dontshoothemessenger

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- Komm süßer Tod -

I sketched this almost a year ago, final,y took the time to finish it

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I don't even have an explanation for this one.

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Oromo women || Ethiopia || East Africa || x

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i'm confused, what do you mean by 'media literacy is a mostly fake concept'?

i just don't think it's like... useful, or describes something that's meaningfully real. like, the idea of 'media literacy', the ability to read media for its 'correct' meaning -- i don't place value on the ability to 'understand' what the 'author' 'meant'. i think that producing readings is, yknow, an active process that produces meaning, rather than uncovers it, and of course the meanings you can produce through readings depend on the contents of the text but they equally depend on its context, on you and your context... and of course, i think some readings are more productive, more useful, more grounded, or more interesting than others, but i don't think that's a matter of 'literacy'.

and, yknow, the ability to produce these readings is a whole set of different skills, not really one that can be put on a continuum. like yknow it is possible to be very good at like... psychological character analysis, or at producing meaning from vivid visual imagery, and then completely lack the background and understanding needed to produce coherent political-economic readings. it is possible to be extremely well trained in the vernacular of one medium or cultural tradition and lack fluency in another... there is just not one unifying skill that makes you Good at Understanding Media

& especially i think the concept of media literacy often gets deployed to kind of like, ignore or paper over ideology. like people will clown on ben shapiro whenever he says some stupid fucking shit about a movie, but like... y'know, he is misunderstanding the movie on purpose, to come to the political conclusion he wants to? like, his opinions on superman (2025) don't come from him neutrally trying to do Media Analysis in a vacuum, they come from him watching tyhe film through the lens of "what can i say about this on my right-wing talk show". and so on, right, i think the concept of 'media literacy' (and tyhe 'piss on the poor' meme associated with it) is often used to close one's eyes to people's ideological (& sometimes material--shapiro needs to be able to say dumb things about how movies are Bad because of Woke to make money!) investments that underpin their analysis

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i love u

via

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happy birthday to anthy’s least favorite foil‼️🥀

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ue ue ue

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Today's Seal Is: Honk... Shoo... Honk... Shoo...

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I think what a lot of white people who follow this blog do not understand is that existing as black in a public sphere automatically comes with the knowledge that people will be horrifically, overtly racist to you with very little if any consequence, and that no one will even think about it until you point it out or unless you put your pain on display in a satisfactory enough manner that they choose to allow you your tears.

I was talking to boyf about how simply existing as black on tumblr, when I am active I get at minimum 3 racist rants and/or "nigger" messages to my askbox every single day, and I have been on tumblr since 2012. You learn to block and move on because posting them with a witty retort usually nets you like 5 more, but because I usually just block and move on... it doesn't get shown in public on here.

I've seen my black followers and mutuals mention this same problem- nonblack and especially white people who follow along, did you know? Did you know that all of your favorite black creators and social media presences are also most likely dealing with the same thing? A constant barrage of racism every day they choose to sign in?

Or was that something that only registered to you as a risk, and not as a reality?

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night so dark, where are you?

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a patriarchal society can very easily understand womanhood as something traumatic and something one would want to escape in favor of manhood. this makes it easier for most to empathize with a desire to transition from female to male and to empathize with traumas therein endured.

but in a patriarchal society a desire to transition from male to female or any desire to be female at all is totally nonsensical to the average person, and any suffering brought on by transitioning from male to female is either “fake”, “not actually that bad”, or on some level deserved.

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"We really ended up together, didn't we?"

Support me on Patreon 💗

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I’m not going to be home with Jimmy today… so enjoy this picture

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holding the pieces together every time they touch

third and final artwork for @sulkybender's Once I Was You, thank you for including my work in this beauuuutiful story <3

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it's just. fucking crazy to hear trans women talking about their real experiences with trauma and being forced into shitty boxes and submissive roles by the other people in their lives and go "you don't have to limit yourself! a trans woman can be anything!" as if it's a fucking. choice we're making?? instead of a survival tactic, instead of the result of abuse?? as if we don't have goals and aspirations and desires. fucking. hearing us talk about the way people treat us as subhuman and making it our fault because you don't see us as full human beings either. god fucking dammit nobody listens to trans women we can say anything and it gets twisted in the worst faith imaginable. sorry for not being a chipper little ray of sunshine constantly in the face of incredible abuse from all aspects of society. i'll nod along and smile for you next time. cause i can be anything right? as long as i'm not the one deciding what it is. fuck's sake.

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There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)