failurebecameouraim

[failurebecameouraim]

You know what I'm gonna COMPLAIN!

Vanilla sex isn't "wholesome sex"! Sex is not more pure just because it's done within the framework of a monogamous relationship and free from elements of kink!

"Person is so pure they probably don't even know what sex is." Purity isn't defined by the distance from sex! As if the more a person encounters sex in any context the less pure their soul becomes!

You🫵are not immune to propagating the beliefs and ideas of purity culture!

[failurebecameouraim]

i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out

brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad

[failurebecameouraim]

No matter what a post on tumblr tries to tell you, your moral and ethical stances will never be determined by what you reblog and what you scroll past. Don’t let manipulation tactics force you into doing anything you don’t want to do.

[failurebecameouraim]

Homeless people are people too!

[failurebecameouraim]

[failurebecameouraim]

I hope I can express this properly and sensitively, but I think oftentimes people need to have Categories and Identities and to be healthily exploratory and playful and elastic about them, else they can get vulnerable to some negative things, sometimes really awful things

I wish I could remember where I read it, but there was something that wrote about whiteness in America as an abyss.

Whiteness is something that sheltered white Americans' ancestors, and at the same time devoured them. They used to have a distinct medley of heritages: Irish, German, Scottish, Italian. "Whiteness" ate it up, the languages, the cultures. There were privileges if you destroyed it, and punishments if you held onto anything that was "Other." In a white supremacist society, white people wanted to be "white" first before any other possible identity or connection they could have.

Yay! You're white. You're on top. You win...what? Turns out the prize for "winning" is just that you get to perpetrate the violence of the game instead of being on the receiving end of it.

And that's the nasty twist—there is no prize. The deeply embedded vice of "Southern pride" is not just what the Confederate flag stands for, but also why they've got to cling so hard to that symbol of traitors and losers: they need to be on top of something so bad that even a pile of shit will do. My ancestors were ultimately dirt poor, loads of them ending up in prison or breaking their bodies down doing hard labor, but they were white. Their reward, and their pride, was being stepped on by the violence of poverty only, instead of also by the violence of white supremacy.

"White pride" is all about hate because white supremacy didn't give these folks anything to be proud of. It stripped away the culture and heritage their ancestors had in favor of "whiteness." All those jokes about how white people have no culture, well, it's true isn't it? This shit is how we ended up a primarily monolingual nation. And what looks like happened is that white Americans wound up just...scavenging most of their culture from those they oppressed. Food, music, all of that stuff. Our white ancestors didn't GIVE us anything that was their own to start with.

And this is something that really strikes me about the white supremacist and fascist movements nowadays: the starvation and hollowness behind them. These folks are empty inside. They were given nothing by white supremacy except a very vague sense that they deserve something, and they see people of all different cultures celebrating and flourishing in their unique heritages and identities, and they feel like...they've been cheated.

Equality is so threatening when you're in this situation because it feels like you've got less than everyone else at the end of the day. Not just because of comparison to previous privileges, but because your whole identity was "person that gets to step on everybody else" and your whole inheritance was "shit stolen from everybody else" and in a world where all is set right, you have no identity and nothing. You are nothing.

Anyway I was looking just now at a blog that seemed really white-supremacist-leaning and it was 99% about like, Norse and Proto-Indo-European paganism and "traditionalism" and that's what got me thinking about this again.

This person had apparently done DNA tests on themselves or something, and were really fixated on figuring out their Norse and Germanic ancestors and separating out their genetic and racial identity at a level of precision that seems really pointless that far back in time. And honestly all the paganism stuff seemed like totally arbitrary speculation as well.

And how to become satisfied as a person like this? I am just as much Germanic or Norse as they are, but I don't believe that distant ancestors determine who you are to such an extent that I have some sort of innate cultural tie to Vikings or Visigoths or what have you. I know what percentage Celtic or Anglo Saxon or Norse I am—zero. I learned about those things in books the exact same way I learned about all the cultures and past kingdoms of the world that I presumably don't have ancestors from.

I feel like the experience of being a baby ally and obsessing about apologizing for being white is the same kind of thing in another direction, or another outcome of the same process. Some people seem to get really twisted up for a time over how to stop being guilty about being white.

It's part of the same thing as this guy who is trying to genetically identify his ancestors from like 3,000 years ago. It's the emptiness and meaninglessness of "white" identity apart from white supremacy.

I talk about deradicalization sometimes and I've had the notion a few times that fascism appeals to people who are hollow and starving in terms of identity, and if it wasn't for the sense of emptiness and hunger, they would be less easily radicalized. But it's also a little bit awkward to talk about the deeply unsatisfying nature of white supremacy, because...well, that is pretty low on the list of things bad about white supremacy.

I think this concept is worth talking about in general, though: People want to feel like they come from or are part of something meaningful. They are drawn toward Identities and Categories and Belonging to groups. This is something I think is commonly true about humans, I think it is normal and not a bad thing, and I think we could stand to be a little more upfront about its reality.

I think this means that wanting, and seeking, a sense of cultural identity as a white person (particularly an American) needs to have some kind of non-horrible outlet for it. Because right now, it's nothing but a way to get radicalized, and the dominant other option people take (becoming the Guilty White Person) is liked by no one and helps nothing.

And maybe it doesn't need to have anything to do with race or culture or your ancestors or any of these things that can lead a person down such terrible paths. Maybe more of us should be furries!

As just another thing to consider, I'm reading the book Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and the author of the book uses the word "cracker" not like, with the gravity of reclaiming a "slur" or something like that, but seemingly because that is just the word she most strongly identifies with, the word that best articulates who "her people" are. This feels very solid and levelheaded to me, something that comes from someone with a good sense of themselves.

Personally I've thought a long time that more people should reclaim "redneck." Not in the sense of reclaiming a slur exactly, but in the sense of putting it in neutral usage among the folks it always referred to, instead of letting it increasingly be associated with any Southerner (regardless of working class background) that is the sort to wave a Confederate flag around. The very idea of gatekeeping "redneck" away from racists is just absolutely hilarious to me, I won't lie.

[failurebecameouraim]

Reminder that capitalism is the death of art

[failurebecameouraim]

[failurebecameouraim]

An interesting demonstration of how the human brain works.

But also something of a lesson regarding perception, and the unreliability of subjective perspective versus objective reality.

You can be extremely certain about how you perceive the world, your "lived experience," that which you "feel it in my heart." But that doesn't mean it's actually true. And it doesn't mean we have to endorse it, or ignore or outright deny objective reality.

That's a "you" thing, not a "we" thing.

[failurebecameouraim]

this was a great read. “Laziness Does Not Exist” by Devon Price

[failurebecameouraim]

the lack of compassion that a good portion of lotr fans show for frodo ("why can't he fight or do simple tasks" "why is he so weak" "why does he always need help / to be rescued") mirrors the lack of compassion of people for those who bear the burden of invisible disabilities. he's struggling against an immense weight at every step! something that actively tries to destroy him, worsening at every moment! his heroism is in just continuing to walk his path, step by step. his bravery is in just existing as himself under the debilitating weight of the ring. but because the influence of the ring is invisible, it is forgotten, and frodo is written off as a weak, cowardly, and/or useless character, much like disabled people irl. in this household we do not stand for frodo slander!!!

[failurebecameouraim]

this is 100% why i never fucked with that “normcore” nonsense and why i’m still extremely self-conscious about what i wear and how my clothes fit, even after my weight loss. wearing “normal” clothes only becomes “fashion” when it’s on skinny attractive people and once it’s on a fat person it’s suddenly the trappings of the tacky and the unwashed poors. fuck out of here. you can make anything look good.

[failurebecameouraim]

All of the Very Upset™️ individuals on this app who are appalled by the activists who threw soup at a Van Gogh painting can rest easy knowing the painting remains unharmed thanks to the protective glass it is kept behind.

Perhaps they will rest less easy as our world collapses around us and billions die from dehydration, starvation, and natural disasters caused by climate change.

If you found their form of protest distasteful you are probably from a wealthy privileged country and have been largely insulated from the effects of climate change thus far. I can assure you that that will change. As the droughts and food shortages worsen and climate events increase in severity and frequency every single person on the planet will feel the impact. Even the wealthiest among us who’ve convinced themselves that their money will save them.

The fact that I’ve seen more headlines and social media activity surrounding an unharmed painting than I’ve seen about the worst drought in humans history in China and the 40 billion people displaced in Pakistan is disgusting. And it only highlights how necessary their action was.

If you are outraged by this protest I’d suggest reassessing your priorities. Before it’s too late.

[failurebecameouraim]

it's kind of nuts how many people on here say they are critical of America, but retain these impossibly strong American puritanical values.

I've talked to so many liberals who were horrified by the idea of communal baths and freak out when I talk about going to Korean bath houses or a nudist hot springs where gasp, children can see naked bodies of all genders. Like, you are the weirdos if you think grandma's tits are an issue, that's you problem my American friends.

Nudity is not inherently sexual and sexual things are not inherently bad. In fact, seeing a bunch of naked old people growing up probably helped me resist the ubiquitous problem of body issues as a teenage girl. If you see enough saggy ass you realize we're all headed to the same place and also secondarily, if you watch them playing naked volley ball you also no longer afraid to die.

[failurebecameouraim]

School being so traumatic people have anxiety dreams about it for life sure doesn't seem uh. Normal

[failurebecameouraim]

I can’t draw very well and hated that I couldn’t draw my DnD character, a tabaxi cleric named Merry Thing, but then I remembered I’m pretty good with a needle and thread so I made her

All made by hand, hand embroidered details, and I even crocheted the lace trim on her shift!

[failurebecameouraim]

Sand art 🎨