bimbohemia - Tumblr blog

[bimbohemia]

girl I hear you but for a sec I thought you were talking about zombies

Thinking about... Grieving the undead.

[bimbohemia]

when i say that gender and sexuality are generally pretty fluid i don’t mean that gay people have to fuck people they aren’t attracted to. like. no that’s just an entirely different sentence

[bimbohemia]

It's almost time for Zack and Cody's reservation at the Italian restaurant

[bimbohemia]

Crying over these lesbian cats

[bimbohemia]

[bimbohemia]

i am once again asking you to support standing together

[bimbohemia]

People boarding a US Navy vessel that didn't have weapons destined for Israel on it, because they heard on the internet that it had weapons destined for Israel on it, feels very "how was I supposed to know it was illegal to shit on the speakers desk" but left wing.

[bimbohemia]

Like yes sorry I am actually fucking furious that there are people in Israel who have been fighting for peace and equality for Israelis and Palestinians for years and years without acknowledgement or support from the broader international left, and since you weren't spoonfed this information by the Tumblr School of International Relations you wanna just act like it's never existed.

Fuck you.

[bimbohemia]

I'm not 100% sure how to articulate this, but something that has been bothering me about I/P discourse (especially in the last month, it's gotten so much worse) that I haven't seen talked about in a productive way is the "yoking" effect that the extremist ugly takes create for the good-faith people just trying to talk about their issues. And I see it on both sides, and have felt compelled to act this way myself.

Essentially, when I talk about antisemitism (especially the significant spike in the last month), my goal is focused on educating people about the antisemitism and urging them to do something about their own behavior, help groups that are working on it, and/or become part of the people working on advocacy to that effect. I just want to talk about the antisemitism, and have that stand as a topic on its own terms. But the problem is, I'm a Jew and extremists on both sides have made it so that anything I post about this requires disclaimers that I also support the rights, freedoms, and care about the lives of Palestinians also. And I do! But that's not the point. The point is that Jews facing antisemitism should be able to talk about this without bringing in a whole separate topic to prove we're worth listening to. And I saw this with Israelis trying to talk about the grief they were feeling after the Hamas pogrom; they couldn't do it without either including some kind of statement about wanting peace, separating Hamas from Palestinians as a whole, etc. or face relentless antisemitic abuse.

And this effect comes both from outside people [supposedly] supporting Palestine being awful unless the Jew in question attaches sufficient disclaimers, as well as [supposedly] pro-Israel people who couldn't help themselves from spouting off dumb racist shit in their posts on otherwise valid topics.

But as I've watched things play out, and Western outsiders become more and more antisemitic in their [supposed] support of Palestine, I've noticed Palestinians and their not-antisemitic allies having to couch their [valid] criticisms of Israel with caveats about how antisemitism is not okay, or else face harassment when talking about their legitimate issues - even ones that aren't about Israel at all.

That's what I mean by "yoking" - this inability to talk about ourselves and our own issues without bad faith actors coercing us to address the other and "prove" that we're worth listening to. It's dehumanizing, because it means that our legitimate issues are always and only ever able to be discussed in the shadow of the other. They aren't allowed to stand on their own without risking harassment.

Anyway, I think the reasons we got here are complicated, but I lay most of the blame at the feet of uninvolved westerners using this conflict as a proxy for their own problems. I don't know that there's a way to fix this at this point, either, because the discourse has become so unbelievably toxic. I think the closest thing I've got is just the suggestion that if you see a Palestinian (or ally) talking about Palestinian issues and not being antisemitic about it, don't derail what they're saying even if they don't specifically denounce Hamas outright and/or antisemitism in their post. And if Jews (including and especially Israelis) are talking about antisemitism and/or legitimate issues and aren't being racist or Islamophobic about it, don't derail what we're saying even if we don't offer caveats denouncing the Israeli government and/or Islamophobia/anti-Arab racism in that specific post.

We can support each other in the face of danger and want peace without having to constantly be forced to talk about other issues and divert focus from our own issues.

[bimbohemia]

"homosexuality is unnatural! there's only two genders! it's a sin-"

I'm sorry, have you seen NATURE???

and there's so many more species than this that exhibit homosexuality, varying genders, etc. SO! MANY!

it's very much a natural thing. it always has been. unfortunately, while homosexuality is found in many species, homophobia is only found in one

[bimbohemia]

[bimbohemia]

What is your Hogwarts house?

Actually I've already processed all five stages of grief in regards to a beloved author from my childhood very publicly making the jump from "milquetoast liberal with unexamined biases" to "actively dangerous bigot who will double down into perpetuity" and will no longer be basing any part of my identity on her intellectual property! Thanks for asking!

[bimbohemia]

beauty standards are so fucked up what happened to i love your body because it's you. what then.

[bimbohemia]

ive made a post like this before but its actually okay if you realized you were trans through sex/kink or if being trans has some erotic element to you. its cool even. contrary to popular belief horny trans people are not personally responsible for the oppression of women and the downfall of society

[bimbohemia]

today’s date is the 3rd? what’s next, the 4th? the 5th? the minor fall, the major lift? 

[bimbohemia]

the Youth ideology that you have to drop everything you're doing and dedicate every ounce of yourself to every cause and if you don't you're a bad person, is what's stopped me cold from helping at all for years

do what you can and that's enough!!!!

[bimbohemia]

Blanket statements and broad strokes that paint Medinat Israel as evil and illegitimate is something antisemites have been doing since Nazi Germany.

While the latest actions of Israel's government are unconscionable and an abuse of power, to say the least, and the deaths of innocents bring up strong emotions in all of us; we must be conscientious in how we talk about it.

Here are the stakes: David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and famed influential white supremacist, is vocally anti-Israel and pro-Palestine. We must make sure that our message, to laymen, is easily distinguishable from the likes of his. We do that by making statements with nuance and caveats, and doing so using the same fervor with which we denounce genocide, terrorism, and Islamophobia.

Otherwise, Jews will stop trusting gentile leftists; not because they hold hate for Jews in their hearts, but because they will have made it easier for Nazis and Klansmen to camouflage among them.