nimbusllewelyn

[nimbusllewelyn]

"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.

[nimbusllewelyn]

Hey in middle earth is there any ecological consequences for those big fuckin eagles

[nimbusllewelyn]

Do not let them erase this. Do not let them tell you he meant "my heart goes out for you."

This man is the grandson of a Canadian Nazi sympathizer who moved to South Africa BECAUSE he thought the apartheid was just the coolest.

He has a gaggle of kids specifically because he believes his genes are superior and need to be spread to improve humanity.

He has thrown his support behind the neonazi party in Germany and the far right party in the UK, not to mention how far he's wormed up the ass of the Republican party.

He threw two sieg heil salutes back to back at the inauguration of the president of the United States and is trying to scrub the evidence off the internet.

Elon Reeve Musk is a fucking Nazi.

[nimbusllewelyn]

Being good to each other is so important, guys.

[nimbusllewelyn]

I’ve connected the dots

[nimbusllewelyn]

ao3 turns 15 today

reblog if youre older than ao3

(there's a lot of people asking about this, but the legal age to use social media is 13, except in few countries. so yes, there are people here under 15)

[nimbusllewelyn]

Really happy to see this at my local library

[nimbusllewelyn]

I wanna tell you guys a story,

Not too long ago, my friend Bella came out as aromantic to me, and now I’ve got some things to say.

I was the one who told her what aromantic means, because I was explaining different sexual orientations to her. I remember saying, “Asexualiy is when you have romantic attraction, but no sexual attraction.”

Bella immedently, without missing a beat, asked, “Is there an opposite to that?”

I asked what she meant, and she asked if there was a term for sexual attraction but no romantic attraction. I told her about aromantics. She got weirdly quiet, then excused herself.

Not two weeks later I was heading to my boat. I was supposed to meet Bella and another one of our muteral friends there for a day of fishing.

As soon as I was in earshot, I saw Bella storming off the boat, and our other friend standing there like an idiot. Boi had no idea what was happening.

Anyway, Bella isn’t looking where she’s going and walks smack dab into me. That’s when I realized she was crying. Puffy red eyes, wet cheeks, the whole nine yards… And if you know anything about Bells, she does not cry. Ever.

She’s been through some serious crap in her life, and she does not cry. She’s tough as nails. Bella has a steel core. She does not not cry. I’ve seen her fall off a roof and break her arm before, not a single tear. I can’t stress this enough, Bella. Doesn’t. Cry.

So seeing her in tears shook me. I took her by the shoulders and escorted her somewhere more private where we could talk. We ended up in the women’s restroom, which was weird as fuck for me, because haven’t been in a woman’s rest room for years. Luckily it was empty, and I’m realistic, I know I don’t pass so well, so I don’t think anyone would have said anything anyway.

Before I can even ask her what’s wrong she hugs me around my middle and burys her face in my hoodie. Then, in a voice I can only describe as traumatized, she says, “I think I’m broken.”

I’ve never seen her in so much pain, and Bella and I are CLOSE. She’s one of my dearest friends. She’s like my little sister, but if she’s like my sister, our other muteral friend is like her twin. He and Bella have know each other WAY longer, they’re practically inseparable. They come as a pair. They’re a duo. They’re a package deal.

Appearently, said muteral friend asked Bella out and forcefully kissed her. She shoved him off, and told him she’s aromantic, which she only recently figured out. She wasn’t ready to be out, but this muteral friend left her no choice. She tried telling him no, and he didn’t listen. Bella saw no other option.

Quote on quote, this is what he said to Bella. “That’s okay. You just haven’t dated me yet. We’ve been like, unofficially together for years. You’re probably just freaked out that it’s finally going somewhere.”

After that I’m not 100% clear on what happened, but apparently Bella kept saying no Nd trying to explain herself, but he kept insisting he could ‘fix her.’

Eventudally she started crying and stormed away. That’s when I found her.

Keep in mind, this was her first experience coming out, and her best, closest friend insisted he could fix her and forcefully kissed her. I found out later he also implied corrective rape would ‘solve the problem.’

Bella was traumatized. She’s still traumatized. I tried to make her feel better by buying her an aro pride shirt, and taking her go a local LGBTQ+ hang out. I wanted her to be around like minded people, so she could see she wasn’t broken, and her identity deserved to be respected.

Instead of a warm, welcoming environment… The first thing someone said to her was, “This place is for REAL lgbt people. You don’t belong here.” He also implied she wasn’t human.

Just think about that for a minute. Her first experiences with being an out aromantic have been limited to;

A person she trusted more than anyone forcing himself upon her, claiming she was ill, and needed to be fixed. (Raped.)

Sobbing in my arms in the women’s restroom because she thought she was broken and defective.

Being told she wasn’t welcomed in LGBTQ+ spaces and called inhuman.

This isn’t what I want for her. Bella deserves better than this. She needs a support system, not all this crap. I’ve spent the past week trying to undo all the damage exclusionists, arophobes, and people she trusted did.

Aromantics and asexuals belong in the LGBTQ+ community. You literally cannot change my mind.

[nimbusllewelyn]

Look I have no problem with aces being part of the community, but historically queer was never used as a slur against them, so as someone who has been called queer as a derogatory insult plenty of times, I'm pretty uncomfortable with them using it. Reclaiming the word queer is fine, but not if it wasn't directed at you in the first place.

Hey.

Quick tip. 

You are not the Queer Pope. You don’t get to decide who is and isn’t queer. 

Also, get off my blog. 

[nimbusllewelyn]

something I think more people need to understand is that rape culture has a very simple way to maintain the plausible deniability that enables mass support and investment, and that is the complete separation of the rhetorical construction of "The Rapist" and "The Pedophile" from any actual specific person who engages in sexual violence.

so often people do not believe that we could possibly live in a rape culture, they do not believe it could possibly be true that people do not care about children who were sexually abused-- they say but everyone hates rapists and pedophiles! but that's not really true. they hate the conceptual idea of The Rapist and The Pedophile, but do not actually oppose--in real world contexts, with real actual complicated people--the use of sexual violence to control, degrade, and otherwise abuse other people. they do not hate their friend who joked that their date "took some convincing" or their neighbor who publicly humiliated their adolescent child by telling their church group he was "caught" masturbating, or the cop who performs cavity searches or the guy who posted tips for "stealthing" online, or their uncle who says he "made some mistakes with women" when he was younger, or the person on social media publicly speculating about a stranger's sexual desires and sharing their nudes to degrade and humiliate them, or their granddad who was "falsely accused" of sexually abusing his daughter when "all he did" was leer and not touch, or their professor who has relationships with their students, or their acquaintance who recommends dating girls with "issues", girls who are "crazy", girls who are trans or fat or queer or have low self-esteem, because "they'll do anything", or the person they organize with who is so valuable to the movement but everyone kind of knows not to be alone in a room with them, or...

specific people who rape are usually not the deviant that most people already want a reason to expel from the community, they are the center of power and influence. they provide vital support or resources to people, they are likable and intimately connected with many people, they have an embedded role in the social fabric and many people benefit from it (whether economically, politically, spiritually, etc). Specific people who rape are incredibly buoyant. They are usually buoyed to places of power no matter how far they're attempted to be pulled down from that power, and most people see this and will cling to a person like this, defending them, because people who rape are the social equivalent to a life preserver, whereas people who have been raped are the social equivalent of an anchor-- no one wants to be dragged down by allying themselves with the person who was raped by the beloved person everyone loves and relies on.

On the other hand, The Rapist" and "The Pedophile" as cultural tropes are treated very differently from specific people who have raped others. "The Rapist"/"The Pedophile" is often a racialized, gendered, and classed archetype that exists to be the ideological load bearing pillar of rape culture, to reinforce the belief (against the weight of evidence) that rape is something committed by Deviant Others who can be identified and expelled from social life. When sexual violence is not understood as one of many possible tactics of control and is instead as the result of the uncontrollable desire of innate deviants, then accusations do not even require there to be a specific person who was harmed by a specific act. All you need is evidence of "deviance" and all the justified anger at sexual violence can be offloaded onto whatever scapegoat you want.

In fact, within rape culture, harassment campaigns are much more successful than any actual instance of a survivor asking for support. That is no coincidence either! Rape culture hates survivors! But because in harassment campaigns there is no actual survivor speaking up, rape culture's default of disbelieving specific, actual survivors is never triggered, and so the accusation becomes perceived as more credible because there is no victim to discount.

If there is no actual specific instance of someone engaging in sexual abuse of another specific person, there are no details to question and pick apart ("but why was she naked if she didn't want to have sex?" "was he really raped if he had an orgasm?" "how do you know it was sexual? adults have to bathe their kids" "why did she post that photo if she didn't want it shared?" "I've never seen that side of him!" "maybe you misunderstood" "maybe she didn't hear the safeword" "why wait until now to bring it up?") and no demands of the public that implicate them and demand change from them (are you sending survivors funds to help them move out? to help them afford therapy? are you examining why you didn't notice it was happening or didn't believe it could be true? are you able to understand that as part of this person's community, you failed to protect them, and that actual restorative justice involves you changing your beliefs and behavior too? that it's not just about rehabilitating the person who raped someone?)

If there's no survivor, then the imagined victim can be perfect, innocent, and worthy to rally around. The imagined victims are only good and only hurt and have no problematic opinions about anything (no opinions at all! so they can be imagined to believe whatever you believe), no burdensome expectations of you, no resentment towards you.

Focusing on identifying "The Rapist" as a deviant instead is so easy; it only requires condemning someone who you probably either already dislike or a complete stranger who has no direct connection to your life. It's so much easier to pin responsibility for the entire (abstracted) concept of Rape onto someone you already hate and is already a social outcast and show how much you're "against rape" by venting all your anger and fantasized violence against them. It feels good too! the way righteous anger always does. It can be energizing when a whole community comes together to hate the same person.

Supporting actual survivors does not feel energizing, it feels exhausting. It requires so much work and effort, and you don't feel righteous while you do it, you may even feel ashamed, frustrated, deeply sad, resentful, angry, hopeless, or emotionally numb. It enters the deepest parts of your consciousness and you find it hard to breathe during certain scenes in movies, seeing certain arguments play out in the news cycle. It changes you, too, and that is the point.

We want to be against rape culture, because we want to be good people. but we don't want it to be hard.

I think this reality is the reason why a lot of young organizers think they can throw themselves into restorative justice and then find themselves completely burnt out a few months or a year later. People start thinking it'll be energizing, and then have to contend with the reality of what is, essentially, providing material support for disabled people whose health and capabilities have been permanently decreased from trauma. Some folks think they're gonna be "fixing things" so everyone can continue their reliance on the person who raped someone and the survivor can "move on" and everything can be "restored."

And then (if they're serious and not just performing at activism) they are inevitably faced with the terrifying reality of trying to make ends meet, with cobbling together strategies to meet community needs outside of the person who everyone relies on. they are faced with this person who raped someone losing interest after a few meetings and deciding "the accountability process" is dragging on too long and interrupting "more serious things than one person's emotions." they are faced with trying to get more people involved supporting the acute needs of the survivor even when the survivor is "difficult" or "ungrateful", and realizing that no one wants to do it. it is overwhelming to realize how deep the roots of rape culture run through everything, how much stability is upturned when you uproot any structures and beliefs that rely on rape culture. it is deeply demoralizing when you realize nothing can change without collective effort and very few care enough to do it.

It's so much easier to do nothing and pretend you don't know what happened. It's so much easier to decide it doesn't have anything to do with you and maybe this is something the survivor should "work out" with the person who raped them. It's so much easier to not try.

that's the function of rape culture. and we are all implicated in it.

[nimbusllewelyn]

i might elaborate later but fanfic replies literally develop writer’s metacognition and make them better writers

[nimbusllewelyn]

Don’t mind me…I’m just thinking about how spiders are naturally talented and skilled weavers and they know how to weave their webs and even make functional, stylish homes and nests and whatnot.

So maybe that’s why Spider-Man knows how to sew his suits. He inherited that trait from the spider and just instinctively know how to weave his suits. Maybe. That’s my explanation for it.

[nimbusllewelyn]

[nimbusllewelyn]

imagine you're a fifth-grade teacher and one day a crow just flies into your classroom, steals some food, sits on some kid's head, and shouts "fuck off"

[nimbusllewelyn]

[nimbusllewelyn]

*passionately thinks about story instead of writing it*

[nimbusllewelyn]