ghosst-writer

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In Whipping Girl, Julia Serano proposes that we drop "passing" as a term. Instead of passing or not passing, we are either correctly gendered or misgendered. This is to de-artificialize our genders, after all, am I a man trying to pass myself off as a woman? Or am I just a woman who cis people, due to their own prejudice, look at and assume is a man? Of course, it is the latter.

She also proposes to change what some call "passing privilege" to "conditional cissexual privilege." This is to emphasize how while passing can be a privilege in many respects, it is also a conditional privilege that is only given to you if you have the luck, effort, and money necessary to be good enough in the eyes of the cis person. One that can be easily revoked if they clock you or discover your trans status in any way.

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The last moments 😮‍💨

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With the Israeli defense minister talking today about his plan to (quote) "concentrate the population of Gaza" in a camp built "on the ruins of Rafah" to carry out the "Emigration Plan", I don't think anyone gets to call the comparison inappropriate any longer: the Israeli Nazis plan to kill Gaza's entire population of 2 million Palestinian people, systematically, in order seize their land and settle it with Israeli Jews, because they consider Palestinians to be a racially inferior & intrinsically dangerous people. If "emigration" is what they're discussing openly, what do you think they're planning in private?

If the Western world order were not hypocritical, NATO would be coordinating a campaign to eliminate Israel's military capabilities and occupy & partition the country, abolish its central government, have its leaders put on trial for the capital crimes of genocide and aggression, and prevent by force the existence of an Israeli nation-state until a secular and democratic Palestinian administration can be established. Never again means now.

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yiddish theatre, yiddish newspapers and other yiddish cultural stuff was illegal in israel for years and actively discouraged and attempted to make obsolete, yiddish lectures were disrupted and the israeli state translated the testimonies of holocaust survivors to hebrew rather than keep them in yiddish (the language spoken by most jewish holocaust survivors) but tell me more about how israel and zionism are saving jews and making jewish cultural identity stronger rather than destroying and devaluing jewish diasporic culture 🤔

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"But the protests! We cant be violent, my optics!"

Shut the fuck up. These protests are actively keeping ICE agents in that area incapable of efficiently completely their job. Their job to kidnap people, torture them, and send them to a camp in another country with 0 due process.

Every time protesters stop ICE from advancing. Everytime they force the national guard, the police, whatever the state wants to throw from accompanying ICE, a family is saved. Every single time precincts are forced to stop a crowd instead of assist ICE, a family is saved.

This is direct action. This is showing up and building community. This is organizing.

Also don't give the "Oh but theyre looting!" Yeah and? Fuck those businesses. Looting is redistributing capital back to the working class and still helps stop ICE and Police from acting.

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Stripping citizenship is the first step to death camps.

This is a pathway to legal non-personhood. It is a way to produce a legal void into which people can be dropped and then killed.

Is this hyperbole? No. It is at the heart of Arendt’s insistence on a right to have rights.

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Adriana Smith’s neonate was delivered today, 3 months early (around 28 weeks).

She will finally be allowed to rest and taken off of life support.

Her family’s fundraiser is nowhere near its goal, and now they have tremendous NICU costs to look forward to based on how her son was able (or unable) to develop under the duress of all those life saving drugs they pumped his mom full of.

Please allow this mother’s spirit to rest and support their family as they’re finally allowed to grieve poor Adriana being used as an incubator for the state.

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emory hospital performed an emergency c-section on adriana smith's corpse last Friday.

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The largest mass shooting in American history was a hate crime against gay people. Don’t ever forget that.

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All Eyes on the Sumoud Convoy

Eyes on the road people. Eyes on the thousands of people on their way to the Gaza border to break the siege.

SumoudConvoy-tracker

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📢 ISRAEL HAS KIDNAPPED ALL 12 CREW ON BOARD THE MADLEEN HUMANITARIAN AID SHIP 🚨

Earlier this evening, the IOF boarded The Madleen humanitarian aid ship, headed to break the siege on Gaza.

As a result, 12 foreign nationals have been kidnapped by the IOF and their fate is currently unknown.

You can help.

You can contact the relevant ministries of foreign affairs for the crew on board The Madleen and also the UK foreign ministry as this was a UK flagged ship.

This is a violation of international law and an attack on the UK's sovereignty.

The crew on board The Madleen also reported white "paint" being poured on them and it's unknown what this substance was.

Please write to your local representatives and the relevant ministries of foreign affairs to demand the safe release of all 12 crew members who were on board The Madleen.

This is a crisis.

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Eyes on the madleen freedom flotilla

freedomflotilla-tracker

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"My name is Greta Thunberg and I am from Sweden. If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces, or forces that support Israel." (X)

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So a few months ago there was the discourse about would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods. I didn't want to touch it while the discourse was hot and everyone dug in hard because those are not good conditions for nuance, but I waited until today, June 1st, for a specific reason.

I'm not going to take a position in the bear vs man debate because I don't think it matters. What is really being asked here is how afraid are you of men? Specifically, unexpected men who are, perhaps, strange.

People have a lot of very real fear of men that comes from a lot of very real places. Back when I was first transitioning in 2015 and 2016, I decided to start presenting as a woman in public even though I did not pass in the slightest.

I live in a red state. I knew other trans women who had been attacked by men, raped by men. I knew I was taking a risk by putting myself out there. I was the only visibly trans person in the area of campus I frequented, and people made sure I never forgot that. Most were harmless enough and the worst I got from them was curious stares. Others were more aggressive, even the occasional threat. I had to avoid public bathrooms, of course, and always be aware of my surroundings.

I know how frightening it is to be alone at night while a pair of men are following behind you and not knowing if they are just going in the same direction or if they want to start something - made all the worse for the constant low level threat I had been living under for over a year by just being visibly trans in a place where many are openly hostile to queer people. You have to remember, this was at the height of the first wave of bathroom law discussions, a lot of people were very angry about trans women in particular. My daily life was terrifying at times. I was never the subject of direct violence, but I knew trans women who had been.

I want you to keep all that in mind.

So man or bear is really the question "how afraid of men are you?", and the question that logically follows is "What if there was a strange man at night in a deserted parking lot?" or "What if you were alone in an elevator with a man?" or "What if you met a strange man in the woman's bathroom?"

My state recently passed an anti trans bathroom bill. The rhetoric they used was about protecting women and children from "strange men", aka trans women.

Conservatives hijack fear for their bigoted agenda.

When I first started presenting as a woman the campus apartment complex was designed for young families. The buildings were in a large square with playgrounds in the center, and there were often children playing. I quickly noticed that when I took my daughter out to play, often several children would immediately stop what they were doing and run back inside. It didn't take me long to confirm that the parents were so afraid of "the strange man who wears skirts" that their children were under strict instructions to literally run away as soon as they saw me.

"How afraid are you of a strange man being near your children?"

I mentioned above that I had to avoid public bathrooms. This was not because of men. It was because of women who were so afraid of random men that they might get violent or call someone like the police to be violent for them if I ever accidentally presented myself in a way that could be interpreted as threatening, when my mere presence could be seen as a threat. If I was in the library studying and I realized that it was just me and one other woman I would get up and leave because she might decide that stranger danger was happening.

Your fear is real. Your fear might even come from lived experiences. None of that prevents the fact that your fear can be violent. Women's fear of men is one of the driving forces of transmisogyny because it is so easy to hijack. And it isn't just trans women. Other trans people experience this, and other queer people too. Racial minorities, homeless people, neurodivergent people, disabled people.

When you uncritically engage with questions like man or bear, when you uncritically validate a culture of reactive fear, you are paving the way for conservatives and bigots to push their agenda. And that is why I waited until pride month. You cannot engage and contribute to the culture of reactive fear without contributing to queerphobia of all varieties. The sensationalist culture of reactive fear is a serious queer issue, and everyone just forgot that for a week as they argued over man or bear. I'm not saying that "man" is the right answer. I am saying that uncritically engaging with such obvious click bait trading on reactive fear is a problem. Everyone fucked up.

It is not a moral failing to experience fear, but it is a moral responsibility to keep a handle on that fear and know how it might harm others.

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Killing starving civilians with tanks is how Israelis distrubute aid. Intentional genocide.

The lessons from WWII regarding Nazis are now aspirational for Netanyahu and IDF.

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A trans woman was just sentenced to 15 years in prison for defending herself from an attacker. She wanted no part in the fight and witnesses described her actions as self-defense. With right-wing media constantly portraying her as "evil" since the incident, the trial was over before it began.

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greta thunberg, liam cunningham, rima hassan, and everyone else on that ship, thank you, and i hope you succeed. i really hope you succeed. you know what you are risking, and i wish for you to come back safely, having done what you set out to do.