#Marginalized and vulnerable groups

[harbingerofsoup]

so can we admit that running to the right doesn’t help democrats? liberals will you finally be willing to admit this is a bullshit strategy and immediately knock it off please?

[gildedpin]

made the mistake of checking the notes on a post and holy shit. because government in the u.s. did such a great job of providing accurate covid numbers. florida isn't real.

[amber-angel]

If I get one more comment on this discussion board telling me I'm brave or strong for being deaf I'm tearing into the professor for making this stupid fucking assignment

[sepdet]

have you ever noticed your ability to face internet drama drops 500% when your innards are trying to be outards due to IBS or other GI misbehavior

[rangedreign]

i think subcultures doing cult shit is more a feature of human organization than a valid condemnation of what that subculture centers around.

[southie187]

a lot of people think they open minded and judge free but when it come to some the most vulnerable people in society and most marginalized ... there is no compassion or attempt at understanding.

yall be so quick to judge gang bangers, drug dealers.. people in the street in general from the junkies to the people stealing copper etc etc

a lotta people look at em as subhuman and as if they don't got feelings ... as if most these people wouldn't choose to be able to live a care free/stress free life where they can focus on a hobby or relax without the stress of not having enough money for bills. They wanna stop n smell the flowers too... it be more i want to say but i be coming off the top my head wit this and it jus me rambling now.

[beauty-funny-trippy]

Bishop asks Trump to show mercy to LGBTQ people and migrants He was simply asked to show mercy toward our marginalized groups of people. Yet being asked to treat vulnerable groups of men, women and children with some small amount of basic human decency made these MAGA Republicans visibly uncomfortable. To be clear, he wasn't asked to support these groups, or even show them a little kindness. He was simply asked to please treat them like human beings — to not single them out and treat them like subhuman "animals," as Trump has called them. There is something deeply and truly wrong with someone who views acting with even just a bare minimum of human decency is asking too much of them — as if things like Honor, Integrity and Compassion are repugnant to their very soul.

[esqueism]

i’m seeing a lot of people use the point of death and people always needing to die in unrest and revolution to say “well brown people are dying at the border anyways” and this is true but a lot of political violence and unrest is happening in countries marginally more homogeneous than the U.S., in which, in the case that a protest becomes a place where people die, black and brown people will disproportionately be killed. i saw a tag say “god forbid a red blooded american dies instead of a brown person at the border” and like… a brown person dies in both cases. a “based” white woman will not be martyred here. the original post is very correct and it is also very true that people protest and die from it in the global south and sometimes they see change but i don’t think it’s reasonable to ask americans to sacrifice people of color yet again. we will keep protesting but it really bothers me to see people from other countries act as if there isn’t a major racial aspect to protests in america and who has the potential to survive them in case they go south

“We won’t be able to organize/ protest under Trump”.

People in the Global South have been organizing and protesting under dictatorships that America has installed as puppets for decades. You will be fine.

[caintooth]

All I have to say regarding Bob Bryar’s death:

Bob Bryar’s rightwing spiraling was likely due to the fact that he needed psychiatric help and did not receive any. It’s kinda fucked up that he was dead close to a month and nobody noticed. He contributed greatly to meaningful, life-changing works of art, and will always be remembered for this.

However, his racism and other -phobic statements hurt a lot of vulnerable people, and neither his mental health struggles nor his work with My Chemical Romance excuse any of his bigotry. His words were especially heinous given that he was part of a subculture which claims to value diversity and the protection of marginalized groups.

We can/should acknowledge it is sad Bob Bryar did not receive the help he clearly needed, especially within a community which centers itself around mental health activism, but also can/should acknowledge that it was not this community’s responsibility to de-radicalize, and especially not to forgive, Bob Bryar. It is perfectly reasonable for people to both think there is a degree of sadness to his loss, and simultaneously condemn him for his actions.

[drdemonprince]

Is there a polar opposite of transphobia?

Like I’m a newly transitioned trans man and suddenly everyone wants a piece of me. In a weird way. Like people have started asking me to join committees and talk to youth groups and shit so they have their “representation”. I’m now the token trans person. I live in a small lefty town. People either want to ask me allllll the questions or they are too scared to even talk to me in case they offend me. Suddenly everyone wants to be my friend. I feel like I’ve joined a club I did not agree to sign up to. Like is this normal? Is there a term for it? I have a lot of gay male friends who are awesome, no other trans people local. I’ve started connecting with people online.

I mean some people have been cunts for sure. But mostly it’s nauseating fawning. I know this is a stupid thing to be complaining about but I guess I’m curious.

I’m not that special, I’m actually just an angry little man.

My brother dear, what you are experiencing is a very common combination of the growing visibility & tokenization of being a newly out marginalized person, and the massive increased authority, social trust, social value that comes with being a man.

Welcome to male privilege baby, to put a spin on a far more undermining phrase that typically gets hurled at trans femmes. You will be considered a trustworthy authority on trans issues, a valuable contributor to panels and workshops, a needed (but also highly convenient to access) form of "diversity" for a workplace, a welcome attendee at all manner of events, and you'll be deferred to over women, especially trans women, for pretty much the entire rest of your life, if you continue to remain out about the trans side of things.

Guys like us are invited, centered, included, listened to, treated with respect, treated with WARMTH, viewed as intelligent, perceptive, sensitive, safe, trustworthy, reliable, and desirable to include. In the eyes of the cis public, we are a "safe" kind of trans person who does not make people uncomfortable to look at and who doesn't challenge their pre-existing understanding of gender hierarchy; when they listen to us, they get to trust in the certainty of a MAN giving them information, but they can also feel comfortable and safe around us as a kind of enlightened, sensitive nonthreatening figure.

We're men who can can explain sexism right back to women. We're trans people who went from being subjugated as women to being rewarded with privilege as dudes. In this way, trans men being positioned as an authority figure reinforces the existing gender hierarchy, which feels soothing and right to people's brains.

You will have to be conscious of this power differential for the rest of your life, around cis and trans women alike, because otherwise it plays out in a pretty traditionally sexist fashion: people (especially women) will go quiet when you start speaking, you will be given credit for ideas that were a collective effort, your emotions will be more likely to be taken seriously and seen as a sign of principle rather than weakness, and you will be regarded as special and memorable while dozens of other people and their concerns are passed over.

Another factor that is at play here is a phenomenon that is less specifically gendered, because it does happen to trans women too, and that's the phenomenon of cis groups making the newly-out trans person their token and educator, because typically it is the newly out person whom they have the most access to and power over.

The moment that a trans person transitions they immediately start getting singled out as an expert and resource on the trans experience, asked to lead workshops at their jobs and explain concepts to people and attend events and sit on panels. I think on some intuitive level cis people kinda *know* that the newly out are in a vulnerable, uncertain state and have fewer communities ties and less experience than more seasoned trans people do, and so they make the ideal "translator" of trans experiences to them as an audience.

In cis people's minds, you're not gonna push back, you're not going to complicate their narratives, you're not gonna be tired of answering offensive questions, and you will be freely available to them as a resource, because you've just come out. You'll put a friendly face on transition, one marked by newness and hope, rather than be jaded, complicated, or assertive at them. That's their expectation.

It makes no logical sense to make a newly out member of the community the arbiter of transness or the educator on the trans experience, but it DOES make sense that a powerful group would view such a disempowered and disconnected (relatively speaking) member of the trans community to be the most attractive to include.

Of course, this might not be true to who you actually are. But on a gut level, this is how the newly out trans person is typically seen: nonthreatening, moldable, convenient, so thankful to be included that they won't be angry. And you will be doubly rewarded for fulfilling that role if you are a man.

The only way to upend this narrative being forced onto you is for you to speak up, every single time you are invited to an event, and demand that just as many trans women be included in that event as trans men. Make sure to have a nice list of experienced, wise trans femme friends whom you can recommend as speakers and co-panelists in your pocket.

More often than not, you will be thanked by cis people and rewarded for having the brilliant idea of including women in a conversation about gender minority status. How the trans women in the equation get treated, well, you'll need to pay close attention to, and be ready to stand up and speak out the moment any passive aggressive exclusionary bio-essentialist fuckshit gets going. You can do it! And lots of times you ARE the person with the power to set things right. You're trans and you're being singled out, but you also are a man.

[lastoneout]

Nothing shows the long-term negative effect the Shinigami Eyes extension has had on the queer community better than the fact that now that's it's fallen apart I'm seeing people legit saying the reason it's bad now is because it "got taken over by TERFs" like bro...we really let this extension do SO MUCH heavy lifting that now a big chunk of the online queer community has no fucking idea what a TERF actually is or how to identify one.

Shinigami Eyes is still owned and maintained by trans people and there has not, to my knowledge, been some sort of covert TERF coup to wrench control away from the decent trans folks running it(TERFs don't need to do that to weaponize it, anyone can use it and it is not moderated well enough for false labels to get caught 100% of the time and there is no way to appeal a false label anyway). It's still trans people in charge. The problem is that trans people are not immune to being bigoted and welding whatever scrap of power they have in a space to target marginalized people they don't like. Which, tbh we probably should have seen coming given that for most of it's existence the rules have stated outright that several transmedicialist slurs attacking afab trans people are "out of scope".

Shinigami Eyes did not get taken over by TERFs, again, they don't need to be in charge to use it as a weapon. Unfortunately the people in charge just happen to hold some profoundly shitty views about several marginalized demographics and have responded to being called out for that by deciding intersex, nonbinary, and afab trans people are inherently transphobic and marking them as such.

We never should have relied on a crowdsourced blacklist that has been vulnerable to misuse from day one to catch transphobes for us. We need to know how to recognize TERFs, radfems, and other transphobes ourselves, because not being able to recognize them unless they're standing on a desk screaming about how much they want trans people to die is making it easy for their horrid bullshit to permeate our spaces and promote division and hatred.

Learn to spot TERFs, radfems, and transphobes yourself. Do not outsource your critical thinking to a person or group with power and no accountability. We have to be better than that.

[lovelake]

In which you find out who the person leaving you continuous love letters is and return the gesture

solivan brugmansia x gn!reader | 1.7k wc, fluff, reader is friendly, awkwardness, nervousness, hyugo’s very involved, deryl and geo (briefly, just in the background), tiny implication of masturbation if you squint

note: i felt a little iffy writing about lockers because they’re uni students but that’s how it is in the game so (ᵕ—ᴗ—) this was supposed to be out while most people were still in college (because i think people in the semester system are already out for break) but i didn’t make it in time </3 as always, reblogs and comments are appreciated

masterlist read on ao3

Lately, your existence has been put on the same pedestal as that of everything beautiful in the world.

You’ve been getting love letter after love letter ever since Valentine’s Day. At first, you thought it was some sort of misunderstanding—they got the wrong locker. It wasn’t until certain details in them were specific to you that you finally got the message across. This secret admirer really was yours.

You picked up on quirks in the handwriting after rereading them so many times. Separated letters frequently molded into random strings of cursive. The horizontal lines on the t’s are low, they look like upside down crosses. 

If the writing itself wasn’t sweet enough, there were also doodles left on the margins and corners. Flowers, hearts, and oddly enough, pumpkins. 

Life was more fun with romantic secrecy in the air.

Sometimes it was embarrassing, though. You’d trip, drop a paper, or miss a shot of a wrapper to a trash can—and your mind would immediately go to, did they see that?

The question hovered over your head for months like a cloud. Who are they? 

—

“Don’t eat so close to me,” Sol mumbled to Hyugo, angling himself away as he continued writing. He didn’t want the wind to blow any crumbs onto his paper.

“Another letter? You’re so romantic, Sunny! It almost makes me lose my appetite.”

Yes and no. It was a letter for you, but essentially, it was just a draft for now.

“Do you think it’s working?” Sol asked with a sigh, vulnerability in his question.

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t. Have you seen their reaction to finding one in their locker?”

“A couple times.”

“And?”

“They were smiling.” Sol’s own answer prompted a faint one to form on his face.

Love and commitment wove through each and every word until the end result was practically a written serenade for you, and only you.

—

Whether by sheer luck or fate, you didn’t have to do any snooping to find who your secret admirer is. The answer came to you.

“Pass your homework towards the front of the class.”

Stuck in the very first row, you patiently waited until you were tapped on the shoulder and given a stack of completed homework.

As you were making the stack look presentable, you noticed a familiar looking ‘t’ on the title of the last paper. No way. Was the person sending love letters in this class? They had to be sitting at the very back if so.

Knowing their name wouldn’t help, you didn’t know anybody in this class because group activities weren’t required.

Acting nonchalant, you stretched your back from side to side and took the opportunity to look behind you. But you couldn’t really see because of all the people in your way. 

Next idea. You “accidentally” dropped your pencil and leaned over in your chair to catch a glimpse. 

Their head rested snugly against their forearm, you couldn’t see their face. Black and dark green long sleeves, that’s all you were getting. Okay, you could wait until class ended for the mystery to be revealed.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Tock.

The clock mocked your excitement for approximately fifty-five torturous minutes. 

Class ended, students scrambled.

After quickly gathering your things into your arms, you (not very discreetly) turned around. There was no reason to, there were two doors and you usually went out the front one since it was close to you.

But only in this way were you able to fully look at the person who’s been making even the shittiest of weeks feel better.

Tall, pierced ears and lips, eyelashes that look long even from a distance…

Your secret admirer is handsome in a pretty sort of way. Even so, he looks like someone who would give his crush a necklace with his blood in it rather than lovey-dovey letters. 

You must’ve been awe-struck for too long, time slowed.

As soon as he caught on to your staring (gawking), he immediately walked out of the room, leaving his friend talking to no one. “…and then–huh? Sunny? Sunny! How rude…”

“No fair. You have long legs, you walk faster than me.” Hyugo eventually caught up to Sol. Their lockers were next to one another’s.

Sol’s body felt hot. You had looked at him with intent for the first time ever, not just an accidental glance or something. He tried to compose himself as he opened his locker to put one of his books away.

Were you finally noticing him? He had so much love to offer, all you had to do was embrace the soul that was so willing to give it to you.

“…I have to use the restroom.” He most certainly does not, at least not in the way it’s intended to be used.

In the midst of being over the moon, he failed to see that you were nearby.

You know where his locker is.

Now there’s only two things left to do.

—

i. WRITE HIM A LETTER

Now back at home, you felt insecure. Just a bit. All his letters were beautiful: nice expensive looking paper, sentences all in pen (somehow he never made a single mistake, there were never any words scribbled out), and lived in envelopes that had pretty dark red wax seals prior to you opening them.

Well. You didn’t have any envelopes. Your paper was college ruled with three holes on the left. Your pen was gel-point and smeared when you wrote too fast. And, you didn’t have any white-out in case you made a mistake.

“This is silly.” You tell yourself, shaking away your doubts and picking the pen back up. 

You didn’t harbor the same feelings that he did to you, how could you, when you barely came to know of his existence? Either way, his letters always left you feeling giddy. And who knows, maybe a potential future relationship awaited you.

So, you got to writing. 

ii. DELIVER IT TO HIS LOCKER (GONE WRONG)

Time passed by ever so slowly the next day, it always did when you had something to look forward to. Butterflies ran rampant in your stomach, concentrating in class was hard, especially the one you shared with him.

You waited until the end of school, the letter already in your hand as you (hesitantly) made your way there. If anything, it looked like you were holding a folded graded assignment with a big giant F on it, nobody would suspect it.

“Hey, maybe that’s another letter for you Geo! Your locker’s full again isn’t it? Have you even gone through them?”

“Be quiet.”

They couldn’t be talking about you. They just couldn’t.

Thankfully, those guys turned a corner. It would’ve been awkward if you all kept walking the same way. And who’s Geo, anyway? Is he really that popular?

You leaned against the wall, your other hand preoccupied by your phone as you waited for the after school crowd to die out. Checking the time, you had a tutoring session upstairs in ten minutes.

Eventually, the only footsteps you could hear were distant. Putting your phone away, you swallowed your nerves and approached his locker.

Well, here goes nothing.

You start slipping it in. 

Somehow, your body flinches before your hearing processes anything.

“Woah! Is that a letter for Sunny?”

Shit. 

Wide-eyed, you looked over. The letter was still in your hands, only the tip of it was rammed into the locker ventilation hole. 

Day one of trying to mimic your secret admirer and you already failed. 

Just your luck, his best friend was here too. Even so, you could only focus on him. His expression matched yours, but his was from being incredibly flustered rather than embarrassment from being caught.

You didn’t know what to say, only one word slipped from your lips.

“…Hi.” 

Hi.

Hi?

Hi?!

“Hi!” Hyugo greeted you back with a grin and wave, catching your attention for a split second. Like the good best friend he was, he nudged Sol your way. 

Looks like he was too stunned to talk, you’d have to break the ice more. All the words he held right now, you were sure you’d already read them all.

You brought the letter back down.

“I may have…figured out that you were the person sending me letters. Unless I’m wrong! And in that case I can leave and…” 

“How’d you figure out it was me?” 

Surprisingly, his voice is soft. 

“Because of your t’s.”

“…My t’s?”

“Yeah. You write them differently. Not differently in a bad way! Just…I’ve never really seen anyone write them the way you do.”

One of his brows raised. You thought you offended him until he smiled. That alone put you at ease.

“This is for you,” you handed the letter to him. His fingertips briefly kissed your skin.

The paper didn’t so much as crinkle in his hold, he was being gentle. You were grateful he wasn’t bold enough to start reading it on the spot, you would die.

He opened his locker with his free hand and fetched a crumpled-looking paper. He stammered a bit over his words as he held it out to you. “It’s…It’s not done yet.”

It was a draft full of scribbles and crossed out words. So, he did make mistakes. Just that he worked on a draft before putting everything onto the fancier paper. Somehow, that just made his gestures all the sweeter. 

“I think this one will be my favorite,” you tell him, no sarcasm present.

You were kind and welcoming, exactly what he needed in a world such as this.

"I love-" Sol's overly strong confession was interrupted by Hyugo elbowing him.

Finding a clock on the wall, you curse under your breath. “I have to go catch a tutoring session but it was nice finally meeting you. What’s your name?”

“You can just call me Sol.”

“See you tomorrow, Sol!” 

You repeated his name under your breath over and over to commit it to memory as you walked away. “Sol, Sol, Sol…” 

He was stuck in place, never taking his gaze off you until you turned the corner. Your voice echoed in his head, a catchy melody he would never tire of. 

See you tomorrow, you said. Like you would be talking to him from now on. Like you wouldn’t be put off by him casually approaching you. Like you were friends now.

Hyugo lightly pinched Sol’s arm, he got no response.

Sol looked down at the letter, he was holding something sacred—you put thought into it, something in your possession (your pen) had touched it, your fingerprints were all over it. Does this count as indirect hand-holding?

He needed to read it, and he would, once in private.

“Let me see, let me see!”

“Touch it and I’ll kill you.” 

“…Jeez, and then who’ll clean up all your messes?”

[chronicallycouchbound]

PSA: Please don’t ask participants to do grounding/mindful/somatic/etc practices at your events

Grounding exercises should not be an activity in large group settings, especially unsolicited and without warning, especially if you’re not aware of every single person in the space’s mental health conditions, physical health conditions, and personal relationship to their body.

Practices such as mindfulness, grounding, somatic exercises, breathing techniques, body scans, etc. are very helpful therapeutic tools to help manage stress. They can (and do!) help plenty of people– when taught safely and used effectively!

HOWEVER for people with conditions that cause psychosis and/or dissociative conditions such as depersonalization/derealization, these techniques are contraindicated and can make their symptoms significantly worse. They should only be used with guidance from their mental health team and adapted to their needs. For people with conditions like anxiety and PTSD, being aware of breathing can trigger a trauma response or anxiety attacks.

And for people with conditions that cause chronic pain or other uncomfortable bodily sensations, becoming re-centered with their bodies can cause more awareness of the pain they are in, which a level of (ideally functional) dissociation is actually helpful. For people in wheelchairs and powerchairs, touching the ground beneath their feet isn’t always an option. For people with cardiac and pulmonary conditions, deep breathing can be impossible or can trigger asthma attacks. For disabled people in general, doing body scans can be impossible due to paralysis or limb differences. They can bring awareness to things the person wasn’t aware were wrong to begin with (which is helpful in certain spaces, but not a great ice breaker at a retreat!)

And for trans people, binders and other garments can restrict breathing, and taking repeated deep breaths while binding can cause rib damage (which is why you shouldn't bind at night, while coughing from sickness, while exercising, etc). Becoming centered in a body that makes you dysphoric can be deeply distressing, again, a level of functional dissociation helps.

This also goes for plenty of other people in marginalized bodies, such as people of color, people who use substances, queer people, and more. Becoming grounded in your own marginalized body can be a heavy weight to carry, and needs appropriate and individualized care to be a beneficial experience.

As an alternative, I suggest doing a round of gratitudes instead, it allows for people to choose their level of vulnerability in spaces, while not being generally contraindicated for many people. Doing fun (and appropriate to the setting) icebreakers are great. Ask what brings someone to the space. Check-ins about basic needs such as if people need to use the restroom, eat, drink water, are rested, etc. can be more appropriate body check-ins for folks to do.

I don’t recommend doing these exercises even with a warning beforehand. If I'm in the room while someone is leading a breathing exercise, even if I try to ignore it, I (and most people) would automatically become aware of my breathing. The same goes for any other techniques. These techniques can cause real, life-threatening levels of harm for some people, and can even just be deeply uncomfortable or distressing for others. Dissociation is not inherently evil or bad or harmful. It is the way the body and mind naturally respond to adverse experiences (note: it can also cause distress and at higher levels, can be disordered) it is best to allow people to exist as they are in communal spaces. Let people show up as they are.

Most spaces are not equipped or appropriate to respond to emergencies, difficult feelings, and all the varied responses that can come from folks doing mindfulness in group settings.

I personally do some things before large gatherings and events to feel centered on the activity I’ll be doing, and afterward, I decompress. Encourage participants to lean on their natural supports and offer suggestions for it! Be creative in your caring!

This also doesn’t mean to discourage these practices! If you see someone doing deep breathing, check in with them, offer a space for them to decompress, care for them! Worksheets or posters on techniques like square breathing and 5 senses check-ins are great for a quiet room or spaces where participants can decide if they want/are able to engage with those tools. It should be a fully consensual opt-in, rather than being forced to opt-out. Having to leave a room when a group leader says “We’re going to start a mindful breathing meditation, please feel free to leave if you have psychosis, chronic pain, or are trans” is obviously othering and outs people.

Sincerely, someone who has psychotic symptoms, dissociation, chronic pain, is trans and whose body is marginalized in many ways and is really tired from trying to explain this at every event I go to

[toorumlk]

the importance of art and safety.

(in this period of descent into fascism)

If you're a liberal/left-leaning person like me, you have been voraciously keeping up with local, provincial/state and federal politics, and with the world news, using all avenues available to you to try and make sense of the tumultuous time were living through. And thus, with each passing day, you've probably been inundated with the F-word more and more from the news/political commentators you follow, from the images attached in the articles you read, and the academics and journalists you trust. Fascism. With the recent ruling from the UK Supreme Court saying that the legal definition of a woman is solely going to be rooted in biology and seeing the jubilant celebration surrounding it, I can’t help but feel like we just took one more monumental step in the global death march towards fascism.

I’m scared and very worried.

Of course, this isn’t really about my own personal feelings of fear because overall, I will be quite alright. I’m a bisexual, leftist woman and arts and culture person living in Canada, in a dependably liberal-to-progressive riding and city. Yes, my country has a federal election coming up and there is a chance we might (strong emphasis on ‘might’) elect a right-wing reactionary buffoon of our own in the form of Pierre Poilievre, but center and left-of-center Canadians were given a hail Mary in the new liberal party leader Mark Carney, who’s performing better in the early polls everyday. So, we might not have to worry that much at all. Yes, the cost of living is still abysmal (as my friends and I keep saying: girl, the tariffs), and going through life’s very human struggles is still excruciating but ultimately, bearable. Spring, the best season, is well on its way and the days are getting longer and you see that your neighbour’s tulip bulbs are peaking out from the soil and you’re able to go home and give your cat a big kiss on the cheek as they reward you with an annoyed and disgruntled meow.

And so you feel emotionally regulated enough to then go on your daily news binge and find that another university student in the US got black-bagged for expressing pro-Palestine views, you see images of the destruction of Gaza and the concentration prison/camps in El Salvador, and then that the boomer British lady who authored the books that have been bringing so much joy and fulfillment to your art practice donated 70 000 euros to a feminist organization that was the plaintiff fighting to disenfranchise an already marginalized minority group. And you’re left feeling quite… dirty and doom-ridden and powerless while standing in the middle of the cushy imperial core.

Your cat who was annoyed you picked them up earlier has forgiven you now, though, and is headbutting you for some catnip.

But this isn’t about me, not in the slightest. I/we know how these things go. I’m not a history buff by any means (though I really want to be) but I have a basic enough understanding of world history to know we’re already in the throes of fascism: with the targeting and scapegoating of vulnerable minorities like the trans community or the complete hatred and want for disposal of migrants – I feel a deep and suffocating grief for my fellow comrades.

This pain, I believe, is all our duties as human beings with the gift and responsibility of empathy, to feel.

I’m also hyperaware that with the downward fall into fascism comes the defunding and eventual erasure and censorship of art. Now I’m not saying my art is worthy or important enough to be censored. But I am saying we need art; we need as much of it as there can be for our emotional needs which is imperative for our survival. I don’t mean to say this in a hyperproduction/hyper consuming way, of course, we just need human artists, humane art (whatever that means to you) now more than ever.

I’m a political person, and my leftist and feminist principles and values I think show up quite plainly in my work but again, I don’t think I’m making anything radical here – my art I think is just one small piece in a greater human need to make and experience art. Therefore, I’d be remiss to say it wasn’t important. I know my work is important in that I know it means something to people. This community here for instance, or on twitter/x, Instagram or tiktok, which I feel like the luckiest person alive to have somehow conjured, that means something to me, and I’d be glaringly obtuse if I didn’t acknowledge it. So, I sincerely want you to know my art exists not only as the physical manifestation of this vocation of mine, but also as a source of safety and comfort for your senses, if you need it to be.

As much as I want to be, I’m not an activist, I’m just an artist. And my art is the one (I hope) iron-clad thing I can give to the world and the beautiful, worthy of lives of dignity, people within it. Joy and comfort aren’t a solid political program on its own and I know art consumption alone is not going to lead us to liberation, self-determination and lives of dignity. But, my god, do we still need joy, comfort and safety in the form of art to get through each day.

To my nonbinary and trans friends and siblings, I am so, so fucking sorry powers greater than us are using you as pawns for political theatre, and that so many restless people are using you as political punching bags. The world we’re living through is incredibly unfair and unjust at the moment. Your pain is our pain, none of us are free until all of us are free. So, I want you to know that my little pictures and I are here, fighting alongside you.

I know Harry Potter, the IP and the storyworld with its characters, isn’t what’s causing our dissent into fascism. And I know, realistically, I’m not the devil’s spawn for still liking it, for making cute artwork of the titular main character’s best friends for its fandom. I can’t explain in words why I feel such an affinity to this story, this very entry-level story about fighting fascism, with its anti-social megalomaniac villain and its painfully liberal/reformist politics. My pull towards it is deep, abstract, and almost spiritual, and if I could succinctly put these feelings and magnetism into words, I probably wouldn’t be making this much art like my life depended on it. And the awful truth of it is, I’ve never been more artistically fulfilled. I’m so happy while making this work and my cup becomes fuller after each drawing, I selfishly don’t want to stop. Does that make me awful?

A lot of my peers, fellow fanartists, have been considering leaving the fandom altogether and it’s left me feeling a kind of panic because, quite frankly, I don’t want to. Not until the creative reserve (which is rooted in my love and other abstract feelings for the story) within me has run dry, which it hasn’t. And after I realized this, I felt a little ashamed that I wasn’t feeling what others are also feeling, but I think the knee-jerk reaction to leave and disavow this community because of the cartoonishly mean-spirited author (who ironically made this story about love, friendship and fighting fascism) also feels hasty and reactionary. I understand the impulse, I really do. I recognize I have a vested interest in saying this, but I sincerely think we need art now more than ever, if any of my peers are reading this: your art. Thoughtful art, art that is an exercise in empathy. I’m also saying this because I feel a deep sense of responsibility to my friends (majority of whom are also queer and trans) I’ve made through our shared love of this story, to fellow fans and the people I’ve been privileged enough to have touched with my art.

This discomfort of still harboring love for this flawed but ultimately lovable and beloved story during this time of political unrest and chaos, and continuing to express my love for it by creating artwork for it… is something I will just have to live with until it’s run its course. I don’t think this is a righteous grief by any means – I think the mundanity of it is what’s making it especially annoying.

Quivering in the face of good art is I think one of the best feelings in the world, and though I sincerely believe the HP story to be good and adequate in its political and class commentary, this squirming isn’t exactly that. I’m immensely (and selfishly) resentful to JKR for being the mean-spirited bully/troll that she is, not only do I wish she weren’t a right-wing reactionary, I wish her tomfoolery didn’t make me squirm uncomfortably (the word I’m looking for here is ‘cringe’) while still genuinely enjoying this work. Nonetheless, I’m confident in my ability to engage with this story intelligently and I hope to continue to share my thoughts and love for this narrative through posts and meta/cultural analyses and many, many drawings of Ron and Hermione kissing. I am also steadfast in my political convictions, which are so much older than the just-over-a-year-old love I have for these books. My political convictions which have always been and will always continue to be pro-trans, feminist, anticapitalist and grounded in my love and empathy for people.

I don’t have all the answers to how and why we are so drawn to certain stories and characters and tribes (because fandom in a fundamental way acts like a tribe), and why we so profoundly need to keep making and keep experiencing art. Or how to even best live with the contradictions that exist within and outside of us. I’m just a young artist, still in the infancy of my career in many ways, but something in my bones is telling me this is important work, and I should keep doing it – with all its squirming discomfort, and its wonderful, beautiful fulfillment.

Again, we are living through incredibly difficult times, but we must make it through, and we will. I will keep making work that I hope is thoughtful and politically principled, and I hope you’re able to find some joy and comfort in them as I do while making them.

- nus :)

[thedandelionresistance]

I think the issue is that marginalized humanity also exists, which we've written about extensively before.

It's not as simple as humans=oppressors who benefit from the subjugation of nonhumans. To summarize what we've said before, alterhuman identities involving powered or mutant humans, werecreatures who are sometimes or partially human, otherkin human identities, and human members of nonhuman systems (all including when these identities are a result of delusions/endelity) face much of the same oppression as nonhumans, for the same reason. Then, when they turn to their community, they see hatred for part of the very identity that caused them to face that hateful oppression in the first place. (Also, we did see that you use the label of CLCZ and may have different experiences - we're speaking from our own experiences and those of other people close to us, as well as some pulled from wider discussions.)

It's the same way that trans men are disproportionately hurt by posts venting about (99.9 percent of the time cis) men, and even that transhet and other queerhet people are disproportionately affected by complaints about hetero/straight people. Even within the queer community, antimasculinity has been such a large issue that people have detransitioned and delayed transitioning (or even repressed their very trans identity and not had their egg crack for longer) - all things that are well known to kill trans people. Heterosexual trans, nonbinary, aspec, and intersex people have all suffered from constant blatant hatred of straight people in the queer community - and at various points, hating straight people was also used as part of larger aphobia and transphobia, arguing that aspec and trans people were inherently dangerous invaders of "real" queer spaces and communities.

That last part is more an issue of aphobia and transphobia, but that doesn't make the use of hate towards specifically explicitly queerhets irrelevant. If anything, it's more relevant, because it was a double-edged sword of erasing aspec and trans people who aren't het while attacking those who are.

There's also the fact that these things often hurt members of the very marginalized communities they originate from. People questioning or not yet aware of their identities are pushed away from the community from shame about their perceived identity. Community members who are aware of their identity are hurt by demonization of traits they share with the identity being vented about (for example, trans women who have a deep voice or choose not to shave). And people who are two identities that are considered mutually exclusive by most people, such as multigender people who are both men and women, or people who are queer and straight as mentioned above, and so on, will always be the most vulnerable to being hurt by hostility towards someone's identity.

Neurodivergence vs neurotypicality doesn't quite map to this, but there is a point to be made that the way we conceptualize neurodivergence is very different than how people generally conceptualize queerness. A plural allistic person and autistic singlet are both considered neurodivergent, but in the context of autism alone allism is considered neurotypical, and in the context of plurality alone, being a singlet is considered neurotypical (and that's even further complicated by the existence of plural non-systems and even plural singlets, complex identity labels that can be used for any reason from having soulbonds that you don't view as sharing your body or headspace, to having pursued and achieved final fusion).

As much as I agree with a lot of OPs beliefs, I also actually agree that homophobia and gay are not accurate replacements for humanity and misanthropy.

But I also disagree that humanity is an inherently oppressive identity (not saying that you're saying that either, just that I believe that's fundamentally untrue), even within the context of it currently being an oppressive class. It's just that not all humans are a part of that class, and therefore don't all have access to the power and privilege that comes with it.

When venting about an innate inherent (and typically unchangeable trait" turns into lateral violence, hurting other marginalized people in your community or adjacent communities, it can no longer be justified as "punching up". That's why caveats can be so important, particularly on public forums and blogs (whether a blog is public or private is kind of a complicated question, but those which are publicly accessible is what I'm referring to for the sake of this discussion).

This kind of folds into the idea you talk about with not carrying this attitude towards individuals. But the thing is, community attitudes and societal forces are not separate from the people occupying those spaces and moving through those frameworks. If a response to an oppressive systemic structure, rather than dismantling or defying it, instead destabilizes and harms other people hurt and oppressed by the same system, it's directly harming individuals. It can even unintentionally reinforce the harmful systems - for example, treating manhood as inherently violent and misogynistic reinforces that that is the default standard of masculinity, and that healthy and nontoxic masculinity is the exception rather than the rule.

I think the post linked above even goes into the nuance of having spaces for safely venting, and how to mitigate harm when doing so. We've talked even more extensively privately with friends about this, and I think that absolutely there should be spaces to communicate unfiltered, messy, "negative" feelings towards oppressor classes. I also think it's important to have spaces like that be still moderated for potential toxicity and harm (for example, how some spaces for healing from misogyny fall into radic//al feminism).

I don't think venting, even imperfect and messy venting, is some great sin. I just also don't personally think it's always inherently harmless. When we've talked about this before, we've had people entirely erase the nonhuman majority part of our plurid identity, just because we talked about how it has directly harmed us due to our marginalized humanity. We were treated as having power and privilege we've never had in our entire lives, for the very same identities that directly caused us to endure significant interpersonal AND systemic harm, up to and including institutionalization, nonconsensual medication, refusal to prescribe other needed medication, whether directly or indirectly (indirectly, for example, in cases such as being suicidal due to repression of our identities).

It's also worth noting that our experiences with nonhumanity and alterhumanity both are both entirely psychological and entirely spiritual. We kind of have some double bookkeeping going on there with our own schizophrenia, but essentially it's two 100 percent gauges overlapping. Each part is inextricable from the other, and that also affects our perspective on humanity and nonhumanity not being mutually exclusively and humanity as an individual identity not inherently granting access to humanity as membership in the oppressor class.

Not all straight people are not queer, and are subject to the same isolation and difficulty finding community as any other member of the LGBTQ+ community. Just like not all cis people are not queer. The ways that a cis queer person and queerhet person might struggle for their queer identities may be different, just like even when solely referring to sexuality, a bi person and a gay man and a lesbian woman might all have different struggles.

Likewise, not all humans are, for lack of a better word or phrase, structurally empowered and unmarginalized. In the same way that heteronormativity can hurt transhet people, in part because of how heavily it leans on patriarchal gender standards (including the ones that fundamentally reject transness as valid), so too can human-normativity hurt and even oppress humans who exist outside of it. Binary gender-conforming trans people are still treated as an inherent threat to patriarchy, because it's a cisheteropatriarchy built on a foundation of queerphobia, racism, and a dozen other subjugations of marginalized people.

In the same way, the power structure which gives the majority of humans power still treats some humans as an inherent threat to itself, because it is built to enforce a very narrow inflexible definition of humanity and relies heavily on neuronormativity and sanism.

We have commonly seen it argued that it's still okay to shit on an oppressor identity to vent, precisely because it's a very small minority of humans that aren't oppressors/are potentially hurt by misanthropy.

Even setting aside that misanthropy isn't actually effective in dismantling the oppressive system itself, it's never okay to hurt a minority just because they share an identity with an oppressor class, even if the identity they share with the oppressor class is the one being attacked itself. The fact that they are a minority even within the alterhuman and nonhuman communities too only means we have more of a responsibility to make our spaces safe for them - they come to us after sharing in our oppression, and if they find hate towards the part of their identity they faced that oppression for, that just further harms and isolates them, making them more vulnerable.

This is very directly comparable to anti-masculinity, because not all venting by women about harm done by (largely cis) men is harmless. Multigender and butch trans women, trans men, and nonbinary people have all talked extensively about how this has severely hurt them, up to and including being deadly. Lumping marginalized manhood in with privileged manhood results in erasure of the struggles that marginalized men face - from black men being the primary target of police violence to trans men being denied coverage for treatment for cervical cancer until it literally kills them. It also directly isolates questioning/pre-questioning trans women, driving away some of the most vulnerable people in the marginalized class of women, who most need community support.

Idk, I think I'm starting to go in circles. But basically, this ties into a lot of larger topics, such as the idea that it's important to focus more on uplifting marginalized people than hating their oppressors on a wider scale, that expressing pain and trauma still needs to be handled with care to avoid harming other hurt and traumatized people as powerless as you, and that it's worth it to add a little extra clarification to your statements if it mitigates harm done to other people.

Not all criticisms of negative statements about identity are invalid. Sometimes negative statements about identity do very real harm to the most vulnerable members. Sometimes even, as in the case of cis women having very real structural systemic power over trans men, it is very directly literally used to perpetuate the oppression of a marginalized group. This is true within communities too - black queer men have talked about how antimasculinity not just affects them but is deadly for them, and black queer women have talked about how it also hurts them due to how people view gender as very centered around colonial white ideas, and how this leads to the over-masculinization of perception of black women.

As a nonhuman who is just as marginalized for my humanity on the basis of its relation to my nonhumanity alone, but also without my nonhumanity would still be inherently marginalized and cause me to face oppression, misanthropy is not harmless nor is the harm it can do justified or even effective in fighting our oppression. That being said, I think there are ways to create safe spaces for expressing negative feelings even towards innate traits and identities that often correspond to systemic inequity and structural oppression.

Theory aside, I think the easiest way to start is to bookend venting with two very short phrases:

"I feel like..." [insert vent] "but this is just my personal experience right now"

Because the thing is, it doesn't even require you to state that the identity isn't inherently bad (I think it's worth doing if you can, but still).

All it is, is acknowledging that you're not making an objective statement on the inherent morality or value of an entire group of people.

Heck, I have an ex-friend (ex- for very different reasons) who told us straight up that they hated men/manhood, but would not mistreat men in the server we shared. They also said that it was something they were working, but we told them from the beginning that what mattered is how they treated people. Even with manhood being a part of our genderfluidity, that was the main important thing. We only asked them to spoiler text if they needed to vent about men in the vent channels and leave a content warning, so that we and others who identified as masc or men could also give her the space to have those valid feelings and even those of us up for it at a given point could offer reassurance and help her to process everything.

At the end of the day, it's about not assuming that everyone of a specific identity is also a member of that oppressor class/nonmarginalized/not harmed by the structures most of their identity benefit from. It's also about acknowledging that just because the "exceptions" might be rare (though often less rare than people think, as in the case of trans men, because erasure is a crucial tool of oppression), that often they are part of our communities or victims of our same or similar oppression, at the bottom of the system with us. These people deserve safety and community, and it's important not to push them away or further harm them, especially since those very same structures of oppression rely on us being divided and isolated.

At the end of the day, even when working through strong difficult feelings, it's worth it to try and soften edges which may hurt not just innocent but vulnerable targets. It's worth it to hold onto a little bit of compassion, and just reframe misanthropy as more clearly processing very personal trauma and pain. And it's worth it to consider minority groups even within marginalized communities - because before punching up, it's important to make sure you know which way is up.

Sometimes I genuinely want to reblog some of these posts just swapping every instance of "human" for "gay" and "misanthropy" for "homophobia," because it really puts it into perspective.

"But of course I know there are good humans out there -" Saying something to the effect of "Gay people are horrible" and then following up with "but of course I know there are good gays out there <3" doesn't actually make you not homophobic.

"But humans have actually done bad things that destroy the planet -!" 90% of my mom's internalized homophobia stems from real gay people she knew who intentionally spread HIV to other people, and that being her only exposure to the queer community before, like, me. Do you think that makes it fair for someone to be homophobic? Because a small proportion of the gay community does terrible things? Like, no, right? So why do you think it's fair for you to act misanthropic because a small proportion of the human species does terrible things?

[sha-brytols]

da2 is crazy because it's like almost (A L M O S T) a perfect demonstration of like. power schisms and how dominant colonialist religions gain their influence through control and fearmongering and how said fearmongering works specifically because the system is Designed to isolate and dehumanize groups of people who inevitably lash out and fight back, creating the exact circumstances for a dominant power to claim the moral high ground and further suppress the marginalized population. not to mention how it touches on the way the system even abuses its own participants by preying on their desperation or vulnerability to gain their loyalty and THEN turning them into disposable pawns that rely on it far more than it relies on them. and then in the midst of this you play as a victim of that exact same system where your whole life has been dictated by fear and secrecy and the constant looming threat of being taken or having your family taken from you, and then when you finally work your way above the system you still aren't free because the person at one of the highest points of the hierarchy is willing to turn your family and friends into hostages to ensure your compliance. and this isn't even mentioning how this is the same game that just Happens to be separated into three different periods of time where your class status and social standing is drastically shifted in each one so you experience every angle of this cycle of systemic oppression. and then at the very end when you choose between upholding the status quo or protecting the marginalized and persecuted population you get a wildly different outcome as the protagonist. rebelling and going against the grain makes you a fugitive who has to abandon the very home you fought tooth and nail for because the system is now hunting you down for attempting to disrupt it. but if you choose to maintain it you rise to one of the most powerful positions within the system. and the only difference in how you get there is you can only obtain power through massacring the oppressed population in its entirety, demonstrating how this exact cycle is maintained through violence and subjugation. it's oppression at its most brutal and honest form. victims will always be victims unless they comply to the will of the oppressor.

and then you go online and you find out the writers have been writing thinkpieces on why the templars are actually the good guys on twitter and you're actually stupid as fuck for interpreting this as a commentary on institutionalized oppression