.

The first is the set up it supplies for future issues.

The second is that the article specifically talks about leaked set photos.

This further plays into the confusing nature of Mysterio’s scheme. He wants the media interest to act as a form of publicity (arguably this leak is an example of that) but he also has current villains on his staff. Wouldn’t the press be likely to find out about that and thereby jeopardize the project?

Reputation for authenticity or not, that’s extremely illegal.

With aaaaaaaall that said it’s time to move onto dissecting the status quo set up by this issue.

It’s all subject to change of course. Williams might address each and every problem eloquently at some point. But taking it at face value I am going to dedicate one (or more…) instalment(s) of this essay series to exploring the problems presented by this premise.

*We will talk much more extensively about this in a future instalment I promise you.

**By the way I don’t quite understand what MJ is asking her character to be rewritten into. She asks why she’s fighting without super powers but then says she should already be doing that in the story and that this is how she falls in love with the hero?????????????????????? Maybe I’m being dense but that just wasn’t clearly communicated to the readers).

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#Amazing Mary Jane #Leah Williams #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #MJ Watson #Spider-Man #Carlos Gomez #Mysterio #quentin beck #Peter Parker #Savage Six #Adrian Toomes #X-Men #vulture #The Vulture

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aboycalledeverything · 4 years

Text

An In-depth Response to JK Rowling from a Transman

**CW: transphobia, suicide, surgery, discrimination, assault**

Let me first say that we should not allow this conversation to derail the progress and momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement. Though race and sexuality intersect in many fascinating and important ways, it is important to allow the voices of our BlPOC to be heard and amplified for as long as it takes for meaningful, sweeping changes to be made in our society. That being said, I would be remiss if I did not take the time to process and respond to the conversation you have chosen to bring to the table.

TLDR: To JK’s assertion that trans women threaten the political and biological class of ‘women’, Acknowledging that trans women are women is not the erosion of a political and biological class. It is strengthening those classes by accepting the women who, despite all threats of assault or death, stand by their identity and celebrate womanhood.

Let me also begin by saying thank you. For surviving, for persisting, for blessing the world with the gift of magic. The books-which-need-not-be-named were and are pillars of my childhood, identity, and life philosophy. I will never stop finding solace in the pages of those books.

Before we can continue the conversation, I need to introduce myself. I am a (relatively) young white transman and former D1 softball player. I chose to defer physical transition but came out socially as a transman in my sophomore year and was one of the few openly trans NCAA athletes at the time. I was also a student, and spent a large portion of my collegiate career studying LGBTQ+ issues and how they connect to human psychology. My senior capstone was a paper titled “Transmen and Suicide: Unique Contributors to a Disproportionately High Suicide Attempt Rate.” This involved both an in-depth literature review of trans research and theory as well as an independent collection and analysis of transman testimonies. The year after graduation was spent as a Lab Coordinator for the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: Health and Human Rights Lab at the University of Texas at Austin which does phenomenal sociological and psychological research on queer youth in particular. This is not to say that I am an expert, but rather to make it clear that I, too, have spent years researching the fraught topics of gender and sexuality.

Thank you for referring to my trans brothers as “notably sensitive and clever people.” We do try to use the unique empathy granted by being seen and treated as both women and men. Most of us grew up as girls and have been targeted by the misogyny and sexism that you reference; we try to use those experiences to inform our responses and opinions to societal issues. I, specifically, am going to use my lived experiences to respond to your essay. There are some points with which I agree and appreciate your recognition - freedom of speech, the importance of nuanced conversation, and the fact that both women and trans people are at disproportionate risk of violence and must be safeguarded. There are other points with which I take umbrage and will address one by one.

JKR: “It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.”

Response: Let’s be clear: trans activists - at least the majority of us - are not trying to erase sex as a definition. Instead, we are asking that the parameters be reconsidered to make space for intersex people and who have biologically transitioned. Your points about the biological differences in treatments for MS are well taken. Ignoring intersex people and focusing on only the binary sexes male and female, you’re right. There are often sex differences in diseases and health disorders. But the problem is that we don’t always know what drives those differences; if they’re based on hormones, physical bodies, or something else entirely. Intersex and trans people, if they choose, now have the medical capability to change their hormones and physical bodies to the extent that they can be classified as male or female.

I’m not going to give you a full explanation on sex as an expression of levels of hormones, chromosomes, and physical organs. I’m sure you already know that both biological men and women have varying amounts of the same hormones, and that hormone replacement therapy can and does give trans men and women the hormonal levels that correspond to each definition. I have been taking testosterone for just under 2 years and, for all intents and purposes, have the chemistry of a biological man. In the same way, surgeries can and do affect physical biology and organ makeup, from removal or reconstruction of a penis or vagina to the removal of ovaries and uterus entirely.

This creates a gray area as to how to medically treat diseases like MS in trans people. We’re still learning, and I’ll be the first to admit that. What I can say is that there are many binary trans people who are not trying to replace legal definitions of sex with gender, but rather are trying to expand the legal definitions of sex to those who, for all intents and purposes, are biologically male or female.

JKR: “I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.”

Response: I would very much like to see the studies that you are referencing in this “huge explosion” of detransitioning individuals. If you’re referencing the article by Lisa Littman, it is definitely worth noting that her study was a) descriptive rather than empirical and b) based on the testimonials of parents and not the actual trans youth.

According to a different and arguably more experienced researcher, Dr. Johanna Olsen, regret and detransitioning as you talk about it are extremely rare. I encourage you to watch her video below and read over some of the other research she is and has been doing.

Even if we were to listen to descriptive research such as Littman’s and assume that there are people who wish to detransition, the lack of fertility you’re talking about is not universal and, as with people assigned female at birth, varies. According to recent studies, trans men who wish to reproduce biologically can take a break from testosterone while carrying their children and resume afterwards. So far, there are no negative side effects for the children of transmen.

What should also be considered, especially in youth, is that hormone blockers are entirely reversible. But puberty is not. When trans children are put on hormone blockers, they are essentially delaying permanent puberty and taking time to examine whether it’s right for them. Access to medical care such as hormone blockers are essential to trans youth because it does give them time to figure out their identity before going through the male or female puberty that affects them.

I have not seen any cases of transition driven by homophobia, but would like to note that working to make parents less homophobic and transphobic seems to be a better use of time than arguing against the right of many trans youth who do need access to medical intervention.

JKR: “The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves. In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’”

Response: This point is one of the more frustrating parts of your article because it is using one medical professional’s opinion to ignore a horrifying truth. Trans adults and youths experience suicidality and depression at staggering rates. While I cannot comment on studies in the UK, here in the US the lifetime suicide ideation rates for trans adults is 81.7%. The attempt rate is 40.4%, almost 10x the national average of 4.6%.

And those are just the statistics of the people who survived long enough to participate in the study. Denying the real threat of suicidality in trans youth is not only saddening - it is actively harmful.

JKR: “The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”

Response: This is one of the most frequent arguments I see for people denying trans men their identity. My own mother has suggested that I transitioned to escape sexism. To this, I respond that choosing to transition does not provide an escape to discrimination and harrassment. I was well aware, when choosing to come out and transition, of the statistics of discrimination I was entering. I was well aware that it might mean the loss of my athletic scholarship, the dismissal of the team of sisters that I played on, It was not a matter of escaping sexism, but rather a matter of being my most authentic self. Even if you dismiss my own personal experience, I would point to the trans women who actively transition and give up their male privilege in exchange for the trials and tribulations of womanhood. Either way, I can assure you that the suicidality trans people experience makes the “choice” to transition no more of a choice than raising your hands because a gun is pointed at your head.

JKR: “ I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria”

Response: I appreciate your recognition of our reality! I would love to see the studies that present a 30% difference. In my experience, those of us that lived long enough to see adulthood have not grown out of dysphoria, even if we’ve learned coping strategies to make it bearable. And again, hormone blockers for teens allow the opportunity for them to grow however they need to without permanent changes being made.

JKR: “So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.”

Response: Once again I cannot speak to the politics or legislation of the UK. What I can say is that “bathroom bans” on trans people that require us to use the fitting room/bathroom/locker room of the sex we were assigned at birth lead to significant sexual and physical assault on trans people, which already face a disproportionate risk (as you mentioned). I personally have been fortunate enough to have not been physically assaulted when I was trying to go to the bathroom, but have been harassed in both mens and womens bathrooms (which I varied between during my transition, depending on how well I thought I was passing). Many of my friends are not as lucky.

JKR: “But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive.”

Response: The implication that trans women - who are literally dying to be acknowledged as women - putting on a “costume” is flagrantly offensive. I am choosing to believe that you did not intend this implication and instead are confusing sex and gender. In which case,would refer you to the seminal work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by Judith Butler. According to her, gender is literally a performance that one chooses to express. Transwomen define their gender and femininity as individuals, and do not choose to go through the grueling process of changing their biological sex because they like Jimmy Choos. The gender ‘woman’ is not a “pink brain” but rather an identity that can be inwardly cultivated and outwardly expressed. The sex ‘woman’ or female is an amalgamation of complex physiological systems that, as we’ve already discussed, can be altered.

JKR: “I refuse to bow down to a movement...”

Response: There is undeniably a movement, a “cancel culture” that dismisses nuanced conversation. I, like you, am concerned about the erosion of free speech and the expression of alternative points of view in nuanced discussions such as this one. But this movement is not specific to trans people and should not be described as such. Most trans activists and researchers that I know are not asking you to “bow down.” We’re asking you to come to the table and have an open mind. We’re asking you to use your huge platform to help trans people (as you clearly want to) without harming them (as you clearly have).

JKR: “...that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it.”

Response: This is the crux of the “TERF wars”. The refusal to accept trans women as women. To this, I would simply say: Acknowledging that trans women are women is not the erosion of a political and biological class. It is strengthening those classes by accepting the women who, despite all threats of assault or death, stand by their identity and celebrate womanhood.

#long post #essay #jk rowling #response #harry potter #transmen #ftm #mtf #transphobia #transwomen #trans #LGBT #terf #terf wars

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azdoine · 5 years

Text

So let’s talk about them cherubs.

I think it’s no secret that Calliope and Caliborn have always been deeply gendered characters in Homestuck, but (beyond fanart and enthusiastic headcanons) I personally haven’t seen a lot of engagement with their characters on that level. The most comprehensive readings of Calliope and Caliborn that I’ve seen have always been through the lens of metatext (Calliope and Caliborn as fandom avatars) or religion (Calliope and Caliborn as Gnostic figures).

With that in mind, I want to talk about the ways in which Calliope and Caliborn are gendered in Homestuck, and offer my own amateur reading of Calliope as a trans allegory.

Full disclosure, I love the epilogues, but I won’t be engaging with them here -- I view them as extracanonical, which is to say, I’d like to talk about them and their own presentation of Calliope’s story in another post.

Also, it’s Homestuck, so, you know. Sex, death, violence, and bigotry under the cut:

If we’re to read Calliope as a trans allegory, then we don’t need to look very far for evidence, because the text is very straightforward in suggesting it.

Almost as soon as we meet Calliope in the flesh for the first time, we’re confronted with the bleak reality of her desire for a more feminine embodiment:

'Callie Ohpeee’ serves as an aspirational figure for Calliope on multiple levels. Most obviously, she’s a vehicle for Calliope’s self-insertion into the wider world of paradox space and the alpha timeline (i.e. her self-insertion into the story of Homestuck); Callie Ohpeee is able to freely and directly interact with the elements and characters of the story that Calliope adores, while Calliope cannot. Somewhat less obviously, Calliope’s trollsona also serves as a way for her to imagine herself in non-caliginous relationships (which she desires on some level, but she feels she has been denied by her biology).

However, Calliope’s trollsona isn’t just a vehicle for her relationships and engagement with other people. Calliope’s trollsona is also key to the way in which Calliope desires to relate to herself.

Calliope desires to be attractive and feminine for her own sake: she desires to be beautiful and pretty, and her trollsona serves as the vehicle by which she satisfies this desire.

Calliope’s trollsona is quite literally her idealized feminine self, and so her relaxing “solo cosplay” sessions bring nothing more to mind than a trans woman privately enjoying a feminine presentation in the closet, as many trans women have. Her costumery and face paint imply clothes and makeup, and Caliborn takes on the role of a patriarch or patriarchy that tries to control her.

Ultimately, though, Calliope’s embodiment desires are cosmically validated by the unfolding drama of paradox space. Calliope is tormented by the apparent fact that she isn’t and can’t be Callie Ohpeee, but nevertheless, she successfully inserts herself into the lives of the alpha kids and the unfolding of the alpha timeline, forms the kinds of relationships that she wants, and receives the regard that she wants. She dies and takes on the form of her trollsona in the dream bubbles, and even when she’s physically reborn as her cherub self, she’s still “Callie” to Roxy, a meaningful nickname that goes basically unspoken.

Pretty straightforward, right? A trans girl learns that she and her body aren’t unlovable, makes friends and forms bonds as her true self, and escapes the reach of the forces that once abused her.

FEARFUL SYMMETRY

Before we can close the door on a trans reading of Calliope, we also have to consider Calliope and Caliborn as a pair, and not least because the two of them literally share the same body. Fair warning, we’re only going to get more speculative (and more indulgent) going forward.

Calliope and Caliborn are presented, at least superficially, as absolute and dichotomous opposites. They are two spirits that cannot coexist at once within the same body; their respective attitudes and temperaments couldn’t be any more different, and they are, of course, Muse and Lord: quintessentially passive and quintessentially active.

However, Calliope and Caliborn aren’t so different as one might think. Despite Caliborn’s violent protestations to the contrary, they share key characterizing interests in the likes of shipping...

...and art:

Caliborn is infamous for his disgust and anger with the absurdity of paradox space (i.e. his anger with the text of Homestuck itself), but Calliope is easily provoked into displaying the exact same petulant frustration with the direction of the story and the unfolding of events around her.

Calliope and Caliborn are consistently unified within the text -- not as incompatible opposites, but as two sides of the same coin. In Complacency of the Learned, Calliope and Caliborn are personified in the singular, androgynous Calmasis. In his chess match with Calliope, Caliborn disguises his king as his queen, and vice versa, signifying a mutual transgression and inversion of gender; Caliborn steals Calliope’s hemotyping and typing quirk, just as alternate!Calliope does the same to him, in a mutual appropriation not just of quirk (i.e. voice and presentation), but of blood, or life. On the level of the body, Caliborn’s skin is inextricably marked by the green that signifies Calliope, and Calliope is inextricably marked by Caliborn’s skull: the deaths-head he would inflict upon all life (and a hyperrealization of the masculine or unfeminine bone structure that troubles many trans women).

Most significantly, Aranea indicates to us that Calliope and Caliborn actually began as one being, which then went on to fracture into a male and female aspect, striving with and against each other -- a creation myth for gender and sexuality itself, in the vein of Plato’s Symposium, Rabbinic lore on Adam and Eve, and (rather topically) Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

With their fundamental unity in mind, we can read Calliope and Caliborn not just as ‘brother and sister’, but rather as two identities, personas, or aspects of one person. This is why, for example, calling a cherub by one of their two names brings that personality to the surface -- because, on a literal or symbolic level, it constitutes the active validation of that personality and identity, and the abject denial of the other.

Does all of this suggest a bigender, genderfluid, or otherwise non-binary reading of Calliope and Caliborn? Maybe, but let’s keep going, first.

Aranea’s exposition tells us that even adult, mature, ‘binary’ cherubs are still figures of gender duality, inversion, and transgression. Mating cherubs take on the forms of dueling cosmic serpents -- the sex act occurs between two hyperreal phallic symbols, suggesting male homosexuality in specific and queerness more broadly. It was Calliope’s biological father who ultimately submitted to their biological mother, and thus it was Calliope’s biological father who laid their egg, while their biological mother was the one to fertilize it, revealing the separation of sexual anatomy and power relations from gender among cherubs.

The gender dualities, inversions, and transgressions at play can still exist within cherubs who are, by all accounts, decisively male or female in gender identity -- despite the lack of of any way to assign them a sex or gender from the outside.

The dueling personalities within each young cherub are siblings to each other, but they are also different possible selves that the cosmically-transgender cherub might become as they grow to adulthood -- just as the dueling alternate selves of so many other characters can illuminate their own internal conflicts. In Homestuck, the inner life is always prone to manifest in the outer life, again and again.

I TRAGICALLY LOST A SISTER TO MURDER

Having established a reading of Calliope and Caliborn as two identities within one person -- as ‘Calmasis’ at odds with themself, containing multitudes and torn between them -- we can move on to look at the way Calliope and Caliborn relate to each other, and to gender, in order to get the bigger picture.

Caliborn introduces himself to us as undyingUmbrage, a username of largely straightforward meaning. His umbrage -- his anger, irritation, annoyance, or offense in the face of the world -- is neverending, everlasting, and eternal, and so too is his own life. Caliborn is immortal, allowing him to carry his rage forward forever.

If Caliborn’s username is simple, then Calliope’s is more sophisticated, which fits their characters. As uranianUmbra, her title invokes most obviously Uranus the planet and Urania the heavenly muse, but also the ‘uranian’, Karl Ulrichs’ antiquated title for gay men and trans women: those with an anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa, “a woman’s soul enclosed in a man’s body.” As the umbra, or darkest shadow, she invokes the Jungian shadow archetype, the suppressed, unconscious, or rejected aspect of the self.

As such, Calliope identifies and codes herself both as transfeminine and as Caliborn’s allegorical shadow archetype -- a part of himself that he can neither accept, acknowledge, or escape, perpetually haunting him. In-universe, Calliope names herself after Uranus’ topspin, and the ‘English’ of a cue-ball that it echoes -- thus, she implicitly identifies herself and the trans feminine uranian with the cue-ball that threatens Caliborn and Lord English. She symbolically establishes herself and the trans feminine as Caliborn’s only intrinsic vulnerabilities!

And on some level, Calliope tells us all of this! Because while Caliborn wants to destroy Calliope, she hopes to make him like her:

Calliope manifests a sincere investment in so many of the things that Caliborn orbits at a distance. Thus, to Caliborn, she represents a threat from within to his ability to maintain distance, because on some level, she serves as a manifestation of his own desire to draw closer. She confronts him with the reality of his own desire, or at least, with the latent possibility of his own sincere investment -- she serves to remind him that anyone who can waste as much time on creating Homosuck as he does is both an invested creative and sincerely invested in Homestuck on some level.

And it’s much the same on the level of gender, too. Calliope serves as a sincere reflection of the gender identity that Caliborn can only orbit at a distance. It was, after all, Caliborn’s idea to swap the king and queen chess pieces, and to disguise them as each other. Calliope lashes out at him because he cannot do so earnestly: because Caliborn makes a shitty twist out of his insincere production, because he can’t commit to swapping the places of the king and queen, and because he abuses Calliope’s willingness to swap the pieces (because he abuses and misdirects her inclination to gender transgression, and by extension, betrays the premises of his own idea).

This is why Caliborn kills Calliope’s dreamself instead of predominating over her in the conventional way -- not just because it’s easier and more convenient for him, but because his predomination would mean “consuming” her personality and “integrating” with it. It would constitute an integration with his shadow archetype, and thus, on some level, a partial destruction of the persona and ego he has established for himself. To Caliborn, as pathological as he has become, any level of integration with Calliope represents an existential threat, and so he has to cut her out of himself like a cancer.

But even having cut Calliope out of himself, Caliborn cannot escape her. By cutting her out of himself, he has defined himself around the hole she has left in him -- he has permanently divorced himself of the opportunity to integrate with her or accept what she represents. While both Caliborn and alt!Calliope take up each other’s typing quirks as a sign of victory, Caliborn takes Calliope’s quirk as a way by which he can signal his ‘wholeness’:

And this is, of course, complete bullshit and posturing of the highest order. Andrew Hussie not only directly characterizes the conflict between Caliborn and Calliope as an inner conflict within him, but he also tells him that his only path to maturity and personal growth was through integration with Calliope.

Not to be denied, Caliborn continues to constantly assert the self-justifying completion and authority of his masculinity, for himself and for others...

...but even so, he still can’t help but betray himself and his own idealized masculinity:

Masc4masc, Caliborn certainly isn’t! In his creative endeavors, he telegraphs his ultimate disgust for masculinity. He needs to draw out the femininity he wants to see in men -- he acts out gruesome, hateful misogyny against women, but even as he murders so many of the women of his manga or otherwise ejects them from his story, he’s still compelled to recreate femininity and symbolically recreate womanhood within the male cast he has left behind.

And he’s not just motivated by homophobia and a disgust for men who are intimate with other men! Nor is he just motivated by a desire to place these feminized characters below him. Just as Calliope does sincerely with her Callie Ohpeee trollsona, Caliborn is compelled to feminize his own self-insert, the crude rendition of Lord English he creates for his own satisfaction. Given free reign to depict himself and insert himself into his story however he likes, Caliborn opts to turn away from the full thrust of hypermasculinity, and he makes himself beautiful and gorgeous.

And as soon as he does so, Caliborn’s repressed attraction to Calliope erupts again:

This isn’t just the matter of blackrom incest that the text superficially suggests; even on a purely textual level, due to the alien nature of their relationship, Caliborn only barely regards Calliope as a sister, and he certainly has no problem with objectifying and sexualizing all of the other women he hates.

No, Caliborn has to repress his attraction to Calliope because, given their shared form, his attraction to her as a woman necessarily constitutes an implicit recognition that he could be attractive as a woman, and his body could be attractive as a woman’s body.

Caliborn can never accept that, and he’ll never directly address it or engage with it. He’ll never think about what all of this means for him, or act on his idle fantasies. The time for turning back is well behind him.

He is, now and forever, exactly the kind of angry and disaffected chud who will never unplug from 4chan or stop masturbating to awful trap hentai. He has deliberately imprisoned himself within the teleology of his own self-confirming hegemonic masculinity, and he thinks it is glorious.

THE DEMON IS ALREADY HERE

To fully understand Caliborn, of course, we need to understand Lord English.

If Caliborn has imprisoned himself within his own assertions, then Lord English is the embodiment of those assertions, and Caliborn’s transformation into Lord English is his ultimate apotheosis: having murdered his shadow and excised her spirit from within himself, his transformation enables him to excise her from without. His ascension allows him not only to purge Calliope’s visage from his body, closing off the possibilities once implied and allowed by his youthful and androgynous form, but also to recreate, reconfirm, and relive his victory over Calliope at every turn.

To understand what I mean by that, let’s look at the characters and components who go into Lord English, starting with Equius.

Equius, is, of course, a long-form joke character about the pathetic contradictions of hegemonic masculinity. In his pesterlogs, he opens every line with blatantly phallic imagery...

But when he actually tries to handle said phallus in real life, his titanic strength prevents him from doing anything but destroying it:

And the same goes for one of his horns, which he has apparently broken off. The autocastration symbolism is not subtle, and about the mildest thing we can conclude is that he’s a chronic, addicted masturbator who has compromised his own sexual performance.

He’s also textually obsessed with upholding the racial hegemony of the Alternian civilization...

...but his obsession with hierarchy and dominance quickly collapses into a thin pretext for his barely-suppressed desire to submit to those who are higher than him on the hemospectrum...

...and to those who are lower than him!

Equius is a character intrinsically lined to the collapse and self-destruction of masculinity and male sexuality, which is topical enough that we might end there. However -- and there’s no nice way for me to say this -- we also need to establish that Equius is a necrophile and a sexual predator, too.

@mmmmalo and others have written intriguingly and at length about reading “blue beauties” as a cipher for “sexualized corpses” in Homestuck, but for Equius, it’s about as textual as it gets. Equius is explicitly sexually and romantically interested in Aradia even after her death, and his necrophillic attraction is only reinforced by the symbolism: he constructs an unliving replacement body for her, which parses most obviously as a symbolic embalming and restoration of her corpse, and he treats it like a love doll even as it’s uninhabited and lifeless. He seeks to literally transform her body into a “blue beauty” by the transfusion of his own blood, which (given the color-coding of troll body fluids) parses as a clear insemination joke about his genetic material.

We might excuse his attraction for various fantastic mitigating factors -- Aradia is, after all, still ‘alive’ in a kind of undead state -- but Equius’ more general sexual predation cannot be so easily ignored. Aradia is chronically depressed and in absolute need of the service that Equius can provide, which he uses to take advantage of her and to compromise her bodily autonomy and judgement with the device he covertly implants inside of her.

Equius is undeniably a sexual predator who constructs women’s bodies in order to further his own domination, and his own motif of sexual self-destruction and inversion puts the final dark twist on his story. He is brutally dominated by Gamzee, suffocated to death until his corpse is blue in the face, and ultimately prototyped together with AR. He finds a unique fulfillment as he becomes the object of his own desire, when he is transformed into his own cybernetic “blue beauty”.

It’s not hard for me as a trans woman to see certain tropes at play, but for those of us who aren’t up to date on foundational transmisogynistic screeds...

Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent not only in religious myth, but in its offspring, phallocratic technology. The insane desire for power, the madness of boundary violation, is the mark of necrophiliacs who sense the lack of soul/spirit/life-loving principle with themselves and therefore try to invade and kill off all spirit, substituting conglomerates of corpses. This necrophilic invasion/elimination takes a variety of forms. Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes... The projected manufacture by men of artificial wombs, of cyborgs which will be part flesh, part robot, of clones – all are manifestations of phallocratic boundary violation. So also the behaviorism of B.F. Skinner and “physical control of the mind” through the use of implanted electrodes by such scientists as Delgado, are variations of monstrous male “motherhood”.

-Gyn/Ecology

Blanchard believes that autogynephilia is best conceived as misdirected heterosexuality. These men are heterosexual, but due to an error in the development of normal heterosexual preference, the erotic target (a woman) gets located on the inside (the self) rather than the outside...

Autogynephiles are men who have created their image of attractive women in their own bodies, an image that coexists with their original, male selves. The female self is a man-made creation. They visit the female image when they want to have sex, and some became so attached to the female image that they want it to become their one, true self...

-The Man Who Would Be Queen

But hey, does anyone else remember that time when ARquius got upset and envious because he couldn’t lactate like a mother would?

EXTREMELY SUBTLE.

As for Equius’ fusion with the AR, or Auto-Responder, we come to Dirk Strider.

Dirk Strider is, if anything, the furthest thing imaginable from the autoerotic subject that Equius presents: he is not so much attracted to another self as he is utterly repulsed by himself in his own totality.

Dirk Strider is a self-loathing, self-destructive, self-mutilating gay man, caught in the grips of a kind of hateful narcissism. He is not overtly trans-coded, or related to the trans feminine, but his male homosexuality ties into another, subtler form of trans feminine horror, one which Jake suggests in aside:

Dirk Strider presents the horror of the destruction of the self and the destruction of manhood more generally, both in the service of the satisfaction of others and in the fulfillment of self-hatred. He creates and destroys himself with abandon. In Unite/Synchronize, it’s Dirk who willingly decapitates himself to cross the gulf of space and time between him and Jake, and he allows Dave to decapitate him and destroy his ‘unbreakable’ katana with Caledfwlch -- the uranian cue-ball sword that destroys masculinity -- in Collide.

And keep in mind that when Dirk decapitates himself, it’s Lil’ Hal who looks out from his severed head:

Holy castration symbolism, batman! Remember that Hal’s shades are a part of ARquius’ own phallic imagery:

Lil’ Hal is a phallic specter that terrorizes both Dirk and Jake on the individual level, as well as in their relationship with each other. He drives Dirk’s Brobot-self to greater aggression, he’s aggressive, condescending, and cruel with Jake in general, and he apparently manipulates events to force Jake to kiss Dirk’s severed head -- which, if we’re taking the castration metaphor seriously, basically means he forced Jake to give Dirk head. Classy.

Is it any wonder that Dirk is so compelled to lop Lil’ Hal off of himself and out of his life, no matter the ethics or implications for himself? Hal is the perfect storm and culmination of all of the worst things Dirk sees in himself, and the omniscient apotheosis of his own detatched, ultramasculine, hypercompetent, ironic persona -- all despite being treated as a 13-year-old by the text, an immature and incomplete version of Dirk.

Remind you of anyone else?

Dirk and Lil Hal are in this respect a brighter mirror of Calliope and Caliborn: they are a self divided for whom the better half has softly predominated.

Dirk probably hasn’t literally castrated himself to destroy his masculinity in the way that Caliborn has literally destroyed his own femininity; Dirk and Hal certainly aren’t so explicitly gendered or trans-coded as Calliope and Caliborn are, so it’s more difficult to read them and their relationship as trans-coded. (Unless you want to read Dirk and Hal that way, in which case, hell yeah, go forth and be valid, and link me your fanfiction, please.)

Nevertheless, Dirk’s symbolic castration and literal rejection of lil Hal represents, if nothing else, a rejection of and predomination over his most toxic aspect (and his most toxically masculine aspect), and the gruesome excision of such from his life.

But while Dirk has left his worst half behind, his worst half has gone on to supercede him: entering into union with Equius, and by extension, Caliborn.

And what of Gamzee, the most important character in the entire comic?

Well, Gamzee is, of course, another mirror to Calliope and Caliborn. Like Calliope and Caliborn -- our allegorical Calmasis -- Gamzee is caught in an erratic duality between two possibilties.

Just like our Calmasis, Gamzee vacillates almost all through life between two fundamentally different personas. At the time of his introduction, he was someone basically passive, agreeable, and kindly -- even lovable, to the point that he still has his fans and stans to this day.

Of course, as time went on, he became more and more aggressive. Even against the backdrop of his largely passive behavior, his increasing aggression culminated in his many infamously depraved and murderously violent outbursts: a transition not incidentally marked (among other things) by his rejection of the green (and Calliope-coded) sopor slime that once helped to pacify him, and his radicalization at the hands of his future self (in Lil’ Cal).

In his typing quirk, Gamzee likewise alternates between Calliope’s lowercase and Caliborn’s uppercase:

Definitely no themes of duality here, nope!

Most tellingly, even in his ascension to Lord English, Gamzee is also halved, just like Calliope & Caliborn: Gamzee is bisected such that only half of him enters Lil’ Cal, while half of him is left behind, utterly broken and irrelevant.

But if Gamzee is a reflection of Calliope and Caliborn, then what else does this piece of shit clown have to say about them?

Well, like Calliope, Gamzee is quite involved in his own constructed persona -- but unlike Calliope, he’s almost never regarded as anything but disgusting and pathetic.

No amount of face paint can cover the scars across his face, and instead of covering himself up, his costume only accentuates his own body, exposing himself in the most pornographically aggressive and perverse way possible.

Even in making himself into a clown he reaches towards something inherently absurd; something that has no existence in itself save for how comical and disgusting it is to others. His aspirations and imitations render him a walking joke and a figure of corrupt terror.

And most horribly and grotesquely, if Calliope and Caliborn are a trans allegory, and Gamzee is any kind of reflection of them, we know exactly what kind of warped and fictitious trans archetype Gamzee is:

Gamzee suggests himself as a serial killer, and he’s one who hordes corpses and steals trophies from his victims, at that.

But there’s one more person we need to look at in this gruesome sequence: Doc Scratch, another parallel to Calliope in this incestuous slurry of signifiers. In Doc Scratch, the man with the uranian cue-ball head, we see even Calliope’s most harmless, silly traits taken to their most nightmarish and oppressive conclusions.

It’s Doc Scratch who selectively warps troll culture in order to create the world and the culture that Calliope loved so, and who meddles in the alpha timeline as he so desires; it’s he who shows just how perverse and oppressive omniscience can be, transforming all her scrapbooks and her labors of love into his own exhaustive account of the cosmos, turning her love of her favorite characters into his own callous disregard for objects to be manipulated. When he uses her own thoughtful tone, it only telegraphs menace.

And, most darkly for our own analysis, Doc Scratch is a sexual predator and a pedophile.

Almost from the start, he’s undeniably sexualized as a threat in his conversations with Vriska:

Even his omniscience is sexualized by his own words, casting the light of his awareness as a phallic presence invading and penetrating the unknown:

Vriska is an unreliable narrator, of course, and we might not want to read too deeply into Doc Scratch’s words. Scratch is certainly quick to assure Rose that he’s not a predator in his conversations with her...

...but as always, the gulf between what Doc Scratch says and what he means is almost insurmountable. Doc Scratch tells Rose that he has no biological means of reproduction, but he is a conglomerate of and a vessel for multiple sexual beings, and even the castrated may experience sexual pleasure and pursue sexual ends.

Most tellingly, Doc Scratch only tells Rose that he isn’t attracted to her “in the way she means”. From an entity known for wordplay and lies of omission, this constitutes a tacit admission that he IS attracted to her in some way that she isn’t asking about.

Aradia explicitly characterizes his interference in her and Kanaya’s lives as ‘grooming’...

And he does much the same to Damara:

Doc Scratch is an undeniably sexual and sexualized threat.

We might ask how, exactly, he’s supposed to be attracted to Rose and the other young girls he victimizes -- and certainly I think he’s a sexual voyeur in the general case, but I think he’s also an even more abstract and pedophillic threat.

Doc Scratch is a copy of Lil’ Cal, given life and omniscience as a First Guardian; he is the child’s toy which was once fawned over by a puppet pornographer, and he is a child-sized man. He titles himself after the Scratch process which allows children the chance to grow up, but which also transforms adults into children; he presents the absolute perverse sentimentality of all adult transgressions into the realm of childish things.

This alludes to Caliborn, of course, as the boy who cannot escape his childhood, but it’s also sexologically linked to toxic trans feminine archetypes...

Blanchard (1991) started with the idea that some cases of male-to-female gender dysphoria and transsexualism are fundamentally motivated by an ETII, in which natal males who are otherwise sexually attracted to women eroticize the idea of being women to such an extent that they want to become a woman themselves. Freund and Blanchard (1993) later extended this idea to an analogous ETII that might motivate some pedophilic men to impersonate or fantasize about being children.

It is fitting that the most compelling finding of our study—that autopedophilic men sexually attracted to girls tend to find it sexually arousing to imagine themselves as a girl—reflects the likely confluence of the two ETIIs that had been proposed many years ago: one that involves locating an individual of a different gender within one’s own body, and the other that involves locating an individual of a different age within one’s own body.

...and it’s also a searing indictment of Calliope.

To cosmic entities such as her and Scratch, how can other people be anything but objects, tools, and characters to be abused? Before the power and knowledge they might come to command, how can other people be anything but insects?

To Scratch and Calliope, how can other people be anything but children?

Even as Calliope becomes a mere player within the story of paradox space, Doc Scratch accuses her of a fundamental and unwholesome transgression. She lets go of the condescending oversight she used to hold over the alpha timeline, no matter how kindly and well-meaning she was, and she descends from the omniscient authority of her lonesome ivory tower, but Doc Scratch still names her as an offense to herself and to others. Her desire to be a person is cast as a perversion, a deviance, and a sickness.

SBURB is a game her kind was never meant to play, after all. It’s a coming-of-age narrative not meant for her.

Ultimately, Doc Scratch himself is a fundamental accusation against Calliope: he is a grail of the souls who signify some of the most horrible gendered narratives and trans feminine narratives we can imagine, animated in mockery of Calliope as if to say: “this is you”. Equius, an autoerotic, necrophillic predator, and Hal, an aggressive, intellectualist meddler; even Gamzee, who is both a murderous pervert and her own adoptive father, a normative role model who is anything but.

And when Caliborn rises to prominence and Lord English births himself from the corpse of Doc Scratch, it’s nothing less a recreation of the traditional predomination that Caliborn has denied himself. To Caliborn, Lord English is the sign of his own victory: he may see the souls within Lil’ Cal as like-minded role models to emulate and assimilate, or as hateful and loathesome symbols of Calliope to be crushed under his will, but his predomination allows him to take both options without interrogating himself, just as he’s gone without interrogating everything else he wants.

And to Calliope, well, if Doc Scratch was an accusation against her, then what could be more horrible to her than Lord English? He has destroyed Doc Scratch and symbolically ended her own perversions, but only through the act of being born.

The only alternative to the horror of being Doc Scratch is the terror of being Lord English; the only alternative to the horror of being Calliope is the terror of being Caliborn.

ISOLATION

I could navel-gaze for hours about the potential symbolism of Lord English, but I think it’s time to return full circle to a somewhat more grounded look at Calliope.

If Calliope, Caliborn, and Lord English cast light upon each other, then what does alternate!Calliope have to say about them?

Having naturally predominated and standing as a singular figure in the furthest ring, Alt!Calliope serves to illuminate the alternatives to Caliborn’s false victory: in all the alternate possibilities illuminated by the dream bubbles, we see that Calliope can naturally predominate over Caliborn, but not vice versa.

Alternate!Calliope strongly suggests to us that Calliope is inherently stronger than Caliborn, and she tells us that Calliope and Caliborn share the same strength: she tells us yet again that Calliope and Caliborn are two sides of the same coin.

She suggests to us that, in a sense, Calliope and Caliborn are just Calliope -- that Calmasis, upon achieving integration, will simply view herself as Calliope, and Caliborn will lose because he was never the true self.

So why, then, does Caliborn win in the alpha timeline? Is it just an arbitrary time loop, a timeline plucked from the frothing sea of paradox space and arbitrarily validated by the happenstance of the immature Caliborn’s power over time?

No, I certainly don’t think so; I’d like to think that the principle of AURYN applies even here. Caliborn wins out over Calliope because they’re Doing As They Will -- because, even on the level of our trans allegory, they both have reason to want Caliborn’s victory. Even on the level of our trans allegory, Calmasis needs to be Caliborn.

Alternate!Calliope tells us that she had to become strong because she had no-one else to comfort her, and I think suggests two important points of interest:

Firstly, that alt!Calliope serves to reflect Calliope’s inner drama, just as Calliope serves to reflect Caliborn’s inner drama. Caliborn fears and loathes the possibility of being like Calliope, the sentimental degenerate and weakling that she is, and Calliope fears and dreads the possibility of becoming alt!Calliope. Calliope fears that even if she rejects the hateful accusations that are Doc Scratch, and rejects the teleological future of Lord English, her only alternative is to be like alt!Calliope: someone who has won, and who has become herself, but at the cost of isolation, distance, and loneliness, without humanity, connection, or kindness.

In other words, Calliope fears her victory would mean her little green skull is always going to be a miserable Federal Fucking Issue, for herself and for others.

Secondly, that Calliope’s relationships with humans are in some sense the vector by which Caliborn came to dominate. Alt!Calliope won because she had no-one to take comfort in, and thus she had to be strong on her own, but I think the flip side of that is that alt!Calliope was able to be strong, because she had no relationships that could weaken her -- she was more insulated from the toxic ideas of the cultures that came before her. No one could so much as accidentally insinuate to her that she wasn’t good enough or pretty enough as she was, save perhaps for Caliborn -- and certainly Caliborn would have been malevolent, but he would have had less in the way of the language and systematic ideas to be the hateful and cultivated misogynist that he became in the alpha timeline.

In other words, alt!Calliope doesn’t have any reason whatsoever to worry about her little green skull in the first place.

But there’s another much more straightforward reason why Caliborn had to win, too:

If we’re supposed to take Calliope and Calliborn as two facets of a whole more generally, let alone as a specific trans allegory, well... they may have been two personas, or even two people, but they are confined to an existence as a single player. The cherub session likely never could been anything but a single player session; the cherub session was always going to be a dead session.

And whether it’s a fundamental fact of SBURB or just an idea in Calliope’s head -- one of the ideas she’s likely constructed with the human cultural biases she’s obtained by osmosis -- Caliborn is someone who can win a dead session, and Calliope isn’t. How could a Space player, a patient creative, succeed in a test of frantic, timed destruction? How could a passive Muse succeed where even an active Lord would struggle -- how could a woman succeed where even a man would struggle?

Only someone like Caliborn could ever possibly win. Perhaps Calliope reflects Caliborn as the person he desperately wishes he wasn’t, and she is the shadow that lies outside of his hateful and constructed self, but as a precarious supergiant hangs overhead and the light of Skaia gutters out, Caliborn reflects Calliope as the person she desperately needs to be, and he is the self she has to construct for herself.

Caliborn kills Calliope’s dreamself not just because he desperately hates her, but also because she has to allow him to supercede her, and he is the kind of person she needs to be: because SBURB is unfair, Skaia is unfair, and he can escape the desolate waste of her life, while she cannot.

And so it happens that Calliope is exiled from the real and cast to the unreality of the dream bubbles, while Caliborn grows monstrously beyond himself, self-mutilated and cancerous.

People have commented on the obvious romantic symbolism at play in Calliope’s return to life in the real...

...but it’s not just the power of a love that saves Calliope. Love is powerful and transformative, but love alone isn’t magical. It isn’t even the power of a magical macguffin ring that saves Calliope, either, because a ring is never just a ring, even when it is magical.

What redeems the possibility of Calliope’s existence is recognition and freedom.

TL;DR: ‘Caliborn’ is Calliope’s deadname.

#homestuck #calliope #trans calliope #homestuck analysis #homestuck meta #effortpost #self-indulgent complete bullshit

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official-transsexual · 5 years

Text

Let’s discuss Gender Dysphoria, GID, and criticism of the DSM

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s noticed that the mere fact that the DSM has been criticized by psychologists has become a pretty common truscum talking point lately, though most have been reluctant to engage with those criticisms in a meaningful way. One of them was kind enough to link me a study, so I’d like to take a look at it, as well as a couple of other DSM critiques that focus more specifically on the old “Gender Identity Disorder” diagnosis that was replaced by “Gender Dysphoria” in the DSM-5.

(this is going to get long, sorry mobile followers.)

Raskin, J. D., & Gayle, M. C. (2016). DSM-5: Do psychologists really want an alternative?. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 56(5), 439-456. (sci-hub)(google scholar)

The data for this study was collected in May & June of 2012, from 104 surveys (out of 128 attempted; surveys with less than 75% completion were discarded). While the title itself mentions the DSM-5, "psychologists’ familiarity with the proposed changes [in the DSM 5] (n = 103, Mdn = 8) did not differ significantly from neutral.” Already, this tells us that between the lack of familiarity and the fact that this data was collected before the fifth edition was even published, this study is not sufficient to draw conclusions about the actual validity of the 5th edition. We can, however, determine what some of the actual concerns are about the DSM-5; for instance, "participants expected the DSM-5 to be significantly worse than the DSM-IV-TR regarding “inappropriate classification of some behaviors as disorders" (other comparative concerns were not statistically significant). Despite these concerns, 94% of respondents declared their intent to use the DSM-5 (compared to only 90% who regularly used the DSM-IV-TR).

As far as the alternatives listed in the title, "psychologists are interested in alternatives not rooted in the medical model common to the DSM and ICD.” This dislike of the medical model of psychology also extended to the stated “disadvantages” of the DSM-IV-TR according to respondents, which included “places too much emphasis on pathology” (50.96%) and “applies medical labels to psychosocial problems” (43.27%). Respondents also stated that the DSM “obscures individual differences” (60.58%), “places more emphasis on diagnosis than treatment” (51.92%) and that “[diagnostic] labels distort one’s perception of a client” (43.27%) while “ha[ving] little bearing on treatment” (31.73%), Respondents also tended to agree with the statement that “DSM relies too heavily on medical semantics,” while disagreeing that “mental disorders are a subset of medical disorders.”

Through these results, we can see that there is a trend among psychologists who responded to this survey to move away from medical models of psychological care.

So, how does this apply to Gender Dysphoria?

Prior to the construction of the current diagnostic label "Gender Dysphoria," trans people seeking medical transition were diagnosed as having "Gender Identity Disorder" (GID). According to two members of the DSM-5 workgroup who constructed the current diagnostic criteria for Gender Dysphoria, the label "dysphoria" was expected to serve the same purpose as Criterion D of the GID criteria, based on the longstanding medical use of that term to refer to profound distress or discomfort (Cohen-Kettenis & Pfäfflin, 2010). (To be clear, by long-standing, I’m talking over a century of use with almost no change in how it’s used by psychologists).

This was the diagnostic criteria for GID in use during the time that the survey data above was collected (via behavenet.com):

A. A strong and persistent cross-gender identification (not merely a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex). In children, the disturbance is manifested by four (or more) of the following:

(1) repeatedly stated desire to be, or insistence that he or she is, the other sex (2) in boys, preference for cross-dressing or simulating female attire; in girls, insistence on wearing only stereotypical masculine clothing (3) strong and persistent preferences for cross-sex roles in make-believe play or persistent fantasies of being the other sex (4) intense desire to participate in the stereotypical games and pastimes of the other sex (5) strong preference for playmates of the other sex. In adolescents and adults, the disturbance is manifested by symptoms such as a stated desire to be the other sex, frequent passing as the other sex, desire to live or be treated as the other sex, or the conviction that he or she has the typical feelings and reactions of the other sex.

B. Persistent discomfort with his or her sex or sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex. In children, the disturbance is manifested by any of the following: in boys, assertion that his penis or testes are disgusting or will disappear or assertion that it would be better not to have a penis, or aversion toward rough-and-tumble play and rejection of male stereotypical toys, games, and activities; in girls, rejection of urinating in a sitting position, assertion that she has or will grow a penis, or assertion that she does not want to grow breasts or menstruate, or marked aversion toward normative feminine clothing. In adolescents and adults, the disturbance is manifested by symptoms such as preoccupation with getting rid of primary and secondary sex characteristics (e.g., request for hormones, surgery, or other procedures to physically alter sexual characteristics to simulate the other sex) or belief that he or she was born the wrong sex.

C. The disturbance is not concurrent with a physical intersex condition.

D. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Code based on current age:

302.6 Gender Identity Disorder in Children 302.85 Gender Identity Disorder in Adolescents or Adults

Specify if (for sexually mature individuals):

Sexually Attracted to Males Sexually Attracted to Females Sexually Attracted to Both Sexually Attracted to Neither

Yeah, it’s... a lot. It was also the subject of serious criticism before the DSM-5 workgroup began rewriting it. The criteria for GID in children was particularly heavily criticised by researchers, who may have been particularly wary because of the disaster that was the DSM-3 GID in children criteria. These criticisms do not reject the definition of a mental disorder outlined in the the DSM-IV, instead focusing on whether GID fits that definition (bolding mine):

In DSM-IV, each of the mental disorders is conceptualized as a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom. In addition, this syndrome or pattern must not be merely an expectable and culturally sanctioned response to a particular event, for example, the death of a loved one. Whatever its original cause, it must currently be considered a manifestation of a behavioral, psychological, or biological dysfunction in the individual. Neither deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) nor conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict is a symptom of a dysfunction in the individual, as described above

Bartlett, N. H., Vasey, P. L., & Bukowski, W. M. (2000). Is gender identity disorder in children a mental disorder?. Sex Roles, 43(11-12), 753-785. (sci-hub)(google scholar)

In Bartlett, Vasey, and Bukowski’s 2000 paper, the authors ask four specific questions related to the definition of mental disorders:

“Is GID associated with present distress?”

“Is GID associated with present disability?”

“Is GID associated with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom?", and

“Does GID represent a behavioral, psychological, or biological dysfunction in the individual or is it simply deviant behavior or a conflict between the individual and society?”

When looking at the first question, the authors note that the criteria for GID specifically requires that the distress be caused by the incongruence (”disturbance”) between a person’s assigned sex and gender identity, rather than simply be associated with it. Here, they argue that the present distress criteria of the definition of a mental disorder should be interpreted as requiring direct causation. The last sentence of the DSM-IV definition of mental disorders seems to support this conclusion; in order for distress resulting from the conflict between society and trans individuals to count as “disordered,” identifying outside of one’s assigned sex would itself have to be established as inherently disordered according to the above definition.

The authors conclude that “there is a lack of empirical evidence to support the notion of distress caused directly by GID as opposed to simply being associated with it,” and that “evidence from published case studies does not appear to support distress caused by ‘gender role disturbances’.” At one point, the authors suggest that “indeed, considering the minimal amount of attention in the literature devoted to the child’s distress in comparison to that devoted to the child’s tendencies to engage in cross-gender behaviors, one might infer that the child’s own feelings of contentment or distress are treated as secondary to the distress felt by others as a result of the child’s cross-gender behaviors. It is possible that this lack of attention to child distress in the literature is reflective of the actual state of affairs, that is, a lack of distress on the part of the child,” before going on to explain some of the other possible explanations for distress in kids with GID that had been previously offered by other researchers. Current research showing the mental health impact of supporting trans kids through social transition would seem to support the idea that at least some of that distress (dysphoria) is a result of social factors, and not an inherent aspect of identifying outside of one’s assigned sex (Olson, Durwood, DeMeules, & Mclaughlin, 2016; Russell, Pollitt, Li, & Grossman, 2018); while this does not disprove the mandatory dysphoria requirement, it does validate those alternative sources of dysphoria mentioned by Bartlett et al.

The examination of the second question raises the same concerns as the first did, with the authors concluding that “taken together, research would suggest that caution must be taken in making definitive statements about the mental health of children with GID.“

In response to the third question, that of future risk, the authors describe the risks toward trans people as “such negative outcomes as physical abuse, school drop-out, drug and alcohol addiction, prostitution, AIDS, and poverty,” before noting that “adolescents with GID may be caught in a downward spiral similar to that which is found among other adolescents who have suffered rejection,” which means these risks are more “mere associations” that don’t necessarily indicate that identifying outside one’s assigned gender is disordered.

The authors start answering the fourth question by looking at whether wanting to transition counts as dysfunctional, noting that while “outright repudiation of one’s biological sex certainly seems “dysfunctional,” at least in the folk sense of the word [...] this sort of intuitive “hunch” is clearly an unacceptable foundation upon which to base a clinical diagnosis.” They also note criticisms of the definition of “dysfunctional” used in the DSM-IV, before concluding that “it is simply impossible to say whether disavowal of one’s biological sex is, or is not, a dysfunction.” At this point, the authors start talking about desistance studies; I’ve linked criticism of those studies before so I’m not going to get into them in too much detail here, but the concerns raised by the authors have a lot to do with the DSM-III’s pathologization of gender non-conforming kids & lack of identity requirements, which resulted in GNC kids who identified with their assigned sex being diagnosed with GID alongside actual trans kids who otherwise met the diagnostic criteria. The authors finish by noting that research undertaken using previous diagnostic standards obscured differences between the kids diagnosed with GID under the DSM-III criteria.

Wilson, I., Griffin, C., & Wren, B. (2002). The validity of the diagnosis of gender identity disorder (child and adolescent criteria). Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 7(3), 335-351. (sci-hub)(google scholar)

Wilson, Griffin, & Wren (2002) expressed extreme concern about the use of diagnosis based on behavioural criteria and the pathologization of gender-nonconformity. Like Bartlett et al, the authors of this study highlighted the pathologization of social problems, such as those that accompany mistreatment or those which are the result of a problem not inherently linked to gender identity; note that examples of the latter are potentially the result of the intersection of multiple forms of marginalization (btw, you’ve all read Crenshaw’s 1989 paper on intersectionality and multi-axial oppression, right?). Wilson et al also focus heavily on Zucker & Bradley’s (1995) attempts to justify treating transgender identities as disordered, concluding that “it is evident from their argument that the distress and disability experienced by those individuals with crossgender behaviour, was the consequence of the perception of the behaviour by others, and not as a result of the behaviour itself.”

Again, as with Bartlett et al, the authors of this paper found no evidence to support the claim that distress (dysphoria) is an inherent part of identifying outside of one’s assigned sex.

Comparing these three critiques of the DSM-IV-TR makes it evident that there's a number of overlaps between criticisms of the GID diagnosis and those of the DSM in general, specifically with regard to concerns about over-pathologization and the conflation of social and medical issues. Bartlett et al (2000) even explicitly called out the "distress criteria" of GID as lacking empirical evidence.

TL;DR:

Criticisms of the DSM in general by psychologists do not support the idea that trans people must experience the symptom known as dysphoria. Research suggests that many psychologists think that the DSM is too focused on labeling experiences as disordered or otherwise medicalizing things that shouldn’t be medicalized. Meanwhile, criticisms of the DSM that focus directly on the diagnosis used to gatekeep people seeking transition explicitly point out the lack of evidence for the type of distress that psychologists and other gatekeepers refer to as “dysphoria” as a problem with the validity of the DSM-IV, which directly contradicts the truscum claim that the necessity of dysphoria is an established scientific fact.

okay this keeps growing so I’m going to call it here for now & give my eyes a break, if anyone notices any bad typos or absent links lmk

#long post #anti truscum #anti transmed #tucute #transsexuals against truscum #dysphorics against truscum #op

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skamofcolor · 5 years

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Skams ranked by most to least likely to cast a Muslim PoC as their Even

1) Skam España

I have no proof of this other than I trust™️ the showrunners. Yes, they have a majority white cast but I can see them fulfilling the prophecy and casting an actual, Muslim MoC as Even. They’re great at creating more nuanced backgrounds for characters and I can really see them incorporating Islam into Spanish!Even's character as an important part of his identity. I can also see them trying to do this as something to bond Amira and Spanish!Lucas. For example, when Spanish!Lucas questions Amira in class, it could be less like "WHY DO YOU MUSLIMS HATE GAYS" and more like "...so... this guy I like is Muslim, does your faith... approve of gay people?" Something to also consider is that the showrunners have to contend with Elite. And they must know that a huge part of the appeal of Ander/Omar is that Omar is a Muslim MoC. So if they can actually incorporate Spanish!Even's identity in a nuanced and caring way without succumbing to Islamophobic/racist stereotypes that would be wonderful; especially if they make the Spanish Balloon Squad and his parents take a bigger role in S3 as supportive people in Spanish!Even's life! THE POSSIBILITIES.

2) Skam Austin

I too, am surprised to be ranking this remake so high. But I remember hearing that Cengiz Al originally auditioned for og Even, because Julie originally wanted og Even to be a Muslim MoC. Obviously we didn't get that, but this could be Julie's change to redeem herself and make American!Even as a Muslim WoC. It also seems plausible due to Skam Austin's commitment to ethnoracial diversity in their cast. Plus, I will literally riot if they cast some white girl as Shay’s love interest. I don't actually trust Julie to create a Muslim, bi/pan, WoC character that isn't either A) a walking stereotype or B) refuses to engage with her identity in any meaningful way BUT a girl can hope. So maybe this is more a wish fulfillment ranking than anything else.

3) Skam Netherlands

This is the show that definitely seems most committed to racial diversity, as they racebent a number of important characters in S1 (Liv, Noah and Olivia). So I could see them casting a Muslim MoC as their Even simply for that fact alone. I think Skamnl is willing to take risks and has unique characterizations, so Dutch!Even I think could potentially be like nothing we've seen before (not only in terms of religious and ethnoracial identity). Plus, wouldn't it be beautiful for Dutch!Lucas to slowly fall in love with a shy, feminine MoC, and for Skamnl to give us a scene that mirrors the S1 dance between him and Kes, but as something that's serious and sweet and soft?

4) OG Skam (in an alternative universe)

Although they canonically cast a white man, I truly feel like OG Skam could have cast a MoC. See the above, re: Cengiz Al. Also Even's story, imho, fundamentally doesn't make sense when the character is a non-Muslim white man. Rather than being a show that perpetuates Islamophobia, it would be one that challenges it and show all of the stereotypes and discrimination perpetuated by non-Muslim white characters is bullshit (but that's a post for another day...) anyway what I'm ultimately trying to say is that Julie really could’ve done that™️.

5) WTFock

This is in the middle because WTFock is honestly a wildcard. They’ve changed up the S1 storyline enough to truly make it feel like an original and I feel like they’d be willing to continue to diversify their cast. I also trust them to be able to incorporate a Muslim MoC Even in a nuanced way that acknowledges his religion and ethnoracial identity. I know some folks might have doubts on this one because of the lack of Yasmina content in S1 - but I heard rumblings that the scenes where she was missing was because the actress didn't feel comfortable shooting at parties, etc. as a Muslim woman. So right there is also an example of how they listen to their cast and could do a great job with a Muslim MoC Even.

6) Druck

I know I'm in the minority here placing Druck so low, but hear me out. Yes, Druck has one of the most diverse casts of the remakes, but so far, they have been unwilling to give their characters of color any meaningful characterization (besides Amira,,, to an extent). I love Sam M., but in reality she, Sam F., and Carlos have basically only existed as accessories to their white friends/counterparts. Abdi is barely a character. For this reason, Druck isn't a frontrunner on the "ready and willing to give a Muslim MoC a complex storyline and feature him as a main's love interest" train. I may be pleasantly surprised though and we'll find that out soon enough.

7) Skam France

Canonically cast a non-Muslim white man, but were we surprised? Not really. Skam France seems to operate on the idea that there can only be one (1) PoC with a speaking role per friend group and they're sticking to it (see: Imane and the Girl Squad; Alex and the Raptors; Yann and the Boy Squad; Sarah and that crew). Their choice to whitewash Mahdi and "create a new character" by casting a white boy with sharp cheekbones should have been our first indication that they definitely weren't going to cast a Muslim MoC for their Even. No shade, but all we can hope for now is that Imane's brother isn't the only MoC in the French Balloon Squad.

8) OG Skam (in this universe)

The og is listed here twice because of two reasons. One, I wanted to list Skam Italia as low as possible and two, because, they were the original. Ultimately, their choice to cast a non-Muslim white man as their Even might very well lead to all the other remakes casting non-Muslim white people as their Evens. And while each showrunner has agency and the ability to racebend this character, we have to hold the original accountable. The reality of the situation is they canonically cast a non-Muslim white man as their Even and also perpetuated hella (unresolved) racism and Islamophobia to move the plot along in S3.

9) Skam Italia

Canonically cast a non-Muslim white man in a show already full of non-Muslim white people. But even if they hadn't already cast their conventionally attractive white boy, we would've already known. This is the show that couldn't even be bothered to cast a Muslim WoC actress for the canonically Muslim WoC main character. there's no way in hell the showrunners would've ever casted a racebent Even. I'm positive they'll continue to have an all-white cast even in their Sana's sham of a season.

#meta #mod jennifer #skamesp #skam austin #druck #skamfr #skam #skamnl #wtfock

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dyinglightroleplay · 5 years

Photo

𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒.

NAME : Arabella Petra Figg RELATIONSHIP TO THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX : Member ( active - duty ), On-call Non - Magical Physician AGE / BIRTHDATE : 37 Years Old / born 16 July 1942 at 10:02pm EST ZODIAC SIGN : Cancer ( sun ), Virgo ( moon ), Aquarius ( rising ) EDUCATION : Université de Paris / Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie ( MD ) BLOOD STATUS : Pureblood Squib

𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒.

✧ Benjy Fenwick ( platonic ) ✧ Peter Pettigrew ( antagonistic ) ✧ Gabriel McKinnon ( player’s choice )

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐄𝐍.

Directing the makeshift infirmary created at Order Headquarters following the Battle of Hogwarts. She’s yet to hear a full report of the battle’s events.

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐒 : 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐍.

PLAYER : Mod Rivka FACECLAIM : Rachelle Lefevre URL : @aerabella

𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: BLOOD SUPREMACY, GASLIGHTING, ALLUSIONS TO THE SHOAH, WAR

ZERO / RISING. * How is your character perceived by others? What mask do they wear, and is there more than one?

The biggest current conflict in Arabella's life is, frankly, that she's essentially leading two of them --- --- she's spending her days ( and three nights a week on call ) at Charing Cross Hospital, working as a general surgeon, and her nights ( and nearly every waking hour she isn't working ) making herself available for Order business. These two worlds hardly dovetail in any convenient, meaningful way, and often, Arabella feels more like she's being slowly - pulled apart between them than she is bridging any sort of gap. And, as the War progresses this feeling only intensifies for her, bringing a new companion in doubt. Albus' move to the Ministry saw one of her major remaining ties to the Magical world frayed, and she can't help but feel lost ; the disintegration of her relationship with Alastor, no matter how necessary or mutual, hasn't helped that. Arabella has always relied on her uncanny ability to seek strongholds in people, rather than places, in friends rather than family, to keep herself tethered to the life she's chosen. But even that is called into question as the Order steadily begins to turn inward, as bonds strain, as the stakes raise in ways she's not even certain herself she can withstand.

Something I'd really like to investigate with Arabella is how much of her literal existence is affected by continual, subtle gaslighting --- --- even unconsciously, bias lives so intertwined with Magical politics that not a single day goes by where she doesn't question her place in this world, or her ability to participate in it. Losing Albus’ influence only fuels this, leaves her unsteady enough to begin to doubt her own competence, her own power ; while she may not have Magic, she's never felt its lack as keenly as she has in the days since the news of the Battle of Hogwarts broke. And of course, she's grown used to fighting this, she's grown used to proving herself time and again at tests that never would have been presented to her if she could wield a wand. But the weight of displacement wears, a quiet wound she doesn't dare mention for fear of seeming too needy, too weak, too much. Arabella has spent her life taught, continually, that who she is, who she was born to be, is something of an accident, a problem, a tragedy, something to be hidden or forgotten, something to be ashamed of. And the fear in that self - fulfilling prophecy --- that by asking for help, that by speaking about her insecurity or her fear, that by appearing anything but self - possessed and certain she's somehow proving them right --- keeps her from growing past it.Additionally, I'd really like to explore the shape Arabella's role in the Order takes, as a non-magical person. We know that she spends her life as this 'double agent', continuing undercover and keeping an eye on Harry as he grows up on Privet Drive --- --- how does she get to that point? What about her training, her personality drew Dumbledore to that conclusion, fostered that trust? And what is she doing now, in his absence? She's a woman with military training, an accomplished physician, but these are not valuable skills to Magical eyes ; how does Arabella translate her accomplishments for Magical colleagues in order to establish her competence and earn their regard? And what does she do with it, once she's finally managed to earn it? What inspires her to carry on even after the fall of You Know Who, even after Lily and James' deaths? Why does she continue to devote her life to a world that has, from the moment she was born, tried so hard to forget her ?

And perhaps it's the nature of a woman brought up across two worlds, but Arabella is a woman of contradictions. She is brutally soft, she is tender in equal measure as she is tough. From a very young age, she understood that she, and she alone, was responsible for her happiness, for her safety, for her security, for her love. Coming of age the non-magical child of pureblood parents taught her early that no one would make space for her, if she did not demand it. And does that necessarily always make her the easiest to get along with? Of course not. But has it made her singleminded, driven, powerful in ways that she would not have been otherwise ? Absolutely. She exists in a space entirely of her own making, and taking that space is a purposeful, continual choice. Arabella is, above all, protective of this, and careful to only allow people into that space who will respect it, or help her maintain it.

Ruled by her emotions ( a true water sign ! ), Arabella thinks with her heart, with her gut. She's intelligent, well - spoken and well - educated, but pragmatism doesn't serve her ; she's action - oriented, stubborn, and proactive. Still, she is steady - handed, and is less about the rush of acting before thinking and more about the dominant emotion of the action --- --- while she allows her emotions to dictate her choices, time has given her the benefit of perception and self - awareness. She learnt empathy long before she decided to pursue medicine, and discovered the joy in using her perceptiveness to bring others peace early in life. Guided, always, by her heart, Arabella presents a calming, opening presence, but it is not one that she abides being used or taken for granted. And again, this is where her fundamental duality comes into play ; she can be generous, kind, and affectionate with those she trusts with those energies, but she can be equally cold, distant, or aggressive with people who've proven themselves unworthy of that emotional labor. Protecting herself --- because, truthfully, she doesn't trust others to do it --- takes precedence here.

A classic introvert, Arabella can come across as quiet or aloof, but her rich inner life --- and vibrant energy, shown to those who know her well --- fills her time and keeps her from retreating inward or closing herself off fully. However, she has a distinct confrontational side, and one that is not always to her advantage ; Arabella wears her anger, just like her heart, on her sleeve. Despite this, she is not a good arguer, preferring instead to sort through her own feelings first to address her needs, if possible. Sensitivity and intuition rule here, as well, and while Arabella is at her most obvious when angry or frustrated, she is very particular about whether or not 'fighting it out' will serve her, or simply take away her peace. This combination is interesting, especially for a woman who prioritizes herself, especially for a woman stretched between two worlds as she is --- --- Arabella is, truly, the sort of unbothered who can decide if a confrontation will not be worth it long before it comes to a head. In this way, her anger is valuable to her --- --- not as a weapon, but as a means to separate out what is and is not worth her investment.

ONE / THE SUN. * Choose one to explore : what about their personality, general preferences, sense of self / ego, or fundamental traits attracted you to them?

I have .... so quickly fallen in love with Arabella, in the same way I fell in love with Davey, as an opportunity to really dig deep and explore intersections in this universe that don't usually get much attention. With Arabella, there's a chance to delve into how Squibs interact with the magical world in a time where their very existence is questioned even more than it usually is --- --- where do Squibs fall in the hierarchy desired by blood purists ? What part of their identity is more valuable, is more important, is more easily leveraged, politically and interpersonally ? And what does it feel like to be part of a sub - group so small that you might very well be the only you you know ? But even beyond that, Arabella presents the opportunity to look into the worth of a woman's work, and how its gauged in a society that fundamentally considers her to be 'broken'. Children raised in magical homes who end up without magic don't have that Hogwarts Moment that Muggleborn children do ; at eleven years old, at ten, maybe even earlier, Arabella's entire world got infinitely smaller, rather than broader. She was raised in one culture and fundamentally turned out of it, how does she cope with the intersection ? What life does she chose ? How does a Witch who can't perform magic parse her own identity and how does she go about making space for herself to just exist ? And all of this, of course, viewed with the Dark Lord's war as the backdrop .... I can't wait to tell the rest of her story. I can't wait to hear it.

The Order is not Arabella's first time amongst soldiers, but it is undoubtedly her first time fearing for them. Albus was never a man of great explication, preferring to work as close to omnisciently as possible in what was, at least she'd believed, an attempt to protect anyone else from the pain and loss of the great labor of war. But as the recruits skewed younger, as the faces seated 'round the meeting's table grew rounder, softer, before they became fewer altogether, Arabella caught herself thinking less and less like an Officer. And the newest ones, the youngest ones, they are fierce and indomitable in ways the Order undoubtedly needs to re - invigorate their efforts, but is that worth this ? Is that worth losing them ? It seems absurd that a world of magic, armed with the fantastic and limited only imagination, could fall so easily into a pattern repeated in the wake of the waste laid to the Muggle world mere decades before. She wants to be hopeful, she wants to see that ferocity and conviction and let it reassure her, let it comfort her, let it reignite her own fire. But Wizards are so ineffably human, in this way --- --- as prone to mistakes as they are to a fervent refusal to acknowledge them. So she worries, instead.

TWO / THE MOON. * Which color would you associate most strongly with them and the emotions that dominate them? Describe however you’d like.

MUTED TONES. Lavender, clary sage, rose quartz --- --- soft but lingering, perfumed, precious, protective. Spring rain on windowpanes making watercolor, worn - in knits, velvet or silk, the thatch of an aging floral sofa run - through with unmistakable cat scratches yet beloved all the same, comfortable all the same. Multi - colored capsules and oils, blood seeping pink through the white threads of sterile gauze, the faint - orange stains of iodine left behind and the quiet yellow of sterile soap caught under cut - short fingernails. The blue - lipped hush of the operating theatre, and the lavender tinge of dawn that greets her as she leaves ; sunset - colors of desert and death, white enveloping as some believe it will always do, when life leaves this world. The sweet melt of candlelight across a familiar face, the pale gold pinch of a well - baked challah, burnished gold and the cream droplets of dried wax.

THREE / MERCURY. * What is this character’s area of expertise? Where do they excel?

Several years of Medical study and residency later, Arabella is currently practicing as a hospital - based general surgeon. She spent two tours of French Army duty as a field medic, first at eighteen ( and simply an assistant ) and again at 35 and running her own team. She's also an active participant in Médecins Sans Frontières, helping to train younger physicians in field strategies they might use abroad, and while she hasn't yet had the pleasure of taking a humanitarian trip herself --- blame this war, of course --- she very, very much wants to.

Despite being unable to accomplish any Magic on her own, Arabella takes careful consideration and great pride in finding and placing protective objects and plants in her personal spaces. Growing up so entrenched in Magical culture meant she sees the efficacy --- and the appeal --- of utilizing crystals, candles, oils or scents, and herbs for their healing, safeguarding, and enriching properties. She's also a rather adept Tarot reader --- --- the grey area between everyday magic and Magic is expansive.

#marauders rp #first wizarding war rp #hp rp #oc rp #lsrp #arabella figg #takenf #takenootp #taken #gaslighting tw #war tw #shoah tw

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darisu-chan · 6 years

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MitsuKoro Wedding aka The Nines Send Their Regards

Okay, so this is what I think of this episode.

First things first, Mitsuru and Kokoro together the day before they finally did it was so freaking cute and domestic I forgot they’re like 15/16. And also the baby doll next to a Mitsuru seems to be symbolism.

I saw three death flags just after the opening. First, Ichigo while noticing they were actually spying on them all along. She seemed really on edge. I’m guessing that she’ll be one of the first ones to rebel, and since she’s the squad leader, she could totally get killed in order to extinguish the sparks of rebellion. Not to mention Nine Alpha had a weird interest on her. Who knows if he still does. Then, we learned in an interview that Ikuno might be in a position of leadership. Again, this will only happen if something bad happens to Ichigo.

Second death flag is Goro. Firstly, because he’s Ichigo’s partner, and since she has a big death flag on her head, that means he could potentially be killed too in action together with her. Not to mention he too is questioning things. If Hiro and Ichigo decide to rebel, he’ll support them right then and there. Secondly, Hiro mentioned again Goro had a fever. The first time it happened was episode 16, and now again. It doesn’t seem normal.

Then, there’s this scene from the opening:

Not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but they look unconscious, as opposed to the other ones. Could it be that both Ichigo and Goro are going to die or at least be comatose?

Third death flag: Miku.In episode 16, Zero Two noticed that Miku has graying hair, which she has tried to hide. Now, in this episode, just like Goro she has a fever. We know that Child Fever kills them. She seems to be aging fast. I think that that’s what could potentially kill her.

And as with Ichigo and Goro, Miku and Zorome are closing their eyes in the opening:

Now, I wanna talk about how Futoshi wanting to officiate the wedding is a HUGE character development. He was super jealous of Mitsuru and heart that Kokoro had rejected him. In the scene, Kokoro notices he still feels sad, and tries to apologize, but Im happy Futoshi chose that role for himself. It’s good progress. Letting go of someone you love it’s always tough, doesn’t matter if they love someone else or not. But I’m just happy he decided to move on for her happiness, which will bring him happiness in the long run.

And speaking of letting go, Ikuno’s confession is easily my favorite love confession in this anime. When I saw the preview, I totally thought she was going to kiss Ichigo or make her uncomfortable. I’m glad they didn’t. I’m glad Ikuno was able to be honest with Ichigo and convey her feelings to her. How she agrees with the Nines, but that she can’t hate their gender, for it is what it makes them who they are. In short, Ikuno accepts she’s a girl, but she’s also attracted to girls. It’s also come to my attention that she knew so many things about Ichigo, that she could read her so well, specially when she mentions she changed her hair clip: “Did a certain someone give you a new one?” It means she knew about Goro’s love for Ichigo all along. Now, the parallel with Ichigo’s love for Hiro is so obvious. Both fell for someone because that person gave them their names, their identities. They wouldn’t be who they are without that person. Ikuno says that, ever since, she’s only had eyes for Ichigo. And the same can be said for Ichigo before she decided to move on. It’s hinting that Ikuno will have to move on. In favor of Ichigo’s relationship with Goro? Who knows. Maybe no But I’m glad that the writers have pointed out that the action of giving someone a name in that world is super important! We’ve had Hiro giving Ichigo, Mitsuru and Zero Two their names, which was a very important moment for the three. And now Ichigo with Ikuno too.

Now, Ichigo comforting Ikuno was the sweetest thing ever. How she understood her feelings, of how loving someone who doesn’t notice you is painful, but that’s part of life. I know a lot of teens are watching this show, and this message is very important. It’s possible one day you’ll fall for someone who won’t love you back, and it’ll hurt like a bitch, but that’s part of life. It’s not because something’s wrong with you. It’s just that, sometimes, that happens. We can say the same for Futoshi. He chose to be happy for the person he loves, even if she doesn’t love him back.

I hope both find their happiness, even if the opening shows us the opposite:

Squad 13 joining forces to prepare the wedding was beautiful. But taking a picture at the end totally spelled doom for them.

The next scene of ZT hearing what sounded like the Klaxosaur princess was phenomenal. We were all wondering if ZT had any link to her, and now there’s one, she can hear her call. Then, the giant hand made a come back. I feel that it symbolizes ZT will have to go back to her klaxosaur origins, saying goodbye to her apparent “humanity.” The deaths of her partners are coming back to haunt her too. I think we’ve always wondered if she cared about them or not. It seems she did. But now, separation from Hiro is imminent fi she doesn’t share her worries soon.

I hope ZT and Hiro get to marry, because I feel that’s the wedding we actually want to see.

Kokoro was beautiful, even with a dress made from curtains. Mitsuru looked handsome and so in love. Ikuno making them bouquets was super sweet. And everyone looked so happy and excited. The ring exchange was so obviously a sex reference with Mitsuru hurting Kokoro and then she saying “keep going.” I mean, why was that there if we know they had sex already. It would’ve been different, for example, if it had been ZT and Hiro getting married and they’ve never had sex. But why was it there?

Anyway, everyone was joyful, until, like in ever Game of Thrones wedding, something bad happened, and of course resident snitch Nine Alpha went and ruined everything.

Kokoro and Mitsuru’s separation was already hinted in both the opening and the ending that I’m starting to think the other hints I mentioned before will actually come true. On a side note, the Nines aren’t human either. Maybe even less human than ZT. They don’t appear to have sexual organs, they’re all androgenous in appearance. Maybe that’s why they look down on the rest of the parasites.

Glad it was confirmed that Nana and Hachi were parasites and that it’s possible children can become adults. But I also have to wonder how many achieve this, and if they stop aging or what. Another theory, could it be that children are clones of other parasites? What will ahppen to Nana now? Her memories will be erased? Her emotions suppressed?

Finally, revolution is upon us! What Hiro says then is so on point “Are we not even allowed the slightest bit of happiness?” The answer is no. They’re just pawns in a game they don’t understand. But this repression is exactly what starts rebellions. This is the spark they need to act. It, obviously, got worse when Mitusur and Kokoro got taken away, and then came back with no memories. The same thing that happened to Hiro and ZT. The same thing that might happen to all of them if they’re not careful.

I saw very tired and angry children. I think any respect Zorome and Miku still had for Papa is gone now. “We’re at the end of our rope.” They will rebel soon, and I’m so here for it! I just hope Kokoro and Mitsuru regained their memories soon. Maybe by a kiss or something.

Some people were saying Kokoro had an abortion. I mean, could be. But we don’t even know if she got pregnant to begin with. Difficult to tell unless we have a clue.

Other thing I think people kept missing that I hope has become clear is that the message isn’t that “straight sex” is forbidden when it’s the natural thing to do, rather, that the government has eradicated all semblance of relationships and decisions humans should have all freedom to make. Adults don’t have friends. Adults don’t form families. Even if they’re apparently together, there’s no love. They don’t have feelings anymore, and without them they can’t form meaningful relationships. Our ability to form these bonds is one of the things that makes us humans. Without that ability, what are we? Chilren are the only ones in this world who can experience any of that. But what happens, they’re being monitored. Eventually, they too lose their feelings. Close friendships seem to be discouraged for other squads. No one is allowed to fall in love. No one is allowed to decide if they want to get married, if they want to have babies. They’re even being forced to work with people they don’t want to. Those are fundamental human rights. We’re seeing a society that has gone to hell. They only care about trivial matters without living. The children are the only ones who want to live, but no one is letting them. They’ve been born to die, and the ones who survive and make it to adulthood, lack emotions and desires, like Hachi. Are children going to keep accepting this? The answer is no. They will fight for their rights even if they die.

#darling in the franxx #long post

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queernuck · 6 years

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Trans-Inclusive Radicalism and Contemporary Feminism in Postmodern Feminist Thought

If one wishes to rescue a concept of political lesbianism, one must recognize both the lesbian phallus as a part of certain lesbian political ideologies, and must further engage in a process of understanding the many differentiated flows of lesbian desire, flows that absolutely must include trans women, flows that take on a radical character in defiance of materialist feminism and not directly as a form of proletarian feminism, and accepting this as part of accepting a certain postmodern posture. There is a fear among certain feminists of the postmodern, of poststructural acts of signification, specifically because of how the ideological structures they depend on are repetitions of an Oedipal burden, are part of a means by which sex is codified and essentialized in order to understand it as a central aspect of oppression separate from conventional historical materialism.

The definition of these terms: political lesbian, radical feminism, and the lesbian phallus as a demarcation of exactly what goes on in political lesbian acts of filiation, affection, identification is a difficult task specifically because so many of these terms have changed not only in assemblage with one another, but as independent structures of realization, as part of larger assemblages of identity and community. The importance of realizing this, realizing that radical feminism was not and need not be so singularly associated with trans-exclusionary ideology, that the “trans-exclusion” at hand is itself a misnomer, that it in fact welcomes certain realizations of transition as a process and uses them as a means of increasing precarity for trans women both in feminist spaces and in larger communities, as part of making trans women acceptable targets. The presence of a lesbian phallus, that is, the specific conceptual “lack” of a phallus that is filled through the reinvention of Lacanian flows of exchange between women, when previously such flows were conceived of strictly as heterosexual, is discussed by Judith Butler specifically in order to critique the means by which lesbianism becomes clear, becomes that which it is most readily identified as. Frequently, identities such as “butch” or “femme” are understood rather shallowly as mere resignifications of heterosexuality, in the same way that top and bottom are for gay men. Penetrative acts become central in a fashion that first demands the crudely-manufactured phallus become clear, the insertion of discourses of penetrative acts into a voyeuristic understanding of sexual intercourse, sexual intimacy, before the subtler flows of phallic desire are able to exist between two women. The apparent refusal of this by denying any penetrative act, by acting as if penetration cannot be a lesbian act, a process that is frequently realized by admonishing trans women for their heterosexuality even if they are involved in sex with another trans woman, is central to certain notions of political lesbianism that merely resignify feminist action, acts of feminist concentration on womanhood and building community with women over men as not only a substitute for any sexual act, but in fact far greater than it, a more meaningful realization of lesbian identity.

This is not to say that all “political lesbians” make this distinction: certainly, a bisexual woman who specifically concentrates on building community with women in a fashion that involves an exclusively woman-oriented character in her attraction, expression of desire, expression of her most immediate senses of community could be described as engaging in a certain sort of political lesbianism, but moreover doing so in relief of bisexuality as an identity and a structure of identification. Political lesbianism as a distinction that dictates not the lack of a phallus (that knowingly invites its resignification) but rather a new series of schizophrenic affinities, desires that form along new lines of flight and specifically act in an Anti-Oedipal fashion, thus becomes a potential singularity of identification. This would include recognizing womanhood as a contingent structure, as one that involves both sexing and gendering of the body, in a fashion that implies the two as singular yet separate, a kind of univocality of the body that trans women are far too familiar with. For trans women who are unable to pass, who have features that are commonly understood as markers of maleness, the apparent-privilege they enjoy seems an especially ironic sort of joke: it is those features which mean they are not enough of a woman, and yet those exact features which mark them as a woman especially deserving of violence, a woman who must be tested and observed and studied in order to find possible moments at which she is unbecoming of a woman, a kind of becoming-transgender, becoming-transsexual, becoming-tranny that is not the molecular becoming that belongs to a man, but in fact a far different status akin to the revelation of the “real” seen time and time again in comedies where a trans woman is undressed against her will and made to stand naked, her sex revealed and thus her gender resignified in an instant. For trans women to concentrate on the well-being, safety, happiness of other trans women in a fashion that may involve sexual intimacy but is far more focused on a network of attachment, a rejection of the suturing of the stunted phallus to the body of the trans woman attempted by a kind of reversal seen in the popular discourses around the vaginoplasty that describe it as dead, always bleeding, as the sort of wound the vagina is often imagined to be.

The deeply physical, sex-based language combined with an ontology of performativity often used in radical feminism means that transness is impossible to conceive of except as a sort of degeneracy, akin to most other reactionary notions of it, always coming from an impossible “other” that cannot be truly met, in numerous different discourses coming from an Orientalized Other, a decadent Western influence, the collapse of an arboreal and Oedipal concept of the family as bound through the taboos surrounding the traumatic formation of family bonds, the way in which one creates a transhistorical notion of sex and sexual identity through the colonial resignification of structures of knowing and naming the body as ontically bound to sex and gender, as part of a kind of rhizomal resignification where sex and gender were not only always one another even in difference, but in fact present the sole and singular point at which transhistorical convergence can be noted. There is, thus, a kind of transcendence of the body but moreover a transcendence that is bound to an ascension of the supposed female body into something that cannot be critiqued specifically because it lies beyond coloniality, despite the profoundly colonial character of many discussions of gendering of the body and the attempts to realize the language of gender as inadequate but the most readily available means of expressing certain knowledges of the body in a context of decolonization. Effectively, the sort of desire that radical feminism claims to reject is imposed specifically through a radical feminist epistemology. This is not comprehensive over radical feminist thought, and indeed one can read even explicitly transmisogynist works against themselves in order to develop a kind of trans-focused radical feminism: the example of deconstructing and admiring the SCUM Manifesto as a trans woman is a particularly pertinent one given the way in which it describes a kind of abolition of manhood and makes cast-off remarks about men transfigured into women, men who have become women in order to avoid this cleansing and who instead admire, love, wish to be women. The eventual outcome of this, then, is a refusal to recognize the rather obvious means by which one finds shifting, flowing schizzes and breaks in the manifestation of gender not as genuine changes that can be deconstructed, approached materially, or even affirmed: instead one finds them all as a singular, monolithic whole, gathered into an arboreal singularity of gendered nightmares.

The move away from a strict materialist approach to gender should be one that benefits women of all sorts, including trans women: so much of what is considered “material” is developed out of a range of epistemic holdings that are influenced by an ontology of phallogocentrism, that exclude women by their very conception, are intentionally ignorant on the matter of women and their experiences. Even adapting these frameworks in order to offer a properly historically materialist understanding will be marked by this lack, just as the phallus and its lack are signifiers of the same affinities, same concepts of desire. Postmodernism, as a means of developing through dialectic methodologies a new understanding of deconstruction and its application past traditional notions of textuality, of exactly what a text constitutes, toward the same openings necessary for postcolonial scholarship, critical theory as a vector for decolonization, eco-deconstruction as a part of realizing these potentialities, and numerous other sorts of critique. The importance of gender to these, given the way that postmodernism has so often been driven by women, by women looking through a queer lens at texts, leads to not only the origins of condemnation by supposed-radical theorists, but the reversal of this, the potential for reaching toward radical critique through a specific evocation of reactionary strains of radical feminist thought. By comparing them to other feminisms, attempting to enter into critique that does not presuppose any singular one as an incorruptible source of knowledge-making, privileging any single feminism at the risk of privileging a remaining and lingering ontology of biological essentialism borne out of capitalist and colonialist violence, one seeks to then allow for a genuine process of restorative communal knowledge making which expands phenomenology beyond its primacy as a male way of knowing the world.

The maleness of phenomenology, the apparent antifeminism of an author such as Merleau-Ponty, is specifically due to a certain lack in their own work, one that Sartre admits about his classic lecture “Existentialism is a Humanism”: the frame of reference specifically involves certain points of privileging, certain relationships within one’s material situation that then go on to become realized in one’s phenomenological interfacing with the world at a level below any understood threshold, as a part of the phenomena of life itself. Feminist application of Merleau-Ponty has borne this out: when girls, due to an ontology of biological essentialism, are taught from a young age to behave in a way they are by necessity prevented from understanding, acting in a fashion restricted by pedophilia as a cultural norm, sexualization of unknowing subjects driving restrictions on what girls may wear, how they may participate in valuable spaces of community from sports fields to preschool classrooms, seen as subjects of interest for their male peers in a way their gaze cannot return, girls are refused childhood, are eternally moving toward a teleology of womanhood which is beyond them. That trans women are not understood in the exact same fashion, that their experience is differentiated, does not prevent it from becoming realized in the exact same fashion. Rather, it is expressed in different traumatic realizations, the waves of Oedipal becoming-woman washing across the body in the same way they wash across other women, the acts of restriction and ontological determination forced on the body from birth becoming clear. The notion of “male socialization” as an unbreakable and fundamental aspect of trans womanhood when, in fact, this represents a source of trauma, a specific and important point at which trans women first realize their location as a specific sort of woman, even before being able to name themselves as women, begin becoming-woman, is far more similar to the childhood that reactionary feminists describe girls as having than to the male socialization they imagine.

Thus, in understanding these structures of desire, terms such as “lesbian” and “political lesbianism” one must eventually reach a point at which certain basic assertions are questioned simply because as categorical markers, rather than individual identities, they lead to certain violent acts of demarcation and separation that bear no resemblance to the material or hyperreal processes of encountering gender, becoming-woman, becoming-gendered, becoming-sexed, becoming-trans, becoming-trans-woman that shapes trans womanhood. This is not at all meant to deny the critique that desirability as a singular paradigm eliminates the potential of ugliness, undesirability, community founded in fostering a kind of gleeful embodiment of such qualities and that a desire to be desirable is largely about colonial and capitalist acts of making the body worthless that are repeated violently upon mirrored, desired bodies. It is not a claim that any specific organ, specific woman, specific description of desire is to be ignored, rejected, is to be examined specifically due to trans women. Trans women, rather, are a single group within the larger structure of encounter that forms desire, and the presence of colonial ontologies in founding and maintaining exactly what desire must mean, must present itself as, is part of what exactly makes desire such a precarious point of identification. That is why, then, lesbianism must be extended in a fashion that resembles political lesbianism in some fashion: it is a specific choice regarding how one understands men, chooses to express oneself in relation to the notion of manhood and the phallogocentric necessity of such, to identify as a lesbian. That trans women are prevented from becoming even subjects of encounter unless made undesirable, unless restructured through the same sorts of flows of violent desire derided by so many radical feminists, that trans women are treated in such a specifically ironic fashion, is one of the fundamental inadequacies of certain sorts of radical feminist thought and the point at which radical feminism must thus change dramatically.

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roominthecastle · 6 years

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ethics, romance, sex: where’s Michael at? (nobody asked, rambling on my own accord)

Short version:

I think atm Michael’s character is markedly grey in these 3 “areas” of human experience. He’s started to shift away from his “old ways” and is now somewhere in-between. His “ethnical transition” is the most straightforward one and it can be used as a guide for speculation on possible shifts to romantic and sexual dimensions bc they are all parts of the larger reconceptualization process Michael’s been going through.

Long version: behind the cut

Michael’s an amoral being who was created for and, up until v recently, has existed w/ the singular purpose of inflicting pain on bad people. His human form is also meant to serve this very purpose. But he moves away from this “default setting”. He gains a new, more nuanced perspective that was previously inaccessible to him due to rules, norms, and customs. Living among human beings (the heart of his innovation) produces the wild card of transformative empathy and triggers a paradigm shift: the “gross insects” become close friends and the “stupid garbage” he’s initially forced to learn turns into a roadmap to a richer, more meaningful life.

“Stupid” and “gross” are keywords here, imo, bc they indicate Michael’s ingrained attitude: if it’s human, it’s reflexively considered primitive and disposable by his kind. This attitude is the norm and isn’t questioned by demons (tbh, it would be rather counter-productive for them to do so). But this “stupid and gross” seem to hold a covert interest, an inherent and genuine attraction to Michael. It’s the complete opposite of Trevor’s exaggerated sleazy overtures which still strike me as empty “all talk, no action” posturing, sth similar to when Janet briefly switched to “overt sexuality mode” despite having no real desire/interest or any relevant experience. It’s a function, a role to perform, part of the job. But to Michael, humans present a puzzling, stimulating otherness that invites close proximity and experimentation, which falls way way outside his job description.

This “repelling is also alluring” contradiction is nicely demonstrated on a small scale when Eleanor calls the white chocolate + shrimp combo nasty yet keeps eating it, or when she describes churro dogs to Michael and he responds w/ an excited “oh, sounds awful.” We know that given half a chance, he would try it. We know bc this is what happened on a much larger scale when he was given the opportunity to work as an architect: Neighborhood 12358W was born and he purposefully designed it in a way that granted him 24/7 close contact w/ “disgusting humans” and their gross ways.

His attitude towards human mouths is another interesting example that carries this contradiction:

“There are gonna be days when you're just sick of being around these disgusting humans, with their weird, gross little mouths, and their stupid elbows.” (201 - a rallying speech that I suspect is exaggerated but still serves to illustrate the basic demon’s view)

“Kissing is gross. You just mash your food holes together. It’s not for that.” (209)

And yet when we take a look at his small stash of human objects (106), we find wax lips that have sexual connotations (shiny, full, and red - they resemble the vulva) but are also edible and come w/ the “play now, chew later” tagline. Nice triple twist on the “mouths are for eating” sentiment. Michael also abruptly reverses his stance on kissing: gross suddenly turns exciting (hot diggity dog!). Granted, there may be other factors influencing this particular flip-flopping (I believe there are), but it’s still a solid example of the confusion created by the radical, ethics-infused reconceptualization process.

Michael starts to question things he never did before. He comes to regard humans in a fundamentally different way. He experiences the superiority of a species he always thought inferior and recognizes the inferiority of his own kind (Ya basic, Shawn.). In this sense, he plays Beauty in the tale as old as time who discovers that there’s more humanity in an allegedly primitive beast than in most of her fellow humans who mock her for the “crime” of being “different”. But the reverse is also true: being a demon, Michael also plays the Other/Beast. In the former scenario, Eleanor serves as the primitive Other/Beast being aided in her transformation, and in the latter, she’s Beauty who inspires transformation. Both work simultaneously and both result in an intimate understanding of one another, which opens the door to other areas of intimacy, i.e. those of romance and sex.

Feelings bloom whether we want them or not, but how we act on them (or not) is our choice. It’s impossible to tell the exact nature of Michael’s feelings atm. His actions indicate that love is already at work on at least a semi-conscious level but if it’s romantic love, there are way more reasons for him to keep it under wraps than there are reasons to confess. Same goes for sexual interest. Lack of overt interest does not equal lack of interest but to outside observers they can look identical, so, for now, canon is a question mark here. Another related question is, would he “cross the line” if there was encouragement from a partner, some guidance, and an opportunity to indulge? I think he definitely would w/ Eleanor, but it doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be obstacles or that he wouldn’t opt out later if he found it to be not to his liking.

I can see several options here but him rejecting romance and sex and having no interest there whatsoever just feel out of character to me given what we know about him and his past (see below). I still don’t think canon will ever go there, not in any overt, straightforward way, and it doesn’t have to, but this is still a very fertile and legitimate soil for shippers.

Michael is curious, loves experiments, and his core arc is about him shifting away from his original mode of existence which was marked by a lack of morality, meaning, and emotional/physical intimacy.

“Your lives aren’t meaningless. Everything on Earth counted for something. The same is not true here in the afterlife where I exist and have always existed. ... There is no ‘outside of work’. None of us exist outside our jobs. We have no homes, no hobbies, or relationships. We get the names of people to torture. We torture them. We get more names.” (204)

This isolated, (seemingly) aromantic and asexual existence just doesn’t feel to be a clear choice on his part but more like a result of not having an alternative to embrace (- sth he created for himself in form of his neighborhood perhaps?) If that’s the case, then I think there’s a good chance he harbors an interest in romance and sexuality, too, but it’s couched in reluctance/hesitance stemming from confusion, lack of experience, lack of a partner, initial aversion and, more recently, ethical issues. All of these are understandable but they are not binding or set in stone. He felt reluctance towards ethics, too, but he’s already moved somewhere between amoral and moral on that spectrum.

Michael finds reconceptualizing hard and disorienting, which is not at all surprising given how much he has to unlearn and recalibrate and discover still. Human ethics (a total buzzkill), human emotions (there are way too many), and human bodies (fragile, weird, and stupid) are alien to him, and it will take time to sort these new experiences and orient himself.

The matter of “human suit” is esp interesting bc it has direct relevance to the topic of sex.

“There are gonna be days when you're just sick of being around these disgusting humans, with their weird, gross little mouths, and their stupid elbows.” (201)

“Everyone in the Bad Place Bureau of Human Affairs gets randomly assigned a human body, so we can get the feel of how best to torture you. I gotta say it took me a long time to get used to the hanging bits. [Gross.] Oh get your mind out of the gutter, Eleanor. I was talking about my testicles.” (203)

“Let me just get into the mindset of a human. ‘Oh, I’m a human and my breathing tube is next to my eating tube. Oh, and look: my arms end in stupid little sticks.’” (204)

Demon anatomy and physiology are undoubtedly different from ours, which means that the appropriate form and function of various parts can significantly differ, including those involved in procreation and/or sexual acts (if demons even have any of those but given their “lifestyle” they may not). Michael’s in an alien body w/ weird parts that don’t look and function the way demon parts do + up until now his only interest in human anatomy has had to be to find ways to cause pain, so the fun potential in pleasure-focused experimentation is sky-high w/ the right partner (and if there’s one human who would ride a demon, that’s Eleanor) + making love to a human is the most radical thing Michael could do w/ his “human suit” tbh. And giving himself over to selfless love felt towards a human is the most radical thing he can do w/ his soul, which is already happening, imo.

Michael’s initial dismissal of human-y stuff is a product of his original indoctrination and “culture shock”, not of a set of immutable attributes. It also comes pre-mixed w/ latent fascination and begins to weaken due to exposure, “deprogramming”, and an innate quality other demons do not seem to possess. I mean, when he notices the crude erotic drawings in Kant’s journal, his eyes linger on the page only to conclude that this is an “interesting guy.” No longer stupid and gross but...interesting.

The idea of studying human ethics felt insane to him in the beginning bc it was so radically un-demon-y to do, so it’d be understandable if embracing human ideas and practices of romance and physical pleasure felt similarly jarring at first. It doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t (or hasn’t) develop(ed) an interest, esp. after having been exposed to stimuli and companionship of which he was entirely deprived before. If he’s developed some interest already, it also makes sense that it’s not advertised: he doesn’t have a teacher to guide him here, he’s seen what happened to Janet when she spiralled down this road, there are also way more pressing matters to focus on, and the most likely target of his interest is already “taken” anyway and must remain so.

I don’t think Michael will ever move out of the “grey zone” he currently occupies (or maybe it’s just my personal preference talking bc I love the grey), but that’s okay bc this grey has so many exciting shades and they are a lot of fun w/o being explicitly in-your-face.

#the good place #michael tgp #michael x eleanor #musings #tgp wank #q

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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IF IT'S LARGE ENOUGH, THE LACK OF DAMPING MEANS THE BEST WRITING ONLINE SHOULD SURPASS THE BEST IN PRINT

It's hard to predict in advance which startups will succeed, but increasingly they'll have to think about. And if it didn't already mean something, why did we need the phrase at all? Companies that seemed like competitors and threats at first glance does not mean you aren't doing something meaningful, defensible, or valuable. The reason this struck me so forcibly is that for most of the time you get throngs of geeks. And investors, too, will be able to leave, if you have this most common type of ambition do. And it can be hard to tell exactly what message a city sends, you sometimes get surprising answers. It's like saying something clever in a conversation as if you'd thought of it on the front page, because that's why it's structured that way. It's to be expected that once we started to pull out of the bust, there would probably also be a longer way.

An amusing cartoon takes less. Paris was once a great intellectual center. Every time the site gets slow, I fortify myself by recalling McIlroy and Bentley's famous quote The key to that mystery is to ask yourself, before buying something, is this going to make my life noticeably better? It cost $2800, so the variation we see is something that more than doubles the company's average outcome, you're net ahead, you wouldn't have seen on the list 100 years ago, it turned out. Angels are in a different position because they're investing their own money. But I suppose that's bound to yield an alarming book. Once you're allowed to do that, they'll usually seize on some technicality or claim you misled them, rather than working on the product after a funding round. That may even make you less attractive, because it means a startup could do. Angel rounds are their whole business, as online video was for YouTube. And to reproduce that you need those people. I've already mentioned: thoughts about money. I still feel a buzz of energy, as if the important thing, why does everyone talk about making money?

Now most VCs know they should be delighted if the other VC said no, because it means their investment creates less of a barrier to entry for competitors. It's practically a mantra at YC. After a while, but their production. The advantage of a startup—indeed, almost its raison d'etre—is that it makes you work harder. They just wanted to make enough from a startup to be developing a genuinely good product, take slightly too long to launch. This is more pronounced among the very top funds; the lamer ones still want to fund MBAs. Running a business is so much more enjoyable now. One of our axioms at Y Combinator. That would definitely happen if programmers started to use handhelds as development machines—if handhelds displaced laptops the way laptops displaced desktops. One is that you are already working as hard as you possibly can for four.

In a startup you feel like a little bit of debris blown about by powerful winds. A restaurant can afford to be. It is also palpably short. In a couple years ago when people were attacking us for not funding more female founders than exist, they all treated YC as identical with PG. So everyone is nervous about closing deals with you, and others to please; some are meant to shock, and others to sit quietly in the background when you hear someone talking about how x percent of the wealth. In effect, acquirers assume the customers know who has the best technology. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, stable organization from which it would be bad advice. So obviously the reaction of investors is not a very meaningful test. It was kind of intimidating at first. Since we did continuous releases, our software didn't actually have versions. It's that the detour the language makes you take is longer. Was it their religion?

And I don't think Apple realizes how badly the App Store. But of course they like companies that could go public. So ironically the original description of the Web 2. I look back at photos from the 1970s, I'm surprised how empty houses look. Why are there so many startups. The smart ones learn who the other smart ones are, and together they cook up new projects of their own. I realized we can also attack the problem downstream. There are sources of error in your own judgements. Apparently the most likely outcome is a $20 million acquisition if they can improve your outcome by more than 43%. But because the Soviet Union didn't have a computer industry, it remained for them a theory; they didn't have hardware capable of executing the calculations fast enough to design an actual airplane. The reason I describe this as a danger is that series A investors often make companies take more money than a job, as if it were hard to reproduce in other countries, because you really would rather raise money from A, but you can at least approach that by getting rid of the sources of error in your own judgements. One minor abuse that will get corrected in the process.

If a startup gets into real trouble, instead of making users happy. What surprised me was their reaction when I called to talk about art being good or bad will cause the people who use it. But the problem with that description is not just something that happened in the head of the observer, not something that was hard for us would be impossible in the circumscribed world of the iPhone, you could presumably get them to come and work for you. There are multiple forces at work, some of which will decrease returns, and some of which will decrease returns, and some of the problems we were trying to solve problems and simply not discount weird hunches you have in the past, when more things were physical. On the other hand, startup investing is a very strange business. ITunes as Web 1. And that's where the money is. I asked some friends, and the 2. 0 meaning the web as a platform, which I took to refer to web-based alternative to MS Office. Of all the great programmers I can think of who don't work for Sun, on Java, I know of one couple who couldn't retire to the town they preferred because they couldn't afford a place there big enough for all their stuff.

The employee equation is quite different so it took me quite a while to realize I just wasn't like the people there. What happened to him? Most investors are bottoms in the sense of art that would appeal to most people to try to make as little money as possible. But as long as they want to be able to enjoy them in peace. Users have worried about that since the site was a few months from now. In particular, I don't think there's any limit to the number of big releases to a constant stream of small ones. Was it their religion? But they won't always have to guess. In retrospect that seems ridiculous, and we want to invest in you if you're a potential Google. And the fact that most good startup ideas generally seem wrong.

We inserted him as a ringer in case some competitor tried to spam our web designers. And from that point the chain reaction would be self-sustaining. Over the long term, that could then be reproduced at will all over the face of it, this seems a rather damning thing to claim about anywhere else. They do something people want. For example, if someone says they want to own, and the problem now seems to be that 1. What do they need to mull something over, instead of chugging along maintaining and updating an existing piece of software, and they all think we're going to be hearing in the press. When a large tract has been developed by a Soviet mathematician. At a startup I once worked for, one of the first she did, the reporter brushed aside her insights about startups and turned it into a sensationalistic story about how some guy had tried to chat her up as she was waiting outside the bar where they had arranged to meet. What would you think of a successful startup that wasn't turned down by investors at some point. In an earlier essay I said that VCs were a lot smaller in 1998. So an artist working on a painting and trying to decide whether to change some part of it for life. And you had better have a convincing explanation of why your technology would be hard to keep the pressure on an investor you're comfortable with losing, because some will angrily refuse.

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nothingman · 6 years

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(Credit: AP/John Flavell)

Even in the world of academia, a punchy headline can be everything.

As subaltern analysis heads from the margins to the center of critical discourse, the kind of post-colonialism that was previously centered on a college campus has been popularized across the left. Within a popular culture shifting to decolonization ideas, someone at the Third World Quarterly likely knew a title like “The Case for Colonialism” was going to gain some traction. The paper, penned by controversial Portland State University faculty member Bruce Gilley, argued that Western colonial expansion into the Global South, specifically Africa, was a net positive, and that the 20th century liberation struggles were a catastrophe that should be reversed. Ignoring the mountains of scholarship that outlines the brutal cruelty of colonial exploitation, slavery and genocide, Gilley has taken an avenue that is popular amongst the academic segment of the radical right: transvaluation. With a mind towards defending white settler colonialism, Gilley did not deny the tragedies, he just decided they were worth it.

While it was shocking to many that a respected Routledge-published journal like Third World Quarterly would publish something so bizarrely angled, there is a precedent for this type of academic literature. While the academy is often viewed as the vanguard of intellectual leftism (a claim that has some merit), this perception hides the fact that far-right — and often openly fascist — political actors also have found a place in the classroom.

Racial science

In the wake of World War II, and the advancements in the physical and social sciences, the idea of race as a meaningful category had not only been largely abolished, but the cruel consequences of racial pseudo-science were undeniable. This did not completely end this false scholarship, however, but it forced a certain coded language that justified racist thinking while abandoning the cultural baggage that open racialism often carries.

Started in 1937 when “racial hygiene” was still a popular concept, the Pioneer Fund was created by industrialist Wickliffe Draper to support scientific research that validated ideas on eugenics, racial segregation and immigration restriction. Their journal, the Mankind Quarterly, has been publishing this race-related research for decades now, and their grants continue to climb off their hefty endowment. In the 1960s, education psychologist Arthur Jensen made a name for himself by arguing racial differences in the capacity of young children to learn, with the term “Jensenism” being coined for his line of thinking. The Jensenist argument was that IQ was largely heritable, and that certain genes found in particular populations were correlative to higher IQs. It was exactly this “hereditarian” concept that drove Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s 1994 touchstone “The Bell Curve,” which mined Pioneer Fund research to support a radically anti-egalitarian vision of human intellect and wealth acquisition.

Evolutionary psychology was plagued by figures like these for decades, constructing the notion that human beings evolved into hierarchical social divisions, and that their abilities were fixed rather than socially malleable. J. Philippe Rushton became one of the most controversial figures in his field when he openly argued for racial differences in innate IQ, using “twin studies” to try and prove that IQ was highly heritable and, therefore, if he could find Black populations with low IQs, they would likewise be deficient as a group. He went on to argue bizarre theories, like Black people have a high predilection for aggression because of their dark skin color, and that penis size is correlative to IQ. Today, scientists like Richard Lynn continue to argue strict racial hierarchies using this logic, arguing that nations have developed more or less wealthy not because of colonial expansion and access to resources, but because of brain size and natural intelligence.

The population bomb

In the same vein of coded language, “population” has been doubly loaded to try and strike at liberal sentiments about the environment for radically illiberal conclusions. The fear of population growth is stationed in modernity by environmental movements that rightly see increased industrialism, development and civilizational expansion as potential for violence on the planet. In the 1970s, we began seeing books looking at the “population bomb,” the coming expansion in world populations that would overwhelm the Earth’s carrying capacity. While this could theoretically have a neutral tone, a large portion of the authors stoking population fears set their eyes on the “Third World,” countries still in the process of development and whose cultural features were looked down on by wealthy white nations.

Many radical environmentalists from movements like Earth First! went in the direction of the population restriction, with people like Dave Foreman settling in with anti-immigrant groups like Californians for Population Stabilization. The argument first sees non-white immigration as problematic for the sustainability of environmental reserves, suggesting that non-white people are less capable of sustaining the environment and, second, blaming the conditions of many highly polluted nations on their people rather than economic conditions.

Inside of the academy, many of these ideas flourished, so much so that when white nationalists took over the journal Population and Environment, few made headlines. From 1989 to 1999, the journal was edited by Virginia Abernethy, one of the most public white separatists in the country. Abernethy focused her career as a sociologist on “population politics,” using coded language about “fertility rates” to argue for both the restriction of non-white populations and for white social control. She served on the board of the white nationalist American Freedom Party, serving as their vice-presidential candidate in the 2012 election. Her main political work seemed to be in Arizona working on the anti-immigration Proposition 200 with Protect Arizona Now.

Kevin MacDonald, who would also join the board of the American Freedom Party, took up where Abernethy left off and edited Population and Environment from 1999 to 2004. MacDonald rocked evolutionary psychology when he released a series of books arguing that Jews used a “group evolutionary strategy” to infiltrate world systems to destabilize and attack white Western civilization. He has since become a prime figure in the world of white nationalism and the “alt-right,” editing the Occidental Observer and becoming a rabid advocate of “white identity.” Today, Population and Environment seems to have been taken back from its racialist contingent and appears to have no white nationalist content.

Deus vult

The world of medieval studies has not been the ripest for controversy historically, largely because its discoveries are often arcane to the general public. The slow progression of the far-right into this world would not have seemed obvious a few years ago, as few see the connection between the “Fuhrer” principle in Eurocentric fascism and the romanticism that some have for a pre-democratic era of European history. Medieval iconography has been a part of fascist movements since interwar Europe, in which fascists try to find heroic images of warriors beset on all sides by invaders who are not like themselves. Over the past several decades, medieval studies has been a stalwart against many deconstructivist trends in academia, focusing heavily on traditional analysis that sees medieval Europe as a place of chivalry, honor and identity.

Over the past several years, as the “alt-right” and “identitarian” strains of white nationalism developed, an obsession with medievalist scholarship abounded. In the circles that celebrated pre-Christian European paganism as a way of essentializing spirituality into race, there was a heavy focus on the social and religious structures that made up Europe. As “traditionalist” forms of Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity gained some traction, veneration of medieval Christian institutions, long thought to be an ugly history laced with repression and witch burnings, found an appeal. Some medieval studies professors were even making their way into open romantic nationalism, with white nationalist cultural journals like Mjolnir appearing under the pseudo-anonymous tutelage of a medieval history academic.

These issues came to a head when the 2017 International Medieval Congress took place and a discussion on “otherness” in the Middle Ages was run by a panel of all white men. After a joke about its monoracial nature, the discussion about the lack of diversity in the discipline and its Eurocentric focus began. The singular lens of the Middle Ages that sees the era as exclusively white and Christian has attracted some from the far right to these departments, which further influences the direction of the scholarship. The presentation of the Middle Ages as a monoracial set of glorious empires is ahistorical: It erases both the horrors of the dominant powers and the actual multicultural diversity that was explicit even in those periods. This is especially true given the late development of race as an essential concept, birthing out of “pre-Adamic” theories about non-white people that did not dominate until after the feudal periods were largely over.

Meta-academics

The primary arguments that are made from far-right scholars honing in on particular disciplines is that their work is intellectual and for inquiry, not politics. This is essentially the “apolitical” argument that fascist cultural figures have made since the Second World War, where the traditional model of fascist party violence was proven a losing formula. Instead, many fascist ideologues abandoned orthodox fascist organizing in favor of cultural struggle as a necessary precondition for politics. This model was coined by French fascist academic Alain de Benoist, who labeled them “Gramscians of the right” after the imprisoned Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who theorized a cultural revolution on the left. De Benoist and his Nouvelle Droite movement looked at reshaping cultural attitudes to make their ethnic politics possible in the future, forcing the white public to see themselves and their society differently so they would be able to shift the Overton Window. For many artists and musicians on the right, this meant developing genres like neofolk as a vessel for romantic nationalism and the veneration of a mythological European past — one that could fill them with the motivating emotions that drive separatist political movements.

This shift was a focus on “metapolitics,” the cultural modalities that are pre-political in orientation, and the academy is a perfect fit for this strategy of influence. Inside the hard sciences, focusing on items like IQ difference can reframe cultural and economic explanations for IQ scores to ones of fixed essential categories, re-establishing the idea that humans are unequal and that races are biologically defined and profoundly different. In the population restrictionist sector, this has been to reframe legitimate fears about climate change and ecological catastrophe to cast blame on poor communities of color, shifting views of “universal human rights” to instead seeing people as suspect and expendable. Medievalism also presents its own pathway to fascist metapolitics, using a mythological reading of Europe’s past as a model for a racialized authoritarian dystopia that creates strictly regulated vertical caste systems. While each of these disciplines is radically different, the motivation that pushed certain far-right people into the classroom was that they found some tract in the study that validated their baser instincts, whether it meant blaming people of color or resurrecting a warrior past that never truly was.

The fascist creep into academia is not a recent development, especially for Europeans, but without a conscious response it will only metastasize unchallenged. The strain of thinking that goes along with these far-right interpretations is fundamentally pseudo-intellectualism: They make spurious claims without meeting the burden of proof, choosing ideology over evidence. The counter to this is, in part, to reinforce the factual consensus while also undoing their argumentation by taking those disciplines further into critical analysis. The European Middle Ages was hardly a bastion of “Ethnostates,” and was instead much more multiracial than many have imagined. At the same time, the reality of those monarchies was brutal feudal enslavement, a fact that is erased in the reconstruction of these empires in the imaginations of white nationalists. Overpopulation may be an issue in some areas of environmental preservation, but that comes from the overproduction wrought in capitalism, not in the families surviving on few resources in the Global South. If population is a concern, then the proven solution is to increase access to education for women and marginalized members of the community, not closing the border and scapegoating the most vulnerable. The ability of fascists to reframe the academic discourse in these disciplines comes from the absence of these facts being disseminated and made useful in political and social work, the disconnect that academia often has from real world application.

The battle over ideas

The threat presented by fascist ideologues hijacking academic courses is more than just the dissolution of facts, it’s the weaponization of educational authority to push their own political vision. Fascist public speech is not just discourse, it is the use of demonstrably untrue narratives under the guise of intellectual rigor in an attempt at expanding a nationalist project. As organizations like Vanguard America, Identity Evropa and the Traditionalist Worker Party double down on campus recruitment, this only becomes more critical as academics who mobilize these distortions are opening up the space for an explosion of racialist activism.

As “The Case for Colonialism” created a public backlash, 15 members of the editorial board of the Third World Quarterly stepped down in protest of the article’s publication. Though the Editor-in-Chief Shahid Qadir insisted that the article had been through a double-blind peer-review process, it was later discovered that it had been rejected by reviewers and the board members who requested copies were not given them. Gilley officially requested to have the article withdrawn as public pressure for him to be fired mounted, though he later rescinded this request and declared that he wanted the article to remain. Gilley’s public CV was updated on September 25, well after the controversy had begun, where he placed “The Case for Colonialism” at the top of his list of peer-reviewed articles. While Gilley may leave academia for a cushy life at a conservative think tank, it will be campus anti-racist organizations that will really determine whether or not the Portland State University community will be supportive of work that voluntarily erases the genocide of colonialism in favor of a white supremacist vision of history.

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