#and not. dominanted by system discourse

[235uranium]

yknow i forgot the reason i stopped openly being a kinnie is because all of those associated places are filled with the most exhausting discourse and teenagers being. well, teenagers.

[deathstars]

wow you believe haytham secretly didn't believe in the colonialism and imperialism of the templars. omg you think achilles was awful and actually worse than haytham. you blame achilles for problems with the writing. you think haytham gets too much hate for being a leader of the order that believes explicitly in furthering colonialism and imperialism. omg i've never heard that before you're so cool

[apas-95]

I think the 'problematic media' issue is composed of two principle parts, one superceding the other.

Firstly, and the most important to address to cut the discourse off at the head; yes, media is a vector by which social systems reinforce themselves. This is the purpose of propaganda, and this dynamic is completely intelligible to us if we consider the cases of 'person whose sole source of online interaction was 4chan, and who exclusively watched History Channel hagiography about fascist war machines', or 'person who developed inappropriate ideas about sex through watching misogynistic media'. It is plainly clear that it is both possible and common for media to influence people ideologically, as an apparatus of a given social system. Material reality dictates which social systems are given ideological hegemony in media, but media is in fact an effective tool of those systems.

Secondly, while acknowledging the first point, it is not the dominating factor, here. While media can and does influence people ideologically, often commandingly so, it is not some sort of cognitohazard. It is plainly possible to watch, even repeatedly over an extended timetrame, some given piece of fascist propaganda, or abuse apologia, or what have you, without becoming any more beholden to its ideas - if anything, becoming more opposed. The crucial thing, here, is that doing so requires some level of understanding and defence against the ideas presented. Someone with no rebuttal to fascist positions, with no even kneejerk dismissal that what they're taking in is fascist, is unlikely not to internalise something if they're surrounded by fascist media. On the other hand, someone who has been innoculated with opposing political theory, who is capable of recognising the social systems being reinforced by a given communicative work and reasonably countermand them, can watch a thousand misogynist movies, read a thousand racist books, peruse a thousand transphobic news articles, and leave with only stronger convictions to oppose these systems. Clearly, the dominating factor here is not the content of the media itself, but the content of the audience - whether the audience is able to sufficiently recognise, interrogate, and oppose the messaging in a given work.

All this is to say - yes, media can and does influence beliefs, but that that influence is completely subordinate to the question of whether the audience has any level of political theory or critical analysis. A liberal reading fascist literature, not holding any real theoretical opposition to the content of fascism, is safe so long as they can recognise and reject basic fascist signifiers. A feminist is able to recognise misogynistic logic in a given work. A communist can recognise and countermand reactionary spin in a news article or wikipedia page. While the politically-unconscious man will not recognise that his favourite sitcom is instilling him with absurdly sexist views on marriage, the issue here is not the media itself. Fundamentally - the issue of 'problematic media' is one best and principally solved by the development of political theory and political education, not by any suppression of the media itself, which is cumbersome.

[taliabhattwrites]

I’m sorry if you’ve answered this, or if it should be obvious, but you does your substack say trans/rad/fem? What is trans radical feminism? How does it differ from just radical feminism?

Yep! It says Trans/Rad/Fem, as does the title of my book.

The short version is that your average online hate speech aficionado who calls themselves a TE"RF" is no more well-versed in actual radical feminist literature than the billionaire writer. The most feminist literature they've read is likely wizard kidlit, and maybe the most hateful bits of 'Transsexual Empire' or a bit of Sheila Jeffreys if you're lucky.

Meanwhile, the radical feminist tradition was one that itself emerged as a materialist, inclusive, and more working-class counterpoint to the First Wave's doddering Friedanism. People don't recall much of the first wave, but it engendered such ironclad feminist arguments as "lesbians are not oppressed by patriarchy because they do not marry and are not confined to the domestic sphere", or "mothers and fathers are equally responsible for women doing to the bulk of childcare, because mothers are so reluctant to let go."

Truly, it's a miracle there were any subsequent waves at all.

Adrienne Rich's essay on Compulsory Heterosexuality can be viewed as something of a turning point, a collation of a more materialist framework (since I don't believe Rich necessarily originated all the points she raised). She, rather gently and with more patience than I have ever demonstrated, addressed the arguments of the heterosexual feminists and highlighted the coercive nature of patriarchy and of heterosexuality itself, which could be considered a social regime, a model that attempts to subsume all women into domestic servitude and sexual labor for men.

(A quick aside--if you've ever encountered any arguments on this site along the lines of "CompHet is only for lesbians", do note that the original text involves Rich, a lesbian, laying out the argument to hetfeminists that all women, even straight women, are subjected to a mandatory heterosexual existence, and are punished for trying to live outside of it, as by pursuing economic independence or choosing to be childless.)

For me personally, given the rather dismal state of Indian feminism, which is dominated by affluent liberals and ignores the more radical prolefem and dalit feminist elements attempting to come to the fore, it was refreshing to finally behold a piece of feminist literature that identifies and names forced marriage as an aspect of patriarchy, one that a significant chunk of women all over the world, both within Western territories and without, live with. So much mainstream feminism in the 2000s and beyond was located in the interpersonal, the foregrounding of choices women "should" make, ignoring that for the vast majority of us, patriarchy either denies us any choice at all, or presents us with false ones, harshly punishing us for some choices while presenting them as "free".

(Liberal ideologies and systems, bound up as they are in a veneration of contracts between equal parties, account very poorly for contracts between parties on unequal footing, where one is at a significant material disadvantage and cannot truly make a "free" choice.)

Besides, it is neither true that modern feminism entirely discarded the second wave--look at "gender is a social construct" and "heteronormativity" for now-banal feminist concepts steeped in radfem origins--nor is it true that the "third wave", such as it was, was entirely aa step forward in inclusivity, trans-acceptance, class consciousness, or even racial justice. One need only look at the state of modern feminist discourses to see how well the latest "waves" have managed to argue the case for trans liberation, and my current most well-known essay is a deep dive into the Orientalist, transmisogynistic origins of "third genders", an idea the queer academy has uncritically absorbed and even championed.

I am under no misapprehensions that second-wave feminists would be my pals. A lot of them were white, for one thing. It is, however, a tradition that is both more diverse than the prevailing image of white, middle-class lesbian academics would have you believe, and one that has more than a few useful things to say, especially to a transfeminist.

I don't think we are best served by erecting a cordon sanitaire around the second wave and refusing to engage with it critically. I've read Transsexual Empire, for fuck's sake, and doing so revealed to me just how paper-thin this reactionary movement has always been. That book is as farcical and easily disproved as Hilary Cass' recent bilious screed, but both were elevated to legislative and political relevancy not due to their veracity, but because institutions simply need any literature to provide a veneer of legitimacy to their transphobia. That the texts exist at all is enough.

I have, in short, made my life's work engaging with scholarship that has historically ignored us, vilified us, or instrumentalized us, and that is as true for second-wave feminists as it is for cultural anthropologists. I just believe that Monique Wittig and Adrienne Rich made valuable contributions to feminist thought, and even as we remember all that their missteps, we should not erase what they did right.

On a personal note, I can think of no better revenge than taking the abandoned threads of the radical feminist tradition and finally fulfilling its aborted potential, as a transfeminist. The trans question tore the movement apart because of a subset of zealots who couldn't and wouldn't see us as sisters in the feminist struggle.

I am going to finish what they started, and make the conclusions that they couldn't. We're good at cleaning up other people's messes, after all.

[mercif4l]

/𝗶𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗲𝗿.

pairing: reader x choi 'buzzcut' vernon genre: angst, hurt no comfort wc: 1.2k summary: fingers off the unblock button or you're gonna regret it, girl content warning: angst bro. lovers to strangers, mentions of eating difficulties, rotting post-breakup, self-flagellating, i might wanna write an alt. ending to this bc what on earth is it so sad for.

it gets easier: they’re right about that, which pisses you off, frankly, but that’s just your pride talking. 

first, you go no contact and it destroys you, and the rot makes your blood spill a darker, angry red, like cardinals on the cusp of their death. 

then the rage is followed swiftly by embarrassment. at the circumstances, the context, your response, his response (or lack thereof), at being a human being with emotions beyond your control. it turns your teeth brittle and sore, and you can’t muster the courage to smile anymore, but at least you’re eating again. 

the songs that dominate your breakup playlist fall into obscurity in the belly of your liked songs. savored, chewed up, swallowed, sizzling away in the same acid that digested ‘fireflies’ by owl city some 15 years ago. 

now, they only startle you after their second chorus plays through the shitty sound system of some target eight months later. 

then there’s that big, bulbous, obnoxious conclusion: acceptance. 

maybe it’s the exposure therapy? 

you see his face everywhere, not seeking it out, but not avoiding it either. you’re … you deserve to see that he has moved on. it’s good for you to see him and try to accept the feelings that linger (beyond bitterness and resentment). 

because where that tunnel ends, you know he has made you happy. he persists in making you happy, still. the better memories are too plentiful to count or ignore, and his stupid grin always makes you grin right back, no matter the distance—even if it is watching some moment of fanatic hysteria explode on twitter. 

so it does get easier. yes, even as you’re inundated with pictures of him performing to sold out arenas, or modeling brands whose names you know he's too scared to try and pronounce, or shuffling through an airport with a too-small baseball cap haphazardly hiding a new haircut. wait. a new haircut?

it's like something possesses you. one minute you're doomscrolling, the next you're neck deep in carat twitter's discourse over some fantaken photos.

while thousands of fans scream back and forth over something that will inevitably be confirmed in the next 24 hours, you realize-or remember-you're only privy to this news as a statistic. you're just another view in an algorithm. and that no one thinks (or cares) to ask you about hansol anymore, knowing you no longer have a place by his side. 

oof. yeah, that still stings a bit. accepting you have no right to know, or otherwise being limited to investigative fangirling.

but you haven’t given yourself any room for mistake making so far, so why would you sully that clean streak? for the sake of haircut curiosity? what a stupid thing to suggest. idiotic, really. self-sabotaging idiocy. 

to: +82 *** *** **** hey! new haircut looks cool. so sick the company finally let up. hope you’re doing good 👍 

now, without the warm embrace of imessage’s delete option, you’ve kinda/sort of-fucked yourself. 

“it gets easier my ass. yeah, yeah, gets easier to behave like a freak.” you berate yourself, sliding the phone across your table and vastly underestimating the distance it’d take to fall off. as you dive to catch it (and fail), that deafening ringtone only gives you reason to let it drop, to shatter the thing beyond recognizing its screen. but with this stupid heavy duty phone case hansol had bought a year back? no dice. 

from: +82 *** *** **** haha thanks man ended up begging for forgiveness rather than waiting for permission :P from: +82 *** *** **** craaaazy how hard i tried to cover it up just to be clocked the second i stepped off the plane lol

you snicker at that. how ‘hard’ he tried?

to: +82 *** *** ****  boy you wore a cap nothing was gonna cover that loooow taper fadeee 🎶  from: +82 *** *** **** brooo i was supposed to wear my hoodie but i got overstimulated  from: +82 *** *** ****  and i hope ur doing good too by the way  from: +82 *** *** ****  kinda geeked to hear from you haha

you have to put your phone down. this is dangerous, dangerous territory; like, walking through burning sand, sunburned and windlashed, toward a mirage. you have got to put your phone down. 

to: +82 *** *** **** honestly just wanted to wish u well for the new year and lyk the buzzcut is super cool B)

these stupid keyboard emojis are a little secret you both keep. something silly you only use with each other that is so inconsequential, you can’t help but let your cheeks burn an angry red at their return. 

why does it have to be so easy? 

you are going to put the phone down, now.

to: +82 *** *** **** i’m sorry for blocking you—even though we said no contact it felt pretty immature. from: +82 *** *** **** glad u like the hair. was kinda bummed u weren’t the first to see it haha could only imagine the look on your face calling u after the cut or sending u a selfie :’) from: +82 *** *** **** nah i deserved it

he didn’t deserve it. sure, his whole being him shtick was what made the separation so excruciating in the first place, but you’d made the decision mutually. albeit a bit prematurely. in the way all confused adults do when they preempt disaster and jump ship at the first sign of smoke. 

from: +82 *** *** **** that sounds crazy dramatic i just mean from: +82 *** *** **** it made sense? like it didn’t take long for me to get why you’d done it from: +82 *** *** **** i just figured pretty early on u knew what u were doing. you always did/do lol 

your finger hovers over the call button. never before has it felt so offensive, so risqué to do such a thing, but you know that by ignoring the arbitrary rules of a breakup you’re tempting fate. 

it doesn’t matter that before, you could do it as freely as you wished. that before, he would always pick up and never once avoided answering. before, you could send jibberish voicemails to litter his inbox, quadruple double triple text, or simply tell him to ‘ring’, and he’d oblige; because before you were in love. now, you’re an unnamed contact.

now, you stomp on the ashes like they’ll relight after a year being burned out. 

from: +82 *** *** ****  happy new year by the way!!!! from: +82 *** *** **** and belated happy holidays :) i pried and kwan let slip you got a billy joel record from him from: +82 *** *** **** i didn’t know you’d kept our player. why does that make me so happy?

you need to put the phone down. you have got to put the phone. you are going to put the phone down, now. 

your stiff finger taps that blue icon before you can even think to stop it. it’s unfair, really, how this has to happen, but it was inevitable. because no amount of money in the world could buy you enough dignity to do this properly.

because when it comes to hansol, you’re nothing more than a fool. 

caller id [+84 *** *** ****] > you will not receive phone calls, messages or facetime calls from people on the block list. confirm? caller blocked. 

delete message history? 

a/n: vaguely inspired by @xinganhao rockstar!reader and vernon breakup chapter.... like what if we all suffered more... because im a SICK MASOCHIST! and kae is my unknowing muse. also sorry for going afk and happy new year</3

[aoelustious]

(A lil rambling on queer discourse outside and inside the fandom from a genderfluid bisexual)

One of the most enduring tensions within queer communities — especially as queerness becomes more visible in media, fandom, and state-sanctioned institutions — is the question of assimilation vs radicalism. And no, this isn’t new. We’ve been circling this debate since at least the post-Stonewall era, and arguably since before the term “homosexual” was even coined.

I. “Normalization” as Strategy

The move to normalize queerness — to make queer relationships legible to heteronormative society through things like marriage, monogamy, parenthood, or even just public respectability — has roots in practical survival.

Think: the Human Rights Campaign’s messaging, “Love is love,” marriage equality, queer representation in sitcoms and yogurt commercials.

This direction can be read as a bourgeois political strategy (Duggan, 2002), often referred to as “homonormativity.” It prioritizes “acceptable” queer subjects (cis, middle-class, often white, often masc) who resemble their straight counterparts as closely as possible — except for the gender of their partner.

And it’s true: this has tangible benefits. Legal protections. Cultural legitimacy. Safety.

But this approach also comes with costs. It sidelines queer people who don’t fit the norm — trans people, poly folks, kinky folks, poor people, disabled people, racialized people. It risks transforming queerness from a challenge to dominant systems… into a rebranding of them.

II. “Preserve Queerness” as Resistance

On the flip side, there are those who argue that queerness should remain fundamentally oppositional. That queerness is not just about who we love — it’s about how we live, what we disrupt, how we imagine new futures.

Think: José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia, in which queerness is positioned as something not yet here, something utopian, always pointing beyond what is.

Here, the critique is not just of heteronormativity, but of the institutions that structure all our lives — the nuclear family, capitalism, the state, colonial timelines of success. “Queer” is a method, not just an identity. A verb, not just a noun.

But this view can also become rigid. When queerness is defined only by its capacity to reject, it risks becoming inaccessible to those who do want things like marriage or kids — especially if those things weren’t always accessible to them before. We shouldn’t turn queerness into a test people must pass to be “valid.”

III. And Yes, This Applies to Your Fanfic Discourse

This debate resurfaces constantly in fan spaces:

– Is shipping fixed top/bottom roles inherently heteronormative?

– Is using seme/uke language a form of internalized oppression?

– Is “switch hate” in fandom actually just queerphobia in disguise?

And the answer is… it depends. But more importantly, intention and context matter.

Queer codes like top/bottom, bear/twink, fem/butch emerged from the queer community as tools of navigation, identity, intimacy, and play. That they’re sometimes messy, stereotyped, or commodified doesn’t erase their history or usefulness. And yes — these codes have always intersected with fandom culture. Sometimes clumsily. Sometimes joyfully.

Fandom is not a political campaign. It’s a liminal space where fiction, fantasy, and projection collide — and trying to impose rigid moral frameworks onto it flattens the complex emotional and cultural labor happening there.

If you critique top/bottom dynamics in fic because you believe they replicate heteropatriarchal logic — fine. That’s a discussion worth having. But if your critique shames people for their preferences, you’re reproducing the same moral purity logic you claim to oppose.

IV. The Problem of the Queer Police

The worst-case scenario here is that we start using queerness not as liberation, but as a tool of internal policing. When queerness becomes something that must be performed correctly to be respected, it loses its radical potential.

If your queerness is only valid when it aligns with a particular brand of politics or aesthetics, we’re not breaking binaries — we’re just building new ones.

Queerness contains multitudes. It can be domestic or deviant. Normie or revolutionary. Tender or obscene. Apolitical or hyper-political. And it is still queerness.

To quote Eve Sedgwick:

“People are different from each other.”

And that includes how they ship, write, love, protest, fuck, and self-identify.

We don’t have to collapse queerness into one monolithic definition to protect it. We just have to trust that its range is part of what gives it power.

[zazaiafe2]

A true hot take maybe i don't know because I haven't seen anyone talking about it , I don't know:a lot of y'all are way too individualistic. You could manifest literally anything, and what do you manifest? Money? Status? The perfect physical appearance? Capitalism and patriarchy brainwashed y'all and you want to pretend you're free from limiting beliefs when you're feeding about what this society taught us to be valuable.

In fact, I can see that a lot of your desires themselves, are shaped by individualistic and capitalist values, and they are often products of dominant aesthetic standards. Why is nobody, and I really mean nobody, manifesting the end of capitalism? I'm dead serious. I can't even count the number of posts I've seen about manifesting money or success story about manifesting, being rich and having money. I don't even remember a single post about manifesting the end of capitalism or systems of oppression.

Honestly, I feel like a lot of the discourse seriously lacks structural analysis.

[anarchotolkienist]

you’re attacking that neopagan kind of birthstone post about druid plants, but could you please elaborate or at least clarify the explicit trope that is being used that has been historically weaponized?

I used to spend about a good third of my time on this godforsaken website attacking that idea, but sure, I'll do it again. This will be a bit of an effortpost, so I'll stick it under the readmore

There is a notion of 'celts' or Gaels as being magicial and somehow deeply in touch with nature and connected to pre-Christian worldviews that the people who decided to make up the "Celtic tree astrology" used. This is also why Buffy used Irish Gaelic as the language of the demons, why Warhammer uses Gaelic as Elvish, why garbled Scottish Gaelic is used by Wiccans as the basis for their new religious construct, why people call themselves Druids to go an say chants in bad Welsh in Stonehenge, or Tursachan Chalanais, or wherever, etc etc. This stuff is everywhere in popular culture today, by far the dominant view of Celtic language speaking peoples. Made up neopagan nonsense is the only thing you find if you go looking for Gaelic folklore, unless you know where to look, and so on and so on. I could multiply examples Endless, and in fact have throughout the lifespan of this blog, and probably will continue to.

To make a long history extremely brief (you can ask me for sources on specifics, or ask me to expand if you're interested), this is directly rooted in a mediaeval legalistic discussion in Catholic justifications for the expansionist policies of the Normans, especially in Ireland, who against the vigourous protestation of the Church in Ireland claimed that the Gaelic Irish were practically Pagan in practice and that conquest against fellow Christians was justified to bring them in like with the Church. That this was nonsense I hope I don't need to state. Similar discourses about the Gaels in Scotland exist at the same time, as is clear from the earliest sources we have postdating the Gaelic kingdom of Alba becoming Scotland discussing the 'coastal Scots' - who speak Ynglis (early Scots) and are civilised - and the 'forest Scots' (who speak 'Scottis' (Middle Gaelic) and have all the hallmarks of barbarity. This discourse of Gaelic savagery remains in place fairly unchanged as the Scottish and then British crowns try various methods for integrating Gaeldom under the developing early state, provoking constant conflict and unrest, support certain clans and chiefs against others and generally massively upset and destabilise life among the Gaels both in Scotland and Ireland. This campaign, which is material in root but has a superstructure of Gaelic savagery and threat justifying it develops through attempts at assimilation, more or less failed colonial schemes in Leòdhas and Ìle, the splitting of the Gaelic Irish from the Gaelic Scots through legal means and the genocide of the Irish Gaels in Ulster, eventually culminates in the total ban on Gaelic culture, ethnic cleansing and permanent military occupation of large swathes of Northern Scotland, and the destruction of the clan system and therefore of Gaelic independence from the Scottish and British state, following the last rising in 1745-6.

What's relevant here is that the attitude of Gaelic barbarity, standing lower on the civilisational ladder than the Anglo Saxons of the Lowlands and of England, was continuously present as a justification for all these things. This package included associations with the natural world, with paganisms, with emotion, and etc. This set of things then become picked up on by the developing antiquarian movement and early national romantics of the 18th century, when the Gaels stop being a serious military threat to the comfortable lives of the Anglo nobility and developing bourgeoise who ran the state following the ethnic cleansing after Culloden and permanent occupation of the Highlands (again, ongoing to this day). They could then, as happened with other colonised peoples, be picked up on and romanticised instead, made into a noble savage, these perceived traits which before had made them undesirable now making them a sad but romantic relic of an inexorably disappearing past. It is no surprise that Sir Walter Scott (a curse upon him and all his kin) could make Gaels the romantic leads of his pseudohistorical epics at the exact same time that Gaels were being driven from their traditional lands in their millions and lost all traditional land rights. These moves are related. This tradition is what's picked up on by Gardner when he decides to use mangled versions of Gaelic Catholic practice (primarily) as collected by the Gaelic folklorist Alasdair MacIlleMhìcheil as the coating for Wicca, the most influential neo-pagan "religion" to claim a 'Celtic' root and the base of a lot of oncoming nonsense like that Celtic Tree Astrology horseshit that started this whole thing, and give it a pagan coat of paint while also adding some half-understood Dharmic concepts (three-fold law anyone?) and a spice of deeply racist Western Esotericism to the mix. That's why shit like that is directly harmful, not just historically but in the present total blotting out of actually existing culture of Celtic language speakers and their extremely precarious communities today.

If you want to read more, I especially recommend Dr. Silke Stroh's work Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imaginary, Dr. Aonghas MacCoinnich's book Plantation and Civility in the North-Atlantic World, the edited collection Mio-rún Mór nan Gall on Lowland-Highland divide, the Gaelic writer known in English as Ian Crichton Smith's essay A real people in a real place on these impacts on Gaelic speaking communities in the 20th century, Dr. Donnchadh Sneddons essay on Gaelic racial ideas present in Howard and Lovecrafts writings, and Dr. James Hunter's The Making of the Crofting Community for a focus on the clearings of Gaels after the land thefts of the late 18th and early 19th century.

@grimdr an do chaill mi dad cudromach, an canadh tu?

[silverity]

i'm gonna make my painful contribution to The Discourse and say i do not see the harm in women reclaiming female centric spirituality.

i am not a religious person nor do i want to become one but spirituality is also about culture, community and celebration. i would much rather women celebrate nature, the female form, and "divine femininity" than patriarchal phallocentric religions. that "divine femininity" is used pejoratively has always tickled me considering we live in a world hooked on divine masculinity. the old matricentric religions are really the only form of female culture devoid of male-centric worship we can grasp at, since men have dominated our belief systems for thousands of years. and women learning about the old religions is the best way to unravel the myth of the male creator, and realise it is really women who are the closest thing to a "god" on Earth.

there's also an element here, which i think is deeply capitalist, patriarchal, and a little racist, of people considering the connection to & celebration of nature as somehow primitive. i think that the lifestyles most of us live now, with none of us knowing anything about the land around us is actually very infantile and regressive for humanity as a whole. the ways of life we consider "primitive" (primitive communism, matrilineal societies) are really what we need to find ways to return to post-capitalism. they were in tune to nature, sustainable, and much more communal & equal. how can nature be primitive or ascientific when science *is* in nature, and the practices of these old societies were early scientific discoveries & practices. as a Black person, my community is often trying to reclaim our lost practices. it makes sense to me that women would try to do so too.

[familyabolisher]

hi if u don’t mind me asking, could u please elaborate on your thoughts on the critique of contemporary anti-intellectualism (specifically on social media)? i’m legitimately curious and enjoy a lot of ur analysis and commentary i mean this in good faith :)

Broadly speaking, the philosophical concept of anti-intellectualism tends to critically describe the ideological + rhetorical relegation of intellectual production to an elitist practice fundamentally at odds with the interests of the layman; and, crucially, the treatment of these categories as fixities. I disagree with the propositions of that philosophical discourse as well, but that’s not always the form that the discourse takes on this website. On here, ‘anti-intellectualism’ is more of a vague catch-all used to describe anything from people who express frustration with the literary canon & mainstream schooling in ways that don’t coddle the sensibilities of people with literature degrees to people who come out with outright fascistic views on provocative art; it attempts to corral what are in fact very disparate positions and perspectives under the umbrella of insufficient ‘intellect,’ often shorthanded to ‘reading comprehension’ or ‘media literacy’ (or ‘[in]curiosity,’ a new favourite) without any materialist investigation into what we mean when we talk about intellect and literacy and a lack thereof or whether this is a politically expedient description of the dynamic[s] in question.

When I say materialism, I mean it in the Marxist sense, ie. as a counter to idealism—because what’s being described here is a fundamentally idealist (and therefore useless) position. The discourse of anti-intellectualism as it exists on this website relies on idealist propositions—people lack curiosity, they lack interest, they are ‘lazy,’ they are ‘illiterate’ where ‘illiterate’ is not a value-neutral statement about one’s relationship to a socially constituted ‘literacy’ but communicating a moral indictment, at its worst they are ‘stupid,’ ‘idiots’—these descriptors rely on an assumption of immutable internal properties rather than providing a materialist description for why things are the way that they are. These aren’t actionable descriptors; at best they’re evasive because they circumvent serious interrogation of the conditions they’re describing, at worst they’re harbingers of an inclination towards eugenicist rhetoric. The discourse casts those who are ‘illiterate’—which in this capacity means those who fail to perform conventional literacy, who lack a traditional education, who don’t demonstrate sufficient interest in classic literature—or the more unkind ‘stupid’ (which, frankly, is what people want to say when they say ‘illiterate’ or ‘incurious’ anyway, lmao) as socially disposable and places the onus of changing one’s behaviour (so as to not be cast as illiterate/incurious/stupid) on them rather than asking what conditions have produced XYZ discourse of social disposability and responding with compassion and ethical diligence; I hope I don’t have to explain why this is eugenicist.

The discourse also lacks an ability to coherently describe what is meant by the ‘intellectualism’ in question—after all, merely appealing to ‘intellectualism’ is a similarly idealist rhetorical move if you don’t have the material grounding to back it up—and indeed tends to dismiss legitimate critiques of intellectual + cultural production as ‘anti-intellectual.’ People love to talk about ‘literacy,’ but don’t like expounding on what they’re actually describing when they do so—the selection of traits and actions that come together to constitute a correct demonstration of ‘literacy’ are built on the bedrock of eg. an ability to thrive within the school system (a mechanism of social control and stratification), fluently speak the dominant language by which this ‘literacy’ is being assessed (in online spaces like Tumblr this is usually English), and engage with the ‘right’ texts in the ‘right’ ways where ‘right’ means ‘invested with legitimacy and authority by the governing body of the academy.’ Literacy is used as a metric of assimilation into hegemonic society by which immigrant and working-class children are made rhetorically disposable unless they demonstrate their ability to integrate into the hegemonic culture (linked post talks about immigrant families being rendered ‘illiterate’ as a tactic of racism in France, but the same applies to the US, UK, etc); similarly, disabled people who for whatever reason will never achieve the level of ‘literacy’ required to not have Tumblr users doing vagueposts about how you deserve a eugenicist death for watching a kids’ show are by this discourse rendered socially disposable, affirming the paradigms which already make up their experience under a social system which reifies ableism in order to sustain itself. (This includes, by the way, the genre of posts making fun of the idea that someone with ADHD could ever struggle with reading theory.) ‘Literacy’ as the ability to understand and respond to a text is difficult and dispersed according to disparate levels of social access, and a lack of what we call literacy is incredibly shameful; any movement towards liberation (and specifically liberatory pedagogy) worth its salt needs to challenge the stigma against illiteracy, but this website’s iteration of ‘anti-intellectualism’ discourse seems to only want to reaffirm it.

Similarly, the discourse dismisses out of hand efforts to give a materialist critique of the academy and the body of texts that make up the ‘canon’—I’m thinking of a post I saw literally this morning positing a hypothetical individual’s disinterest in reading canonical (“classic”) literature as an “anti-intellectual” practice which marked them as an “idiot.” (Obviously, cf. above comments re. ‘stupidity,’ ‘idiocy’ as eugenicist constructions.) People who will outright call themselves Marxists seem to get incredibly uncomfortable at the suggestion that there are individuals for whom the literary canon is not even slightly interesting and who will never in their lives engage with it or desire to engage with it, and this fact does not delegitimise their place in revolutionary thinking and organising (frankly, in many areas, it strengthens it); they seem determined to continue to defer to the canon as a signifier of authority and therefore value, rather than acknowledging its role as a marker of class and classed affects and a rubric by which civility (cf. linked post above) could be enforced. (I believe the introduction to Chris Baldick’s The Social Mission of English Criticism touches on this dimension of literary studies as a civilising mission of sorts, as well as expounding on the ways in which ‘literary studies’ as we presently understand it is a nineteenth-century phenomenon responding to the predictable nineteenth-century crises and contradictions.) People will defer to, for example, Dumas, Baldwin, Morrison, to contravene the idea that the literary canon is made up of ‘straight white men,’ without appreciating that this is a hugely condescending way to talk about their work, that this collapses three very different writers into the singular category of ‘Black canonical writer’ and thus stymies engagement with their work at any level other than that of 'Black canonical literature' (why else put Dumas and Morrison in the same sentence, unless as a cheap rhetorical ‘gotcha’? I like both but they’re completely different writers lmfao), and that this excises from the sphere of legitimacy those Black writers who don’t make it into the authorising space of the canon; and, of course, reaffirms the canon’s authenticity and dismisses out of hand the critique of loyalty to hegemony that the ‘straight white men’ aphorism rightly imposes.

The discourse operates on a unilateral scale by which the more ‘literacy’ (ie. ability to speak the language of the literati) one has, the greater their moral worth, and a lack of said ‘literacy’ indicates the inverse. This overlooks the ways in which the practice of literary criticism wholly in line with what these people would call ‘intellectualism’ has historically been wielded as a tactic of reactionary conservatism; one only has to look at the academic output of Harold Bloom for examples of this. People will often pay lipservice to the hegemony of the academy and the practices by which only certain individuals are allowed access to intellectual production (stratified along classed + racialised lines, of course), but fail to really internalise this idea in understanding that the critical practices they afford a significant degree of legitimacy are inextricable from the academy from which they emerged, and that we can and should be imagining alternative forms of pedagogy and criticism taking place away from sites which restrict access based on allegiance to capital. Part of my communism means believing in the abolition of the university; this is not an ‘anti-intellectual’ position but a straightforwardly materialist one.

A final core problem with the 'anti-intellectualism' discourse is that it's obscurantist. As I explained above, it posits the problem with eg. poor engagement with theoretical concepts, challenging art, etc., to be one of 'intellect' and 'curiosity,' idealist rather than materialist states. In practice, the reasons behind what gets cast as 'anti-intellectualism' are very disparate. Sometimes, we're talking about a situation wherein (as I explained above) someone lacks 'literacy'; sometimes we're talking about the reason for someone's refusal to engage with and interpret art with care and deference being one of bigotry (eg. racist dismissals of non-white artists' work, misogynistic devaluing of women's work, etc.); sometimes we're talking about a reactive discomfort with marginalised people communicating difficult concepts online as a 'know-your-place' response (eg. backlash against 'jargon' on here is almost always attacking posts from/about marginalised people talking about their oppression, with the attacks coming from people who have failed to properly understand that oppression; I've been called a jargonistic elitist for talking about antisemitism, I've seen similar things happen to mutuals who talk about racism and transmisogyny). All of these are incredibly different situations that require incredibly different responses; the person who doesn't care to engage with a text in a way that an English undergrad might because doing so doesn't interest them or they lack the requisite skill level is not comparable to the person who doesn't care to engage with a text because they don't respect the work of a person of colour enough to do so. Collapsing these things under the aegis of 'anti-intellectualism' lacks explanatory power and fails to provide a sufficient actionable response.

Ultimately, the discourse is made up of a lot of people who are very high on their own capabilities when it comes to literary analysis (which, as others have pointed out, seems to be the only arena where all this ever takes place, despite the conventional understanding of ‘media literacy’ referring as much to a discerning eye for propaganda and misinformation as an ability to churn out a cute little essay on Don Quixote) and have managed to find an acceptable outlet for their dislike of anyone who lacks the same, and have provided retroactive justification in the form of the claim that not only is [a specific form of] literary analysis [legible through deference to the authority of the literary canon & the scholarship of the nineteenth century and onward surrounding it] possible for everyone, it is in fact necessary in order to access the full breadth of one’s humanity such that an absence thereof reveals an individual as subhuman and thus socially disposable. A failure to be sufficiently literate is only ever a choice and a personal failing, which is how this discourse escapes accountability for the obviously bigoted presumptions upon which it rests. In this, all materialism is done away with; compassion is done away with, as it becomes possible to describe the multiplicity of reasons why someone cannot or does not demonstrate ‘literacy’ in X, Y or Z ways in the sum total of a couple of adjectives; nothing productive comes of this discourse but a reassertion of the conditions of hegemony in intellectual practice and the bolstering of the smugness of a few people at the expense of alienating everyone else.

As I’ve said countless times before, the way to counteract what we might perceive as ‘incuriosity’ or disinterest in challenging texts is to talk about these challenging texts and our approaches to them as often as we can, to make the pedagogical practices that are usually kept behind the walls of the academy as widely accessible as possible (and to adjust our pedagogy beyond the confines of ideological hegemony that the academy imposes), and to encourage a culture by which people feel empowered to share their thoughts, discuss, ask questions, and explore without being made to feel ashamed for not understanding something. The people who cry ‘anti-intellectualism’ because they saw someone on Tiktok express a disinterest in reading Jane Eyre are accomplishing none of this.

[pumpacti0n]

We should always be aware that it isn't some innocent mistake that authoritarian "leftists" have constantly failed to acknowledge systems of power other than a vulgar "anti-capitalism" or "anti-imperialism", like they've carelessly left out an ingredient in a cake recipe.

"Whoops, we've acknowledged one abusive hierarchy, but the other ones slipped through our fingers, silly us!" Nope. The reason this analysis of power isn't included in their ideology and praxis is because they consider these hierarchies useful to their projects.

This is why they'll mock or ignore discourse related to youth liberation, disability justice, gender self-determination or anti-patriarchal struggle, for example, or engage in apologetics for capitalist regimes in other countries -- they want to "have their cake, and eat it too".

A key reason why "the left", as some might call it, is not as powerful as it could be isn't because of some lack of discipline (or "degeneracy"), but rather a lack of intersectionality, a criticism that many of those within the black radical tradition, (black feminists and transfeminists more specifically,) have been highlighting in one way or another for at least 50 years.

Authoritarian "leftists" don't want to sacrifice the power that these hierarchies afford them, which explains why they're largely not opposed to prisons, borders, police, the enforcement of gender roles and even capitalism itself, if it's under the purview of the "socialist" ("workers") state and its bureaucrats.

And this is why I keep putting "leftist" in quotes...We're not free until we're all free, so the implication that we should settle for addressing one or two systems of domination while allowing all the others to flourish until we address them in some vague point in the far future is a distortion of what truly radical liberatory politics should entail.

It's simply a myth that we can address capitalism while leaving racism, ableism and misogyny etc. intact, as if they aren't mutually reinforced by one another, as if fascists and reactionaries will forget that they exist once capital is abolished. This is a fantasy, a delusion.

Authcoms love to pose questions like "without a state to enforce class rule, how will the proletariat defend itself?" but a better question would be: "if we fail to acknowledge the hierarchies that atomize and disempower the masses, how could we ever be a threat to capitalists in the first place? how would abandoning the most vulnerable populations serve the interests of the "working class" and "anti-imperial" struggle?

For example, (cis) women make up approximately 50% of the world's population -- so if women are still subjugated by patriarchal rule and the gendered division of labor, how will we have the numbers to fight?

Similarly, a significant portion of the world's population are currently incarcerated. If we don't abolish prisons, allowing the State to continue extracting labor from prisoners and destabilizing untold millions of social relations in the process, how can we hope to match or exceed their powers?

If we do not challenge the capitalist, productivist logic of endless resource accumulation, with its constant pollution of the environment and the displacement and erasure of indigenous peoples and non-human animals, there will be no habitable planet left for us during this "revolution", because we will have destroyed all of it in the name of profit...so what would be the point?

These aren't minor concerns that we can put off indefinitely, and it isn't some innocent mistake that they are left out of the discourse, but are instead deliberate attempts to co-opt liberation struggle for the sake of advancing counter-revolution and authoritarian projects.

It's no wonder then, that they are eager to dismiss any criticism of their projects the result of "western propaganda", as if these same critiques aren't leveraged by very people belonging to populations they constantly tokenize whenever it suits their agenda.

They'd much rather treat every marginalized community as some monolith or as primitive victims in need of saving and representation by a vanguard. This chauvinist, colonial, assimilationist, antisocial attitude is endemic in (often white,) authoritarian circles, because it forms the basis of their position towards racial and gender hierarchies, that they are a natural and inevitable factor of organization itself. They are wrong.

In this sense, they aren't meaningfully different from the capitalists they pretend to hate so much. In truth, they are just jealous and greedy for more cake.

[making-you-in-mweors]

Mod is shy if I am slow or don't write much please don't be offended!

You may call me Azzie (he/it)

taps mic

Hello! This is a making you in blog inspired by @\making-you-in-spore. Send requests in asks! Or asks in asks!

I'll probably add more information as this blog develops. The site I am using is https://www.mweor.com, its pretty fun and has a very neat genetics system! (recessive and dominant genes??? alleles??? my little biologist mind is exploding.)

Requests are OPEN Images are preferred! Mod is offline!

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If you want best results, I recommend characters that are furries, animals (obviously) or don't have monochrome/low distinctive traits clothes. Obviously I can't do specific emblems ect and patterning is always a trick. I can't do props really (I have a dressing room, I have a mweor maker, but I can only put mweors I have access to in the dressing room.)

Terfs go away and get off my blog.

more under cut

This is a safe place for all queers, including aspec people, genderqueer people, poly people, intersex people, and if you're a queer who has been excluded from the community or had discourse around you in the past, been there and I get it and I respect you no matter what! This is a safe place!

My flags... so preetty.... the pastel one is genderfaun, which is like genderfluid but only for masculine leaning genders! The feminine alternative is genderfey which I think is cute. Fey and faun! Yayy! I love my creatures....

me saying I'm pan aroace and watching the 'we need more weird queers' crowds heads explode

[taylortruther]

also re: the racial component of TS/fan base, if you haven't you should watch Alex Avila's video on Taylor Swift, I think it was really well done

this is SO good. thank you SO much for this recommendation.

i really liked how avila noted how masterfully taylor blends authenticity and social normativity - "the reason taylor swift seems so authentic to young girls is because she's conforming to an image [of white patriarchal girlhood] that young women internalized from a young age." similarly, the popular feminism of 2014 (when 1989 was released) was flimsy and did not challenge patriarchal norms, and we see how she made feminism part of 1989's branding.

and he asks a question i often pose: is there anything subversive in idolizing the most popular cultural object? does poptimism (the critique of pop music as a serious form of art) simply reinforce existing power structures??

taylor swift and whiteness

understanding how someone becomes a legend and icon means understanding how they challenge, but also reinforce, the biases in society, which includes race, class, gender, and so forth. and "there IS something deeply white about [taylor's] image" (1:18:33). her image is cultural whiteness! taylor swift's relatability (which is and has always been part of her brand), her social capital, her social normativity, is directly tied to the neoliberal racial philosophy that, instead of calling whiteness superior, establishes whiteness as the norm (1:21:23).

millennials want celebrities to be morally pure. this is a mistake.

also - LOVE that he points out that millennials don't judge female celebrities by their sexuality or modesty anymore, but instead they judge based on political awareness, which is just another way of continuing the "patriarchal history of regulating narratives around women's actions" (1:42:39). avila focuses specifically on millennials here, cautioning us not to consider this a a sign of true political engagement from millennials. as he points out, systems of oppression adapt to our ever-changing culture. when we try to 'cancel' or 'hold a celebrity accountable' for their ideologies or missteps, sometimes it's because they're truly terrible, and other times it's because we hold women to "unrealistic standards of purity." ie, this isn't necessarily real political engagement, it is just another example of judging women. often it's both (pointing out missteps, and also being sexist.)

whiteness again

avila goes on to discuss how white women have long been held up as virtuous, moral centers of american families - and while this is a racist and sexist practice, given that woc aren't seen as virtuous, it also lays the foundation for why white women in particular dominate conversations about politics in the public sphere. it is an Event every time a white celebrity frames their political awakening as a personal, spiritual journey of self-realization. yes, this act is important, because women must learn about their own oppression, and talk about it, in order to educate others.

but when taylor (or any other famous white woman) frames politics solely through the personal, it relieves her of the obligation to critique systemic issues. her own political awakening is all that matters - she must prove her own political purity (instead of sexual purity, as before.) there is a deep problem in society demanding this, rather than larger systemic change, but we'll get to that later.

this personal political purity awakening earns her a lot of goodwill, but her resistance ends with herself. and this is a pattern that we see happen all the time, in what robin james calls "neoliberal resistance discourses" in pop: someone is damaged by oppression (sexism), she overcomes it brilliantly with an awakening (miss americana/lover/denouncing trump era), and she absorbs this goodwill into her brand. these individual damages and awakenings supposedly symbolize society's own awakening and resilience(!). (1:52:48)

🚨 some readers might be getting tired/annoyed at this; i can hear y'all saying "well, what do you even WANT from her omg!!!" just stay with me here. 🚨

she holds a mirror up to society, tho

what avila so brilliantly points out is that... this cycle of damages and resilience isn't helpful. it goes nowhere! and we are all at the mercy of the same patterns as taylor. it's not about taylor, it's about us, and how capitalism commodifies everything, including social movements! including personal 'goodness'! a neoliberal system wants individuals to care about their individual choices and looking like good individuals; it encourages the use of "purity tests" and "commodified algorithmic social movements" to discourage challenges to systemic issues (reminds me of the celebrity blackout situation earlier this year, and conversations we have about politics, well, daily on here.) and the pattern of a person failing politically as an individual is part of this machine. if we're too busy policing individuals for their purity, we won't ever organize together for shared material goals. unfortunately, unlike taylor swift, most of us are not extremely powerful, wealthy, and influential as individuals. she does have more power than us in this regard.

taylor as cultural hegemony

anyway, avila goes on to talk about how taylor had this musical renaissance with folklore, and became more honest about her masterminding her own career in midnights. she has shown herself not just to be a musical chameleon, but a cultural one as well, positioning herself as white teenage purity when the culture called for it (circa 2008-2010), neoliberal pop feminism (1989 -> lover), pandemic escapism (folkmore) - and the culture has become part of her brand, part of her music. music that is already heavily wrapped up in her own life. she is the brand she is the culture. of course she put the work in, and not just anyone could do this. but imo, her whiteness (which, again, gives her this "default" "neutral" background to work with) is part of this success. "sure, she's challenged the institution but all in the effort to become the new face of musical hegemony" (2:06:25.) she challenges systems to assimilate into them, or create them in a way that requires assimilation.

of course, this is all based on her REAL experiences, her REAL life. she is living her own life, and also living it in this metacognitive way that mirrors culture.

but we don't have to hate taylor, actually!

and MOST interestingly, avila closes out by suggesting: it's not actually super healthy to always be suspicious and critical of art (2:17:24.) yes, there is a long political history of "paranoid reading," of critique based on marx, freud, and nietzsche's philosophies. it is the basis of A LOT of our frameworks for thinking about the world, including art.

as i've said before, it's interesting to discuss taylor or celebrities because they hold a mirror up to society. but we can't just relentlessly critique ourselves - after all, the critique is supposed to protect us from being bad! the critique is what keeps us good! and it's why we project so much onto them (the celebrities, or "bad" people.)

this video dove into a term that may be new to a lot of people (i only learned of it recently) - "reparative reading." rather than relentlessly critique art or what-have-you, engage with it in ways that is "affirmative, creative, and caring." this does not mean you toss out critical readings - reparative readings can coexist, and give us hope, optimism, feelings of beauty/appreciation, and affirmation.

for example, it's why -while i enjoy critiquing taylor (or what she Represents) - i am also here to just... have fun. i don't want to linger 24/7 on her emissions, or what she hasn't done, or who she's friends with. it's also why, as a fan of color, i hate that she is often dismissed and minimized to "white musician making music for white women." i find affirmation in a lot of her music, regardless of her race; i find optimism and hope in the way women so deeply relate to her, and how queer fans (also like myself) relate to her! (which avila points out too 2:21:00.) it's why i stopped debunking stuff, because queerness - like any other aspect of the fandom - is such a critical, significant part of why her music is beloved. it's so important for people to recognize that she is more than just 'music for straight white heterosexual cisgender women.'

[maxdibert]

They butchered all female characters and it's true, but people can simply don't like Sansa's chapters or don't enjoy her character because she's classist. She thinks bastards are beneath her in earlier chapters and in Alyanne. She's disgusted by Arya spending time with Butcher boy and other peasants because they're beneath her.

I'm not saying she's s bad person or the worst one or that we should blame her for being passive while being hostage. She's a kid, she's s victim, she can still have a positive change. but I'm reminding that saying people are misogynist because they don't like her is a reach. And it's not that people hate her, they just point out things she did or thought about in canon and her fans scream "you hate her! You hate women!" No. It's okay to not like a character, you can point out their flaws, it doesn't make you a mysoginist.

Oh, trust me, the issue isn’t that people simply don’t like Sansa—it’s why they don’t like her and the patterns that emerge when you look at how traditionally feminine female characters are treated in fandom discourse.

See, I don’t care if someone criticizes Sansa for her classism. That’s a valid discussion. I don’t care if someone dislikes her personality. Not every character is for everyone. But let’s not pretend that the dominant criticism Sansa gets in fandom spaces has ever been about her early prejudices. No one’s out here writing essays about how Sansa Stark needs to deconstruct her internalized feudal biases. What do we see instead?

“Sansa is useless.” “She’s weak.” “She’s stupid.” “She just stands there and does nothing while other people suffer.” “She should have done something.”

And that’s where misogyny enters the chat.

Because when you actually break these takes down, what they boil down to is that people resent Sansa for not being proactive in the way that they think a strong female character should be. She’s written as a character whose resilience is passive rather than active, who survives through adaptability rather than aggression, and fandom hates that. This is a known trend in media reception.

Feminist film and literature studies have examined this bias for decades. De Beauvoir discusses how femininity is traditionally coded as passive, and because of that, it is devalued in comparison to traditionally masculine-coded traits like physical strength, direct confrontation, and assertiveness. Susan Faludi discusses how women who embody traditional femininity often face more ridicule than those who adopt “strong” or “unconventional” roles. And the male gaze, as theorized by Laura Mulvey, conditions audiences to respond more favorably to female characters who are active participants in traditionally masculine-coded spaces—combat, strategy, direct rebellion—while dismissing those who navigate systems through softer, less immediately visible means.

Sansa fits this mold perfectly. She does not fight with a sword, she does not make grand speeches, she does not take direct violent action, so fandom deems her “useless.” But here’s the catch—this standard is not applied equally.

Think about how Tyrion is treated for his ability to navigate the political landscape through words rather than force. Is he called “useless” for not picking up a sword and charging into battle? No—because intellect and political maneuvering, even when nonviolent, are still considered active and thus valuable in a way that Sansa’s more passive survival is not.

Now, compare Sansa’s treatment to Arya’s. Arya is beloved in fandom spaces, and yes, she has her own set of haters, but notice how different the tone of that criticism is. Arya is rarely called “useless.” She is rarely ridiculed for being afraid. She is allowed to be traumatized, to make mistakes, to be messy and complicated in ways that Sansa is not—because Arya performs a more masculine-coded form of resilience. She fights, she kills, she runs, she rebels.

And just to be clear, none of this means that Arya’s arc is bad or that her popularity is undeserved. The problem isn’t that Arya is liked—it’s that traditionally feminine resilience is not. The issue is that Sansa is not disliked because of her flaws in isolation, but because those flaws reinforce her femininity, and femininity is what people are actually responding negatively to.

This is why calling Sansa hate misogynistic is not a reach. It’s not about saying that everyone has to like her. It’s about looking at the larger pattern of why she is dismissed, why she is mocked, and why so many people cannot accept a female character whose form of strength does not align with masculine-coded ideals.

So no, I’m not saying that every single person who dislikes Sansa is a raging misogynist. But I am saying that if your criticism boils down to “she’s useless, she’s weak, she’s stupid,” you should probably examine why those specific critiques keep coming up for female characters who embody traditional femininity. Because it’s not a coincidence.

[dailyanarchistposts]

What is wrong with the concept of rights?

Do rights always and everywhere flow from the state? Don’t some rights (ideally) protect one from the state? Human rights as opposed to legal rights say? Isn’t it OK to have some basic standards for our treatment of one another and can’t that be totally independent of the concept of the state? And, finally, can’t new rights take political/social space away from the state and capital? For example wouldn’t the concept of housing as a basic human right take some space away from the idea that property rights should be primary and form the foundation of the social order? Can the concept of desire replace the concept of rights? What are the implications of this? If it doesn’t replace this concept what are some of the consequences of eliminating a discourse of rights? How does one talk about the importance of people’s access to basic resources or the importance of eliminating torture (for example) outside of this discourse.

ank

Rights always come from the state. The idea that rights should be written into law was developed when people were so pissed about getting stepped on and ruled over by sovereign powers that the governments had to do something. So they made a tremendous shift into a system of politics called liberalism (not the same as liberalism as in liberal vs. conservative or liberal vs. maoist) in which the law recognizes the rights of citizens. These laws serve to not only convince citizens that they aren’t going to be stepped on as hard but also to ensure that people will appeal for recognition of their rights to the state or for a change in the rights written in law, rather than revolt when they have grievances. It is a remarkably successful system, in which revolt now tends to happen only when the system is clearly fucking people over and clearly not going to change itself. Even then, revolt can be settled by implementing some larger systematic change or having a revolutionary government take over.

Anarchists do not want protection from the state. Or, to put it another way, a truly anarchist life guarantees that one will not be promised protection by the state, and instead punished by it. The state offers protection to (certain normal, decent, law-abiding, good, productive, etc) citizens in exchange for their preservation, reproduction, and reformation of the status quo.

An alternative understanding would be that rights are first and foremost inherent to our being human, and only secondly is this ‘real’ human essence recognized by the state. I would reject this because no one can point to the existence of these essential rights except in the writings of law (whether international or national). There isn’t an inherent human essence, or if there is it would be a highly paradoxical, enigmatic “thing”. To appeal (to the state) for the establishment of greater rights does not “take away space” from the state. It would seem that only revolt can actually wrench spaces from state control, but even then, state-forms manage to creep in through the back door (the implementation of self-management among the insurgents).

As for alternative discourse, I don’t see the need for one. For anyone to actually achieve the essence of what you are talking about—to live free of the domination of state and capital in their lives—they would have to live fighting against domination and not appeal to it to recognize the importance of their needs or how cruel torture is. In other words, they would have to become a non-subject. And only subjects can have rights.

[amillionmagpies]

So. My fellow Jews. I wanna talk about ways to prevent antisemitism. Yes, I recognize that preventing people from being antisemitic should not be our responsibility, but we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a world where our right to existence is always conditional, and there isn't really any other group I trust to be consistently on our side. It's up to us.

So with that in mind, I think one of the reasons it's so easy for goyim to fall into antisemitism is that they don't really know anything about Jews.

They probably know that Christianity and Islam are offshoot religions of Judaism, and they might know that we read a version of their 'Old Testament.' They probably know about the Holocaust in broad terms, but rarely in specifics. Some may know that we've been persecuted in other contexts, but few know how systemic and all-encompassing antisemitism has been throughout history. They probably know Channukah exists, but they most likely think of it as 'Jewish Christmas.' They probably know that Israel is the world's only Jewish state, but very rarely do they know anything about what it means to the Jewish people, historically or in the present.

Most of what goyim know about Jews relates to Israel, the Holocaust, or Channukah. This is a pitifully small amount of information, and if it's all people know about Jews, it's all they're going to talk about. And since Channukah is seasonal and the Holocaust is uncomfortable, most of what they're really going to talk about is Israel.

I'm sure we're all aware how viciously toxic the discourse around Israel is - how it repeats and regurgitates ancient antisemitic rhetoric in a shiny, modern, anti-Zionist skin. I think this is, in large part, because they don't realize what antisemitism in history actually looks like most of the time. But I also think the reason it's become the issue dominating every conversation about Judaism is that people don't know what else to talk about. Moreover, since they don't know much about Jews to begin with, they're likely to take lies at face value, because they don't know anything that contradicts them.

If we want people to talk about anything but Israel in regards to Jews, we have to make sure they know about things other than Israel. If we want people not to believe lies about Jews, we have to make sure they know the truth about Jews.

Again, in a perfect world, this would not be our responsibility. In a perfect world, people would do their own research, and they would find sources that are accurate and compassionate. But we don't live in a perfect world. People are lazy. They're unlikely to go looking for information unless forced to, and even less likely to know how to avoid misinformation on a topic as widely and wildly mischaracterized as the Jewish people. I've been inconsistent in my practice of Judaism, so I often have to look up specific questions - what bracha to say on certain foods, for example, or when a holiday is on the Gregorian calendar - and even I, knowing exactly what I'm looking for and having a solid grounding in Jewish culture and faith, sometimes have trouble finding accurate information. Goyim are incredibly likely to find sources that are biased, inaccurate, and/or deliberately feeding them lies. If we want them to have accurate information, we'll have to be the ones giving it to them.

One of the single best ways to prevent antisemitism is to make sure people actually understand Judaism - as a people, a culture, and a religion.