alex-seity

[alex-seity]

Source

Video of Tama

Follow Ultrafacts for more facts

[alex-seity]

legitimately my first feminist awakening as a ten year old child was realizing that girls were expected to respect “boy stuff” but boys were never expected to respect “girl stuff”

[alex-seity]

A comic based on this poem

[alex-seity]

describing my relationship to someone by introducing them to people as "an old wound"

[alex-seity]

I've been reading some stuff on punitive justice, and it made something click for me that I've observed a lot online but haven't been able to put into words before.

When someone does something wrong, that's bad, and the damage it does needs to be repaired while the person needs to try to do better in future to minimize repeating harm. We learn it in preschool - say sorry, don't do it again. If they keep at it, remove them from the situation where they can do the harm until they prove they're responsible enough to go back in.

So if it turns out someone DIDN'T do anything wrong, that should be a relief! There's no damage to fix, no internal errors to correct. Less work for everybody, literally no harm done. False alarm, all good.

The thing I've observed is, lots of people want them to have done something wrong. There's almost disappointment when it turns out there's no harm done. And I think that's because of this general undercurrent of punitive justice as morally righteous and desirable: someone does something wrong, you get to punish them. Turns out they're innocent? That's disappointing. Find another reason you get to punish them, or find another bad person you get to punish. But at the core of it is that desire to punish someone. Someone you can hurt in a way that makes you a better person for hurting them.

This particular brand of almost cannibalistic pseudo-justice is super common in tumblr, one of the most ostensibly liberal spaces on the internet; I see more borderline savagery in online discourse here than in the actually toxic parts of the internet that are just openly cruel for cruelty's sake. It's always thrown me for a loop, and has frankly also hurt me, because on the rare occasions I get personally dogpiled, it only actually stings when it makes me worry that I've legitimately hurt someone. If I did something wrong, or more realistically when I inevitably do something wrong, that would make it good and right for people to give me shit about it every day until I'm dead.

The thing that clicked for me most recently was this bit in Ijeoma Oluo's Be A Revolution:

Punitive justice is specifically, uniquely appealing to people who have suffered injustices. Of course it's the Tumblr zeitgeist. Everyone here is a marginalized person failed by at least one system. Punishing someone for perceived injustice is how someone the system has deemed worthless proves their value in blood, even if the person being punished hasn't harmed you directly - even if they haven't harmed anyone. "Righteous" anger isn't about the target in these cases, it's about the inflicter. This is how much my pain is worth.

And that kind of violent validation is so alluring and so very dangerous. It seeks an outlet, wearing the justification of justice. Who's in reach? Who's an acceptable target this week? What's a good reason to use?

Is there anything they could do that would make me stop?

[alex-seity]

One evening, I was at the LGBTQIA center for a trans committee and I was the only trans man in attendance. One trans woman told me she never understood how I could want to be a "disgusting man".

Later that evening, she told me she'd love to swap bodies with me (I was pre T, pre op and didn't bind). I told her I didn't understand why she'd want to have the body of a "disgusting man".

She called me transmisogynistic.

Oh, the irony.

[alex-seity]

a couple grocery stores in my area have started selling what they label as a 'watermelon tenderloin', which is basically an unbroken long-way cross section of the watermelon, about an inch thick, with the rind cut off around the edges. they can be like $8 each and are sold in very limited quantities in single serve boxes and there are so many parts to this that i find really funny but most of all im obsessed with the idea that theres different prime cuts to a watermelon in the same way theres different prime cuts to a cow or something, and the watermelon tenderloin option gives you the best of the possible watermelon parts, of which there are famously only two. like it reminds me of those pics of people crouching with a gun and their dog with their garden vegetable hauls lined up in front of them parodying hunters like they shot the zucchini and i so badly wish i could get behind it as a trend but for $8 while a full watermelon is like $5-6 i unfortunately cannot

[alex-seity]

[alex-seity]

An alphabet I made to celebrate the UK paperback edition of my book 'The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess' which came out yesterday.

Some lucky independent bookshops have been sent signed copies of this to give out. I'm not sure how how you'd find one: just ask, maybe.

Or you can download a copy to colour yourself at: www.tomgauld.com/colouring

[alex-seity]

vegans make peace with honey

no shut up do it

[alex-seity]

the whole “i used to be a teen who hated authority only to grow up to become the authority that hates teens” is a bad bad thing that practically every other generation has fallen into and we all need to make an extremely conscious effort not to repeat the fucking pattern

[alex-seity]

I caught you thinking about it again.

You want to constellate the stars,

set the moon in the sky

and the rain just above your shell.

Did you know snails can write, too?

 Apparently words can be slower to trace

when you are so glued

Have you ever found a writing or a drawing you don't remember making? Well I found a poem written two years ago that I must've left as a draft. I don't know how it was supposed to end, what the meaning was supposed to be, the person (or thing?) I'm adressing, or even the theme. I don't know how to feel about this ngl.

[alex-seity]

Have you ever found a writing or a drawing you don't remember making? Well I found a poem written two years ago that I must've left as a draft. I don't know how it was supposed to end, what the meaning was supposed to be, the person (or thing?) I'm adressing, or even the theme. I don't know how to feel about this ngl.

[alex-seity]

You know. Some people could really stand to get more comfortable with the idea of “you shouldn’t say that because it’s mean”. Especially with really common body shaming and straight up bullying lines.

“You shouldn’t make ugly bald jokes because what if a transman on T sees it!”

“You shouldn’t make virgin jokes because what if someone who’s asexual sees it!”

How about you just don’t make them because they’re mean. How about people can be balding or a virgin for a number of reasons and also don’t deserve to be routinely made fun of. How about saying that the reason you shouldn’t make x joke because it spares x specific identity’s feelings also let’s them know that you actually have no problem saying or thinking bald people are ugly or virgins are stupid or etc but you’re just not saying it in front of them. How about you understand this kind of body shaming and bullying especially in a very public setting online are always going to have way more unintended damage to people who did nothing wrong than damage to the person you’re upset with.

Sometimes the best reason to not make a bad joke like that is because it’s fucking mean.

[alex-seity]

I am guilty of this. Academy brain-rot has me stating that we should hear the voices of the oppressed and their experiences... and at the same time prioritize inexistent statistics or articles devoid of the people it's discussing, about events that are currently happening and individuals that right now need to be heard. It's neat to find a little graph showing you that The Violence Is Rising, but who is this for? Who are you trying to convince that there is a reality away from the text that should already compel you? What good is a study when you make the stories, wants and struggles of others secondary to it?

It is a way of thinking that is hard to unlearn, but must be done to move forward, towards a better, critical and caring world.

getting incredibly tired of westerners responding to firsthand accounts shared by palestinians in gaza with the reflexive demand to see a "source"

because by source, they always mean a western news report

never mind, of course, that international journalists are banned from entering gaza; the word of the western journalist, writing in passive voice about a genocide 6000 miles away, is still deemed more 'reliable' than the firsthand accounts shared by the victims living through that same genocide

a palestinian shares a video of an IOF solider brutalizing civilians in gaza? not good enough; they still need a ''source.'' the video in question was posted by a palestinian journalist? okay cool, but does someone have a more reliable source? can we get a word in from the esteemed fact-checkers over at the new york crimes, or the iraq-has-wmds-post? we just don't want to spread misinformation...

[alex-seity]

i love this site

I'm starting to get smile lines.

How lovely to have smiled so often that happiness permanently etches itself into your face

[alex-seity]

You. Youtuber who makes annoying videos complaining about people "romanticizing" their mental illness. Are you normal about mad people irl