#PLEASE stop conflating the two

[faggotslime]

anyone else get skeeved out by the wording people use 'you can choose any identity you want!' when talking about reflecting on your gender identity?

It's like.... I didn't choose to be a man tho... I just am.

I didn't choose to be bi. I just am.

I've been this way for as long as I can remember regardless of how long it took me to find the language to properly express it.

There is no choice. Making it seem like a choice leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.

[something-about-sunflowers]

More ‘Izzy is racist and I’m BIPOC (or Native? Which is somehow different than Indigenous?) so if you say I’m wrong you’re racist too’ discourse in the Izzy Hands tag. And yet. Still no actual evidence. Not one single concrete thing to back up that claim. Interesting.

And still the only two characters of the main cast who are actually called racist in the show are Stede and Pete.

[neverevan]

About that hijacking post, you know what's my biggest tumblr pet peeve and I can't seem to escape it no matter how much stuff I filter out? People hijacking buddie gifsets with supernatural. destiel. Edits, tags, gifs, theories, whatever THEY ARE NOT DESTIEL GET OUTTA HERE

same baby saaaame. like, I have nothing against people being in that fandom obviously, to each their own, but like... I'm sorry but whatever clusterfuck that show and that network and their actors got going on... please keep it miles away from 911, which is a show that's actually trying to (and so far succeeding tremendously) to do right by its fans.

this is not some spanish dub meme factory bs and I truly do not need to know Misha Collins' thoughts on a TV show he has nothing to do with.....

[weirdmageddon]

i posted this on twitter also but it’s still eating at me. i’m so fucking embarrassed to be jewish rn. i dont want to be associated with this ongoing bullshit from israel. why do we need our own state. theyre just making every jew across the globe look bad in general even though many of us are conflicted about zionism and the legitimacy of israel as a state

people have hated jews throughout history for no fuckin reason but now israel exists but now its like. GIVING people reasons to hate us as a group. note that i DON’T conflate zionism with jewishness, but a lot of people in the world don’t know the difference because theyre uninformed and been dripfed cultural antisemitic tropes their whole life and that’s the scary part is them falsely putting two and two together. like what the fuck israel stop youre just putting fuel on the fire for people around the world to hate an entire group of historically persecuted people if youre being this shitty with your insane colonialism and apartheid like……I Want No Fuckin Part Of This. you’re spelling our own doom. you cant just swoop in and go “mine now” and then oppress the people you took land from under a regime without my blood boiling at the injustice no matter WHO you are. even if my lineage is tied to you. so when news outlets support israel it doesn’t feel like they have the best interest of jews as a people in mind. it’s in the interest of a zionist ethnostate and whatever that christian zionism belief is about the jewish people returning to the holy land as prerequisite for the second coming of jesus. its not like they care about us as a dispersed ethnocultural group, it’s all for that religious narrative that a bunch of people in the US are backing.

saying you want all jews to die is antisemitic. beating someone up because they’re jewish and no other reason without knowing their views is antisemitic. criticizing human rights violations perpetrated by israel and the belief that one group deserves more rights another is not antisemitic. and the fact that israel has the ability to pull that antisemitism card in response to criticisms of the violations they commit because their state is the “jewish homeland” drives me fucking insane. take fucking accountability for your actions. and yes, there do exist full-on anti-jewish groups in the middle east that go beyond hatred of israel’s policies and existence as a state and i’m tired of people pretending there aren’t in fear of appearing to seem like they support the state of israel. on the other side of things many people overestimate this by fearmongering and saying EVERY arab is out to get jews worldwide, telling people like me “they want YOU dead”. this is not the belief every person in the middle east and it really rubs me the wrong way that people group millions of individuals into all-encompassing lumps like this. many people there do understand nuance of this political situation.

even if i have that “right of return” by israeli law or whatever, i don’t feel obliged to it; it does not register as fair. why do i have a “right of return” when i’ve never even been there in the first place while palestinians who have homes there can’t return to them? what’s the basis for that? substituting objective reality with an imaginary reality? i don’t think like that. i can hypothetically come and go whenever i please but palestinians are severely limited in mobility? what makes me more entitled to that land than the people who lived there for centuries? nothing that comes from natural law thats for sure. it’s all artificial and inflated.

but at the same time i also dont want to be the target of antisemitism and caught in the fray just for being ethnically jewish. once people start calling for the genocide of entire groups we’ve got issues (and you better believe this absolutely applies to the palestinian victims in gaza too), because people who dissent to the violence perpetrated by the loudest are caught in there with the people who are perpetrating the violence. lack of nuance. people conflating israel and its zionist apartheid policies with jewish ethnicity and culture worldwide. other people conflating being terrorist anti-jew with muslims worldwide (like that 6-year old palestinian-american boy that was just stabbed to death in chicago). scary times man. but as a jew i can’t just opt out of this if it’s how i was born as. i don’t have control over that. but i can control what i think and what my beliefs are

[jewish-sideblog]

"Both indigenous and colonizers" CAN PEOPLE STOP TALKING ABOUT SHIT THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND PLEASE

This wave of antisemitism and bullshit about "indigenous vs colonizer" makes me so scared as an indigenous person in the US of what will happen when Land Back movements do result in actual sovereignty restoration and then tribes do what people do and disagree over land and resources, like we were doing for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. Will we be reduced down to colonizers too??

It feels like Westerners, especially USAmericans, have such a black and white idea of what it means to be indigenous and what it means to be a colonizer/settler (because those terms are always conflated) and it makes me so angry and frustrated to see people apply those standards and lines thinking not just to complex sovereignty movements in their own countries but also to incredibly complex conflicts and wars happening on the other side of the world.

The damage I've seen done to sovereignty movements here in the US alone, people going around claiming that we want all "settlers" to go back to Europe or that we're going to start massacring people, has been horrible and the fact that it's all just to justify antisemitism makes me sick.

Genuinely. They're blocked now, but that same person said something to the effect of "Would an Iranian praying in a Mosque built on the ashes of a former synagogue be decolonization?"

And that was the point at which I was like. Ok. It seems like most people genuinely don't actually know what the terms "colonization", "colonizer" and "coloniality" mean. Obviously, that wouldn't be decolonization, because the Jews never colonized Iran. Emigration and colonization aren't the same fucking thing!

I used to have so much faith in my generation. I thought we were critical thinkers, capable of flexibility and engagement with new ideas. But I'm realizing now that we're basically just rebranded boomers. Back in the day, anybody you disagreed with was labelled as a "Communist". It didn't actually fucking matter if they were communist sympathizers, Soviet sympathizers, or even if they were remotely allied with socialist ideals. You could just call them a "Communist" and be done with it, without even understanding what that term means.

It's the same shit today. Instead of a HUAC witch hunt targeting communists, it's a social witch hunt targeting "colonizers" and "Zionists". I am terrified that the moment indigenous rights movements in the Americas and Oceania start making practical strides in Land Back, regaining rightful control over the ways your own land is used, you'll all be labelled as "colonizers" or "imperialists" or whatever the bad buzz word of the month turns out to be.

People simply can't wrap their heads around the idea that indigenous decolonization doesn't have the end goal of ethnically cleansing non-native people from the Americas. And it's because they're so absorbed in colonial thinking. They can't even fucking imagine what sovereignty could look like beyond an authoritarian structure based on control and violence. It's the same with Israel and Palestine-- they think that Jewish sovereignty must look like complete Jewish control to the detriment of Arabs, and they think Palestinian sovereignty must look like total Arab control to the detriment of Jews. The idea that a shared state or a two-state solution is "racist" stems from that false dichotomy.

Establishing an ideological binary of violence that pits "indigenous" against "colonizer", "native" against "settler", and "us" against "them" with no room for cooperation or collaboration is the core of colonialism. Because the core of colonialism is the idea that only one group can have true power at a time. And that's just not the way the world has to work.

[ultimatefartwizard]

NOT FUCKING AGAIN! THE MUSICAL ( TF EARTHSPARK MESSAGES AND MANDROID'S GENOCIDAL HORRORS EDITION)

Holy shit I am losing my mind... @monocle-teacup you better read this <3 (dead serious though cuz wtf)

Also of course as always, spoilers ahead this time for season 2 of earthspark so dont want it? skedaddle (s2 isnt worth caring about though, trust me)

Also again nobody go witchhunting or harassing anyone, this is discussion of media and someones poor takes on some clear themes in a show.

Okay you're using THE TERRIBLE WRITING OF S2 TO PROVE YOUR LITTLE HORRIBLE SLIMY GENOCIDAL GREASEMAN IN THE RIGHT???? WHY ARE YOU VOUCHING FOR HIM. WHY DO YOU SAY HIS IDEAS ARE RIGHT AUUUUGH-

How you continue to have terrible takes astounds me 💀 You can't be serious man how are you this like,,, braindead? And ignoring all of what S1 is trying to teach even before S2 came out? oh wait.

You choose your attraction of a gross ass man over LITERAL IN YOUR FACE PLOTPOINTS BECAUSE YOU'D RATHER MEATRIDE YOUR BABYGIRL MANDROID OVER EVERYTHING THE SHOW HAS BUILT UP. Not like you probably ever cared to connect any of the dots.

Oh, to help you do that, I have a previous post I made where I pinged you! You should read it before you read anymore, it'll help with what I'm about to preface here. Please READ IT.

Okay, time to dig into literally EVERYTHING ALL OVER AGAIN BECAUSE YOU CAN'T SEEM TO LET GO OF THIS MAN AND HIS OBVIOUS LACK OF HUMANITY IN HIM AND CONTINUE TO SEE SOMETHING THATS NOT THERE. I will start off by saying the quality of the writing for season 2 and season 2's entire disregard for season 1 don't discredit season 1, no matter what nonsense there is. I hate season 2 for all its going for thus far and its just genuinely a waste of my braincells to try watching it again. There are also things not specifically related to mandroid but are also pet peeves that show your lack of attention to detail.

How. Did you miss this. Humans have been living with bots for 30 to 40 years at this point they don't bat an eye at them because THEY THINK THEY'RE JUST SOME BOTS CASUALLY WALKING AROUND. They don't give a fuck about the terrans; only a select few know they are even earth-born bots. Transformers have been living amongst humans casually don't you think they wouldn't give two fucks and know not to gawk at random robots walking around like they just started existing?

You saw the Philadelphia episode (I hope? because you act like you haven't) or really any episode they are just chilling and walking around, you didn't notice nobody gave a damn? What about Optimus, Elita 1, and other bots? Would you randomly gawk at a group of sapient beings walking amongst you who've been there for a lifetime?

No.

They had to hide FROM GHOST not FROM THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE. Ghost would have tried to capture them and imprison them by deeming them a threat for merely existing, not humans as a whole. The fact you miss this entire detail is incredibly sad.

Okay now onto Mandroid stuff because you never stop meatriding him MY GOD

Huh, maybe you need to USE YOUR BRAIN and realize he was not protecting earth. He -thought- he was, because he perceived them as vermin who need to be wiped out and a threat to humanity. Like I said before in my last post DECEPTCONS DO NOT EQUAL ALL OF TRANSFORMERS OH MY GOD. Plus with this season its clear there can't be the same writers on this team. They have sacrificed the story for toymaking opportunities DON'T YOU THINK MAYBE HE'S NOT RIGHT JUST BECAUSE S2 SOMEHOW SAYS THE -CONS IN SPECIFIC (NOT ALL BOTS MY FUCKING GOD)- ARE TO NOT BE TRUSTED AND ARE DANGEROUS? USE YOUR CRANIUM THAT EVOLUTION HAS GIVEN YOU. Mandroid conflated every single transformer with a twisted ideal in his head born out of hate, not from a true sense of danger nor did he separate cons and autobots or unaligned bots in his head from the conglomerate "evil" he thinks they are.

As above so below, you're DEFENDING HIS TERRIBLE GENOCIDAL BEHAVIOR BY BEING LIKE "HE MIGHT HAVE DONE BAD STUFF BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY HE WAS JUST PROTECTING EARTH" over a giant guardian robot who's being mind controlled and had no intention to do this or will of her own. Why are you so adamant on convincing yourself he was a good or commendable man? Where is your basic comprehension of anything in this show at all. HE TRIED TO COMMIT GENOCIDE ON A WHOLE RACE OF BEINGS WHO HAD BEEN COEXISTING ON EARTH FOR YEARS. It's not something you can go 'erm acshually-" on.

He literally killed EVERYONE who was a transformer; even if their death wasn't permanent they still died because he saw them all as a disease needing to be eradicated.

He has no sense of humanity, only hate in his heart and the need to destroy. How do you think he was protecting earth when he had succeeded at murdering an entire population off the face of the earth even if it's only for about 5-10 minutes? HOW ARE YOU THIS BLIND TO MEATRIDE HIM THIS HARD.

I honestly doubt they knew about her, let alone understood the glyphs everywhere. They were just mapping ancient tunnels and figuring it out; Croft also probably forbid anyone from entering due to the DWELLERS, not Terratronus; she was well off course and well protected/hidden by dirt and freaky alien monsters. Even if they somehow DID know, GHOST probably just utilized Terratronus to justify imprisoning dozens of transformers; whether they were cons, neutral, or autobots that didn't want to be part of a government mass incarceration and control program. Mandroid probably didn't give a shit at the moment because he was busy trying to squash literal children like bugs. Shut up about this stupid attempt at the executives making money off of random plot bullshit and toymaking opportunities.

AS STATED IN MY LAST POST: YOU ARE CONFLATING DECEPTICONS WITH ALL TRANSFORMERS, AS MANDROID DID. ONE GROUP DOES NOT EQUAL ALL OF THEM, AND DOES NOT MAKE TRANSFORMERS AS A WHOLE DANGEROUS IF THERE ARE INDIVIDUALS WHO CAUSE TROUBLE. MANDROID SAW ALL TRANSFORMERS AS A THREAT EVEN IF THEY HAD BEEN LIVING WITH HUMANS PEACEFULLY FOR DECADES. YOU ARE HERE SIMPLY REITTERATING A STUPID AND NULL POINT THATS PROVEN WRONG AGAIN AND AGAIN IN S1. His reasoning behind his actions are "we need to get rid of these filthy dangerous vermin who are invading our precious planet." Also the chaos terrans being born evil is a horrible plotpoint and groups being born evil is terrible writing, just like the entirtey of Season 2 because these new writers on the team understand nothing about the show as is. (Yes, most of the writers in s2 never worked on s1)

This one. this one enraged me. This is the most recent post I'd seen about mandroid as of writing (june 8th) and you have SERIOUS AUDACITY to say this. HE KILLED ALL OF THE MALTO BOTS AND TRIED TO KILL ROBBY AND MO; WHAT MAKES YOUR FUCKING MANDROID LOVING SHRUNKEN AND POCKED BRAIN THINK THAT HE WOULD TEAM UP WITH THEM LIKE SOME BUDDY BUDDY ADVENTURE? HE ATTEMPTED AND COMMITTED GENOCIDE, UNETHICAL EXPERIMENTATION, CHILD MURDER, AND MORE.... HE WOULDN'T MAKE JUST """""SMARTASS COMMENTS""" HE'D STRAIGHT UP HATECRIME ALL OF THEM.

I'm not gonna be nice with this last one. You are incredibly media illiterate if not just lacking basic cognition to think he of all people would willingly team up with people he wanted to kill off during season 1. You watched the finale of season 1 and GATHERED NOTHING FROM IT. You, in all your 34 years of life, somehow have not obtained a single gram of "maybe I shouldn't vouch for and defend a person who's xenophobic and wants to commit genocide" despite enjoying writing and HISTORY. HOW ARE YOU ONE TO ENJOY HISTORY YET MAKE NO CONNECTIONS TO ATTROCITIES COMMITTED BY PEOPLE TO WHAT MANDROID IS DOING AND HOW THEY ARE WRONG AND ENTIRLEY UNFORGIVABLE. At this point I believe you to be willfully ignorant to pass off your crush on this man as okay and convince yourself he is right somehow; even going as far as to utilize this new season as an excuse for him.

Your audacity to think he is anything other than a pathetic horrible man with terrible and morally bankrupt goals and actions somehow will be nice to groups of people he hates astounds me to no end. The show gives you all you need to connect the dots and you haven't. I'm aware i'm likely talking to a brick wall because you're likely willingly ignorant to excuse yourself or will never read this but I will call out this nonsense regardless. It comes off as extremely weird and bordering on you just believing in the ideologies he spouts.

I will say this again to make it clear; Mandroid is a stand-in for people who believe in racist and xenophobic ideas, and will stop at nothing to destroy them. The transformers are an allegory for refugee immigrants, and the terrans are first gen decedents. You continuing to believe his lies and defending him just borderlines on you upholding racist ideals. (That might sound deranged af of a claim but considering the context... yeah)

TLDR for lazy people: This fool pinged in this post is claiming a character who ATTEMPTED TO COMMIT GENOCIDE as being in the right somehow with his ideals/actions and not a total morally bankrupt person. Meatriding getting in the way of logic.

-No cheers to you, Wizard and Cupid

[dayurno]

I think it's wild the fandom at large depicts Riko's abuse of Kevin as never being of a physical nature before the hand-breaking despite textual evidence to the contrary from RIKO HIMSELF. It's like people can't understand why Kevin could still love Riko after that, so it must have never been "real hurt"

(also, even if it was only ever emotional, Kevin still would be a victim. Please stop comparing Kevin and Jean's traumas 2k24)

ive been waiting for myself to be in a sons of exy mood to talk about this and today is the day!

two things: one, i think people have an easier time making peace with kevin's character if they believe he was not as severely abused as he was. i think it's conflicting to fandom's characterization of him at large to acknowledge that kevin was famous and revered in his field at the same time that he was being kept captive and routinely violated by both his caretakers and his similars. both things can (and often are, with celebrities) be true! it is very intentional, in my opinion, that the only real power kevin has ever known was in court, peforming the duty of his family name

the second thing is that kevin and riko are just as similarly complex and dual-sided as kevin's character is. it is hard to conflate the words brother and abuser together because they are supposed to be antonyms. kevin himself never properly explains the extent of riko's abuse, and he never tells the stories of before riko's cruelty reached this point either. what ALWAYS gets me is that riko's story didn't die with him — kevin is quite literally the sole keeper of his brother's memory, because he is the only one who has witnessed him both boy and man. so really, if kevin does not want to sully riko's image further, i don't blame him

and lastly because i think this still bears repeating: kevin and jean were more similar than they were ever different. the only reason kevin was ever spared the brunt of riko's cruelty was because he was riko's partner in the duo system, and he was worth nothing to riko if he couldn't keep up. kevin was abused in the same ways jean was, emotionally and psychologically and physically and sexually and culturally. what happened to him was kept behind the door of their dorm room, yes, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. jean is a character in a story who is only allowed to know what he knows — the fact that he isn't aware of the entire extent of kevin's abuse is normal. it is however very telling that the piss on the poor fandom struggled to understand that a character's view of another character is not the objective truth of what happened to them

[pluckyredhead]

☕️batfam (not each character, but your opinion of them as a family both in canon vs. canon)

I think the version of them that you see in things like WFA and a lot of fandom stuff is delightful and entertaining. Don't get me wrong - a lot of the fandom stuff is also wildly wrong and infuriating. But there are writers who do a great job with a more fannish take on the Batfamily and I enjoy their work. (It is usually...painfully obvious who has actually read the comics and who only knows the Batfam via tumblr posts.)

The Batfamily in mainstream continuity is...not that. The characters are significantly more traumatized and rarely joke around with each other. They're also not a unit in the same way. They almost never do anything together out of costume. They don't have a joint baseline relationship of "family" - each pair of characters has a unique relationship. Like, Dick and Damian are close, Tim and Damian have a very rocky history, and Jason and Damian have honestly just not interacted that much? (Hilariously, Jason literally shot Damian early on and Damian doesn't appear to hold a grudge, while you know Tim is still mad about the dinosaur thing.) Damian has a specific relationship with Steph. Tim has a specific (and close!) relationship with Babs. (He used to just...hang out in the Watchtower! Being nerds together!) Duke and Cass are close, which of course is largely ignored by fandom. Etc.

I think the fact that the canon relationships are fraught and in some cases either really volatile or nonexistent is potentially really interesting. Like, I would love to see a story that puts Jason and Tim on a mission together and really digs into that dynamic, or Tim and Damian. (Or my dream story, one where Tim feels Some Kind Of Way about how he used to be Dick's favorite but now Damian very clearly is. (This is not how Dick sees it at all, for the record. Tim is his little brother! But Damian is his baby. It's different.))

Or look at the Robins' current relationships with Bruce: Dick is the closest with him but also accepts and absorbs much of Bruce's bad behavior without question. Bruce and Jason cannot be around each other for more than 30 minutes without dragging up every wound they've inflicted on each other over the years. Tim is desperate to fix Bruce to a degree that's actively unhealthy for Tim. Bruce functionally ignores Steph's entire existence and she seems to have wisely made her peace with that. And Damian is desperate for the unconditional love Bruce seems incapable of giving and mad at himself for it.

I don't actually want to change that. I find it fascinating. I'm not opposed to stories about the kids healing some of that damage, but I don't particularly want it to be via their relationships with Bruce. I'd like to see it happen via their relationships with each other. (That one story where Dick was like "Tim you will never fix Bruce, PLEASE stop trying" and Bruce was like "Lol he's right" was SO good. And then the writing on Tim went catastrophically off the rails but we're not talking about that right now.)

Anyway I think I've gotten a little far afield of your original question, but basically: I like (the good takes on) the fanon Batfam, but I also think the canon Batfam is really interesting. I don't think the two should be conflated (which is what DC does when they try to give us fluffy interactions that haven't been earned, Tom Taylor). And I don't think anyone is wrong for preferring either a more lighthearted take or a more fraught, canon-compliant take. The asshole behavior comes in when you refuse to accept other people's preferences.

(But also, if you are looking for an actually loving and healthy canon family that has playful interactions, you want the Flashes or the Arrows.)

[class1akids]

The way toga grief towards losing jin was sidelined and how uraraka never really comfort toga about jin was kinda weird to me

Yeah - this is why I'm not as big a fan of that fight as the whole fandom seems to be.

The PLF war confrontation between Toga and Ochako centered on the question of "who gets save by the heroes?" mirroring Ochako's question of "who saves the heroes". And then the answer Ochako gives "girl, even if that's what pleases you, you can't just go around killing people and expect no consequences" (which is valid, but is not exactly a response to Toga's question) pushes Toga further into grief.

Then Toga makes another attempt - this time with Deku and asks "what you want to do with me" and Deku's response "I can't imagine being like you - hurting the ones you claim to love" further escalates Toga.

And I think here the fight shifts away a bit from Toga's grief and more towards validating her own way of being. Or rather in a way, the two is conflated into the same: Jin got killed because his quirk was judged too dangerous and he wouldn't back down.

So I guess Ochako's attempts to understand her make Toga feel like a "person" who is not just to be stopped, but also seen as a human being. But in the end, Ochako is just one person and her calling Toga's smile pretty will not solve all the systemic issues around toxic quirk counselling, the way dangerous quirks are treated from childhood, the pressure to conform, the lack of mental care for people like Jin, the way the marginalized or poor are treated, families that disown their "difficult children". And I think the outcome of the fight recognizes that as Toga stays suicidal and says that the world as is doesn't work for her but the destruction doesn't make her happy either.

So even if Toga is "saved", she feels like her only option is to die and Ochako is clearly not happy with this outcome (btw, I still think Toga will live). There is no alternative for them, because Toga and Ochako are just two "normal teenage girls" with limited tools and the world they live in doesn't foster that understanding. Ochako reached and saved Toga's soul on a personal level, but in the grand scheme of things, nothing changed (yet).

I feel like this is maybe the outcome of all 3 fights - Toga's, Toya's and Tenko's "inner child" all got a moment of acceptance / relief they needed, but in the end, a bunch of teenagers reaching out in empathy can only go so far if the systemic issues have not been addressed.

And if Hori puts some effort into these issues in the epilogue - it can tie together quite well. Toga's and Uraraka's story can touch the heart of people to start to think about quirk discrimination and it could inspire people with the real power (like Hawks for example, if he becomes like the head of HPSC) to make changes to crucial aspects of how society works with buy-in from the public opinion.

I definitely feel like the narrative would let both the LoV Trio and the Savior squad down if everything stayed the same. But if the villains' issues become something the hero kids deeply care about on a broader level, their efforts can ignite a change. Then something good can come out of the confrontations, something important that can reach a new common ground between "destruction" and "bringing it all back".

[communistkenobi]

there are things you cant change and you shouldnt hurt yourself trying just to please other people. and that's okay as long as you're respectful about it. i dont like dick and i probably never will and that doesn't change how i treat trans women with no bottom surgery nor does it make me see them as anything other than women and if that makes you see me as a transphobe then there's nothing i can do about that 🤷‍♀️ there is never a situation where its ok to pressure people to have sex in a way they're not comfortable with and if you cant understand that then idk man get better soon

I told you to stop replying to that post but if you want to do this out in the open then sure we can do that

your claim that “conservatives tried to force me to like dick” is based on an essentialistic, extremely transphobic and patriarchal understanding of what a penis is. Conservatives don’t want you to “like dick” they want you (and all trans people) to remain in the closet, get heterosexual married, be Christian, and make babies. That’s not a command to “like dick” that is a demand that all people conform to white western cishet gender norms, and conflating the two is fucking transphobic! You are imbuing a particular body part that people have with deep political, social, and sexual meanings, and those meanings are deeply transphobic in general and transmisogynistic in particular. “Liking dick” or “not liking dick” is not a coherent or useful way to describe a person’s attraction to an extremely broad range of people. If someone said “I’m only attracted to people with vaginas” that would be an insane and obviously transphobic statement because it means that there is some level of sexual interchangeability between cis women, trans men without bottom surgery, trans women who have had it, and certain types of intersex people, and that there is something fundamentally different with people who have a penis that makes them essentially unattractive.

“Genital preference” is an extremely loaded and fraught term. It is the site of particular types of sexual violence against trans women specifically. It is based on the assumption that attraction to the rest of a person’s body and their genitals can be fully disconnected from one another, that genitals hold some essential quality that can be judged on an attractiveness scale regardless of the bodies they’re attached to, that what genitals a person has prescribes a very specific and narrow set of sexual acts that can be engaged in. This is transphobic rhetoric, full stop.

And for the last fucking time I’m not “pressuring” anyone into having sex with people they don’t like. Nobody is telling you to “hurt yourself” into liking a penis. You are getting ridiculously angry at a random trans person online describing the problems with “genital preference” as a framework and spouting virulently transmisogynistic rhetoric to justify said anger. The things you have said and are saying to me right now are insdistinguishable from the transphobia cis people spout, even the progressive ones who say they’re supportive but they just can’t get past how disgusting and unattractive our genitals are. You are having a temper tantrum about the simple claim I made that transphobia is deeply bound up in how people view sex with particular types of bodies, and your reasoning for why I’m wrong is “well because I feel like it” so why should I take anything you’re saying remotely seriously?

I’m done replying to you. Fuck off

[dostoyevsky-official]

I’m not trying to be a dick but can you please for the love of gd stop using the actual increasing antisemitism in this country as a rhetorical gotcha. this increase is being used as a pro-Israel weapon by the state (mostly by Republicans and Christian Zionists, of course also by Biden in his recent remarks) & that is fucked BUT it is ALSO REAL, just as increasing violence against Palestinian and Muslim people in the U.S. is ALSO REAL. the antisemitism of the protestors was and is real, almost never intentional, but REAL. I personally heard crazy antisemitic shit being said in the encampment I was part of just as I have heard crazy anti-Muslim and crazy anti-Palestinian sentiment in my Jewish community. this is all related of course to the war in Gaza and the genocide Israel is perpetrating on Palestinians there, but it is actually a different thing. the platform and reach you have really matter, I’m on your side, I believe in what you’re trying to say, I just also desperately want you to understand that just because shitty powerful people use something as a weapon doesn’t mean it’s not happening

i'm not the one using increasing antisemitism in america as a rhetorical gotcha, and in my posts i have written—as many others have pointed out—that the conflation of antizionism and antisemitism worsens the problem. i don't want to put words in your mouth, but the issue is cheapened when any chant of "palestine will be free" or antizionism is taken as antisemitism. if this is a response to my last post, then it's bizarre: a kahanist—kahane's actual cousin—ran over a protester, the president attacked the protesters for violence, and this is what you have to say? in october, yes, there was a significant flareup of antisemitism. at the start of these protests there were also associated (frequently unwanted) actors who repeated those things, but they were not widespread. what has been more common are baseless accusations of zionism leveled at any jewish student. these are antisemitic and they ought to be stopped. i want to be clear here, however: when i call someone a zionist, it's because they are one, and usually they are quite violent at that. but there have been steps to tighten discipline and correct behavior: one student who later made national news for antisemitic remarks was internally expelled by protesters before the university suspended them.

i'm not going to deny what you have seen with your own two eyes. i also know what i have seen with my own two eyes. i oppose antisemitism, but i frankly don't buy that much of the argument about it is being made in good faith

[moonyinpisces]

I wish people would understand the difference between headcanon and interpretation. Headcanon can have a basis in textual evidence but doesn't necessarily have to. E.g. like a swath of people deciding Crowley was Raphael before he Fell. No evidence for that specifically (just hints about his angelic rank), but OK people go ahead have a good time with it.

Good Omens fandom has a problem with conflating headcanons with interpretation. If people want to headcanon Aziraphale and Crowley as ace that's perfectly fine, the thought police isn't going to come into your house. Write fics, create art, spin around in your mind palace. Have fun! That is what fandom is for!

But a close reading of the show's themes, symbolism, and performances gives plenty of evidence of romantic/sexual attraction.

Whenever someone pops up on a post about A/C's sex life with "ugh stop it they are ace guys... Neil 100% confirmed it (no he didn't, he has never confirmed anything in his life)/the book 100% confirmed it (no it didn't)/the show 100% confirmed (lollllllll no it didn't)" or "ewww I really hope there is no sex scene in S3" I find myself jokerizing. I don't care if you think they're ace, please stop acting like it is an affront to literary analysis and good sense if I think they'd bang on every surface of the South Downs cottage (including the metaphysical realm) and jumping on every post to debate and finger wag about it.

that’s the thing that gets me too! like it’s prevalent all over different fan spaces but in good omens it’s worse because of the specific potency of the story’s context and neil’s far-too-close intertwining with the fandom. like you can have a headcanon! i have headcanons! everyone has headcanons that will never show up in the source material but you have them because they make sense to you! your personal worldview does not and will not change reality no matter how hard you try. creators don’t have to bend to your niche freako will. you can go without validation for two fucking seconds without the world ending!

[feybeasts]

Since there’s been pushback against it lately-

I hope y’all going “oh ‘you don’t owe anyone anything’ is SELFISH and voids the SOCIAL CONTRACT” understand that a lot of the folks saying that (like myself,) are saying that not because we’re condoning selfishness, but because it’s a litany against falling back into people-pleasing behaviors, usually brought on as unhealthy coping mechanisms against abuse in the form of appeasing people to avoid conflict at any cost.

Breaking out of that utterly self-destructive mindset required me having to put my foot down over and over and over to assert my boundaries, voice my needs, and yes, to get a bit selfish about it. If I start turning around and nitpicking my language, it isn’t going to get me to be more mindful of a fucking “social contract,” it’s going to make me vulnerable again.

So in all honesty, stuff your damn social contract, stuff your language policing, and get bent. I’d rather people be free of abusive manipulations than never be conflated with “selfishness”. If you really can’t stop yourself from confusing the two, get your own damn house in order.

[gendiebrainrotreceipts]

https://pin.it/54pfo67

idk how to download this but lmao why are so many women holding down the fort for transwomen like babes pls no stop u don't have to do this come join me

That is only true if you define intersex in the broadest sense ie including anyone who is born infertile. In any case, intersex people are not a third sex. There are still only two.

Then why are you arguing that sex is spectrum if sex is irrelevant to gender identity? Surely the fact there are two sexes shouldn’t affect your argument if it’s purely about gender and not sex? But instead you opt for spreading misinformation about the ‘spectrum’ of sex? Sounds like you may also have the problem of conflating sex w gender

Even if testosterone does have nothing to do w aggression; that is a extremely rarely used argument for why trans women should not be in women’s sports. It’s not one I would use tbh.

But males do have *a lot* more of it, which you decline to acknowledge.

Even so, the testosterone that was released during puberty *has already done its job*. As in greater body mass, bone density, lung capacity etc. These things cannot be undone by reducing the amount of testosterone later in life. (Also please make up your mind as to whether testosterone has a performance enhancing effect in sport, because if you believed it did not, you would not be making the argument that trans women have the same levels as ‘cis’ women. Because it would be irrelevant)

Yes because that’s obviously our actual problem 🙄

It’s honestly hilarious her saying this tbh.

[boreal-sea]

Hey, about your 'fictional characters can't be disrespectful, they aren't real and can't be objected etc' post. By saying this you're saying that there is no such problem as female objectivization in games and other products which is not right. It's like you justify tons of tons of bad fanservice designes and, for example, hentai artworks or writing including rapes. You are a feminist, right? You should have been giving a thought about it, because such things done to the fictional characters WILL hurt real women around the world because they form men's opinions about women and I mean sexist opinions. You may also add here a homophobic/transphobic and racist problems, when some people change fandom characters gender or orientation or paint them with a different skin tone (note that I'm also about white characters who suddenly turn to others colours). All of this caused by objectivization because people think they can change character they like and this is just unacceptable. Next, you wrote that you can't disrespectful fictional characters, but doing such bad things to characters that don't belong to you is a disrespectful towards their creators, like you said you can write a tentacle porn with some characters, this doesn't make you a bad man but if those characters don't belong to you, then sorry, but you'll show your luck of respect to their creator especially if that person is against such things. Like, you objectivizate and make fanservice things with their characters. Also saying that fictional characters aren't real (which is true of course) and they are just things is also very unethical towards those who create them. Try to say such things to any who made some characters and world where they live. Many people add some of their own traits, habits or behaviour patterns and spend a lot of their time dedicating to their characters so you may think a little better. And I think, you can't just say to people they don't have a right to treat their characters as living persons or kids, in any case let people to chose their own treatment

So, I was approaching this seriously until I got to the bottom where you being hand-wringing about how treating characters badly disrespects the creators of those characters, and then I realised you are a person with some extremely internalized Christian guilt and puritanism and a huge heaping of sexual oppression.

Please stop applying your morals and your hangups about sex and sexuality onto other people.

Below is everything I wrote addressing your points up until I hit the fandom nonsense.

---

You are doing what everyone else on that post is doing: you are conflating how a character is treated/depicted and whether or not that harms the character with how that can theoretically affect real people in the real world.

Real people and characters are not the same thing. The inability to separate these two concepts is causing endless problems.

The female character being sexualized is not hurt by sexualization for the same reason she is not "empowered" by it: she does not have agency because she is not a person. I bring up empowerment because a lot of the guys who try to claim this kind of sexualization is fine do so by claiming the sexualization is "empowering" the female character. She is not actually making the choice to dress in a flimsy skin-tight outfit, the artist is making that choice. Therefore, she cannot be harmed or empowered by it.

As many feminists involved in this debate have noted, it is not the existence of a sexualized female character that is the problem, it is the ubiquitous nature of this type of representation. It is in fact fine to draw a sexualized female character. It becomes a reflection on society as a whole when every depiction of a female character is sexualized - when every female superhero wears skin-tight latex, for example. This is especially true when she is sexualized in ways that reveal the patriarchy's ideal picture of what a woman should look like, namely thin and white.

The existence of material that sexualizes women is not the problem. I am an explicitly sex-positive and kink-positive feminist. I enjoy all the things you listed as problematic. I like noncon, I like rape fantasies, I've even enjoyed some hentai and porn in my day. I am the wrong feminist to fearmonger about "bad kink" to.

As for your hand wringing about how fanfic is "disrespecting the creators" - No, it's not. I'm not even going to go into a big long discussion on this one. You're being silly. Nothing a fan does to a character can affect the canon character in any way, shape or form.

[eldritch-thrumming]

i saw that review on letterboxd of all the rhetorical questions for barbie and like… the more i think abt it, the more i’m certain that the review’s author fundamentally misunderstood the film. barbie land is not a utopia in the way that adults would think abt a utopia, like the author seems to imply… barbie land is canonically shaped by little girls playing with their dolls. that’s why we see a supreme court. thats why there are nobel prizes and authors and lawyers (also because that’s how the toys are marketed… would there be a mermaid in ur utopia??? there would be in mine!). that’s why barbie and ken don’t necessarily know what a boyfriend and girlfriend are “meant” to do (not to mention that the author’s assumption that sex is fundamental to a romantic relationship is problematic at best). that’s why barbie is indifferent to ken (i personally had the life size barbie and my sister had the barbie dream house—we had the working woman barbie game, i had the genie barbie gameboy game, we had countless barbie dolls; we didn’t own a single ken doll lol). barbie land is a world created by and for little girls as they play with their dolls (she says in a comment on the original post “don’t little girls play with their dolls in a sexual way?” and yeah, sure, some do. but i didn’t and i’m sure there are others who didn’t… just like there are some girls who completely mutilated their own dolls and made them into horrifying creatures)… that’s why stereotypical barbie starts having an existential crisis—because a grown woman begins to play with her doll again and starts reshaping barbie land… we, as the audience, are meant to understand this as an outlier to how barbie land is canonically created. the author also calls ken “crass” and “slovenly”… maybe after he builds the patriarchy in barbie land he becomes “crass” but i wouldn’t call him slovenly at any point in the film (i suppose this is just semantics tho).

also, please stop saying that barbie land is a reversal of the real world. it isn’t, even if that may have been the filmmakers intentions. again, barbie is indifferent to ken. she does not abuse him, she does not treat him like he exists to service her by cooking or cleaning or providing other favors for her… barbie does not oppress ken in the way that men oppress women in the real world (we have no idea if he owns property or where he lives and she doesn’t seem to particularly care—extremely different from the fact that women couldn’t have their own bank accounts or credit cards, get a mortgage on their own or divorce their husbands through no fault divorce until the second half of the 20th century in the us… within a lot of our mothers and grandmothers lifetimes!!!!) and it is a complete disservice to conflate or equate the two. we actually see barbie drawing clear boundaries around her time and space in regards to ken—this is not a reversal of misogyny as women and girls experience it in the real world, by any stretch of the imagination.

is the film perfect or revolutionary or radical? of course not. it was produced by major studios and corporations in hollywood. of course the barbie movie is a fucking commercial for barbie, like… to expect anything different is just extremely dumb on your part if u saw the trailer, saw the marketing, saw the interviews, bought a ticket, and sat ur ass in the theater, like be fuckin serious. but don’t do women and girls a disservice by discrediting the world and thoughts and ideas it could open up for them by seeing themselves be taken seriously on screen in a major summer blockbuster with stupid fucking questions because u want to feel superior to everyone else because YOU and ONLY YOU see through the capitalist marketing of lipstick pop girlboss feminism (especially when juxtaposed with the way the female characters are treated in oppenheimer, which we cannot help but compare to the barbie film with the viral marketing of barbenheimer).