gillian flynn, gone girl // andrea dworkin, right-wing women

GARçONNE

KALTBLUT presents GARçONNE. Photography by Flavio Leone. Model is David Beer. Styling by Christoph Cong Fässler. All designs by „maison blanche by Yannik Zamboni“. The editorial was made the 100th anniversary of the „Textilerevue“ commissioned by the STF Schweizerische Textilfachschule Zürich (Swiss Technical Textile School Zurich). The assignment was to create a look with the inspiration of the decade 1920-1929. Project and idea by Noémie Schwaller from www.textilrevue.ch // @textilrevue_chmaison blanche believes it is necessary to address the discourse of taboo topics by means of conceptual fashion and to create a stage for interaction. Socio-political issues, the defamation and repression of minorities, especially the lgbtqia+ community, as well as gender issues and feminism, form the content of the collections. maison blanche makes queer anti-fashion. queer within the meaning of different, abnormal or not according to expectations. its subversive content is reflected in the deconstruction and deposition of codes. it forms a side-stream to the mainstream and serves subcultures. maison blanche`s anti-fashion takes the liberty to create its own (ab)normal. it shits on the maxims of action and codes of behaviour of the masses but influences them. it rewrites unwritten rules, completely detached from the oppressive ideas of social ideologies and the fashion industry. maison blanche condemns the common practices of the fashion industry and therefore wants to establish itself far away from this circus. maison blanche conceives fashion, especially skirts & dresses on a man‘s body and thus aims to expand the rules of conduct. As a wearer, it wishes much more than a certain gender, people of all genders with a similar mindset.

Garçonne:

The term „Garçonne“ refers to a twentieth-century fashion trend that manifested itself during the „roaring twenties“ (also called „les années Folles“ or „Golden Twenties“) between 1919 at the end of World War I and 1929, the beginning of the economic and social crisis. Beyond the specific style of the 1920s, the phenomenon of Garçonne that emerged from the emancipation of women and the demand for equality reflects a cultural mutation of the representation of the female gender that prefigures the contemporary woman (Wikipedia definition [French], freely translated by – maison blanche – )

GARçONNE is a cry to give space to gender, and indeed to all forms of gender, and to accept and value them. Not only do we already know the third sex, that of the intersex, but there are many different ways of perceiving and living gender. Gender identities range from agender, androgynous, gender fluid, non-binary, transgender, gender nonconforming, multigender, pangender, polygender, two-spirit and many more. We, as part of society, are responsible for the change. GARçONNE is meant to unite feminist people in the fight for equality of all genders in a society that is still patriarchally constructed and controlled and which teaches, normalizes and celebrates patriarchy. Human history has known more than two sexes since the beginning of time and isn‘t the simplification to two sexes and/or gender a curtailment of the rights of all others?

Inspired by the spirit of Garçonne, the energy and power of 1920s feminism for change, this look was created to break social norms and the binary gender system.

GARçONNE:

Is a breed of human being which is not conforming with the societal gender-norms and qualifications nor let themselves put into a binary system. GARçONNE likes to fuck the gender binary and expresses it by using whichever toilet they want, showing off on streets, dressed with whatever they feel comfortable with. GARçONNE is a species of different genders triggered by modern emancipation for all gender identities. They demand a change of societal behaviour, the binary gender system and expresses themselves according to fashion & style which is often referred to as „the gender fuck“.

Material concept:

Only materials where used which are second hand and/or vintage, stock and archive material and remnants. The idea was to get along with what is available already, not due to financial reasons, but due to the idea of sustainability. Conscious use of materials and the environment. In particular, a lot of wool was used as it was a standard material in the 20s, especially in winter clothing.

aspects of sustainability

in today‘s time of super consumerism and overproduction in a throwaway society, it is a must to design and produce sustainably. it is of great importance to acting sustainably during the entire textile cycle. for the areas of the textile cycle that affect the consumer, i.e. use, maintenance, and disposal/recycling, maison blanche makes a sustainable recommendation. for maison blanche, there are four spheres of sustainability.

ethical/moral

in principle, maison blanche only uses goods produced in Switzerland, if possible. nevertheless, raw materials often come from abroad. suppliers as well as producers must be able to prove that the materials are ethically/morally acceptable. this means it is known exactly where the raw materials come from (traceability) and there was no exploitation of humans, animals or the environment (fair wages, animal-friendly keeping and shearing of sheep/ animals and environmentally friendly dyeing and treatment of substances/materials). due to a design and production process which takes place entirely in Switzerland, these intentions can also be controlled and adhered to when realizing one‘s own collection. as a matter of principle, no furs or leathers are used.

socio-political

maison blanche does not produce clothes in the conventional sense, there are „en masse“, but conceptual fashion which should have a socio-political impact and thus be socially relevant and demand and promote a rethinking. by addressing taboo issues and/or manifested patterns of action, socially oppressive norms, rules and standards are questioned, expanded and/or redefined. maison blanche is committed to the interests of minorities, especially the lgbtqia+ community.

ecological

maison blanche uses only organic or recycled cotton and is committed to an ecological mix of materials. fibers such as hemp, kenaf, jute, flax and ramie are always used in the collections to reduce the importance of cotton. all used materials should be produced in an environmentally friendly way and should leave the textile cycle in exactly the same way. maison blanche is committed to up-and recycling and incorporates these elements into the looks and collections. for packaging & shipping, we always try to use the most environmentally friendly way.

economical

maison blanche produces in small quantities and only as much as can be sold. items which are not sold are recycled, up-cycled and reused. the collections are based on each other and do not compete with each other. the growth of maison blanche is controlled and if necessary slowed down so that ethical/moral, socio-political and ecological goals do not degenerate into commercialism. maison blanche produces and sources from small swiss entrepreneurs if possible and promotes them. it is a major concern to continuously respect and adhere to all four spheres of sustainability.

Project and idea by Noémie Schwaller @_noemies Photography by Flavio Leone / flavioleone.ch / instagram: @flavio.leone Photography assistant Chris Daeppen / www.chrisdaeppen.com / instagram: @chris_daeppen Model is David Beer signed @scout-model Zurich / Instagram: @david.banc Styling by Christoph Cong Fässler / christophcongfaessler.com / instagram: @cong.cf Styling assistant Yannik Zamboni / www.maisonblanche.swiss / instagram: @yannikzamboni

Credits Fashion & Concept: All designs by „maison blanche by Yannik Zamboni“ / www.maisonblanche.swiss / instagram: @yannikzamboni & @maisonblanche.swiss Designers assistant and right hand is Christoph Cong Fässler / christophcongfaessler.com / instagram: @cong.cf Sewing assistant Timéa Luana Panier/ Instagram: @was_bringts_mer Implementation of the screen printing by Martin Schlegel / Instagram: @tdstextildruckerei Conceptual inputs by Anna Rosenwasser / Instagram: @annarosenwasser Commissioned by the STF Schweizerische Textilfachschule (Swiss Technical Textile School Zurich) on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the „Textilrevue“ / www.stf.ch / Instagram: @stfcommunity

Day 14: The Ultimate Reward

https://homestuck.com/story/2404

Movies are one of the main vectors that culture uses to transmit itself in the modern day, and if it sounds like I’m describing this form of cultural reproduction like a virus, you’re not wrong. The concept of the viral video has been around for about 15 years, if memory serves, and Homestuck’s self-referential format closely recalls the snowclone and advice animal type memes of the late thousands. Meme itself is a word coined by Richard Dawkins to describe the basic unit of cultural reproduction and transmission. While the lines related to memes from Metal Gear Solid have become memes themselves,

John and Karkat’s lives are both shaped by memes, transmitted to them through movies. John’s ideas about romance and family are shaped by his movies, Karkat and his ideas about romance and family are shaped by his movies.

https://homestuck.com/story/2406

The narration insists that Feferi and Eridan are made for each other, but their romance almost immediately disintegrates. The narrative is training us to be skeptical of the Troll’s preoccupation with Romantic Destiny. The idea that you have one soulmate, a person you were just destined for who it’ll work out with, is bogus.

https://homestuck.com/story/2435

Something about this sequence has inspired me to talk about Society with a capital S. Both Hobbes’ Leviathan  and Ginsberg’s Howl talk about Society with a capital S - the indistinct entity, the system which arises seemingly unbidden from the gestalt of myriad human interactions, parables about social systems.

Leviathan is a founding myth for the social contract and liberalism in general. As one of the petite bourgeoisie who benefits from Liberalism, it is of course in Hobbes’ interest to defend its existence and provide justification for the material conditions he benefits from, but Howl is considerably less charitable. Referring to the same entity as Moloch, Ginsberg describes it as an incommensurable monster, consuming the lives of the men and women who make it up to further its own agenda.

Authoritarians have always used the threat of cultural extinction in order to justify unjust material conditions and social hierarchies. Fail to fall in line, and Western Civilization is doomed. Glub Glub (who I refuse to call anything else, Feferi’s Lusus, you know who I mean) is the physical manifestation of this threat, an unbearable burden foisted upon troll society by their overlord, Lord English, to force them to participate in a system that guarantees their inability to produce ethical behavior. Their choice has always been a choice between murder and extinction.

https://homestuck.com/story/2439

Eridan is fascinating to me. I don’t know if he predicted the Incel movement, or was merely an agglomeration of school shooter, neo-fascist stereotypes, but boy is he absolutely spot-on - the fascination with military history, the emotional theatrics, the possessive and entitled attitude toward the women in his life.

https://homestuck.com/story/2441

Feferi’s a sweet girl, but she’s still one of the people who benefits from Alternian Society. The problem has never been that the Condesce is a brutal evil woman, the problem is the way that Alternian Society is structured in the first place. I’ll have more to say about this whenever we get to Openbound, since Feferi’s rule is discussed more there, and I’ll definitely have more to say about it when I eventually write the companion piece that I intend to about Hierarchy, Patriarchy, and so on and so forth. That one might be a long time coming though, because a lot of Homestuck is devoted to examining it, and I think it might end up being my longest essay. It’s the theme I think is the most directly applicable to real life, hence the import.

Feferi’s caretaking attitude and controlling predilections are also juxtaposed with Jade’s in the same way that Kanaya’s maternal instinct and green thumb are juxtaposed with Jade’s. Could it be that as the Witch of Space, Jade Harley is the ultimate mom?

https://homestuck.com/story/2448

Man, as long as I’m comparing Eridan to neo-fascists and Feferi to the political establishment, this relationship between the two of them - the way that Feferi views her enabling of Eridan as actually curtailing his worst excesses -  really smacks of the kind of unity and compromise rhetoric that liberals always seem to spout in order to justify their decision to adopt moderate right-wing policy instead of actual left-wing policy.

I’m probably reaching here, but the thought popped into my head unbidden, and I’m trying to keep this liveblog as stream of consciousness as possible.

https://homestuck.com/story/2458

People think about us way less than we think about ourselves.

https://homestuck.com/story/2467

Just as I’m not here to defend Eridan (he’s a piece of shit who knows what he did), I’m not here to attack Feferi, or to excuse her. Characters in Homestuck are frequently both abusers and victims.

Feferi’s relationship with Eridan is complicated. For starters, she isn’t really curtailing the worst of his excesses, not the way that she thinks he is. Feferi has authority, one way or the other, and by being emotionally available to Eridan, she has enabled him more than she has prevented him from doing wrong. Cutting him out of her life earlier could have sent a clear message to Eridan that his genocidal ideation is not okay, but instead, she has afforded the luxury of her presence.

The aforementioned preoccupation with Romantic Destiny probably made it so much easier for her to wait, too. As the Heiress, Feferi enjoys all the benefits of being in troll society while having to put up with almost none of the downsides. The suffering of other people - the extra pointless emotional turmoil she puts Eridan through by stringing him along, the suffering of the trolls whose lusii she has employed him to murder - their suffering is all theoretical to her. It’s not something she’s ever had to encounter herself (something she shares in common with Jane - if I remember correctly, Andrew’s commentary suggests that he picked up some of the ideas he was originally exploring with Feferi to explore with Jane).

(Some of these ideas are from a conversation with @bladekindeyewear with whom I was having a conversation on Discord while I was writing this).

https://homestuck.com/story/2475

Instead of indulging Eridan’s emotional theatrics (he continues to make other people’s suffering about himself, via his pretension of nobility) I want to call attention to the fact that, as a chemical coping mechanism, Homestuck compares Trolls’ use of Soda to humans’ use of alcohol.

I don’t know if sugary beverages have a similarly potent physiological effect on trolls as alcohol has on humans, and it doesn’t matter if it does - the parallel is being drawn nevertheless. I’m only making this point, because later on it will become important: Terezi and Rose’s respective addictions (Rose’s alcoholism and Terezi’s... sodaholism?) directly mirror each other.

https://homestuck.com/story/2516

The fact that Vriska’s narration here describes these sidequests as pointless is, I think, another clue into Vriska’s overall character. By all accounts, she and Tavros actually seem to be having a blast together. She’s not going for the gold, she’s not skipping right to the end, the two of them are just screwing around in her magical land, going on adventures. Okay, she is literally going for the gold in the sense of treasure hunting, but in a more figurative sense, the Vriska we’re more familiar with would probably be a taskmaster, using the scourge of her overbearing personality to drive the team forward to victory over the main final boss. Instead, she’s most in her element here when she’s not doing anything remotely important at all, just hanging out with someone she likes(hates? Troll friendships are complicated.)

Abusive relationships are rarely as obvious or simple as one person harassing and berating the other all the time. Tavros is clearly having a blast here too, and throughout this whole sequence.

https://homestuck.com/story/2521

The problem is that there are two Vriskas (at least), the Vriska who lives inside of her, who she’s only comfortable bringing out around people who have no expectations for her, and the Vriska that Scratch, and Spidermom, and Sn0wman are egging her on to be, the Ideal Troll who cuts through the bullshit, cuts to the chase, and becomes the most important person in the universe. Later on, they will be literally bifurcated by John’s retcon shenanigans.

Homestuck uses the language of alternate selves and ultimate selves to discuss a question that is applicable to real life as well. “Who is the definitive version of a character for whom different choices and versions of themselves are possible?” And when applied to real life, the question becomes something more like, “Could I have chosen to do something else instead of the thing that I did? Are my intentions important, or only my actions?” I don’t think it answers clearly, but just getting us to think about it might be sufficient.

https://homestuck.com/story/2531

The Black Queen is just one of the many malign influences in Terezi and Vriska’s lives, and while she’s not literally an abusive parent to both of them, by egging them on to indulge their worst excesses (Egging Terezi on to persecute people pre-emptively or overzealously, egging Vriska on to take away other people’s agencies), it’s safe to say that her voice is just one of many doing the same thing for the two of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/2543

Oh man. The memoes are some of my favorite conversations in all of Homestuck. They’re funny, but with the exception of one or two of them, I’m not sure how much useful info we’ll get out of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/2567

:)

https://homestuck.com/story/2575

Karkat and Terezi may not have literally had sex, but whatever their secret encounter was is effectively symbolic of a consummation of their relationship. She knows what color Karkat’s blood is. They have been in a pail together.

The two of them can hardly be more intimate with each other.

Too bad it doesn’t work out.

But then, it’s probably for the best - the fact that it doesn’t work out for the two of them is the retrospect we need to be able to say it was never going to work out for the two of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/2576

Something different does it for everyone.

https://homestuck.com/story/2578

What does it for Vriska is having the shit beaten out of her by Aradia.

What is Vriska’s big takeaway from this beatdown?

Maybe if we continue to read Aradia as being Vriska’s doppelganger, being savagely beaten by one of her own victims, and one who is so like her in terms of her feelings of helplessness, her feelings of being at the whim of a cosmos that is out to get her, Vriska realizes that the thing she lashes out to attack in other people - the weakness loathed by troll society - is what she hates and fears the most in herself.

https://homestuck.com/story/2587

Aradia is starting to lose her tolerance for scenarios that involve being manipulated by those very same actors that are making her feel helpless.

https://homestuck.com/story/2593

Aradia interprets Sburb as being a challenge to come between any prospective gods and the ultimate reward. Perhaps that is the case. Assigning intent to Sburb to me seems possibly flawed, since it is, after all, only the reproductive organ of a universe. But perhaps it does have some intentions of its own. Are those intentions uniquely Sburb’s? Perhaps specifically Skaia’s. Maybe they are even, more generally, the intentions of Paradox Space itself. But Sburb itself seems more ambivalent to its players than anything. The vast majority of sessions, it seems, kill their players outright, or at least produce null sessions that never give rise to universal reproduction.

https://homestuck.com/story/2625

And that is where we shall conclude for this evening.

Cam signing off, Alive and Not Alone.

How to Stop Burnout - the unexpected solution (It’s not more ‘self-care’)

I was burning out every second week, sleeping the weekends away, burdened by the guilt of letting people down when I couldn’t keep my commitments, and I was pissed off that I had zero energy for me. 

‘Enough!’ I finally snapped. With a mission to become more productive, consistent and in control - I began researching burnout. I was going to hack my way out of the vicious cycle that was stealing my confidence. 

Boundaries (saying ‘no’ to others) and self care (saying ‘yes’ to yourself). That was what the internet told me to do. I found that attempting to hold boundaries and maintain rigorous self care routines without first dealing with why you’re people pleasing yourself to death - is a recipe for even more burnout! Next.

Inconsistent vs Cyclical, that was my big discovery and the quick fix I wanted. My research led me to what every female used to be taught at the initiated of their first period. This is what I learnt: 

The moon has a 28 day cycle in which it changes from full, to half, into total blackness, and then to half again. Females also have a 28 day cycle. This is not an insignificant coincidence. Men’s hormone levels (where they get their energy) rise high in the morning and fade into the evening - just like the sun. Meaning everyday they have the same amount of energy, they’re designed to smash out workouts or work earlier in the day and switch off into the evening.

Women’s hormone levels are very different, they rise and fall according to where they are in their 28 day cycle. We need different hormones to menstruate and a very different hormone cocktail to ovulate. Like the moon, sometimes we’re full of energy and other times our light fades. We are designed to be reflective and still in the week that we bleed, then a powerhouse of energy the week we ovulate, an abundant nurturer the week after we ovulate and then more reclusive or nurtured in a premenstrual week. 

If you compare a woman's energy to a man’s it seems very inconsistent, changing rapidly from day to day. But if you zoom out you’ll see that we are extremely consistent to a rhythm of our own. When you know what’s coming and what you need in each phase of the cycle, it doesn’t have to be a rollercoaster!

The hero’s journey. This was a very important piece of the puzzle that helped solve my burnout problem. The hero’s journey is a metaphorical story used to teach the universal truth: we need to go through some shit, shitty experience that brings us face to face with our fears, that challenge us, makes us want to quit but force us to reach inside of ourselves and overcome, emerging from the darkness stronger than before, as a hero. (The premise of not only every movie you’ve ever seen but also all ancient mythology and religious teachings). 

Our culture today glorifies the easy and convenient, struggle is something to be avoided at all costs, making us unequipped to deal with difficulty. The hero’s journey normalises hard times and reminds us they are an important part of life, because on the other side of heartache there is wisdom. It’s a lesson. 

It took me a minute to embrace my cycle. I wanted to skip the slow energy side and just ‘man up’, be in that addictive fiery ovulation energy all day everyday. So of course I continued to burnout but each time I would wonder what was the lesson in the burnout. Each time I sat with the discomfort I began to uncover mind blowing, empowering truths. Such as:

Productivity is overrated. 

Without taking the time to get clear, slow down and reflect, ask why we’re doing it, what is working and not working, is there a simpler way, is it making us happy - we just make more and more of the same old boring shit. We end up creating more work for ourselves rather than results, we make silly mistakes that could have been avoided if we just cleared our heads, and we fail to notice great opportunities that are right in front of us. Action without rest is insane, it’s imbalanced, unsustainable and suicidal. Realising this illuminated to me how toxic my work environment (and mind) had become. Everyone jacked up on testosterone, trying to work harder and faster, doing more, more, more. To rest and reflect was considered lazy and not okay. It was killing us all, but especially the women whose health is jeopardized by too much testerone. It was a problem deeper than stress, the toxicity was rooted in misogyny. It’s not just women who have been labeled inferior but feminine traits like sharing emotions, nurturing safe spaces and taking time to reflect. I began to value mental clarity over busyness, I stopped trying to do everything and just excelled at what made sense. I saw and felt it working which gave me the confidence to push back whenever the ‘more, more, more’ voices started nagging. 

Consistency is boring.

When I stopped fighting my cycle and accepted that I wasn’t designed to perform consistently at the same level everyday, I realised how clever the patriarchy was. To my surprise the slow times were not wasted time at all, on the contrary! When you align your energy with what’s happening inside you, you tap into a huge power that I will struggle to put into words. If you’ve ever had a difficult mediation experience where you couldn’t slow your mental chatter, it’s like the opposite of that. It’s easy stillness, wombing, where healing and release can happen, which gives you greater cleaner energy, truths and next steps reveal themselves, and you can feel a magnetic pull from inside you making it easy to manifest what you desire. It’s a dreamy place that I’d choose over hustling and grinding any day! It may not look like much from the outside but it’s powerful, it recharges you in a way that 50 billion coffees never could. Your actions may be slower here but they are magnetised. If you really embrace the slow times you will emerge with what feels like superhuman capabilities in your ovulation week, which will more than make up for the perceived loss of productivity. It does hurt to find out you’ve been fed a lie and taught to devalue the very thing that holds your power, so that you actively disempowered yourself. But like in the hero’s journey, this hurt is the source of much healing, wisdom and empowerment. 

Control is the root of all evil. 

After a few hero’s journeys the answer was staring me in the face, the way to stop burning out and feeling like I wasn’t in control of my energy, was to surrender. It wasn’t necessarily my work, or the fact that I had a cycle that was burning me out, it was the way I kept fighting the current of my own nature, trying to control it. It takes way more energy to suppress nature than it does to go with it. 

Every time my body told me I needed rest and I refused, I was adding fuel to the fire. On top of that I spent precious energy punishing myself for not being able to keep going. Now if I feel really tired I might take a guilt free mental health day and recharge, rather than pushing through for another week making myself sick and needing to take a few days of sick leave. It wasn’t just me that I wanted to control. If things didn’t unfold the way I envisioned I burnt way more energy being frustrated and trying to force things back. When things unfold differently to what  we expect - that’s interesting. Who’s to say it’s worse and not better, who’s to say the lessons learnt through that experience aren’t more valuable than if everything went to plan. Also, that’s life, nothing goes according to plan so lamenting it or forcing it is a waste of your limited energy! It’s asking for burnout. Instead of seeking to control the uncontrollable, it’s healthier to practice belief in yourself, resilience and compassion for when the plot inevitably twits. Surrendering, especially for a recovering control freak, is easier said than done. It’s terrifying. But just as it’s a myth that rest is lazy, it’s a myth that surrender is defiet. Surrender is freedom. As you release the energy spent worrying about everything that could go wrong, you feel that energy returning to you. More focus, more clarity, more you. 

So my quest to conquer burnout didn’t go as I expected. Instead of finding more productivity, consistency and control, I found balance. By matching my very masculine perspective of action taking and goal seeking with a gentler feminine perspective of reflection and surrender I found a powerful balance. A balance that has stopped me from falling into a heap over and over again. 

Now I move like the tides now. I flow freely from high energy to slow energy, trusting my body when it tells me to rest or to run, knowing there is a reason for every season. Hallelujah. 

Practical ways to find your rhythm: 

Download a period tracking ap (Clue is my fave)

Download a full moon ap (especially if you don’t have a period, run on the full moon, rest on the new). 

Listen to the Period Queen Podcast (4 episodes, on for each phase of the cycle)

Read Goddess Wisdom by Taniska

Get less artificial light after dark, do more moon bathing. 

Spend time with mother nature (feminine energy).

Purchase Failure Friendly Action Cards to learn self belief and self compassion. 

Baptizing American Sin

As I sit here I reflect on a conversation I had with my friend. He began this conversation with me by simply asking “Charles what do you think of all of this”?  I took a moment to gather my thoughts but it was at that moment I was momentarily paralyzed with a loss of words. I remained silent for a little while longer. Noticing the silence he asked “Bro like what are your thoughts with the shit that's going on”? Hearing the question phrased in this fashion I was able to formulate some thoughts. I moved to change these thoughts into words.  I began to answer his question by saying “ I wish I could say that I am surprised but sadly that is not the truth. In fact, I am not.” This response caught him off guard a little so he asked me “ What do you mean by that” I told him “look what do you expect? A pandemic has caused people to remain in isolation in their homes since the beginning of March. And even in this nationwide and global pandemic, Black Americans continue to face the same racial injustices, marginalization, inequities, and inequalities they have experienced for the past 400 years”.    

    Now for the purpose of this, I do not want to go into the conversation that ensued following this statement I made. However, I want to focus on the element that I was not surprised.  Let me tell you why these murders, public killings, and spectacle lynchings are just scratching on the surface. Do not get it twisted I am not making light of these deaths. But what I am saying the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmed Aubrey, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Paris Cameron, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Brooklyn Lindsey, Mike Brown, Tony McDade, and so many countless other Black Americans are parts of a much greater evil system. And these deaths are enabled and are permitted by the greatest sin of America which was the institution of legalized slavery which lasted as a legal institution from 1619 until 1865. Following the abolishment of slavery America has never repented for this great sin, in fact, America continues to commit sins against Black Americans. These sins only are perpetuated and sustained by the White Capitalist Supremacy Patriarchy which manifest systemic racism. And, in this manifestation, Black Americans continue to face inequalities, inequities, disenfranchisement, marginalization, hatred, and death. These traumas are apparent and urgent. But how do we move forward and transform?             

Before we transform we must remember something. And, that is before we are Black, White Latinx, Arab, Asian, etc we are HUMANS. And, I don’t write this to be corny, cliché, or ‘colorblind’. However, I say this as the realization we are humans who coinhabit this planet, and currently, the way we are living is not sustainable. With this realization, we need to figure this out! In addition to this realization that we are all humans, we must address that there is a system in place to keep Black Americans from gaining economic and political freedom. Also, this same system restricts Black Americans from truly living free in a country they built. WE MUST ACKNOWLEDGE THIS FACT. WE CAN NO LONGER REMAIN PASSIVE. IT IS CRUCIAL THAT WE CALL A SPADE A SPADE. The spade is the WHITE CAPITALIST SUPREMACY PATRIARCHY.              The system of the  WHITE CAPITALIST SUPREMACY PATRIARCHY is a system that affects our daily lives. Racism is not the only kryptonite that suffocates Black lives, but it is a part of a system. Capitalism, patriarchal masculinity, American hegemonic values, and racism are the variables that drastically hinder Black life. However, I firmly believe we can change this system. I have faith in the people of this country. America has rallied on multiple occasions. Now more than ever is a time to rally. Our rally call now is liberation. We must liberate every American citizen to create a society in which every citizen feels to live free.      

  So how do we move forward? How does America get baptized to wash away its original sin? To be honest I do not have a real answer to this question because the system of oppression has existed for centuries. But, what I do have is a start to dismantling this system. Like I said previously we must first address and acknowledge that such an institutional system exist. And then something different. It’s a very philosophical and abstract idea because we live in a world that operates on a binary either you’re right or wrong, you are good or bad, you are Black or white, there is just and unjust, and finally yes or no. But the reality is no one truly lives on one side of the spectrum the majority of people operate in the grey. And given this fact, people have their own ideas, experiences, biases, prejudices, and perspectives. However, given this binary, we are conditioned to think and believe certain ‘truths’ the problem with this way of thinking it avoids conversations and discourse.  We need to enter the zone of proximity and have deliberate and challenging conversations.         

    Therefore in these conversations, it is imperative that we do not cancel people. Meaning, we cannot call people out but we must call people in. Calling a person out is a tool of alienation. Therefore, we must call people in. If a person goofs up don’t criticize or chastise them but rather provide constructive criticism. With this being said, it is vital, WE CANNOT BE SOFT WE HAVE TO ACCEPT CRITICISM AND LEARN FROM IT. Now, conversations only go so far.WE MUST ALSO QUESTION and ACT. What should we question and act upon? To begin with, how can we create equitable economic opportunities for EVERY CITIZEN? How do we educate our children? How do we fund our public school system?  How do we police our citizens? How do we disrupt the current housing structure that systematically displaces Black folks? These questions are very broad strokes on the painting of oppression. However, I believe these strokes are important. Along, with these questions, we must also act. We act by voting, and not just for presidential elections but also for LOCAL ELECTIONS. In addition, we need to be politically active writing and calling our local politicians.We must fight for representation and diverse voices and faces in every field. We must write and create! We must work to educate. Not only do we educate but we must also be liberatory educators. Meaning, we allow for folks to question and to think.                 

Ultimately, I believe it comes down to seeing the world and your life in a different way. We begin to see differently we enter the zone of proximity. We have to get close to people. We have to have conversations that are hard and uncomfortable. More than anything we have to know each other. Like the magnificent bell hooks said “ When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us”. That is how we baptize ourselves.

thepurelands reblogged your post:Listen, I’m up to here with “spiritual” men and...

I love this SO much… All else to say, which is not in contradiction to your words but a qualifier, is that we as women...

#so much YES#sexuality

Well, I would be very careful with your terminology there (even though I believe your basic intent was benevolent, don’t worry). Saying women “aren’t victims of the patriarchy” edges far too close to basically telling women, bluntly in their faces, that they’re just imagining it all. Which is bollocks--and what I’ve been trying to get at in my post; that there are issues in the way of healing and liberation and becoming whole. It’s exactly because women are victimised as fuck and abused and beaten up all the time that it’s more difficult for them to even start handling sexuality. 

Women are victimised and abused left, right and centre by a fucked-up, patriarchal system that values the male and “masculine” values over “feminine” ones, and that fucks men up as well as it goes. The whole system is based on violence and power-over and it’s 100% real. And we absolutely need to acknowledge that before we can move on. Not tell women, like far too many self-help guides (who’ve never had PTSD themselves) that hey, just think positive sparkly New Age thoughts and be ~open~ and ~forgiving~ (and forget about these silly BDSM things as therapy) and everything will be fine. Women are fucked over in this world 24/7, end of story.

But.

But.

There’s a difference, a massive difference between being victimised, being on the receiving end of violence and abuse and adopting a victim identity. That’s the key; that’s what I hope you were after, too. I don’t believe in victim-blaming, but I do believe in shaking people out of the *internalised* victimisation part, the internalised self-hatred and passivity and weakness. I would never have said this pre-Tumblr, but I am honestly starting to wonder if women wouldn’t be so badly off right now if it weren’t for their own fetish for fucking themselves over.

My dear, dear sisters: whenever you feel hopeless and useless and act accordingly (or, rather, remain passive because you’ve accepted you’re shit), feel like you don’t have the right to do X (act that doesn’t harm anyone), don’t have the right to say Y (thing that doesn’t harm anyone), that this thing is rude and that thing is being a spoilsport, circle your sentences with “hehe” and don’t use full stops because that’s too stompy and yadda yadda, that’s a big-ass part of what keeps you down. You. You keep yourself down because once you’ve been put down by someone else, you copy them and start doing it to yourself, too.

Every time you call yourself a victim (instead of someone else victimising you that very moment), every time you think you’re weak, every time you’re being a nice girl and not making a fuss (when you absolutely should), every time you put yourself down and remain passive, someone benefits from that. Every time you fuck yourself over typing a Tumblr tag saying “but I feel like there’s nothing I can do” or “im shit lol”, someone’s going to benefit from that, usually the dudebros who are having fun somewhere else celebrating violence and other tough-guy crap (while trying to pretend they aren’t soft and squishy human beings underneath all that). Every time you define yourself through something you are Against, you let yourself be defined by the thing you think is your enemy; by focusing on resistance you’re forgetting about the part where you should be exploring and actively building alternative ways of handling things. You have a choice as to whether you’ll type that Tumblr tag or not, but you’ve forgotten you have it. You’re not being yourself--you’re being what The Man wants you to be. Miserable and malleable and useable because you don’t believe in yourself, believe you have any rights, any power, any divinity in yourself.

So I just want to clarify that. There’s a difference between being abused and *abusing yourself,* putting yourself down. There’s something you can’t help--if someone’s kicking you in the face with a combat boot, it’s pretty damn difficult to start manifesting your innate divinity. And I don’t want anyone to belittle that. It’s incredibly difficult to handle sex if the penalty for that is humiliation and physical violence. But those times you are on your own, self-governed (for example, on your own blog on the Internet, or in your own bed with a vibrator)--if you choose to put yourself down *there* as well, then, yes, that’s a problem. And that’s where you’ve got to start, because if you don’t believe that you have any value, you can be used over and over. That’s candy for abusers; that’s candy for narcissists--they see they can walk all over you. 

These self-defeating structures have been programmed into us for millennia exactly to uphold the system as it is, so that we remain home as passive housekeepers and baby machines. It all goes back to that; every time you say “I should put my feelings and hurt aside and put others above myself at all times even if it literally kills me,” it goes back to being an efficient homemaker while the guys (in turn brainwashed into being good cannon fodder, efficient killing machines) go off to wage war. All gender bullshit boils down to that: either making someone into an efficient home/kid management system or a killing/moneymaking system, and all the divine potential inside of us, regardless of genitalia, gets destroyed and burned on the altar of that system. It’s madness. 

But we’ve come so far from that. We’ve now got the technology and civilisation and brains to be far more than just homemakers or soldiers. We already know we can use these skills for building hospitals--transcending the homemaker and the warrior and channeling that into medical science and the engineering and power needed to build that hospital (and that these skills exist cross-sex, so gendering them is too limiting). We should be able to articulate our feelings and use them wisely by now, and to respect each other by now. But we have to respect ourselves first (and the same goes for guys respecting their “girly” parts). If you start saying “no, actually, this is how it works for me”--which is why I was explaining all those things about the female orgasm in my post, because nobody fucking talks about it on that level, especially in spiritual contexts--then we have a beginning. It’s a defiant act, a hella radical act and it’s exactly when we realise what such women are up against that we understand just how revolutionary it is. 

Even now, I have to try and stop myself from saying “TL;DR” here because that’s one of those many forms of self-belittling, ways of saying “hehhehe, what I just said isn’t that important” because it bloody well is. I struggle with that shit, too. (I’m not even going to go into the list of the shit I’ve been through, even if this kind of Discourse often demands people show their hand--because I don’t believe in cred through victimhood. I almost started to list that shit, but stopped myself, because that’s what awareness is all about--not just vomiting out what you feel, but trying to at least have some consideration over what your output’s gonna be. And I don’t want anyone to feel they somehow have less cred than me because they haven’t been on the receiving end of X, because that’s inhuman and also insane). But all you folks need to know that I’ve been There, and over and over. And sick of it. And it’s exactly because people still self-perpetuate all this crap that I can’t keep quiet about it any more, having been through all this myself. Twenty years ago, I hoped things would be better in 2018, but they just seem to be getting worse, so we’ve got to talk about this stuff, start talking about it as much as people talked about this stuff in the 60s and 70s, and as critically as they did then (but that’s a whole different rant).

We’ve all got to start somewhere--but let’s just be careful about the terminology and not taunt people with broken legs into running when they’re still recuperating, or in any way imply they fell over themselves when someone else tripped them over. 

There’s a difference between sabotage and self-sabotage. Being victimised=/=victim identity.  

Now, can we talk about the glory of uterine orgasms? 

Detective Comics #957

Let's all read a bad comic! Let's all read a bad comic! Let's all read a bad comic! And curse James Tynion V!

This right here is at the heart of what's wrong with the modern age of comic books. Superheroes are supposed to be inspiring! They're supposed to save people. Fuck this cynical bullshit where dozens of people die while the hero saves the day after which their relatives become super villains and blame the heroes. Then they attack the heroes and keep the cycle going because writers are lazy and/or think they're being clever by questioning things like "What if Superman had to fight in the real world instead of a stupid made-up world where he saves the day and makes people happy and causes readers to feel better about their lives and the world around them through the hope and inspiration of their actions?"

If I hadn't read so many James Tynion IV stories in which Batman was portrayed as being wrong while his youthful sidekicks all knew what was right and how to do things better, I might just think, "Spoiler will surely learn a lesson here! At the end, she'll be thinking Batman is the bee's knees!" But I'm fairly certain this will end with Spoiler proving something to Batman while Batman eats crow and admits he could probably be a better person. Because that's what the Patriarchy should be doing, right?! Shutting up and listening! Although I don't know how they can shut up and just listen if the shit they have to listen to is akin to the shit coming out of Spoiler's mouth in this comic book. By declaring she's no longer a superhero, Spoiler decides that her way is better and it'll allow her to save people from becoming innocent victims of Batman's war on crime. After Spoiler Narration Boxes her speech to whomever the fuck she's speaking, it's time for Wrath to do the same thing! He's also going to explain how Gotham City works and he's going to agree a bit with Spoiler. He agrees that the first thing you have to do as a super villain is to defeat Batman. You can come up with a criminal plan after that! Wrath is the anti-Batman. He's usually used in Batman comic books to show what Batman could have become if he allowed himself to use the tragedy in his life as an excuse. I bet this time he'll be used to show that there isn't really any difference between Wrath and Batman at all! Even as I was typing that, I was thinking, "Don't type that! That's such a stupid conclusion to make! There's not way even James Tynion IV would write that story!"

You mean you attempt to solve the hardest problem first and then you spend the next few years in Arkham Asylum wondering why you just didn't rob a bank on Staten Island.

At the beginning of the Wrath scene, he kills one of his own men. Later, he threatens to kill one at random for every minute they go over a deadline he gives them. Who would work for this asshole? The pay and benefits must be unfathomably generous!

So you constantly lose? Because there's no way you got through the level of Arkham Asylum that I grew bored with and quit because you have to be stealthy or you start over! And I'm fairly certain some levels of Thief, even when playing on the "Oops! I've been noticed and have to now murder an entire castle full of guards!" difficulty still forces you to be stealthy on some levels.

That previous caption was where I exceeded my "This comic isn't too bad!" threshold and decided I needed to vent. Spoiler continues to mention how so many innocents got hurt due to Batman and his Bat-Family stopping crime. She thinks (or Narration Boxes, actually), "Who's there to stop my friends when they go too far?" Um, you could be, you coward. She continues, "To say how many losses are acceptable?" Have you met Batman? Zero losses are acceptable! I mean, you know, in Bat-Theory! If anybody dies, it's not because Batman did something that caused their death. It's because somebody else did something that caused their death and Batman wasn't able to save them. I suppose in the world I described earlier where lazy writers only ever have villains attack Batman directly, you can, if you want to be a dick about it, put the blame on Batman. But once more: that's not Batman's fault! It's the fault of shitty writers! Spoiler's conclusion is that super heroes brought about super problems. Fuck you, you idiot. This is the worst hot take in comic books and it has continued to hang around for decades. Writers who continue to use this trope should be shunned from the comic book community. Spoiler is all, "I'm going to use my super training to prove that Gotham doesn't need superheroes!" And Batman will, hopefully, be all, "Fuck you, dummy!" The last story arc was to show that Cassandra was better than Batman. This one is to show that Spoiler is better than Batman. How is she better? I'm not exactly sure since she takes out Wrath pretty much exactly how Batman would have taken him out. I mean, if Batman were being written by somebody who didn't have a grudge against the Patriarchy. I mean Batman! I suppose Tynion's Batman would have exploded all of the walls and toppled the building with his raging hard-on to battle Wrath and all of the hostages would have died. Afterward, Batman would have been all, "It's a shame that Wrath killed so many and it wasn't my fault at all! I had to stop him by any means necessary!" Which totally isn't a Batman thing to do so I don't actually know how Spoiler thinks her version of stopping Wrath was better than the way Batman, being written honestly, would have done it. Spoiler's entirely plan is to save the day and let the police take the credit. So she's trusting that the police will be dishonest bastards who lie about their jobs? That's a great message! Anyway, she somehow thinks that if super villains think the cops are stopping all the crime, they won't want to do crime anymore! Especially since — thanks, again, to the lazy writers — all they actually want to do is beat up super heroes. She'll see how stupid her plan is when super villains continue to do whatever they want (even more so!) when they think all the heroes have left Gotham. Anarchy shows up at the end to be all, "That was great! What a great idea! This story wasn't stupid at all! Spoiler isn't a terrible character with stupid thoughts after all!" That's when I throw up. The end!

Moving away from the divine feminine as told by men

A couple weeks ago, a good friend of mine raised a question that also oddly crossed my mind a few days prior to his raising the question. Whereas I imagine my formulation of the question was internally postulated as cynical and somewhat bitter, I imagine his was curious and had practical gravity. We had an interesting conversation as a result that gave me a lot to ponder over for some time.

We asked paraphrased: “how is it that sometimes men can be all about the earth and the feminine divine, sacred, and otherwise, and still treat human womxn poorly, even while holding some high value for the feminine?”

The question arose for me amidst a lot of internal frustration, during which my partner and I seemed in a terrible (and to some extent still are because it’s currently unresolved) predicament wherein I was and am experiencing constant states of resentment. There is the agonizing internal prodding and plodding around, trying to innerstand, feel, and integrate where the resentment is coming from, acknowledge and heal the internal initial wound as it were, but at the same time, it is exhausting to constantly be doing so much internal work, vocalizing and communicating when there are inklings of the feeling arising again in permutation, and not seeing many actual results.

And by actual results, ones that signify that effective communication in both parties occured and different patterns or behaviors emerge in the partnership on the account of both parties. Then there is the rabbit hole of what the hell is the point of the partnership anyway if i’m going to feel like this so often? How is this healthy for either of us? Am I toxic? Omg no, anything, anything but that. Gotta represent the divine and sacred feminine and all.

What was causing my resentment is basically a story for my therapist.

I am sharing this because something unconscious is afoot and amock, in both of us humans. My partner loves me, yet it is the task taken of trying to understand what’s wrapped up socially and historically beneath this love that stops us from manifesting more truly that guides these reflections. The above was context that catalyzed in part, these reflections. In the rest of this entry, i will sojourn to another place that in which this situation is an exemplary demonstrative.

“How is it that men can place significant value on the feminine, divine, sacred, and otherwise, and still treat human womxn so poorly?”

I wager that in these instances specifically, that a relationship with nature in today’s society at first is a somewhat private, individual relationship. Sure, a garden or farm can represent the feminine, characteristically has for a long time. And cultivating a space and stewarding can be an expression of love for the feminine, sacred, divine and otherwise. And also completely not have anything to do with the feminine.

And as much as I appreciate it, it is also becoming a really tiresome trope for men to pretend that they actually honor womxn, as if that is evidence. This is not true. Because a garden isn’t a person. There is danger in that poetically gendered personification. And it isn’t a one way relationship because the earth also responds and communicates to us. However, using symbols, the feminine is abstractly characterized as a vessel, to hold, to fill, to carry, to pour into. How many times do you see it, hear it: the earth, the moon, the feminine, these vessels, empty of their own intrinsic essence other than their empty form to be filled with imagination, with love, with all of the other things. And how dare she act so ungrateful of that lofty expression of love and honor?

Stupid human womxm just don’t get it, says every men’s rights activist and covert, unconscious misogynist in varieties of reinforcing ways all of the time. I say unconscious misogynist in the aspect that it is unexamined, one may not even know or understand, unless willfully examined, where it may be, how it affects, resides, expresses, exists, or functions.

White privilege is a very similar thing; it is a willfully unconscious and unexamined inner reality mechanism that allows and encourages the perpetuation of racist ideology. And that is how you can depersonalize it (sneakily bypassing the barriers of defensive white/male fragility that says NOT ME NOT ME NOT ME FLAPPY FLAPPY INNER CHICKEN BRAIN PERCEIVING IMAGINARY THREAT TO EXISTENCE) and open the entryway for examination. Perhaps first the admittance that it is there, and if it helps to bypass the barrier, probably was instilled before you had the chance to give consent for its entrance into your neuronal pathways.

But shit mittens, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there, no matter how much you wished it wasn’t. And just because it is there also doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything about it. Quite the opposite, it means now that you know, you have so many ways to do something about it from within first.

Vessels, earth, feminine are amongst the easiest symbols to project oneself onto. And arguably, quite non symbolically as well. And it is very easy to not see the reflection of those projections onto human womxn because they can talk back with human language. Be full of other, independent and w/r/t functional relationships not so independent things. They can disagree, counter, vocalize in ways that can’t be written under the rug in one’s own mind. But they also can because a womxn rejecting notions of unfounded projection or just by disagreeing with abstract symbolism placed upon her can be labelled psychologically and emotionally violently with words like (and usually with the caveat of “just” which conveniently writes off any responsibility on the part of the other in relationship, throw one’s hands up with the word “just”) crazy, disturbed, imbalanced, toxic, maladjusted, etc etc.

These words take the narrative of another perception based in divine feminine who knows how many stereotypes and unconscious yet acted upon expectations, and make it the task of the womxn to internalize it and reflect on it because in the stereotypical trope that womxn are endlessly forgiving, understanding, and nurturing, she must give credence and…validation to the reality and perception of another, particularly and especially of the male variety, particularly and especially if he has something to say or share based on what he “objectively” sees, that will mold her into a more functional creature in this crumbling patriarchy.

It’s not a backward request to treat a womxn as a human foremost before any cultural inlay or responsibility is placed upon them to remain trapped in the unconfronted associations one may have regarding their “innate sacred” or otherwise intrinsically “othered” difference from you. In essence, yes we are returning to a feminine consciousness, and together, but also as together we must learn to be more aware of the filters which separate us from it. I can't step quite away from this paternalistic conception of the feminine because it is still being projected onto womxn, and until they are left alone without these filters...

Kin

I'm sorry, and you can go ahead and hate on me, fine. But this "otherkin" bullshit is just that: bullshit. Same goes with a lot of the transgender shit here. Yes, I am well aware that gender dysphoria is an actual thing. A good friend of mine is gender fluid and her husband was born a girl. But, the key thing to point out here is that they both ACTUALLY have gender dysphoria. They aren't going about screaming about some sort of patriarchy or oppression or how I have to mind their pronouns. They're, oh, I don't know, actual human beings. Go talk to a therapist. Seriously. I've been through therapy and it truly is helpful. Just... just talk to someone. You're not a dragon, a potato, or a rock. You're a human being that just needs attention. Now, that may sound like a condescending statement, I know. It isn't, though. Everyone needs attention. Everyone needs someone to look at them and accept them or compliment them or just be there. We all do. This is not the way to do it. Just sit down and talk to someone. Your parents, your siblings, your family and friends, a random stranger; it doesn't matter. Find someone that will give you the attention you need, don't go claiming, "Oh, I just wanted to lay around and move slowly. I must be slothkin or something." In all seriousness, I feel as though these "otherkin" identities are manifestations of character traits that you feel best define you. For instance, if you admired your own boldness and tendency to charge into a situation headfirst, you'd consider yourself rhinokin. They could also be representations of qualities that you want to have. For instance, I'd like to have less fear of failure. That could make me owlkin due to their 99% success rate when hunting. I play D&D. A lot. In fact, I run a weekly session. I've LARPed several times, as well. But, the difference here is that when I stop role-playing, I go back to being myself. I have the capability to differentiate scenarios. I don't go around claiming that I'm Portul Akiar Blu, Master of Inter-dimensional Space and start trapping people inside the magical linings of my jacket pockets. I hang out with my friends, get drunk, and play video games when our session is over. All I'm saying is that there are better ways of getting attention than becoming a joke on the Internet. I don't care if you go around and act like a cow or a goose or a lawn chair, but don't go shoving it in my face. Do that in private among people you trust. If you and your significant other(s) want to act that way, fine. I'm currently in an MDlb relationship, but I don't go into littlespace around my friends because that isn't the time or place to do that. On that note, I don't believe myself a child, nor that my Domme is my mom. They're roles. We play them, we enjoy it, and we go back to our lives. Rinse and repeat as necessary. Go ahead. Hate me. See if I care. But I'm not saying these things to bother you. I'm saying them because I'm concerned. I'm not saying, "Back down from the bullies" or anything. I'm saying that you shouldn't be putting yourself in the situation to start with. If someone was in front of me dressed like a clown and I laughed, then they said, "I'm not a clown." I would say, "Then why are you dressed and acting like one?" My point here is this: people suck. People are terrible. Don't give them more ammunition or fuel for a fire. Learn from my experiences. I can go on for days about the times I've screwed up by letting people know everything about me.