shocked bystander at sydney, australia’s annual mardis gras pride parade (1994)

I can’t explain what blue eye samurai makes me feel…….its a typical revenge story, a man sets out on his hero’s journey to kill the four men who have wronged him. A lone ronin, wide brimmed hat and sword in hand, roaming Edo Japan on his vendetta. But he’s not a man. He’s a woman. And how has he been wronged? What’s she getting revenge on?

On the fact that she exists. She wants revenge on the four white men that could possibly have conceived her. Who got her Japanese mother pregnant with a blue-eyed child. And not just any blue-eyed child, but a girl child. How is she possibly supposed to live in the world like that? For the wrong of being conceived, for the wrong of being born, for the wrong of being birthed into a world that will never love or accept her, she will kill her father.

I don’t know what level of convoluted self hate that is. Is she a child of rape? Or a child of a whore? Halfway through I realise what she told herself at the start couldn’t possibly be true - it’s not really for her mother. Her mother wasn’t the root of her vendetta, she wasn’t really doing it for her. When she leaves that farm and leaves the chance to live a simple, legitimate life as a woman, she goes right back to hunting down the men. Those men personally wronged her.

And then there’s so much to be discussed surrounding the way she grew up, because as a boy child and a man she can afford so much more than life has dealt her. Her swordfather who took her in out of the love and care in his heart had no shame in teaching a mixed man his art. The face of a ‘demon’ is fine. But not the identity of a woman. Shh. Don’t say it. Don’t confess. He knows and doesn’t want to hear it.

And because she’s lived that way her entire life for safety and security, she’s so completely alienated from being a woman, perhaps she really is he. But not really by choice. Or is it? The thing she does best is the art of killing, the art of men. Gender is a prison and gender is a performance and she has to choose which to perform. The times cannot reconcile hatred and violence with a woman. So she lives as a man.

So she can get revenge on her father, for revenge on herself.

Valeria Vasilenko by Vassilis Pitoulis

as an aroace person with limited sexual experience, no interest in watching porn, and poor sex ed as a teen, there IS something simultaneously funny and vaguely tragic about being 28 adult years old and realising how extremely tiny your frame of reference is for genitalia and deciding you should expand this to better understand bodies (yours and others). and then you're just there like "okay so what the fuck do I even google right now, anyway"

PSA: There is no such thing as a "white Jew"

There are Jews who have European backgrounds and *some* of them have benefited from eurocentrism or being white passing, but in moments of crisis or need the social tides that create white privilege have never seen Jewish people as part of that group. Whiteness is a social category which has changed with time and attitudes and, at least for now, it has never and still doesn't include Jewish people.

Continuing to use the term "white Jews" is ignorant at best and harmful at worst. Even converts once converted are othered and can no longer rely on any previous white background to save them if they are identified as Jewish.

[ Non-jews please reblog]

the thread this is from was a gender-wars nightmare but the OP's post was about how hard it is for men to understand/accept compliments without getting it confused with flirting and tbh? I need everyone to understand this isn't all that gender-specific. this is not a "men vs women" problem. this is everyone. we're all isolated and broken creatures and it will take genuine and real work to become better and build real relationships

americans imagining Land Back as a reverse colonization where your family is violently displaced from their home—just no, and there’s so much projection and anti-indigenous sentiment in that reaction that we need to unpack. in the same way abolishing private property does not equate to taking the personal property/housing from regular human beings, land back deserves your full attention in the actual demands and futurities that native people are calling for. this knee jerk resistance against land back needs to stop inventing hypotheticals instead of engaging with the reality of this which is A. a broader political call to rematriate land to indigenous communities, who currently have limited resources because this is a settler colonial state B. specific calls to return specific lands—often ‘public lands’ i.e. national parks, blm land etc—which often carry cultural significance and also very direct legacies of violence tied to the original displacement. C. a return to indigenous land management strategies, which are place-based and culture-based and offer paths to restoring/reclaiming/reconfiguring the ecologies and human communities most damaged by colonialism/capitalism/the world we currently live in D. land back is deeply tied to the movements protesting oil and gas pipelines, catastrophic mining, etc ongoing destruction of the environment that place indigenous communities on the frontlines yet threatens /everyone/ downstream who drinks water and has a body

Lost in the flood

© Etienne Cabran

http://horseunderthetable.tumblr.com

the revolution is coming, but only if you learn to do the dishes.

You can read all the Marx and Lenin and Troksky in the world, you can own the hammer and sickle flag, you can use a photo of Thomas Sankara as your twitter profile, but theory and grandstanding means jackshit if you aren't going to back your theory up with action.

"but how do I fight against the hyperconsumerism that drives late-stage capitalism?" buy fair trade and ethically sourced! support local artisans! set up a barter system with some mates for skilled crafts and food items! establish a trade network in your community, so you're less reliant on corporations like Amazon!

"how do you want me to seize the means of production?" get involved with citizen advocacy groups! join a trade union or donate to funds to support picketing workers! look, if you wait for ~the revolution~ then you'll be waiting until your dying day. if enough of us organise and do a thousand little acts of revolution every day, then we can at least make a start.

Change soon come, but only if we take the steps to make it.

everyone who doesn't include the full quote when mocking GRRM's "what was Aragorn's tax policy" rhetorical question owes me $200

im gonna be so real - a lot of sapphics claim to love confident women esp confident femmes but when that confidence comes from femmes of color, fat femmes, disabled femmes, gnc &/or trans(masc or fem) femmes, or really just anyone who's not a thin cis white able bodied feminine person it's either outright ignored or treated with hostility and its kind of extremely ugly of y'all

what the 💫fuck💫 is this

The X-Files Season 3 + close talking

Forest mood

I think horror podcasts should make cassette tapes of their shows.

Just the thought of pretending to put some "random" cassette into a seemingly old cassette player and listening to the horrors unfold is something I crave.