#Another abusive man claiming to be the victim of the family court system

[coochiequeens]

Babies are not props to be used to validate gender feelz. And unfortunately this is just the start of a long list of why this guy should not be around kids

By Genevieve Gluck February 26, 2024

A trans-identified male residing in Canada who claims to be HIV positive and inserts progesterone rectally has been allegedly “breastfeeding” his child with the support of established medical clinics. Former men’s rights activist Murray Pearson, 52, who uses the name Margaret (Margie) Fancypants on social media, has been criticized after he shared an image of himself at a lactation clinic holding a young infant.

The photo was first posted three months ago on Reddit community titled r/TransLater, a board dedicated to males who transition later in life. In a post titled, “Milk, baby, milk! MTF 52,” wherein Pearson appears ecstatic that one “benefit of being transfemme” includes “that you can be pregnant and get drunk” with no undue problems.

“I have a baby almost 9 months old… I cannot wait to connect through feeding. And yes, I will stop drinking before it negatively affects anything they drink!” said Pearson

“This is a wish I have had for decades. My egg cracked a year ago on December 12 and I realized I could nurse my baby already on the way. That lit a fire under me, and I have gone from having lean pectoral muscle in March to full B-cups now and growing fast,” he added.

Pearson continues on to claim to have the assistance of “medical expertise,” including “five physicians in three clinics in two world class hospitals,” with one of the clinics named as the Goldfarb Clinic in Montreal.

“Two endocrinologists, Newman and Goldfarb, created a protocol to induce lactation in adoptive mothers,” Pearson explained in the comments. “It works for trans women as well, it works best when breast growth is mature but I am taking domperidone while my primary breast growth is underway. By an astonishing coincidence, I live right next to their breastfeeding institute!”

According to statements Pearson has made on social media, he began identifying as transgender in December 2022, and the following year, began taking progesterone. Approximately eight months ago, Pearson announced that he had found his “true self” as a result of performing in a drag show for a friend’s birthday celebration.

Earlier this month, Pearson described the first moment he believed he was a woman after trying on used women’s clothing at a thrift store. “I realized that the beautiful curvy woman in the mirror was the real me and I could be her every day… after more than two decades of stealth resistance. 87 days later I started spiro, 14 days after that estradiol, and now I am looooooving my boobs. Having curves without fakery is AMAZING.”

In a post made to the TransLater community last week, Pearson described how to insert the female hormone progesterone rectally, as a suppository, rather than swallowing it as a tablet.

“My breasts get a wonderful plumpness and pleasing jiggliness when I have had progesterone the night before…. You’ll need some lubricant (personal lube such as K-Y jelly or similar, or silicone personal lube which may be overkill, or some sort of non-irritating oil; I use my own mixture of cocoa butter and shea butter) to allow free clearance for the capsule… Some people simply pop the capsule in their mouth to use saliva, but I like a more effective lube,” he commented.

Pearson has also shared images of himself in a blue and pink wig attempting to eat ice cream containing the hormone in a seductive manner.

Disturbingly, Pearson has also revealed that he is HIV positive and is aware that the deadly virus can be transmitted through breastfeeding.

“I am HIV+, continuously controlled for 18.5 years now,” said Pearson in a Reddit post six months ago. “The viral suppression into undetectability [sic] makes sexual transmission impossible. But transmission through milk IS possible if viral load becomes detectable so I will test viral load monthly (opposed to semiannually) to keep a VERY close eye on that.”

In a shocking display of further disregard for the child’s health, Pearson speculated as to whether his experiment would qualify him as a candidate for the participation in academic research.

“Fortunately, Dr Lenore Goldfarb, creator of the protocol, has her clinic at the same hospital we birthed our baby in. I may even end up in the medical literature.” While again discussing his HIV status in relation to ‘breastfeeding’ a child, Pearson alleges that his case is being documented by infectious diseases researcher Dr. Marina Klein, who is affiliated with McGill University.

Pearson in a “before” picture posted to Reddit tracking his transitioning progress.

Reduxx reached out to Dr. Klein to request information on her involvement in Pearson’s experimental lactation, and she confirmed that she had been monitoring Pearson for his HIV infection at the Chronic Viral Illness Service of the McGill University Health Centre. However, she stated she had not been involved in his transition nor had she been consulted on his induction of lactation.

“It’s important to emphasize that we do not recommend breast feeding for people with HIV as this is the only way to be certain that no HIV transmission will occur after a baby is born,” Dr. Klein said in her response. “However, guidelines have evolved over time with the recognition that the risk of transmission is very low when HIV infection is undetectable with effective therapy … If, after informed discussion, a person expresses a wish to breastfeed they may chose to do so provided they are willing to follow a close protocol of viral monitoring and have their baby followed closely with pediatric specialists who would generally recommend that they receive preventive medication.”

Dr. Klein further states that Pearson had expressed a desire to breastfeed and then had been referred to an endocrinologist.

Prior to identifying as transgender, Pearson was involved in politically advocating for the US-based, anti-feminist men’s rights non-profit A Voice for Men (AVFM).

The organization was founded in 2009 by Paul Elam, who has said that there would no longer be “any place to hide on the internet” for “lying bitches,” and members associated with the group have previously published personal information about women who opposed their activities.

Pearson has linked to the organization’s website on his YouTube channel biography, where he has uploaded videos of himself advocating positions held by AVFM, such as accusing women of lying about sexual violence.

In one video shared in July 2013, titled “Rape, Posters, Traffic Lights and Consent,” Pearson claims that he was previously drugged and raped by a woman on the University of Alberta campus.

He also encourages discussion of posters produced by Men’s Rights Edmonton which featured the headline, ‘Don’t Be That Girl’, created with the intention of parodying an anti-rape campaign designed by a women’s rape crisis shelter, Sexual Assault Voices of Edmonton (SAVE), which used the slogan, ‘Don’t Be That Guy.’

Pearson has also been active in a Facebook group for “trans lesbians,” a term which labels men who call themselves transgender as same-sex attracted women.

Criticism of Pearson’s claims to be “lactating” and “breastfeeding” have focused on concerns that he is “motivated… to experience sexual arousal from lactation,” as one X user, Lulu Solomon, said.

“Because it is not motivated by what is best for the baby it’s automatically risky because the baby becomes a prop in the fantasy,” she stated, alongside a photo of Pearson at the Goldfarb clinic.

This is not the first controversy that has involved trans-identified males breastfeeding babies, with a number of recent examples triggering concern over the past year.

Last year, a lactation professional in Australia along with a women’s rights campaigner were warned that they had broken the law after criticizing a trans-identified male who had boasted of breastfeeding his infant. Shortly after, a trans-identified male in the UK dismissed critics of the practice as “transphobes” after he posted images of himself with a baby latched to his nipple.

UPDATE 02/26/24: The article has been updated to include comment received from Dr. Klein.

[miliyaread]

JAPAN:  The Paradox of Harmony by Keiko Hirata and Mark Warschauer

4⭐️/5

Japan is known as one of the good countries with always about good things that we heard online or from advertisements. But, face it. No country is perfect, including Japan. This is something that is common in every country. This book is open for discussion of certain issues in Japan, which are The Whistleblower, Grass Eating Girly Men, Graying and Shrinking, Getting Along with the Neighbour, Meltdown, and finally, What We Learned at Lunch. All topics included real example and real conversations, I believe. The discussion was long for every chapter, which is why I limited my review to the interesting fact that I learn.

The first issue that was discussed was The Whistleblower. It includes the working condition of Japan, which for me was a flaw in others. Unlike Malaysian (who I believe like to jump jobs for better conditions and salary), Japanese will stay in the same company for a very long time (possibly for a lifetime). I have nothing to against, as long as I was treated with fair and good composition. Can you imagine how loyal the Japanese are to their employer? Even though the employer treats them badly, to the point they have to go to court just to claim their right. Yes, this is what happened in Japan. However, I don’t think Japan’s court was fair to the victims. The whistleblowers quickly become outcasts. And we are not yet talking about mandatory overtime and the guilty pressure if the employees take leave.  ‘No Overtime Days’ was a scam. Yep, not a good sign. This is why there were lots of karoshi cases in Japan. Japanese also have a family system in that only men go to work while women take care of their families. For me, if I want a family, I need both to corporate. And I also can conclude that Japan’s workplace discrimination against women. There were lots of carriers for women to take up their careers, which is not fair. Just be clear, men will not be born if there are no women. So, be nice to women as well. The second issue was about Grass Eating Girly Men, and yes, it is about men. An idea about men were men should find a company and work with them for the rest of their life, supporting their families while women stay at home. A little bit of lame and old thinking, but that was the ideal. However, some people have another idea about men in Japan. And there was a section dedicated to The Johnny’s, which I know a lots of people know them. And I am very happy that the author mentions Kitagawa’s serious allegation. I mean, come on. People talked when it happened. And the famous topic, Otaku men. Otaku is an insult in Japan, but in western and other Asia, we take it as pride (not me, really). Otaku to them is a geek, but some are still with them because of securities. And the Idol otaku. yeah, I don’t really understand the hype. I listen to them but for me to spend so much on people who don’t look at you, nope. So, this is why many women decide to be single women. The third issue was about Graying and Shrinking, which is kind of related to the second issue. Yes, we are talking about the old population, which is one of the problems faced by the Japanese. When people don’t have an interest in marriage, the birth population decreased which leads to an increase in the old man population. In Japan, it is very popular for the Japanese to use seniority level in every aspect, including in prison. The certain reason that led to this situation is the low fertility rate as the main reasons for that were delayed marriage and non-marriage. Another reason is also that being a mother is not easy in Japan (again, not fair for mothers in Japan!) which is why women tend to have fewer children. So, the solution was to attract more foreign workers. But, this also lead to the next issue in Japan, which is racism and criticised as ripe for abuse. And not surprising that many foreign workers died due to karoshi.   Next, we have an issue with Getting along with the Neighbours. At first, I thought it is about the neighbour next door to their house (I mean I thought Japanese usually have a good relationship with their neighbour), but actually, it is not. It is about the neighbours’ countries. This is due to the face of the war before. The famous case is about comfort women. Japan also concurred Tanah Melayu before, so I believed Malaysia also was a victim of this, like Korea. Korea's anger toward Japan for this matter is understandable, especially when Japan refused to acknowledge this matter. There is also mention about policy, politics and issues of zanichi mentioned here. But, face it. I suck at politics, and politic matter. Well, the problem with Korea was not only about the comfort women, but also because of disputed islands between Japan and Korea. The K-wave does not reduce the tension at all. And Japan also needs to face this dispute with China as well. The second last issue was regarding Meltdown, which is focused on nuclear in Japan. Fukushima becomes Japan’s Chornobyl (Chornobyl is very scary) because of the earthquake in 2011. It is very scary to deal with the destroyed rectors. Only after 19 months after the earthquake and tsunami, TEPCO acknowledged its faults in accident preparation. Although TEPCO had been warned about warning regarding the effect of earthquakes that measuring more than 8.3 can create disable Fukushima, the nuclear plant was still built. Yoshida, the man who save lives from the disaster of the nuclear leak and become the unsung hero who tried to save many live and Fukushima, was also one of the men in TECPO’s leaders who ignored the warning. The effect of this disaster was many people not only lost their land and house but also lost their life after that by suicide. Fukushima became a ghost town. Lastly, we have What We Learned at Lunch. The Japanese school system was very unique and different from other systems in other countries. Japan has collective systems and students spend more time at school (I do not envy that. Malaysian felt very happy at the end of the school period and really want to go home as soon as they can). Teachers also become important in students’ life. Sometimes, when I read manga or watch anime or drama about high school in Japan, I always thought should parents be more concerned about their kids’ problems and life instead of teachers? What is used by parents? But, they have a good system of MEXT, which I acknowledge. No wonder Japanese students are at other levels compared to other students. Also, the Japanese are famous for school spirit. Maybe that made why students spend more time in school. Malaysian have it, but we do it because we have to. Some parents or teachers do not really support students in that. Still, there is some flaw in the education system. The famous flaw was the bullied culture, which is also faced by employees in the company. They bully people (usually weak students) in a group (which is totally cowardly move. Grow up!). Do you know the worst part? Sometimes, even teachers are afraid of bullies. They were afraid that they lost control of their class (that is not how it is going, sensei). And yes, the exam and testing. It is troublesome. Maybe not bad as the Korean exam, but still exam is the one thing that I am not envy in Japan. So, yes! Japan has many good things happened that we learn and heard from Japan. But every country had its own flaw, including mine and Japan. There is no such perfect country in this world, but still, we can take every bad and good thing as a lesson for our own learning process.

Disclaimer: All the opinion about this book is based on my personal view!

[elizabethsharmon]

So. Poland has chosen its "president" yesterday - if we can even talk about real choice here when he won by approximately 422k votes. When he won in 6 out of 16 regions, all of them with significantly lower number of eligible voters. When there are huge discrepancies between the results displayed in each polling district and the ones published on the website of the National Electoral Commission. When there were recurring instances of some voting cards not having the necessary stamps which automatically classified the vote as invalid. When some people went to vote and it turned out they're not registered in their designated district because of system error. When people abroad didn't get their voting cards on time. When his party sent over 150 buses to villages in Eastern Poland to take older, conservative people to voting stations. When this is how the results map looks like - and somehow the blue wins with orange.

In the last five years, Du*a and his party PiS (literally lAw AnD jUsTiCe but believe me, they're none of these things) have completely ruined the country and regressed it to Middle Ages.The democracy practically doesn't exist anymore, not since they have the majority to rule (the opposition won the senate back in the parliamentary elections so it's a small win but it's still not enough). They started with the judicial system, appointing conservative judges who are always ruling in their favour. The courts are not independent anymore. The Constitution is being broken over and over and over again. People have been marching and protesting for years now but to no avail. 

The national television, TVP, is practically owned by the ruling party. The propaganda, fake news, hatred on the opposition and minorities is getting stronger each day. What you need to know is that this is literally the first channel on every TV set in the country. No matter where you live, no matter if you have cable or satellite, you turn on TV and TVP is what you get. Their reach is so much higher than other TV stations from the big four (TVP1&TVP2, TVN, Polsat). Poland has fallen to 62nd out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders. Before PiS took over in 2015 we were 18th. For du*a's presidential campaign now they gave TVP 2 billion PLN in order to strengthen the propaganda. There was a project to give those money to hospital oncology wards but PiS said no. TVP has only been showing him during the campaign. The other candidates have either been showed in a bad light or haven't been showed at all. Voters for whom TVP is the only source of information haven't seen other candidates nor their campaigns.

During the second round of the campaign, when another tv station, TVN, with two major Polish online media, Onet and WP, invited him and his opponent, Rafał Trzaskowski, for a debate. Du*a declined because he said he won't participate in a debate which isn't available for everyone and he asked them to reach an agreement with TVP to host the debate together. In the end there were two debates. Du*a on his own in TVP, answering predetermined questions from journalists reporting to his party and people in the studio that were paid to be there. Trzaskowski on his own in TVN and live on his Facebook channel, answering questions from the journalists from 16 independent offline and online media teams.

At the beginning of his and PiS first term of destroying the country, they started their crusade against women, because as we all know middle aged men are the most eligible people to make choices for women and their bodies. Abortion is Poland is (was? honestly who knows now) only allowed in three cases: if the woman's life was in danger, if the prenatal testing indicates severe damage of the fetus, if the pregnancy was the outcome of rape. With their pro life and anti women initiative, PiS was determined to ban abortion completely and punish it by prison. The bill was so flimsy that in some cases even miscarriage could be turned against woman. Even if the baby would've been born sick or severely disabled, even if the pregnancy could be fatal for the mother, even if it was caused by rape. We went on the streets. All dressed in black, with umbrellas in hand. Hundreds of thousands of women and allies marching and protesting together against the government. And they got scared. The bill proposal was dropped but the fight wasn't over and it still isn't. They tried to bring it back now during the pandemic just because they knew we wouldn't go out protesting. But we did, we blocked the streets with our cars.

The day after pill can only be bought on prescription. But if you end up going to the conservative ob/gyn they can invoke conscientious objection to abortion and they won't prescribe it for you. They want to ban sex ed from schools. In their opinion sex ed “demoralizes children and teaches them masturbation.” They want young people to be uneducated and have sex and get pregnant and give birth. They want to make kids have kids just so they would depend on the government and social wage programme 500+ which gives 500PLN (approximately 125€) each month to families with 2 or more children for each of their children. Right now you can be a woman raising your three or four kids and you will get the equivalent of minimum wage just for that. This program made people vote for them in 2015. First Du*a used it in his presidential campaign, then PiS was blackmailing the voters saying the program will only happen if both president and the government will be on board aka they have to get in so Du*a will sign the bill and people will get the money. People still believe only they can ensure the stability of the program even though almost all the other candidates said it will not go away.

In the last couple of weeks of presidential campaign, it became more clear than ever how Du*a is planning to win the elections - by trying to reach to the mindsets of elderly and conservative voters by attacking the LGBT community. He called us “ideological hurricane”. He said we are worse than communists. His party members have been saying we're not humans. He was saying over and over again how he doesn't care what people do in bed as long as they're not obnoxious on street and in real life about it. How sexuality is a private thing and we shouldn't be proud of it. How there's no place in Poland for “LGBT propaganda that wants to demoralize our children”. How there's no space here for unions for same-sex couples, not even mentioning marriage or adoption. How he'll do everything in his power to protect the “traditional Polish values and family model” (whatever that means). The most conservative parts of the eastern Poland has claimed their towns and villages as “anti-LGBT zone”. It's been going on since last year. After Dua's words now the hate crime is stronger than it ever was. When LGBT activists asked him to apologize for his spiteful words, showed him proofs that suicide rate among LGBT teenagers is higher than it was since his party is ruling, showed him the photographs and shared the stories of the people we lost because of the bashing they encourage and support, he said he won't apologize because he stands by his words and there's a freedom of speech in the country. Not for everyone I guess.

The journalists have been interviewing many people in different parts of Poland after it. What stuck with me were the words of some old man from the countryside who has said that “LGBT should be exterminated in Majdanek”. It's one of the places where the death camp was during World War 2. I don't think I have to tell anyone what words like this mean, how much they hurt, and how much worse it is when they’re said in the country that’s lost so so many lives during WW2. In a country that fought so hard for so many years to reclaim its freedom from the nazis and then from the soviets. In the meantime of this bashing, Du*a has pardoned a pedophile so he could return to his family (and the victim he abused). So that would be it for protecting family values.

The exit polls results yesterday were so close that they gave us so much hope that we would wake up in a new reality today but the hope died quickly. Now we're stuck again with a man who said in the middle of the global pandemic that he's anti-vaccination and he doesn't think vaccine for covid-19 should be obligatory. With a man who thinks climate change and global warming isn't real. With a man whose actions are constantly destabilitizing economy because he only acts like there is today and doesn’t look forward in the future and doesn’t know the way he and his party ruin the country will have terrible consequences in a few years. With a man who is homophobic, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and many, many, many other things. With a man who is a "president” of Polish people but only if you're a straight catholic man voting for his party.

Now our fear is that with him being “elected” as the “president” again, his party will try to meddle with the Constitution and try to change it so they could either extend his term for more years or extend the number of terms a president can have. And even if the change can’t happen so easily, what’s sure is that they will try to take away basic human rights from women and LGBT community. They made it perfectly clear in the last five years and during the campaign now.

So if you’re asking yourself now what can you do about it the answer is simple: spread the word. Read about it. Educate yourself. Make a buzz in the social media. We need as much help as we can get. We need foreign media to pick up the topic, we need them to talk about it and to make the noise. We need the foreign governments to know about it. European Union has already declared that if the bashing on LGBT continues, they will take away the development aid from the self-proclaimed “anti-LGBT zones”. Our country has suffered so much and somehow we’re still standing but I don’t know for how much long we will last. So please. Don’t leave us alone.

[zanguntsu]

attractiveness and morality - or how people think with their metaphorical dicks instead of their brains

people are fucking horny over the villain characters in bleach, i mean specifically the male ones because as we know the female villains are nonexistent lol. but it’s not hard to see how attractive the male characters are even though i just refuse to acknowledge men unless i have too.

however, there is an issue with how we perceive the characters based on how attractive they actually are, more along the lines of how people will excuse any offensive behavior based on physical attractiveness

the convicts oops i mean examples

there are a few examples i can name like popular male villains that people lose their shit over.

aizen is the big one, where despite the crimes he has committed, such as emotional manipulation, attempting to wipe out a whole town, murders, and hollowfying his colleagues and getting away with it. yet, he is sympathized, especially over Tousen who tends to be more villainized by the fandom or at least held in a less favorable regard.

Gin is in the same boat, with the emotional manipulation and general emotional harm inflicted on multiple people but is sympathizes because uwu he loves rangiku even though he did cause her harm, simply because he betrayed her and hurt her friends and colleagues.

Ulquiorra is another very notable one, since he also has that whole manipulation thing although not as blatant as aizen. he did kidnap a minor and abuse her (isolating her, threatens her and her friends, and it is used to control her/keep her in captivity).

Grimmjow is another example, and its especially notable because he’s just very very violent. And he never apologizes or feels remorse for it, despite generally terrorizing Ichigo and co.

Nn*itra is especially reprehensible, he is overtly sexist, as most of his violent acts are targeted at women and uh. actively saying he hates women. creepy (implied sexual) behavior towards a minor as well.

Szayel as well, he has no regard for his minions, and then theres whatever he did to nemu what the fuck that was so fucked what the fuck.

notably, these men are also wildly popular among the fandom. they will have the most fanart, most discussion, most fics i guess. 

why do horny fucks sympathize with them

people empathize with people they see as attractive, and i mean conventional attractiveness. note how none of this empathy extends to people who do not fall in the category as attractive (often pale side eyes) hunk/twink. does zommari get that attention? yammy? why are they not held to the same standard as say szayel/gin or grimmjow. yammy is also angry and prone to violence, much like grimmjow.

what sets them apart is that they are not deemed sexually attractive so therefore, their flaws become easier to ignore and they arent sympathized as much. of course, kubo probably did inadvertently create this problem, seeing as theres a discrepancy in creating a complex character. another example of this is the comparison between byakuya and omaeda. of course, they are obviously different characters, byakuya has more development and screentime. however they are similar in that they are wealthy, in high positions of power, and look down on people they deem inferior for a variety of reasons. byakuya, however, is conventionally attractive and also has screentime. that being said there is an underlying issue of fatphobia as well in reducing omaeda to a comic relief character.

people empathize with attractive people or at least favor them. “People more strongly desire to form or maintain bonds with physically attractive partners relative to unattractive partners—an attractiveness-based affiliation effect (Path B). In turn, through projection, attractive partners are perceived to possess attributes that are compatible with these goals, which largely center on their reciprocation of interest in establishing or maintaining close relationships (Path C).”  this is indicated by the halo effect, “the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas“ which also applies to beauty and how attractiveness impacts how one recognizes a person. for example, an attractive person will often be associated with positive traits such as compassion, intelligence, and other desirable traits. it could be things like how appearing well groomed heightens others perception of you, how you will appear responsible and capable.

and this does extend to the villains. aizen is viewed as a tragic villain who fights for injustice or something like that. gin is a tragic antihero i think that did everything for his true love tm. ulquiorra is a tragic villain who does not understand love. grimmjow is grimmjow. nn*itra is somehow tragic with an inferiority complex lmao take that fucking L bug boyyy loser. and szayel... exists. see how fanon interprets these characters despite none of them having any remorse for what they have done. the fandom leaps to provide a justification or rational for their actions no matter how abhorrent they are. yammy and zommari are still held as villains, yet they are not sympathized with in the slightest nor are beloved to that extent. compare the sexualization of these men and the amount of sympathy garnered from the fandom. 

why this matters

its no secret that in online spaces especially, offenders are romanticized or at least sympathized. take the true crime community for example, in which case male serial killers were romanticized despite the atrocities they have committed. and this is linked to the “bad boy” trope that is prevalent in romance novels, where a troubled or dangerous man seems like a desirable partner despite stalking their love interest among other crimes. of course, this also gets a bad rep from wattpad ya books and just ya books in general.

there are examples of this trope. i have vaguely alluded to edward from twilight. there is also the cause of that white guy from 50 shades of gray, which is most known for romanticizing abuse but the audience cannot help but be allured by his white guyness or something/ there is the netflix film “you” where a man stalks a women but it is seen as romantic and people find themselves attracted to joe despite his violence. literally this type of behavior:

there’s ted bundy film and how people raved about how hot he was despite him being an absolute monster and having real victims whos family have to live with the fact that people find their family member’s killer hot. it is this in its absolute extreme, where people are fully aware of their crimes but still find sympathy or attraction towards a criminal. in this case it is the gradual romanticization of violence that may creep up. i cannot assuredly claim that there is a strong correlation between finding villains attractive and romanticizing violence but there can be some indication of this.

and this view of how attractiveness can bleed into criminal court. of course, there are other factors such as gender, sexuality, age of judges and the inherent corruption within the legal system. here is a list of studies about this topic because christ i am not copy and pasting all of that go read it yourself.  but the main takeway is that in mock jurors and other public opinion, the more attractive defendants accused of crimes have less severe sentences or even less sentences (however this is not seen as frequently in judges). it shows that there is a level of sympathy, leniency, or more compassion towards attractive people. 

Conclusion

the point being made here is that attractiveness affects how one sees a person. yes, it is possible to find villains attractive, however the bias of physical attractiveness and actual character can potentially be dangerous if left unchecked. this is not exactly a call to action or a psa because a) i am fully aware that this fandom is horny to the point of brainrot and that it is incurable and b) this is just an analysis on behavior in the fandom. and i am aware that the studies are cishet in nature and are not indicative of the fandom as a whole seeing as there are a fair amount of lgbt people in this fandom. that being said, my point still stands.

[ziracona]

Hello! I have always believed that Michael needed better doctors and good treatment. He was simply billed as "Evil". Sometimes I think that at that time they were unaware or ignorant of mental illness, and that is why Michael did not recover. I wish it had been treated better. I would like to know your opinion about it ;v;

Oh, absolutely. Michael is a very tragic character, and what happened to him was almost entirely Loomis’ fault, secondarily the system and his parents’, and like onyl 0.8% his own. It’s true that mental health aid has historically been really bad in most places, and even today treatment and acceptance—even in specifically medical settings—tend to be abysmal. Of course people knew less than they do now about how psychological stuff works, but bias, cruelty, and superstition as well as a system that enables and even to degrees outright encourages that is to blame for the awful treatment people woth mental illnesses and personality disorders faced and continue to face, not just a lack of knowledge, and the history is really heavy and awful to look over. : ( It’s horrific some of the things doctors have done and do to people just trying to get help.

Like, in Michael’s case, we’ve had a name and understanding of psychosis since the 1800s. Canonically, by the time the poor kid was six years old, he was hearing voices telling him to do bad things to people. He told his parents, seeking help, and they did nothing to help him—just told him it was his imagination—despite knowing hos grandfather had suffered the same symptoms. If they had only taken him seriously and given him therapy and possibly medication too, Judith never would have died. (I am not goong to say it every time, but all this information is official canon) Michael’s reason for killing his family members is wanting the vocies talking to him to be quiet, because it’s agonizing. If you’ve ever had intrusive thoughts (stuff like “pull into oncoming traffic” or “break that and see what happens” and such that don’t actually compell or force you to do it at all, and are always things you as a person deeply do not want to do, but nevertheless are really annoying or distressing to hear in your head), imagine that cranked up to 1000, endless and constant, but from voices that seem to come from around you instead of in your head. Especially as a young child, with no understanding what is happening to you, this would be incredibly scary and distressing—doubly so when dismissed by your parents, whose sole job is supposed to be to love and protect you.

The voices say they’ll be quiet if Michael kills Judith, so Halloween night, he does. Important to note here Michael is recently six years old at the time, which developmental psych literally is not old enough to have a complete understanding what death itself is, let alone complex morality. You /cannot/ be evil at six, you simply don’t have a complex enough understanding of right and wrong or of consequence to /be/ evil. Also at this age, usually kids see death as a vague concept, but one that applies to people they don’t know only, not to them and their loved ones. In Halloween 1978, immediately after stabbing Judith, Michael looks away while he keeps doing it, and his breathing speeds up in a scared way. He barely looks at the body, and immediately goes down stairs to wait for his parents—probably for them to fix it—and does nothing to flee or hide what he’s done. He looks traumatized when they take his mask off. (Lots of little notes here like that Judith when she sees him seems annoyed but not very, and when he attacks her, tries to shield herself and call to him to stop, rather than fleeing or fighting back, which [appealing instead of fight or flight] is pretty exclusively something you only would use if attcked by someone you are on good terms with—I mean, Michael is six—if Judith had /tried/ to fight back, no way she would have died—so there’s less than nothing to indicate they had anything but a loving familial sibling relationship. But if I list all these I’m gonna launch into my six page Michael Myers meta so I will speed through the rest.)

Anyway! Sorry, I have many feelings. About...everything. Including Michael for sure. So, immediately after killing Judith, Michael stops talking. He also shows other psychosis and trauma readily recognized side effects, like catatonia, slowed movement. In Halloween 1978c Dr. Loomis claims he tried to treat Michael for eight years, then spent another seven trying to keep him locked up because he realized he was evil. This is a /blatant/ lie, as in film canon Loomis, by Michael’s review hearing I believe four months in? Six or less for sure, I believe it is four. Loomis has /already/ become convinced Michael is a demon in human form, faking his symptoms, and itching to kill again. The other doctors think Loomis is crazy, as does the other doctor who examines Michael, but they’re awful people so they let him stay Michael’s doctor anyway, even though they refuse to move him to Litchfield maximum security. By this time only a few months in, Loomis is canonically also threatening the six year old in his care and constantly telling him he is an evil being who wants to get out and terrorize again. (Also, I will die enraged the sentance Michael gets for killing Judith is to remain locked in solitary in a sanitorium for /15/ years, until he turns 21, at which point he will be tried as an adult for murder??? The fuck?? You CANNOT charge a 6 year old’s crime in adult court! ‘Tried as an adult’ is meant for like, when a 17 year old dismembers their family and eats them! It’s for particularly heinous crimes, committed by someone /very/ close to being legally an adult, and that /only/. The idea of waiting fifteen years to try someone as an adult for something done at age six is laughable and sick).

Okay this is already long, I get carried away rip. Uhhh, anyway, yeah. In Smith’s Grove, Michael is visited by mom and Laurie once, then never sees any of his family again, because his dad hates him and forbids the others—finds out because Laurie is four and talks that they went /one/ time, and physically beats four year old Laurie for mentioning his name until she trauma blocks out ever having had a brother. From then on, Michael spends /fifteen/ years and all the dest of his developmental stages of childhood in a sanitorium with Dr. Loomis—a man who on wild religious superstition grounds assumes by his own admission /on sight/ that Michael is evil, and no other human contact. According to canon, Michael spends at least four hours of /every/ day with Loomis, his /only/ human contact, who threatens him, promises to stop him, and endlessly barrages him with “You’re evil, you’re not human, you want to kill again, I /will/ stop you,” and nothing else. He also canonically keeps Michael overdosed on a type of antipsychotic that, while a fine drug if used normally, if overdosed can deeply worsen symptoms, and can cause permanent brain damage.

Honestly, if a six year old is exposed yo major trauma, none of their issues are explained, legitimized, or believed, and almost all of their developmental stage is spent with endless voices they don’t know the cause of suggesting murder and violence, one human being and authority figure telling them over and over and over for fifteen years with no other constant in their life or human contact period that they are a demon in human form who wants to kill and is /going/ to do so again...? How else was that story ever going to end? I’ve said it before, but that’s beyond conditioning; it’s lab growing a human child to one day walk out and murder Laurie Strode with a large kitchen knife.

I stand by Halloween is a greek tragedy more than a slasher, and Michael and Laurie are both victims. He’s the Asterios, she’s the Ariadne. Loomis the Minos, the real villain. (Or the Poseidon choose your poison).

Anyway, I 100% agree! If he had just gotten help from his parents, Judith would have never died. If he’d had good doctors, none of the events of 1978 would have come to pass, or anything after it. Loomis single-handedly causes the deaths in 1978 himself through years of cruelty, and bigoted bias towards a small child in his care who needed his help, not his abuse, but he chose to break as much as he possibly could despite his responsibilities as a doctor, an adult, and a human.

If you’re interested, I did a canon-deep-dive character study short story on Michael on AO3! Halloween is such a sad story but it’s fascinating. God, poor Michael and Laurie deserved so much better than they got. It’s a testament to Michael’s character that even after 15 years of Dr. Loomis, he really only kills his intented target(s) in search of quiet from the voices, and anyone who sees him/would be a threat, and not other people. Makes no attempt to kill any of the kids in Halloween 2018, and only kills Bob when he literally opens the door to his hiding spot and Michael is found and Bob becomes a threat to him. In H20, after Michael has had 20 years on his own, you get arguably the least brutal Michael, who intentionally passes on killing the mother and child, and the security guard he walks right past, because they don’t see him and thus he doesn’t /have/ to. Halloween II is less intentionally avoiding, but even then he still does the same multiple times too, like with the old lady making a sandwich, or the scene in the incubator room. Anyway he desevered better fuck Loomis all my homies hate Loomis.

[96thdayofrage]

Jacco Macacao is a monkey.

Over the years, British children would delight over the “Jacko Monkey” toy they’d receive for Christmas or their birthdays. These stuffed monkeys were available for sale into the late 80s. Those who are more sentimental can find the Jacko monkeys on eBay.

It is no coincidence that the same moniker would be given to Michael Jackson at the same time.

He broke the records of the Beetles as a child with his brothers, otherwise known as the Jackson Five. America grew up with Michael and his family, with he and his brothers becoming the first sex symbols for black girls all over the country. These black fans no longer found themselves explaining to their white counterparts why the floppy, stringy hair, blue eyes, and their British accent simply was not enough to propel them into idol status in black households. The problem was when the Jackson 5 became the same young idols for young white girls.

But Michael remained the cute little boy, with the incredible voice, and those deep eyes that one could peer into his soul. He would state that’s why he wore sunglasses so often. Michael was talented and he would prove he was capable of great things. His album, “Off the Wall” proved that. However, he took home no hardware at the Grammys that year. Soon, he would prove them all wrong.

Meanwhile, The Greatest Entertainer of all Time would be reserved for a white artist. Or so they thought.

Then Michael grew into a man and released “Thriller”, setting the world on fire. There wasn’t a day that the press didn’t write about him, while he broke record after record. Thriller was doing numbers that no other album had ever done. He was becoming a living legend, doing things like filling stadiums with thousands and thousands of screaming fans. Those who believed that the British Invasion was a scene that could not be topped, didn’t see the little boy from Gary, Indiana coming.

What would white America think about that?

Racism and the Press

The Civil Rights Act was signed into law. A year later, the Voting Rights Act followed. However, blacks were still asked to walk though the back door of a white person’s home. Many white people believed that as a country, we had done enough about the race problem, but many of them fled to the suburbs just twenty years later after rejecting integration outright.

Now, just twenty years later, their children were putting black artists on their walls. They were not willing to embrace the ideals of keeping the races separate. This new generation wasn’t interested in keeping the old prejudices alive. They were interested in good music and exploring new cultures. There was hope. There was just one of the old vanguards that hadn’t received the new memo: That was the press.

Michael was an interesting character at first. An anomaly. He didn’t act the way they expected most black men to act. Like his contemporary Prince, they were not sure what to make of him.

But Michael’s career exploded into the stratosphere with his album, “Thriller”, the biggest selling album of all time and they were forced to deal with him.

The short film, “Thriller” was about an all-American man who turned into a beast. The squeaky-clean Michael who didn’t drink or curse, soon became a weirdo in front of our eyes. A strange man who did strange things. For a while, that caricature held, until 1993 when the first allegations against Michael took hold. Without a shred of evidence, they turned a man who they had praised for years into a monster.

Racist

Time and time again, Michael beat the charges that were laid against him. His accusers defeated themselves with their ridiculous antics in and outside the courtroom. To unbiased observers, they saw the charges against Michael for what they truly were; vindictive extortion. But with no evidence to back their claims, they simply slithered back into the shadows. These people were so thoroughly discredited that even the media stopped calling them for interviews.

However, they would never be able to leave Michael alone. Not even after death. The old drumbeats began to flare again. Michael was guilty, they told us but they still couldn’t prove it. The accusers had openly perjured themselves in court many times, but none of that mattered.

Michael was another guilty black man. He was guilty of escaping the justice system that had convicted so many like him. He was guilty of making the media look foolish, when they were unable to convict him. He was guilty in their eyes and that’s all that mattered.

In the Beginning

The emasculation of black men began on the slave ships, as black slaves were raped, often in front of black men. This act of emasculation continued for centuries, as white men would rape black slaves whenever they felt like it. Even after slavery ended, this emasculation would continue with black women being raped, but a national incident would begin if a black man slept with a white woman. It would be enough for that black man to be lynched.

Fast forward to today, the media and others had tried to steal his blackness away, claiming he wasn’t black simply because he had a disease. The arrogance one must have to believe one has that ability to steal away one’s entire racial identity, simply because they could.

They knew they could and get away with it. America’s racial reckoning would not happen until a few years after his death. Had he lived longer, he would’ve known a more “woke” America. This more politically correct America would hesitate before making fun of someone for having a disease. This more “woke” America could never take away his “blackness”. This more “woke” America would have more people speaking out on his behalf and saying that this simply isn’t right. How do I know? These are things that are going on now.

This America would also never have Wade or James as “victims”. They wouldn’t have the guts to make baseless accusations against a man who gave them everything.

The real beast was let loose in his life. The real beast was the media.

The media was thoroughly racist. They were the children of those who had stood outside and picketed integration. They were the children who had grown up watching Bloody Selma on television. However, they would make their careers on the backs of their own fearmongering.

They stood outside Michael’s trial in 2005 and looked at his fans as if they were dangerous lunatics that deserved to be locked up. They didn’t realize that Michael’s fans were also consumers of mass media, so that when the media needed people to pay attention to their more serious stories like what was going on in the White House, less of the American populace would believe them. This allowed for a demagogue to claim “fake news” whenever he wanted. The media spent too much time on stories like Michael’s plastic surgery, Jesus Juice, and giving credibility to people real journalists would’ve shunned. They didn’t realize or had forgotten that Michael fans were also consumers of mass media and that they would have a hard time deciphering the truth from fiction. It was the media alone who should be held responsible for the erosion of trust in its own institutions. These were clearly self-inflicted wounds.

They poked through the crumbs they could find of Michael’s personal life, showing grotesque interest in things like Michael’s sexuality and even the size of his penis, bringing back a century old notion that the slave trade brought us. The examination of the bodies of black men. The preoccupation of the size of the sexual organs of black men. They picked at his skin color, with the same fascination that racist whites who practiced eugenics just a century and a half ago.

“Could a black man turn white?” they asked. Henry Moss was one of the first documented cases of a black man with vitiligo. Doctors studied his case as he made his body available to medical students.

A early century vitiligo patient

But this curiosity could not be limited to just medical students. For a shilling, one could line up in Philadelphia, to see this once black man turn into a white man. He became a “Great Curiosity”. After thirty-eight years, this black man suddenly began to turn white. In 1796, the public found themselves transfixed by this attraction. Even George Washington, the nation’s first president, paid to see him.

He would go on to tour several American cities, enduring endless racism and discrimination, and be treated like a sideshow instead of a human being.

In the 19th century, it was believed black people could turn white through vitiligo.

This story should sound familiar by now.

Some early thinkers were afraid that this could portend the end of slavery, which was dangerous and not a sign of progress. Others set out to prove that those with vitiligo were not white.

As time went on, society never quite figured out what to do with those who had vitiligo. Until Michael came along. Their ridicule was based in this old racism. This man came along and upset the natural order of things. Since they had nothing and no one to challenge him on the virtue of his talent, their only weapon was to make him so different, they would turn him into a caricature of himself. He would no longer be Michael Jackson, he would be “Wacko Jacko”, a figure of their imagination, which turned out to be convenient when the child sex abuse allegations came up.

Another picture…

The man who was once the all-American boy who had a dream to be the greatest, had turned into the monster of their nightmares.

The monster lurking behind every black man in America. That same caricature that had lived in the imaginations of white people for so long.

“Don’t ever be alone with one, even if you know ’em well.” That was the advice taught to every white girl growing up.

“They’ll turn on you, even when you’re good to ’em. You can’t trust em.’

The imaginations of the nearly all-white news media had run wild and truth no longer mattered.

In their eyes, Michael had become the monster. The truth was that he was a human being. Despite becoming the greatest entertainer of all time, he still had to face incredible amounts of racism whether from the press or from the record companies that didn’t want to take orders from this successful black man.

Racism….

The picture they tried to paint of Michael was the caricature and completely divorced from reality. Those that knew him said that he was a regular guy, extremely shy and incredibly generous. His legacy is still being targeted by those seeking money and fame, but now there seems to be some push back from those who are finally seeing the truth. The more we speak out, the more we can shovel through all the falsehoods and finally reach the truth; Michael was a human being who was incredibly talented. He was a father first, and he raised wonderful children. His music lives on forever and so does his legacy.

It bears stating that many who tried to make a career off Michael’s name will be forgotten mostly when they’ve gone as leeches and hangers on. While Michael is vindicated. We will see them for what they truly are; racist.

[starksinthenorth]

Sansa + Dany Romance Arc Parallels

Sansa and Dany’s marriage arcs actually parallel each other so much, besides people aggressively shipping them with Jon Snow.

Both are initially promised to someone beautiful, who they want to trust, but who turns out to be incredibly cruel. Sansa with Joffrey and Dany at least assuming she would marry Viserys until her actual wedding. 

Both young women experience sexual abuse at the hands of someone who should be their prince in shining armor because said Prince blames them for something they had no chance to effect. Sansa is stripped and beaten before the courts because of Robb’s wins. Dany is beaten and abused because she should have been born sooner so Rhaegar wasn't married to Elia.

Those initial betrothals are both broken and cause another marriage to occur to reach other goals of the prince. Joffrey needs an alliance with the Reach so he breaks his betrothal with Sansa, but he still needs to keep a claim to the North  so she’s married to Tyrion. Viserys gives up his hope of marrying Dany because he needs her as a bargaining chip to get his armies through Drogo.

There are some interesting differences with these marriages.

First, Drogo maritally rapes Dany while Tyrion decides to wait for her to want it.  Dany is hesitantly into it on their wedding night - guiding Drogo’s hand between her legs - but it still is marital rape because she wasn’t consenting fully. 

But, Both women end up claiming agency in their marriages through their sexual situation. Dany uses Doreah’s teaching to take control and exhibit agency in the marital bed; Sansa maintains agency by not giving in to let Tyrion have sex with her. Both begin to find their strength in these different forms of resistance against their system. Women don’t usually get sexual agency and control, so by claiming it, Dany is resisting. Sansa’s resistance to Tyrion is another form of sexual agency because she gets to choose not to have sex with him.

Both also continue to experience assault at the hands of their former betrothed. Tyrion does his best to protect Sansa but is as much a victim of this system as she is, albeit in different ways, and can only protect her from some of Joffrey’s abuses. Drogo isn’t even aware of Viserys’ continued abuses until he ends up raising his hand against him - but once Drogo is aware, he does try to protect his wife.

Finally, Sansa and Dany both react very differently to their husbands generally. Sansa puts up a cold wall of courtesy and doesn’t try to get to know him because she’s horribly miserable. Meanwhile, Dany learns Dothraki and attempts to speak and get to know Drogo. This is in part Stockholm Syndrome because she doesn’t have any chance of talking to anyone besides Jorah, a creepy old guy whose in love with her, and her abuse brother.

While married, they both also suffer horrible things happening to their family. Namely, Sansa’s entire family dies and Dany loses her brother and is almost poisoned to kill her son. Dany comes to rely on Drogo more while Sansa just uses this as further reasons to push Tyrion away.

They are both also present for the horrible, grueling death of their former betrothed, and both are part of the death along with their husbands. Sansa carries the poison in her hairnet and Tyrion presents the cup to Joffrey - both unknowingly, but still. Meanwhile, Dany is threatened by her brother and her husband killed him without her interference (forgivable considering its immediately after he tried to cut open her pregnant belly).

They both also have a crush that shows up at various points in their timeline: Loras/Willas and Daario. Dany is more sexually awakened, so she gets to follow through on this. Sansa dreams of it but Petyr eventually foils her chances.

Their next round of marriages/promises is similar as well: betrothals that never come to fruition. There’s vague talk of Sansa marrying Sweetrobin to combine their claims, and some talk of Dany marrying that one guy in Qarth to cement her claim to the iron throne through his funds and ships.

Next, they both end up engaged to a man (and Dany marries him) who can help them cement their claim/rule in the place they are and take back their birthright feudal societies. Sansa and Harry Hardyng, who can get her the support of the Vale to go and claim Winterfell, and Dany with Hizdhar zo Lorak, who helps her cement her claim and rule of Meereen, which will in turn help her turn her forces west to Westeros.

Finally, they both spend the entire series being groomed by much older men who are super creeps but also come off as their defenders. Sansa and Petyr Baelish and Dany and Jorah Mormont. Both have to rely on these men because they have no other guidance at points. Dany was able to obtain power and breakaway from Jorah once his betrayal came to light. Theoretically, Sansa will get to break free of Petyr once his betrayal comes to light.

Make of this what you will, but to me these two have more parallels than not and I really do think they will be friends or at least allies some day.

[askaceattorney]

Dear askrikkaiandhyotei,

Thanks for waiting, first of all.  I’m finally finished with all the essay requests that came before yours.  As Nahyuta might say...

So, an essay about the Last Rites Prosecutor?  Let us begin our journey down the path of enlightenment.

In order to properly talk about this prosecutor monk, I first have to talk briefly about the concept of religion -- not any specific one, but religion as a whole.  Throughout history, religion has been described a thousand different ways -- something necessary for life and society, something needless or even harmful for life and society, and just about everything in between.  The reason I bring this up is that Nahyuta does a great job of portraying both the positive and negative sides of religion through the use of a fictitious one called Khura’inism -- a pretty bold move on Capcom’s part, but if you ask me, it paid off pretty well.

We first meet him in his natural habitat, as peaceful as anyone could be.

His peace is interrupted when the police drag a captured member of the Defiant Dragons into the temple.  As a prosecutor of high reputation, this rebel could be described as Nahyuta’s mortal enemy, but his attitude toward him, while disdainful, is far from unpleasant; he in fact offers him mercy on behalf of the Holy Mother if he’s willing to submit himself to the court’s judgment.  Even knowing how empty of a gesture this is, considering the unfairness of every trial in Khura’in since the enactment of the DC Act, it’s still somewhat refreshing to see him speak so calmly to someone considered to be the lowest of the low in Khura’in.  His patience stems from his calm nature, but also from his loyalty to the deity he serves, as evidenced in his words:

“O Holy Mother, as your humble servant, you would have me act to save this wretch’s soul?  I suppose this, too, is part of my fate.”  This demonstrates one of the nobler sides of religion -- a willingness to leave one’s fate in the hands of a higher power.

The next time we see him, he attempts to stop a potentially brutal fight between the police and a fugitive, who happens to be holding a knife to Maya’s neck.  His desire for a peace is admirable, especially in such an intense situation, but what he says next is of questionable virtue:

It’s here that Nahyuta displays one of the less noble parts of religion -- looking down on those who don’t share one’s beliefs.  Sure, a guy who’s willing to use an innocent bystander as a shield obviously needs some form of help, but what exactly are those condescending words supposed to do for him (or Maya, for that matter)?  Not surprisingly, he refuses to listen, but luckily, Nahyuta has reflexes like Little Mac.

Interestingly enough, immediately after this, we see his compassionate side again.  He not only rescues a foreign visitor, but wishes the Holy Mother’s divine favor on her.

As uppity as he’s shown himself to be, it’s hard to dislike someone who treats a stranger so well -- especially one who, as we know, has been through some serious rough spots in her life.  This introduction of Nahyuta -- a disdainful yet compassionate man of faith -- leads us to wonder if he’s meant to be a protagonist, antagonist, antihero, or something else.

And we haven’t even gotten into the game proper yet.  There’s still a lot to unpack about this guy.

Our next bit of info comes from his unlikely detec- sorry, forensic investigator, Ema Skye:

Like a lot of new characters, he’s shrouded in mystery from the very beginning.  We at least learn what his reason is for choosing the prosecutor’s path, and where his courtroom nickname came from:

We’ve seen all manner of bizarre prosecutors up until now, but so far, Nahyuta is the only prosecutor who wears his beliefs on his sleeve, especially in the courtroom.  For him, prosecuting is about more than seeking justice for the guilty -- it’s about seeking salvation for their victims.  In other words, it’s not only his professional duty, but a religious one.  Interestingly enough, his professionalism is no less strong than his religion -- according to Ema, he’s known for solving difficult cases around the world.

But religious, professional, or otherwise, Nahyuta proves to be the same as every other prosecutor, as well as every human being -- capable of making mistakes, both big and small.  Before we get to that, though...

Well, what do you know?  Looks like we have yet another connection between a new character and a current one.  Apollo, just how many people do you know that you never talk about?

The importance of their relationship is put to the side as we learn how Nahyuta operates as a prosecutor.  At first, he seems like a “gentle-mannered soul,” as Athena puts it, but that visage disappears in the next moment.  Like pretty much every prosecutor we’ve seen, he’s proud, demeaning, and flat-out brutal when he wants to be.  He even has a favorite adjective for describing his opponents.

Then there’s the sutra he often chants as a fancy way of telling them to “get real.”  And as if that wasn’t enough, he uses his “duty as a monk to punish sinners” as a way of claiming the moral high ground, even going so far as to threaten to cast the defense and defendant “into the pit of hell.”  It’s hard to blame anyone for getting upset after hearing that, is it?

But hey, at least there’s no physical abuse this time around, right?

...Oh.

And as fate would have it (or perhaps some divine being who decided to have some fun), his favored forensic detective is a lover of science.  Talk about a perfect match, am I right?

At least the clash is more on the hilarious side in this case.

But anyway, on to Nahyuta’s mistakes.  Aside from his sickening hypocrisy (which is par the course for most Ace Attorney prosecutors, anyway) and the oversights he makes in court, there’s one blatant sin of his that sticks out: ascribing to a principle that anyone, religious or not, should be able to see problems with -- namely, the DC Act and the persecution of those who defy it.  To be fair, his motive for doing so is a humanitarian one -- protecting his family’s honor and safety -- but his willingness to look the other way as his own countrymen are wrongfully imprisoned and executed (not to mention his father having to stay in hiding because of it) is quite the opposite.

This brings us to his signature catchphrase, which could also be called his motto:

There are a lot of situations where this would be good advice, but in Nahyuta’s case, it’s a convenient excuse for him to give up on dealing with the problems of his past and remain loyal to the whims of Ga’ran.  More specifically, it’s a mask he uses to hide what he feels inside, which we don’t discover until it’s forced out of him: a lack of faith.

Even as someone as who has no trouble believing in the Holy Mother, Lady Kee’ra, and the Twilight Realm, Nahyuta struggles to believe in change, no matter how much his family, his friends, and his nation need it.  And it’s here that we see one of the most beautiful twists in his story -- when it comes to change, his father and surrogate brother have more faith than he does.  It takes some persuasion from Apollo to make him realize it, but it turns out he hasn’t quite given up on righting the wrongs of the past.

Nahyuta’s unwillingness to confiscate his father’s badge is all the proof Apollo needs that his faith in Dhurke’s fight for freedom hasn’t disappeared completely.  After proving this and Dhurke’s innocence, he finally forces Nahyuta to do something few people have the courage to do -- look at his own sins.

Unlike Claude Frollo, Nahyuta managed to turn his focus inward and realize his own imperfection.  It took some push from a close friend for it to happen, but better late than never.  And as it turns out, his faith in Dhurke’s creed was as close to him as his right hand all along -- in fact, it was on it.

Much like with Rayfa’s moment of transformation, Capcom was nice enough to give us a voiceover for this pivotal moment.

Nahyuta’s story in SoJ ends with him beginning a journey down his own path of redemption as he attempts to undo the damage caused by Ga’ran and his obedience to her.  He’s even bold enough to ask for Apollo’s help in continuing Dhurke’s mission of restoring Khura’in’s legal system.

I love character redemption as much as anyone, but one thing I love even more is when a character takes it a step further by joining the same cause they were once fighting against.  Whether it was brought on by the Holy Mother’s will, a love for his family and country, a mixture of the two, or something else, Nahyuta ultimately becomes a changed man.  Transformations like this are a sight to behold, especially knowing how much struggle it takes to get there.

So, religion -- is it good overall, evil overall, or somewhere in between?  That’s a mystery we probably won’t solve here, but Nahyuta and his religious devotion provide an excellent example of both the good and the evil that can come from it.  As both a cliche religious bigot and someone who’s willing to make sacrifices for others, he illustrates the crucial fact that no one is perfect, and that religion doesn’t do much (if anything) to change this, but faith certainly does.

And finally, I have to agree with your analogy of Nahyuta as Apollo’s Edgeworth -- the two of them knew each other from a young age, grew up together, were separated by unfortunate circumstances, and followed very different paths, one being less noble than the other, but eventually undergoing a dramatic change in direction.  It makes me wonder what a spin-off game with Nahyuta as the protagonist would look like.  It might just be interesting...as long as we don’t have to chant that sutra into a microphone.

-The Co-Mod

[ppaction]

The Gun Violence Epidemic Is Getting Worse And We Need To Talk About It

Gun violence claims 100 lives every day in the United States. No other developed nation experiences gun violence of this magnitude.

More than five years ago, 20 children and six adults were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Since then, the United States has seen more than 2,000 mass shootings. From an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando to a church in Charleston, from a concert in Las Vegas to a high school in Parkland — gun violence is an epidemic. For every day that our elected officials fail to address gun violence, another community risks being upended by a massacre.

As a health care provider, Planned Parenthood is committed to the fundamental right of all people to live safe and healthy lives without the fear of violence.

Safety In Schools

Schools are meant to be safe — they are sites of growth and development for young people. But as of 2013, nearly 2,900 children and teens are shot and killed at school every year. In Kentucky, a 15-year-old boy opened fire at Marshall County High School, killing 15-year-olds Bailey Holt and Preston Cope. Only weeks later, another school was disrupted by unimaginable violence. On February 14, in Parkland, Fl., a 19-year-old man opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killing at least 17 people.

Parents should never have to fear that their children will lose their lives to senseless gun violence. That’s why young people and people of color are have mobilized the nation around gun violence prevention, and many organizations have been leading gun violence prevention research, education, and community organizing. We must also give credit to the young Black activists who have been fighting to end gun violence for years.

To elected officials who’ve neglected to use their legislative power to sensibly respond to these massacres, we ask: When is enough, enough? Policymakers should take notice and listen to their constituents.

Guns and Violence Against Women

Ending intimate partner violence, which disproportionately affects women, is a matter of basic rights and equality for families. One in threewomen have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner, and when women are 21 times more likely to be killed with guns in the U.S than any other developed nation, it’s imperative that we closely examine this link. Fifty-two women are shot to death by intimate partners in an average month, and women who are abused are five times more likely to be killed when their abuser owns a firearm.

Having a history of domestic violence is also a disturbing trend among perpetrators of recent mass shootings. We saw this in Sutherland Springs, where a man who had previously been court-martialed and convicted of domestic violence was able to kill 26 people with a gun. We also saw this in Orlando, where a man who had been physically abusive to his former wife used a gun to kill 49 people. We cannot let this dangerous pattern continue.

Gun Violence Against Marginalized Communities

The rate of gun violence has already reached unprecedented numbers in the United States, but it’s communities of color who bear the brunt of the epidemic. As Everytown for Gun Safety notes, too many of our lawmakers prioritize the gun lobby’s dangerous agenda — including policies like “Stand Your Ground” that lead to increased violence against people of color and make it more likely their deaths will be deemed justifiable in court. Black men are nearly 10 times as likely to be killed with a gun as White men, and Black women are three times as likely to be killed with a gun as White women. Additionally, our broken criminal justice system subjects people of color to systemic gun violence at the hands of law enforcement. Solutions to gun violence must take into account the effects of racism, law enforcement, and mass incarceration on communities of color.

People with disabilities face gun violence at the hands of law enforcement as well. One-third to half of all people killed by law enforcement have a disability, according to the Ruderman Family Foundation, a disability advocacy organization. No person should have to fear they or their loved ones may die at the hands of those entrusted to protect and serve them.

Gun violence also disproportionately affects transgender communities. In fact, 2017 was one of the deadliest years for transgender people — especially trans women of color. 28 trans people were killed by violent means, with more than half being victims of gun violence. Among those killed with guns were Mesha Caldwell, Chyna Gibson, and Chay Reed. The transphobia in our communities is the root of these tragedies, and we must address it alongside commonsense gun policies.

Break The Cycle, Fight Back

We cannot lose hope that real change is possible. From Black Lives Matter, which gained momentum after a man was acquitted for fatally shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, to the teens in Chicago who kicked off the Wear Orange campaign when their friend, 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, was fatally shot only one week after performing in former President Obama’s second inauguration — activists have been vocal about our right to feel safe in our homes and communities. It is long overdue but, every day, the call for serious action to address the gun violence causing deaths in every corner of our country grows louder.

That’s why we’re calling on Congress and elected officials across the country to combat this public health crisis. Here are several organizations that need your support:

March for Our Lives

Everytown for Gun Safety

Moms Demand Action

Live Free Campaign

Sandy Hook Promise

Giffords

Advance Peace

Violence Policy Center

Community Justice Reform Coalition

Newtown Action Alliance

Brady Campaign

Million Hoodies

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence

[im-gonna-die-anyways]

Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, victim blaming, the “Me Too” movement, and more.

RANT: (TW) Abuse, Rape, Assault, etc. If you were one of the assholes who publicly slammed Johnny Depp and claimed he was an abuser based solely on the bullshit lies and (obviously) faked abuse photos provided by Amber Heard (that held no merit in their divorce court by the way), you’re no longer allowed to come back and like him now that the truth has been revealed. Anyone who believes another without proof of such vile acts is a moron and doesn’t deserve their opinion to be heard. You made your bed and you can lay in it with your evil queen, Amber Heard.🙂My mother has always been a fan of Johnny Depp and in turn, she’s made me one as well. This man is a phenomenal actor and deserves all the praise he's received throughout his extremely successful career. To think that this poor man's entire livelihood, reputation and morality was tarnished in the case of public opinion, all while he was trying to cope privately with what Heard did to him, repulses me. All because a bunch of online ”feminists” believed this crude bitch (without evidence) and wanted to rally behind her to prove their twisted viewpoint that all men are ”evil”. So, their way of sticking-it-to-the-man, was to shame anyone who supported Depp and call for his removal and ultimate blacklist from Hollywood. Wow, you guys really crusaded for ”women’s rights” and ”girl power” by destroying an innocent VICTIM'S life for a few years. I hope you’re happy with the outcome of your keyboard war.So many people publicly tore Depp down and jumped on the hate bandwagon when no specific details on the incidents that took place between Heard and Depp, or their private relationship in general, were revealed to the general public. It’s innocent until proven guilty for a reason and throughout her entire slander-train, she provided no legitimate evidence that would bring any reasonable person to the conclusion that she was a victim of abuse at the hands of Depp. Female abusers are just as vile and manipulative as male abusers and perpetuating the stigma that men are not victims is extremely toxic and damaging to actual male victims. Stop believing all men are "evil” abusers just because a woman with no proof claimed they were. Just because you have a vagina, doesn't make you a ”victim” of men by default and warrants you no pass when it comes to providing proof to back up your claims. One of the biggest issues in these types of situations is that reputation destroying masked as abuse outings are not a particularly rare occurrence and they're even more common nowadays thanks to the popularity of the "Me Too" movement. Despite the movement being a great thing for men and women of abuse in many ways, all good things have a down side, and one of those downsides is the idea it's helped popularized: you must believe a victim the moment they make a claim or else you don't support the victim. The whole concept of believing the victim without proof (or before proof is provided) is toxic and possibly life-ruining, especially in cases with normal men or women. These people usually don't have fans or supporters, outside of their immediate family or friends, who will defend their character to the general public and they must certainly don't have a large platform to ultimately disprove the claims like Depp does. They get accused by one of these abusers posing as a victim (like Heard in this case) and these abusers attempt to seek control and enact their own twisted revenge on the victim through public slander and emotional manipulation. Now, this person (who is in most cases already a victim) has to go through the public shaming and reputation destruction caused by the popularization of this mentality because no one wants to be the person that didn't believe the victim if the claims turn out legitimate. But, that's the reality in a lot of these cases nowadays. If you don't believe the ”victim” at the very beginning, you're a bad person. How dare anyone think reasonably when judging a situation that could possibly ruin someone's life? How dare anyone expect proof to be provided when a substantial, life-ruining claim is being thrown-about? You must hate victims and have no sympathy if you expect logic and reasoning to be used when coming to a conclusion on such a serious situation! You can have sympathy and remorse for another if they share something tragic that happened to them while still being skeptical and requiring evidence when stating your opinion publicly. Failing to do so can tarnish the accused's reputation before they’re even given a chance to defend themselves and that’s exactly what happened to Depp in this particular event when the entire time, HE ACTUALLY WAS THE REAL VICTIM OF ABUSE THE ENTIRE TIME. There’s due process in the judicial system in this great nation for a reason, and the general public's opinion should scrutinize such claims before immediately churning someone as “guilty”as well. You wouldn't want to be publicly labeled as a thief by someone who accused you of stealing a candy bar from Walmart without any proof, so why is being labeled an abuser or a rapist any different considering the stigma for one is much worse?Not all women are victims. Not all men are abusers. Every situation is different and when judging a topic as serious as the one-at-hand, logic above emotion needs to always be applied, and logical thinking requires evidence to draw conclusions from. All humans are capable of despicable acts no matter their gender and it’s about damn time that it start being portrayed that way. Men are victims too, not just women. Equality goes both ways.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 18, 2020 (Sunday)

Heather Cox Richardson

Today reinforced some of the developing storylines of the 2020 election.

Last night, at a rally in Michigan, Trump once again attacked Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for locking down her state in the early days of the pandemic. When the crowd started to chant “Lock her up!” Trump responded: “Lock them all up!” Just ten days ago, the FBI arrested eight men plotting to kidnap Whitmer and put her on trial for “treason.” Whitmer called Trump out for “inspiring and incentivizing and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism.” She told NBC, “It is wrong. It’s got to end. It is dangerous, not just for me and my family, but for public servants everywhere who are doing their jobs and trying to protect their fellow Americans. People of goodwill on both sides of the aisle need to step up and call this out and bring the heat down.”

Lara Trump, who is married to Eric Trump and is a senior advisor to the Trump campaign, disagreed. She told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “Well, look, he wasn’t doing anything, I don’t think, to provoke people to threaten this woman at all…. He was having fun at a Trump rally.” The Trump campaign then insisted that a small “8645” emblem on a table beside Whitmer during her television interview was “encouraging assassination attempts” against Trump. (To “86” something is slang for getting rid of it.) While observers have noted Trump’s use of gaslighting—making someone believe something that is not true—another abusive pattern is “DARVO,” which stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.”

Today, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that political officials in the Trump administration have restricted his media appearances. He also explained that he now has federal protection because of threats to his life, and to his wife and children. “That’s sad,” he told Jonathan Lapook of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” “The very fact that a public health message to save lives triggers such venom and animosity to me that it results in real and credible threats to my life and my safety.”

The editorial board of the New York Times today ran a special section of the Sunday Review to explain to readers in thirteen essays why Trump “is unfit to lead the nation.” The essays cover his corruption, incompetent statesmanship, attacks on women and minorities, rejection of science, and so on. The editorial introducing the issue begins: “Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.” What follows is a blistering litany of the actions of the man who is “without any real rivals as the worst American president in modern history,” the editors say. He is conducting “an intolerable assault on the very foundations of the American experiment in government by the people.” The editorial concludes: “Mr. Trump is a man of no integrity. He has repeatedly violated his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States…. Now, in this moment of peril, it falls to the American people — even those who would prefer a Republican president — to preserve, protect and defend the United States by voting.”

More Republicans who have appeared to move in lockstep with the president are distancing themselves from him. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) needs independents to swing his way in a tight race with Democrat MJ Hegar, a retired Air Force combat pilot. On Friday, Cornyn told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board that his relationship with Trump was “maybe like a lot of women who get married and think they’re going to change their spouse, and that doesn’t usually work out very well.” Cornyn claims to have stood up to Trump, but privately.

In all this there is nothing really new.

But there is a story that might have new information in it.

Last Wednesday morning, October 14, the tabloid New York Post ran a complicated and unbelievable story about Hunter Biden dropping off three laptops at a repair store and never going back for them, the FBI subpoenaing hard drives, and the repair shop owner making copies before turning them over and then giving the copies to Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who gave them to the New York Post. Allegedly, the material on the laptops was incriminating.

The story was pretty transparently bogus from the start, especially since Giuliani has been hanging around with Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who, according to the Treasury Department, is a longtime Russian agent. According to the Treasury, Derkach has been working to promote “false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 election.” Giuliani was an eager listener.

Today, Katie Robertson at the New York Times reported that the New York Post article was so suspect that its lead author refused to put his name on it. The two main sources for the story were Stephen Bannon, Trump’s former advisor who is under federal indictment for fraud, and Giuliani. Giuliani said he took the story to the Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.” One woman whose name finally appeared on the story is a former associate producer for Sean Hannity’s show and has been at the newspaper only since April. The other did not work on the story and only discovered her name was on it after it was published. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have all said they could not verify the story.

The startling new “revelations” about Hunter Biden mirror classic disinformation campaigns in Russia, and look a great deal like the last-minute “revelations” about Hillary Clinton’s emails “discovered” on a laptop in Fall 2016, all of which later came to nothing. Former CIA officer Evan McMullin tweeted: “For weeks, there’s been awareness in intel circles of Russian plans to return (with Trump) to their bogus Biden-Burisma narrative and, as I’ve warned, their plan to expand that to include bonkers pedophilia and human trafficking allegations against the Bidens. Don’t fall for it!”

And yet, certain Republican lawmakers are running with the story. Republican Representative Lee Zeldin of New York tweeted that “Joe Needs to answer some questions ASAP about this dirty $ setup.” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) went onto the Fox News Channel to suggest that the computer at the center of this story, allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden, had child pornography on it. This prompted intelligence specialist Malcolm Nance to tweet: “Whoa. The Republicans tried to tie Hunter Biden to child pornography. This is a 100% FSB [Russian Intelligence Agency] tactic. The FSB ALWAYS claims/plants Child porn on their opponents.”

For at least a year now, intelligence officers have warned us that Russia is interfering in this election, trying to swing it to Trump. Despite the fact that Trump’s polling numbers are abysmal, our Electoral College system means that the swing of relatively few voters in key states could enable him to eke out a victory, just as he did in 2016. It is worth remembering that Trump’s plan in 2020 has never been to win a majority; it has been to win by gaming the system. It seems to me also worth remembering that Trump has consistently refused either to criticize Russia or to acknowledge that Putin’s agents are working to help him get reelected.

While many Trump campaign officials are already trying to blame each other for their candidate’s apparent weakness, Trump and his loyalists remain adamant that he is going to win. They are allegedly taking names of those whom he considers insufficiently supportive. He is mad at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has rejected the president’s plans for a coronavirus relief bill and who publicly criticized the White House approach to the pandemic. He has gone after Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) for her coolness toward Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, and Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) for his condemnation of the president in a phone call with constituents. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), who has made his dislike for Trump clear in recent statements, is also on the outs.

Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, says, “President Trump won in 2016 without the vocal support of the political insider crowd, and he’s going to do it again. The President enjoys the support of over 90 percent of Republicans….”

It is certainly possible that the Trump campaign is putting a brave face on the terrible polls, but the ham-handed attempt to dump disinformation about the Bidens is an excellent reminder that foreign operatives have been trying to influence our elections since 2016, and they have not gone away.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

[creepingsharia]

Texas: Brother pleads guilty to murder in double ‘honor killing’ after sister left Islam for Christianity

A year after a Jordanian man was sentenced to death in Houston for two grisly “honor killings” of his daughter’s close friend and husband, the man’s son pleaded guilty Thursday to pulling the trigger in one of the 2012 slayings.

The murder was one of two orchestrated by Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, who hatched a plot to kill his daughter and four others after she left the family’s rural Montgomery County compound and converted from Islam to Christianity.

Prosecutors had alleged Nasim Irsan fired the shot — at the urging of Ali Irsan and his wife — that killed his sister’s friend, 30-year-old Iranian activist Gelareh Bagherzadeh, in a Galleria-area driveway.

The younger Irsan, now 25, agreed to a plea deal Thursday morning at Harris County District Court. In exchange for pleading guilty to murder, prosecutors dropped the higher charge of capital murder. That could have carried a sentence of life in prison if he was convicted in a trial that would have begun Oct. 4.

Instead, Irsan was sentenced to 40 years in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years. He has already served more than four years, which counts toward his new sentence.

Appearing in an orange jumpsuit with a beard and his hair tied in a bun, Irsan answered procedural questions and declined to say anything at the end of the hearing.

“I think you always in these types of situations want the most punishment a person can receive for doing something this horrible,” said special prosecutor Jon Stephenson. “But looking at the facts and the evidence and everything, we all got together and this is what we came up with that’s appropriate.”

He said the case against Nasim was made more difficult in part because Ali Irsan’s wife, Shmou Ali Alrawabdeh, wouldn’t testify. Her own murder charge was dropped in exchange for testifying against her husband last year.

Nasim Irsan’s attorneys said the deal was a fair resolution for everyone involved. They said he suffered from mental illness and was the victim of his father’s “master” manipulation.

“He had a rough upbringing just at the hands of his father, who was domineering, overbearing, abusive and they didn’t get to have their own opinion or make their own decisions,” said Lisa Andrews. “A lifetime of being raised that way certainly has its stresses, pressures, and … He was susceptible to those kinds of things.”

Ali Irsan, 61, is on death row after a jury convicted him last year of coordinating the murders. The high-profile trial garnered international attention and portrayed the older Irsan as a brutal patriarch who stalked his daughter, Nesreen, after she left and enlisted family members like Nasim to help. Others in the family testified that Ali raped, beat and abused them regularly.

Another daughter said he killed her husband in 1999, which Irsan had claimed was self-defense.

Outside the courtroom Thursday, another brother in the family — Nile Irsan — launched a long-shot bid for Congress in the 29th District, in part to help fix what he called a broken criminal justice system.

Nile, a 23-year-old car salesman and University of Houston-Downtown student, had testified in defense of his father at his trial last year and maintains that he is innocent.

The son has also faced charges himself. After his father was incarcerated, Nile was arrested for trying to bring him Duragesic, a fentanyl patch used to treat pain, without a prescription, according to court records. He pleaded guilty to a felony charge of bringing a prohibitive substance to a correctional facility and was given four years probation.

During his court testimony last year, prosecutors pressed Nile Irsan for comments they said they heard on a recorded jail conversation he had with his father.

“I’m going to burn the whole country down if I have to,” he purportedly told his father in that call.

“Please do,” his father replied.

Nile Irsan said then and reiterated Thursday that he doesn’t remember making the comment.

“That was five years ago. It was an emotional situation, turbulent situation. If I made it, it was a mistake and it shouldn’t have been said and I do step back from that statement.”

Nile Irsan, who quoted President Donald Trump in promising to fight to “drain the swamp,” said he initially filed to run as a Republican but will amend his papers to run as a Democrat. He lives in Montgomery County, outside the district.

The double murders occurred more than 11 months apart in 2012.

In January, Nasim Irsan shot Bagherzadeh in the head after he, Ali and Alrawabdeh followed her to her family’s townhome, according to court testimony in the father’s trial.

Nesreen told investigators then that she believed her father was responsible, but there wasn’t enough evidence and he was released after questioning.

Eleven months later, the father sneaked into the northwest Harris County home of Nesreen and her newlywed, 28-year-old Coty Beavers, while they were out. The father was expecting Beavers and his daughter to return home together and planned to kill them both, according to court testimony.

When Beavers returned alone, the father shot him at least five times with .22-caliber revolver.

One other family member is still facing charges in the case. Nadia, another daughter of Ali, was charged with stalking.

Prosecutors said Thursday they’re still looking at their options for that case.

Shortly after her father’s conviction, Nesreen said that she will likely never stop looking over her shoulder or carrying a gun because of the killings.

[trevor-brown-artist]

I Lost a Nephew During the Pandemic but He’s Still Alive

When the abused becomes the abuser the circle is complete, and the trauma has won, the cycle will continue.

Wow it was just about two decades ago when I first met my nephew. He wasn’t my nephew yet he was one of the twins of my former brothers very beautiful and intelligent girlfriend and soon to be fiancé. They had invited me up to their single bedroom home in Beacon, I think for thanksgiving. Quick aside this was before I had learned about the cult-like history in his girlfriends past where they didn’t celebrate things like holidays. 

I remember his best friend was named Oscar this maybe Latino dude a bit quirky but he had passed my muster in not being a total deadbeat. I still feel strongly that the people you surround yourself with reflect your own character. And my other former sibling surrounded himself with clear losers.

Kelly’s twins were paternal not identical and it was so curious to me that one was dark-skinned and one was light-skinned this physical duality also mirrored their significantly different personalities even so young they were their own people. I thought naturally I’d have an infinity for Marcus the darker twin because I had experienced the colorism that we don’t like to talk about in Black families and was of course rooting for team dark-skin! 

Justice’s shy temperament and more sensitive nature mirrored my own behavior at his single digit age. Both of the boys were adorable as you tend to be at that age and I enjoyed rough housing with them in my siblings very sparse living room.

As I think of this time, it reminds me there was a time before my anxiety about eating in public and I’m realizing that some of my anxieties may have been caused by the traumas and injustices I faced by the hands of the ones who I thought should be taking care of my interest. Silly me.

We shared a meal and I ate but didn’t stuff myself always being conscious about watching my weight. And afterwards we played my Justice League Monopoly a great after dinner game for friends and family. They day I met my nephew was a happy day and a very fond memory before everything went to shit.

Now this is the moment I should probably recount those shitty things but you know I don’t feel like rehashing the past and the poor decisions others made that effected me so negatively. So let’s skip ahead twelve years. Marcus has become a young minister at the Kingdom Hall and besides being an amazing student is a beacon of heteromantic role models, playing sports and ministering with vigor as he goes out on missions, handing out tracts and surpassing quotas.

Justice has become more and more aloof had stopped going to the Hall and his once pristine grades had begun to dip and I had begun to think in our brief contact that he may be queer so it wasn’t a surprise when his uncle called me and told me that his parents had put him out the house right on his eighteenth birthday. Damn!

The marriage was started amidst homo-anatagonistic roots and had produced a queer son who was an anathema to the doctrines and dogma of the families faith. The same faith that made me a pariah at the nuptials had claimed another victim. And even though my other former brother set up a call with me and my allegedly queer nephew there was no foundation for the boy to trust me or even know me. As I had predicted so many long years ago the start of their marriage dictated by his grandmother had ended up in me being frozen out of my siblings life and when the coupling produced a child, I had met him less than a handful of times. 

Here I wanted to assist my nephew but his parents had succeeded in him not getting to know me, and my assistance fell on very deaf ears and a young man who was very isolated felt even more isolated and I was horrified because there wasn’t anything more I could do. I can’t make a bond where there isn’t one, no matter how much I wanted that.

Someone had offered me a place to stay an offer that I later took them up on, so I wanted to pay it forward and I offered my nephew the same. When we spoke about this years later he said he had no recollection of this offer and I told him I wasn’t surprised he had just been rejected by his entire family and even though I was offering a lifeline he didn’t really know me from Adam and his trust in family had been so obliterated, that my earnest offer was like no offer at all because it held no value in his head. Because the seed was set that “family” equals pain. And who in their right mind would deliberately walk towards pain?

I had lost before I began but the urge for me to be a better uncle than my aunts and uncles always made me want to strive to attempt to be there for nieces and nephews even though I had continually been ousted, because I can only see children at the pleasure of their parents. 

Uncles and Aunts hold no legal sway with our court system unless they have legal custody of one of their siblings children. I learned this the hard way when I lost visitation rights with my youngest former siblings children and took the grandmother to court with the kids great grandmother to attempt to get the rights to see the kids. I wouldn’t see those kids again for ten years and then only briefly.

I did try to keep in touch with Justice the uncle he didn’t know very well, and I know he secretly resented for being just like him. But one more card marked “Return to Sender”, had all but wiped out my will to continually chase after kids that clearly didn’t want this uncle in their lives, albeit that decision was being made for them. 

His number was disconnected and his social media presence was seemingly non-existent. I probably didn’t do a durable search being so disheartened about trying to connect with a family that didn’t seem to want me and I apologize for my human frailty in this moment. But it’s not because I didn’t want to find him, I had lost the hope that I ever would.

I think his cousin had mentioned his brother and I had a photo of my light-skinned twinned nephew at what looked like some university, in a cap and gown and I wept that it seemed like he had made it through even though he was discarded like yesterday’s trash. I contacted his twin and asked about contact information and was told he could only be found on SnapChat I set up an account just to get in touch with him called UncleTrevor674. 

I wanted to reconnect with him let him know I had been looking for him without success. And albeit his current internet presence was more robust I was missing the keywords Beacon and Florida. I didn’t know he had went down south for a few years and curiously enough had returned to Beacon. I saw now that adding these words did indeed make him easier to find but my own pain and hurt didn’t allow me the clarity to think of these things. I was excited to reconnect with him and attempt to have the relationship with him that I had been denied for so long.

But this was seemingly doomed because by my very nature of being his uncle I was the enemy, albeit when checking the receipts I had never done anything untoward to him. I was grouped in with all the people who had done wrong by him and even though I had tried repeatedly to be present and show an interest in his life, his friends, his interest, the damage had already been done. And my open hand was met with hostility and displaced anger, a pattern I knew all too well from my interactions with my former siblings who seemed to blame me for the fact that we were separated as children here again I was the target of the wrath of a young man whom I only wanted to connect with and support as best I could, and try to be the uncle to him that I never had.

His past traumas were much louder than the love and support that I offered and to protect myself I had to do the most painful thing I had to ever do with a niece or nephew I had to withdraw from the relationship and hope that time would heal the wounds that I didn’t cause, and that maybe someday I would get back the nephew I had actually lost decades ago but just never knew it.

[trashy-drarry]

#FreeKesha

I want to take a moment to talk about Kesha, Dr. Luke, and the situation between the two. I know this isn’t Drarry, so it’s not exactly what any of my followers are here to see exactly, but I believe this to be important. 

In October of 2014, Kesha sued her producer Dr. Luke - real name Lukasz Sebastian Gottwald - on the grounds of sexual, emotional, physical, verbal, and gendered abuse, specifically rape and forcing her into an eating disorder. The goal of the lawsuit was to no longer be forced to be physically around Dr. Luke or have him constantly looming over her and her work. She wants no association with him.

In retaliation to the lawsuit, Dr. Luke filed a counter-lawsuit on the grounds of defamation in attempts to break their contract, saying that she does not want a continuation of creative differences.

On the 11th of October, 2019, it was made public that she was denied to have her recording contract with Dr. Luke broken by the courts and that she was set to face trial next year. 

The DailyMail published an article that released this information with a statement directly from Dr. Luke’s lawyer, “Kesha and her representatives repeated her false accusation that Gottwald had purportedly drugged and raped her in countless public forums,” as well as that Kesha “spread a knowingly false and wholly defamatory accusation that Gottwald had purportedly raped another female recording artist.” On top of that, the article came with these quotes of previous statements by Dr. Luke within deposition(s):

As you can see, Dr. Luke has said that Kesha has not contacted any doctors or medical providers about the alleged forms of abuse she suffered prior to when she filed the lawsuit in 2014. He also directly states that Kesha is a liar, with some of his examples within the article being jokes that she had made, such as her saying Mick Jagger is her long-lost father.

With that, Dr. Lukes lawyer makes a statement about the supposed defamation Kesha is trying to cause, using the court documents of a conversation between Kesha and Lady Gaga about Katy Perry and rumors of sexual abuse as an example. 

However, I would like to touch upon a few things:

Dr. Luke stated that there would be no records of Kesha discussing the abuse she suffered to medical providers or doctors, yet there is--court documents (that Luke had fought to be made public) showed that Kesha discussed the abuse to her therapist in 2011 and 2012, three years before she sued him.

Usually, these would mean essentially nothing; someone thinking something isn’t the same as actually knowing it. It could’ve been possible that Luke said there would be no records because he genuinely believed it. However, he knew of these documents. He was the one fighting against Kesha to have these been made public. Dr. Luke had deliberately lied within the court of law, to lawyers, in order to push a narrative that Kesha was a liar. He knew of these therapy records and deliberately tried to manipulate the situation.

Not only were there discussions between Kesha and her therapist, but phone records were submitted to the court showcasing that Kesha had contacted multiple people as well as medical providers directly after the supposed assault.

With the phone records, there was also testimony by a handful of people saying Kesha called them after the alleged assault, distraught and confused, or that her mother had called her own friends, upset by what she just heard.

These are directly conflicting with Dr. Luke's statements of there being no history to back up Kesha's claims of contacting multiple people to report her abuse, something he seemed to be sure of. With that though, there’s still more:

Dr. Luke and his lawyer claimed that Kesha was the one to spread the rumor of Dr. Luke sexually assaulting Katy Perry in attempts for her to slander him and create more peer pressure to have Sony drop Luke and have the court break the recording/producing contract between Kesha and Luke.

Yet Dr. Luke had leaked the court transcript of the private conversation between Kesha and Gaga, something Kesha had expressed both after the fact and even within the transcript itself that it should stay private.

Luke and his lawyer are deliberately trying to paint Kesha as an awful person that was spreading an incredibly malicious rumor that Luke (and Katy) have said was not true. However, as you can see within the screenshots, the conversation between Kesha and Gaga was private and Kesha had objected to making the conversation public (as it was not her place to do so). It also shows that neither Gaga nor Kesha was the one to actually create the rumor either.

These texts were released on a very specific day, though--on the day these were released, just before the texts came out, an artist called ‘Becky G’ sued what is called ‘Core Water,’ claiming Dr. Luke forced her into an unwanted deal and was threatened that he would ruin her career.

With the counter-lawsuit still going on and being focused on something that wasn’t even Keshas doing but rather Dr. Lukes, as well as additional lawsuits against her and her family he has filed, it’s clear that he’s trying to drain her of her income due to speaking out--punish the victim, that’s a pattern he seems to have.

Firing lawsuit after lawsuit at someone in attempts to drain them of the money they have is a common tactic he has done whenever someone has spoken out against him reusing songs or stealing someone else's, or to anyone who details bad experiences with him.

Throughout the whole ordeal, Dr. Luke has stood by his defense of calling his own innocence, yet his lawyers have used common victim-blaming tactics that try to shift the blame (of a rape Luke swears never happened) onto the victim.

There has also been multiple testimonies detailing what they know about Kesha, what they know about Luke, and their professional relationship with Luke.

Lady Gaga testified that she had found Kesha in only her underwear in the backroom of Dr. Lukes studio and that she knew Kesha was going through trauma. 

Kelly Clarkson within a deposition that Luke was a habitual liar who rarely had women who wanted to work with him. She described her experience with him as “unpleasant.”

Sharon Osbourne has gone on to describe Dr. Luke as a “bully.” 

Monica Cornia, Keshas former manager, had said that while recording her second album, ‘Warrior,’ she would always want her around as she was scared of being alone with Luke.

P!nk has gone on record saying “he’s not a good person” in reference to Dr. Luke; allegedly she almost jumped him due to being so furious at learning that he recycled a previous song he worked on for the artists The Veronicas and used it for her. Since then, she’s refused to work with him.

Charli XCX has been outspoken even before the Kesha trial on her disliking towards him; it’s alleged that he body-shamed her, much similar to what he did to Kesha.

Avril Lavigne and P!nk and pink have both sworn within court that the reason they no longer collaborate with him on music is solely based on their own bad experiences with him.

Bebe Rexha came forward about a “terrifying” experience at Dr. Lukes house which left her in a bad state of anxiety, fearing she may be sexually assaulted. 

The American court system has failed, holding an assaulter in safety and protection while letting and encouraging that man to ruin the reputation and livelihood of his victim and possibly more. I have nothing more to say other than #FreeKesha and I hope she one day, hopefully in the not-so-distant future, gets the justice she deserves.

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 12: Half-Hanged (Transcript) - 7th August 2015

tw: violence, death by fire, medical details, ableism, child abuse, torture, unsanitary procedures

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Simeon Smith was one of the early settlers of New Hampshire in 1772. He built a farm there, on the border between Wentworth and Warren, that held the local office. By trade, he was a tailor, but like a lot of men of that decade, he fought with the continental army. It’s easy to look back at Simeon Smith as the typical pioneer from the late 1700s – he was patriotic, and a stereotypical New Englander, sure, but few people in town liked him. Why, you might ask? Because Simeon Smith, according to the local stories, was a sorcerer. It was said that Simeon would saddle and bridle a random neighbour, and then ride them all over the countryside, just to spite them. When women were having trouble churning butter, and it simply wouldn’t work, it was because, they said, Simeon Smith was in the churn. If children in town behaved badly, it was because he had bewitched them. He could become as small as a gnat and move through the keyholes of your locked doors; he could become larger than a giant and would stomp through the forest at night – or so they said. Stories like these were common in early America. They were a mixture of fact and fiction, of historical truths and hysterical superstition. In an effort to explain the unexplainable, sometimes neighbours and prominent figures were thrown under the proverbial bus. The era between the mid-15th and late 16th centuries was precarious for many people. This wasn’t the age of Harry Potter – witchcraft wasn’t something that was spoken of lightly, or with a sense of wonder and excitement. It caused fear. It ruined lives. It made good people do bad things – all in the name of superstition. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

Superstition was common in the late 1600s. If something odd or unexplainable happened, the automatic response from most people was to blame the supernatural. But most scholars agree that these beliefs were merely excuses to help people deal with neighbours and family members that they didn’t care for. If you didn’t like somebody, it was common to accuse them of witchcraft. In the most famous historical example of this, the witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, we can see a clear pattern in the events. Many of those accused of being witches were wealthy and held religious beliefs which were different from their accusers. Once a suspect was convicted, their estate would be confiscated by the court, and in a community that was known for property disputes, grazing rights and religious arguments, that became a recipe for disaster. What happened in Salem, happened elsewhere, all around New England, just on a smaller scale. Neighbours accused neighbours constantly, stories were told, lives were ruined. It was the way of things, I suppose – not ideal, but not uncommon either. In one story from Exeter, Rhode Island, a farmer was said to have been carting his lumber to market, when a cat ran across the road. For some unknown reason, the farmer immediately jumped to the conclusion that the cat was actually a neighbour of his, a woman who he insisted was a witch. She had transformed herself into a cat in order to meddle in his business. Now, this farmer was fast on his feet. Not only did he see the cat running, and then make the connection to his witchy neighbour, but he managed to pull out his gun. He was said to have fired a silver bullet at the cat, something well-known at the time to be effective against witches, and struck his target. At that very moment, according to the story, the suspected witch fell in her own home, breaking her hip. In the town of Salem, New Hampshire, a man decided that his cow looked strangely different from how he remembered, and he made the most logical conclusion he was capable of: his neighbour was a sorcerer, and the man had bewitched his cow. Folklore dictated the solution. He cut off the cow’s ears and tail and then burned them. Soon after, the farmer’s neighbour was found dead, victim of a house fire. In West Newbury, Vermont, a farmer had settled in for the evening beside his fireplace. Perhaps he was enjoying something alcoholic and refreshing, or maybe he was trying to read a book. While he was there, he witnessed what he called “spectral shapes” that danced and moved in the flames. This farmer immediately thought of one particular woman in town, a woman known to be a witch, and he took some tallow and beeswax, and sculpted a careful likeness of her. Then, taking a branch from a thorn bush, he pierced this little figurine before tossing it into the fire. At the same time, across town, the suspected witch apparently tripped on her own stairs and broke her neck. Back in the town of Wentworth, our friend Simeon Smith received his own fair share of retribution. It was said that a local boy named Caleb Merrill was struck deaf by the sorcerer. After that, he began acting strange, running up the sides of the house like a squirrel and writhing in agony. After some trial and error, Caleb’s parents put the perfect combination of ingredients into a “witch bottle”, a sort of homemade talisman designed to combat sorcery. They buried the bottle beneath their hearth, and soon after, the town was burying Simeon Smith. These stories of neighbourhood witches and ways in which the good citizens of the towns defeated them were common all across New England. They border on the cruel, and cast these people, often simply the poor or non-religious among them, in a horrible light. For many people, suspicion was a convenient excuse to hate your neighbour and wish them ill. In no other place was that attitude more pronounced, more dominant, and more extreme, than a town of Hadley, Massachusetts. In Salem, the townspeople worked within the legal system. In Hadley, however, the people took matters into their own hands, and the results were horrifying.

When Philip Smith was dying in 1684, the town went looking for answers. It was hard to blame them – Smith was a model citizen and leader in the community. He had been a deacon of the church, a member of the general court, county court justice, and a town selectman. He was respected, trusted, and maybe even well-loved. The sole suspect in the crime was an old woman named Mary Webster. She and her husband were poor, and lived in a tiny house in the middle of some of the pasture land outside of town. Sometimes, when things got tough, they even needed assistance from the town – colonial era welfare, so to speak. It was easy to blame Mary Webster. She and Smith had not been on the best of terms, although few people in town were on good terms with her. She was cranky, you see – accounts of the events report the almost sarcastic comment that her already-poor temper had not been helped by poverty. She was a sour and spiteful woman, and she had a tendency to shoot her mouth off, a lot. Her fierce temper and stinging tongue had earned her a reputation as the town witch. Apparently, she wasn’t much of a church-goer, and that did little to help her case. But the clincher was that she had just gotten back from Boston, one year before. Why? Well, she’d been on trial there for witchcraft. She’d been taken to Boston in chains, some time in late April of 1683. Mary, an old woman with a foul mouth, had been accused of having congress with the devil, of bearing his children and suckling them. These children looked like black cats, they said. She had strange markings on her body, they said. It was conclusive and obvious, they said. There were other stories of Mary Webster. It was said that when teams of cattle were driven towards her property, they would panic and bolt in the opposite direction. They claimed that when this happened, the men would approach the house and threatened to whip her, and only then would she let the animals pass. Once, a load of hay toppled over near her home. The driver of the wagon went to Mary’s house, literally went inside, and was about to give her a piece of his mind when the cart magically righted itself – or, so they say. Another story tells how she entered the home of some local parents, and when she set eyes on the infant in the cradle, the baby levitated out and touched the ceiling, not once, but three times. There is even a story about some people who were inside one evening, boiling water and getting ready for dinner. All of a sudden, a live chicken came down the chimney and landed in the pot, only to escape from the house moments later. The next day, it was discovered that Mary herself had been scalded that night, though she wasn’t telling people how it happened. And so, Mary was transported 100 miles to Boston, along with the sheaf of those eyewitness accounts that had been written by her accusers, and brought before a judge and jury. The jury listened. They read those papers, and they looked everything over, and did their best as impartial, rational individuals. They discussed it amongst themselves, and when they returned to the court, they had a verdict. Mary Webster was not guilty. Maybe this pissed off her neighbours. Maybe they thought they were finally done with her when she had been taken away. I can almost imagine their surprise when she rode back into town, smile on her face and a fire in her belly. She had beaten the odds. But when Philip Smith, her old adversary in Hadley, took sick just a few months after her return, that newly won freedom looked like it might be in jeopardy.

The winter after Mary’s return from Boston, Philip Smith began to look ill. The people of Hadley didn’t know what the cause was at first; what they did know was that Smith was in a bad way. He had frequent seizures and seemed delirious most of the time. The people caring for him - his family, friends and nurses – were all deeply concerned. Whatever it was that he was suffering from, it didn’t appear to be normal. In fact, it appeared to be the work of the devil. What else could possibly cause a man to suffer fits, and scream and babble for hours in an unknown language? When Smith could be understood, he cried out that someone was pricking his arm with nails, hundreds of them, over and over, painfully. His nurses looked for the nails, but they never found anything that could have been causing the pain. He claimed a woman was in the room with him. Some of the young men in town had a theory, though. They had been talking about it for a while, and they decided they needed to give it a test. You see, they thought that Mary Webster was behind the man’s illness. In their minds, there was only one way to find out. One of the men stayed with Smith while the other’s went to Mary’s home. Three or four times, they knocked on her door and bothered her, thinking that if she was indeed casting a spell over Smith, this would break her concentration. When they returned, the man who had been tasked with watching over Smith claimed that the sick man was at ease three or four times while they were gone. There were other things they noticed: the small pots of medicines that had been laid out for Smith were mysteriously empty, as if someone were stealing their contents; they frequently heard scratching beneath the man’s bed; some of the men claimed to have seen fire on the bed, that when they began to talk about it, it would vanish. The details of the events surrounding Philip Smith’s illness are rife with superstition and fear. These young men even claimed that something as large as a cat would stir under the covers near the sick man, but whenever they tried to capture it, it would slip away. Other’s said that the bed would shake enough to make their teeth rattle. All of this was just too much for them. Convinced that they knew who was causing Smith’s illness, the group of young men returned to the home of Mary Webster. This time, though, they had more than just disturbing her peace on their mind. They dragged Mary from her home and out into the snow and cold of the New England winter. They beat her, they spat on her, they cursed her in whispers and in shouts, and then they carried her to a nearby tree. One of the men slung a rope through the branches, while another fashioned a noose, and there, in a snow-covered field outside of her own home, Mary Webster was hanged. When she stopped moving, the men cut her down, they took her body and rolled it in the snow, burying her. And then, they left. They walked back into town, back to the home of Philip Smith, back to the others who knew what they had done, and they waited. They waited for Smith to get better, for the curse to lift and for their lives to return to normal. They waited for safety, for their superstitions and fears to fade away now that Mary was gone. But, oh, how wrong they were.

The world of the 17th century was tensive and harsh, especially for the people trying to carve out an existence in colonial New England. The Protestant Reformation of the century before had left most Europeans with the belief that bad things happen because of the devil. Everything that went wrong, and I mean everything, was caused by something supernatural. This was a time when misfortune, loss, and even a simple illness would be blamed on the work of witches and sorcerers. Because of this, everyone in town was on the look-out. If something went wrong, there was always someone to blame - it seems there was a devil in every community. History is full of people who took things too far. The events that took place in Hadley in the winter of 1685 are just one of the countless examples of what superstitious people are capable of when their fear gets the better of them. Sadly though, it didn’t work. When friends arrived the next day to look in on Philip Smith, he was dead. What they found, though, gave their suspicions new life. It was said that his body was still warm, despite the winter cold, that his face was black and blue, and fresh blood ran down his cheeks. His chest was swollen, and his back was covered in bruises and holes from something like an awl or nails. Now they had more questions than answers. Who beat the man overnight, who kept his body warm against the creeping chill of winter, and who put those holes in the flesh of his back while he lay dying in bed? I imagine the people who visited him that morning were disappointed. He was respected by most of the town - many people there most likely depended on him for something. They’d done so much to take care of him, even gone as far as to murder another person, and yet it hadn’t worked. Philip Smith was dead, and all they had left were questions. Something else would soon disappoint them, though. You see, although Philip Smith had died, Mary Webster hadn’t. Even though she had been beaten and hung from a tree, before being buried in the snow and left overnight, Mary had somehow survived. In fact, she went on to live 11 more years before passing away in her 70s. And it turns out that Mary was also an ancestor of the well-known novelist Margaret Atwood. In 1995, Atwood published a poem entitled “Half-Hanged Mary”. It was written in sections, each one covering an hour of her torture, beginning with the hanging and ending with her return from the dead. The poem, written from Mary’s point of view, ends with a line that makes a person wonder. “Before, I was not a witch, but now I am one”.

This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke. Learn more about me and this show over at lorepodcast.com, and be sure to follow along on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr, @lorepodcast. This episode of Lore was made possible by you, the most creative listeners I have ever met. [Insert sponsor break]. And finally, a reminder. These sponsors, they pay the bills so I can write and produce Lore fulltime, but the only way they’ll do that in the future is if you wonderful and amazing listeners actually check them out, so please, visit the sponsor websites and take advantage of their generous offers. Let them know you’re listening, and they’ll keep the lights on here in the studio. Links and information on how to do all of that are on each episode page over at lorepodcast.com/episodes. Thanks for listening.

Notes

Many of the stories in this episode came from the book Entertaining Satan by J. P. Demos, which has no public access.

[aridara]

So. I've found yet another "anti-feminist masterpost". Which is basically a Gish Gallop full of bullshit, most of which I'm pretty sure was taken straight from realsexism.com, which I've already dismantled in its entirety (shameless self-linking to part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9). So I won't bother bringing sources for a lot of stuff, because in practice I already did.

WHAT AN ADORABLE LITTLE ANECDOTE.

now lets all snap back to reality here and look at FACTS.

let’s look at what real feminism has done in the real world.

Now, theres no question that feminists did some great things for womens rights. but they’ve also done a whole lot of bad for both genders as well, especially in recent years.

This is exactly what anti-feminists said of second-wave feminists. As well as of first-wave. As well as pre-feminists. As well as women in general.

many of the first feminists where white supremacists.

So were many of the first anti-feminists. Not to mention that many feminists were actively against the racism, and sparked countless discussion and activisms against it.

feminist have campaigned and fought against equality for both genders on many occasions

The link is dead, but I suspect that many of the arguments contained in that lost post will be repeated here.

many feminist leaders were borderline genercidal.

Another dead link, so I'm not sure what OP is talking about. But given that they brought up Solanas immediately after, I'll try a shot in the dark and say that it was a list of "hateful feminist quotes".

Fun fact: I've already debunked an old one.

In fact Valerie Solanas, who helped to shape modern patriarchy theory, and who’s writing is still taught today in womens studies classes, not only attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol, but also wrote a book called the S.C.U.M. Manifesto (or feminist Mein Kompf), which was about gendercide, and she is still hailed as a feminist hero to this day. this book is still used in womens studies classes despite the fact that it proposes reducing the male population to 10% and using them for breeding purposes.

SCUM was never founded - it stopped at its manifesto.

Feminists’ opinion of SCUM at the time was divided between “What is wrong with you, Valerie?” and “This is satire in really bad taste”.

Feminists’ opinion of SCUM today is divided between “What is wrong with you, Valerie?” and “Who the hell is Valerie Solanas?”

Absolutely nobody, feminist or not, condoned Solanas’ attack on Andy Warhol.

Solanas attacked Warhol because of a grudge, not because of her feminist beliefs.

Also: "helped to shape modern patriarchy theory"? "Is still hailed as a feminist hero to this day"? What a load of bullshit. Again: feminists at BEST thought that she tried - and failed - to be satirical; and at WORST, they thought that she had major problems, and they shunned her.

Now i know what you’re gonna say, NOT ALL FEMINISTS. 

Feminism is a political movement. It has leaders.

I'm cutting this part out, but basically OP claims that feminism is a worldwide movement that controls the western world, with leaders that all feminists unquestioningly follow; but also too small to have separate sections or schisms. No, really. Also, despite these "leaders" being super-ultra-well-known, OP can only name Solanas.

OP also has a problem with "slutwalks" - which, I remind you, started because a policeman blamed rape victims for their own rape because, according to him, the clothes they wore "caused" the rape. Cue rape victims marching in the streets wearing the clothes they wore when they were raped (or similar ones); if you actually look at one, you'd see anything from business-suits-with-tie to full-body pajamas.

The thing is, even your definition of feminism is wrong. The name itself should tell you that this is a gendered movement.

...And?

Like, OP seems to believe that solving women's issues instead of spreading your resources to try and solve EVERYONE's issues is evil. Guess that the WWF is evil, then: they only care about non-human animals, after all. Therefore, they clearly hate humans.

You are probably asking yourself why this is even a problem. Aren’t women the ones who still need rights? Well see that may have been true twenty years ago but now it really isn’t. The main problem with the definition of feminism is that it enforces this idea that men live in some ideal world that women should want to live in. Idealizes our situation has the negative effect of erasing our problems. So even by its very definition feminism is already fucking up the idea of equal treatment and consideration.

This is nonsense. Feminists point out that the entire system where one gender is placed above another is fucked - and it also fucks over the gender at the "top", whether by punishing those who don't conform or by teaching toxic beliefs to the ones who do.

men actually have less rights than women.

Yet another dead link. But I assume that it's the usual anti-feminist list of "five rights", so I'll answer that:

Cis women (and other people with vaginas) are subjected to: constant attacks on their right to abort or prevent pregnancies; denied wanted sterilizations and, in various cases, forcibly sterilized against their will (and sometimes without their knowledge); the "husband stitch”; etc. As for circumcision on unconsenting children, feminists aren't the ones forcing it, or preventing MRAs from fighting against it.

Women have been actively excluded from the draft by men, despite feminists' protest. Again: feminists didn't cause that problem, nor are they stopping MRAs from fixing it.

Stop mixing up reproductive rights with parental rights. Abortion is a bodily autonomy issue; child support is an economic issue.

Thank traditional gender roles for that. You know, those things feminists are actively against. Also, family courts don't assume that child custody goes by default to the mother, but to the primary caregiver (aka the parent who spent the majority of time with the kid).

Again: feminists didn't cause that problem, nor are they stopping MRAs from fixing it. In fact, many feminists actively fight so that rape by forcing-to-penetrate is legally included in the definition of "rape".

men are also demonized as rapists due to unequal rape laws that favor women. when you analyze the situation you’ll find that women rape almost as often as men (about 40% of rapists are women) and men are raped just as often if not more than women.

False - the statistic was created through bad math. Next.

...Actually, nevermind. The next section has been lifted from another anti-feminist masterpost. Or maybe that other post was lifted from this, or they both have a similar source. Anyway, the point is: I've already addressed all of this stuff. So I'll just paste the link here and proceed further.

The feminist definition of domestic violence has skewed arrest and prosecution philosophies, resulting in having mostly male batterers criminally pursued, and female batterers left alone.

Dead link. Next.

Men who are falsely accused of rape can have their names published...

This is about granting anonymity to defendants accused of rape. I've already explained the issues multiple times:

MRA want to give this special benefit only to those accused of rape. While the law doesn't prescribe anything of the sort for those suspected of murder or terrorism.

Rape has an exceptionally low investigation and conviction rate, and people actually condemned for it are often reaccepted by their own communities (one example: Steubenville). People accused of rape usually don't face any negative effect, regardless of whether they're falsely accused or not; therefore, there is no justification for giving them this special benefit.

There is NOT an epidemic of false rape accusations.

What there is, is an exceptionally low reporting rate.

Feminists skewed the Definition of Domestic Abuse...

I already addressed this in part 7 of my ""Real" Sexism dot com is utterly false" series. Same goes for the following 20 claims (up until and including the one about Gelles and Straus).

Many other claims have also been lifted from (or have inspired) another anti-feminist masterpost I've already wrote about. So, again: I won’t paste here the same debunkings of the same claims.

Feminists say Men can’t be raped.

Dead link.

Feminists defend female raping minor.

No indication that the author is a feminist (and various feminists are actively against female teachers preying on male students).

Feminist defends why fucking an 8 year old boy isn’t rape.

Dead link.

Most feminists backed studies are bullshit.

Bullshit Youtube video.

Beyond reasonable doubt doesn’t apply to rape.For men only

Alright, first: disciplinary college hearings are equivalent to CIVIL trials, not PENAL ones. I’ve already explained this. Second: college hearings apply equally to both sexes. This means that they use the "preponderance of evidence" standards regardless of whether the defendant is male or female. But the author falsely insists that colleges only apply those standards against men. Third: colleges massively mishandle rape cases. See for example the Sulkowicz case, where Nungesser (the suspected rapist) was let go unscathed even though four different people (a man included) accused him, and where the people hearing Sulkowicz were so fucking ignorant they couldn't believe that Nungesser could've physically raped Sulkowicz because he didn't use any lube.

Feminist changes mind on rape culture when her son is falsely accused.

Oh, look, OP discovered that feminists aren't a hive mind, and are actually able to change their mind. Despite claiming earlier that they unquestioningly follow "feminist leaders", of which OP was able only able to name one from the 1960s.

Feminists primary aggressor clause discriminates against males.

The next sections alternates “old” claims I've already wrote about (see previously) with "new" claims. This is one of the former.

From now on, I'll only address the claims that I’m sure they don’t belong in the former category.

Feminists make sure the gov doesn’t spend money on male shelters or male research.

Already wrote about. Let's just say that SAVE is not a credible source.

Feminists stage mock murders to scare men. 

Dead link.

Feminists shut down forum for battered husbands.

This is that usual video where we don't know where we are, what they're talking about, and who are those people.

Propaganda campaign against male fathers wanting custody.

Dead link - but I'll make a guess: it was about feminists opposing 50/50 custody as the default child custody that courts should give unless circumstances suggest that a different custody arrangement would be better.

Feminists wish to slander accused names before convicted. 

This is about granting anonymity to defendants accused of rape. I've already explained the issues multiple times.

Feminists against equal custody.

This is about feminists opposing 50/50 custody as the default child custody that courts should give unless circumstances suggest that a different custody arrangement would be better. It is NOT about feminists opposing 50/50 custody under any circumstance because we must hate men something something - unlike what OP is trying to imply.

Female felons should serve home sentences.

It's around this point that I started to suspect that I already saw this bit in another "anti-feminism masterpost"; but, given that said other "masterpost" is now lost, and only my reply is left - replay that, unfortunately, doesn’t have quotes from that masterpost - I can't be 100% sure. So, I won’t skip these claims. Instead, I'll takethat reply I did, and use it as inspiration for writing my answers on this post. (Read: I’ll copy parts of the reply as needed, and paste them here.)

So, that point above? The one that OP believes is a strike against feminism? It should read “Female felons should serve home sentences if they aren’t violent, but have parental duties, since we can’t just throw children in foster care”.

Told judges to be lenient on women.

Because they’re more likely to have parental duties or mental illnesses. It’s still a case-by-case procedure.

Feminists launch campaigns to help girls only while boys are doing worse in every facet of education.

There still is a wage gap, a pay gap, a hiring gap, and a promoting gap. That’s the reason for those pro-girls campaigns.

Those pro-girls campaigns don't harm boys, last that I've checked.

Feminists aren't the ones making boys perform badly.

Males who were raped as a child still have to pay child support.

The most recent case is from 1996, all of those cases haven’t been picked by any newsource whatsoever, and male rapists can get child custody for the children born from those rapes in these days.

(Not to mention that feminists are against this sort of thing.)

Women should have the right to put a child up for adoption before the father gets custody.

The father in question didn’t have custody in the first place.                            

Feminists against beyond reasonable doubt when it’s male rapists.

Again: you can't put the restrictions of penal trials on civil trials.

5 rights feminism ignores for men.

This is actually a 5-in-1 bullshit list. (Also: JudgyBitch? Really?)

Men already have the right to decide whether to keep or terminate their own pregnancies. Oh, wait, JB wants men to be able to decide for others’ pregnancies. What next, does she wants to stay at home on sick leave when a colleague has a broken leg but she’s perfectly fine?

Feminists ARE the ones taking male rape seriously. MRAs… not so much. (See point 4 of this post of mine.)

Feminists aren’t the ones shaming men for talking about their feelings or admitting that they have mental problems - misoginysts are the ones shaming other men for being “weak”, or rather, “feminine”. (See here and here.)

Again: feminists aren’t against 50/50 shared custody being the default because they assume that women are “naturally” better caregivers - they’re against it being the default because favoring the kids’ “primary caregiver” is more beneficial for those kids.

Feminists HAVE spoken against forced circumcision, and they aren’t preventing anyone from trying and solve this issue. MRAs? Only speak about it in discussions about FGM, in order to paint feminists as penis-cutting monsters. THAT’S IT.

Feminists blame males for their abuse.

Tries to demonstrate that women commit the majority of DV act by referencing the study that uses the Conflict Tactics Scale, which, among other things, doesn’t differentiate single incidents from repeated behaviours, doesn’t differentiate acts in self-defense from acts of abuse, and doesn’t consider at all sexual assaults and rapes.

The primary aggressor clause where only men get charged with abuse.

Dead link.

Shame men into going to war.

The White Feather Movement was created in the first place by far-right nationalists.

Feminists dismiss female child rapists.

Dead link.

Feminists mock a man who has his dick cut off.

Pretty much no feminist has defended that one.

feminists attack church.

The video depicts a feminist) protest (not an “attack") against Argentina’s massively fucked-up laws on abortion, which severely limit them. They’re the reason why 80.000 women per year end up in the hospital due to complications caused by illegal, non-sanitary abortions… and are arrested for having an abortion if they survive afterwards. And only 1 in 8 abortions (out of 450-600.000 per year) in Argentina are performed legally. (NOTE: these statistics were accurate for 2016.)

Feminists shut down a festival about gender equality for including men.

That’s not what happened. What happened was that the sponsors realized that CAFE had nothing to do with equality and everything to do with MRAs and misogyny, and ran away from them.

Feminists hope MRA’s die.

Correction: ONE person who defines themselves as “feminist” and who doesn’t have any relevant spot in feminism whatsoever hopes that MRAs die.

Feminists against fathers day.

#EndFathersDay is a troll tag created by 4channers.

Feminist makes up fake assault stories. 

Again: only 2% at best of rape accusations are false. There is no epidemic of “false rape accusations” or “made-up stories of assault”.

Female reporter bullied by feminists at the National Young Feminist Leadership Conference

Yes, because telling someone “Your conservative magazine isn’t welcome here” is totally bullying on par with what feminists face. </sarcasm>

And you seriously wonder why women don’t want to be a part of the feminist movement?

Part lying about how feminism "is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians", part lying about how women don't want to be a part of the feminist movement because feminists are eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil man-haters.

im not an idiot. and you havent done your research. you need to stop using that pathetic argument and take responsibility for your political party. 

WE DEAL IN FACTS HERE. NOT RHETORIC. NOT ANECDOTES.

Hilarious.