#THIS POST MAKES ME FEEL UNSAFE

[pbpsbff]

crazy how “genocide is bad” is a controversial take to some ppl these days

[qaraxuanzenith]

this is just your daily reminder that if what you THINK you're saying is "i want a ceasefire in gaza," what you're ACTUALLY saying is "I don't think the over 240 civilian hostages who were violently abducted from their homes in Israel over a month ago, including at least 32 children, deserve to be safe or have their human rights respected, and also I think Israel should stop defending its civilians so that Hamas can complete the genocide they set out to commit on October 7."

[monstersinthecosmos]

the most rancid drama starters in fandoms are always like "gee i wish this fandom was nicer, why do we have to fight all the time :("

[dishsaop]

one of the hardest things you can do, but one of the most rewarding, is understanding the fact that if one of your friends is annoyed with or mad at you, they will tell you. and if they are annoyed with or mad at you and they dont tell you, that burden is on them, not on you. catastrophizing in your head about how your harmless interactions might be enraging or disgusting a friend is damaging to you both. if someone respects you as a friend and as a person, they will tell you if they need a change. otherwise, its not your problem, baby. you are both individuals capable of communicating your needs, and neither of you (i am assuming) are telepaths.

[lanaevyssmoved]

ok i feel calmer now so i’m just gonna say it frank. if you believe astarion was turned at 39, and use this as reason to call him a child or childlike or mentally a child, and still romance him and post about lusting over him, i hate you.

[fandomsoda]

Just found out a long-time follower of mine has a fucking alt where they post about basically every Dreamtale-related incest ship you can think of and fucking sh0t4c0n shit (word censored to avoid it being found in search). What the fuck.

So, very unfriendly reminder that THIS BLOG IS NOT A SAFE PLACE FOR ANYONE WHO MAKES OR ENJOYS ANY OF THAT SHIT. NO FUCKING PRO/SHIP BULLSHIT OR HORRENDOUS NONSENSE LIKE THAT. NOT EVEN ON AN ALT. IF YOU ARE EVEN VAGUELY OK WITH THAT, GET OUT OF MY HOUSE.

[cherry-shipping]

thisis. embarrassing It was embarrassing 2 make and its been sittin in my drafts for like a week. but anyway Hi 👋

[relaxxattack]

boys when they cant read some of the most popular and interesting looking fics of their ship because the author who wrote them supports incest shipping and that feels genuinely uncomfortable/unsafe

[kindnessoverperfection]

I've found that, when interacting with others (or myself), it's useful to consider the lessons I'd want to teach a growing child.

If a child makes a mistake, I wouldn't want them to feel shame. I wouldn't yell at them, humiliate them, or in any way indicate to them that their mistake is a reflection of their worth or of who they are as a person.

Instead, I'd want them to associate the process with love and joy. If they say something that hurts someone's feelings, or otherwise ostracizes someone in some way, I'd compassionately explain to them. Ideally, they'd walk away knowing why they said / did it in the first place, how to handle similar situations in the future, and would accept the consequences (e.g. if a friend no longer wanted to hang out with them).

While the consequences may sometimes be painful, I'd do my best to instill in them that mistakes are human and natural, and that the process of learning from these mistakes is an opportunity to improve connections with others and express love.

I have a tendency towards excessive guilt. Memories in which I've said / done something ignorant or hurtful are infused with this guilt and shame- but ideally, I'd feel a sense of love and peace, and perhaps happiness, when looking back on them. Because they were moments of growth, moments I learned how to be more compassionate (even if the actual learning came years later).

So I'll put this out into the void:

When you make a mistake, that is not a reflection of you as a person. It is a moment in time, a moment which was informed by your past experiences. Humans are not static labels, or monsters in an RPG game. We are social creatures who live and learn and react and grow and experience and love. Be gentle with yourself and move forward knowing you're doing so in accordance with your values.

[carucath]

*** TERFS DNI ***

TL;DR: Misogynistic men hate women FAR more than man-hating feminists hate men

I get that hating men as a general population is stupid and reductive and ultimately Not Helpful for anyone except for TERFs (especially since many men are marginalised in some way).

I also understand that women (or people of any other gender I guess) can harm men in real and horrific ways (especially if the man is Black) but the fact he’s a man is usually NOT the reason she is harming him (EDIT: this is a bit more complex than I first considered because for example a “Black man” is seen as uniquely “dangerous” due his race AND gender so this isn’t quite right but ultimately he is targeted due his race)

As a bi woman I get really frustrated with people trying to say that men are intrinsically bad — so many men have been great (I have PCOS and literally the only doctor who’s taken it seriously was a man).

BUT

Misogynistic men are fucking terrifying, like the fact that they can just target you, intimidate you so easily because of their social advantage (which they know they have even if they deny it). And they will harm you because you are a woman (any other marginalisation will stack on top too — race, being trans, being disabled etc)

Seeing misogynistic men talking about women online is so harrowing and the way they can recruit teenage boys so easily really scares me. The fact that teenage boys get emboldened to threaten their female teachers with violence BECAUSE they are women is terrifying

The fact that Twitter is owned by one of the most misogynistic men in the world scares me. The fact that ANYONE supports Brad Pitt (abusive POS) terrifies me

As a woman in STEM I see (and receive) casual misogyny all the time.

In summary,

Men who are hurt by women are not usually hurt because they are men

Women who are hurt by men are almost ALWAYS hurt because they are women

[bisexualrapline]

jk’s weverse post was the first thing i saw when i woke up this morning and i would just like to wish all sasaengs a very get hit by a fucking bus. preferably at full speed. a big ass industrial size bus too not just any old schoolbus.

[coyotebrained]

You have to think things will get better, otherwise what is the point!!! You have to hold out hope that things will get better and then maybe one day things will feel safe and be cool and everything will be fine (at least as fine as it can be)

[sashasluggo]

Bah

[pillowprincessvarric]

This is understandably, and reasonably, a fraught subject, due to general demographic make ups and the wider cultural issues like marginalized persons being unfairly accused of being "angry", the actual anger of persons of various marginalized groups being disproportionately stigmatized, etc. so I'm being careful with my words here. But. A lot of people in online lefty spaces genuinely have severe unmanaged pathological anger issues that they express publicly in extremely unhealthy and upsetting ways and I can't help but feel like that's a, uh, bad thing.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

"We know that these self-identified Jews aren't actually Jewish because their Haggadah is different than ours and I don't like it"

AKA

"Reform and Reconstructionist Jews aren't real Jews, and no real Jew has ever altered the Haggadah via a Jewish lens of modernization....what do you mean Jewish feminists did exactly that and a huge chunk of progressive Jews actively incorporated those changes into their regular Haggadah material, what could women possibly have to contribute to the Haggadah that The Original Jewish Patriarchs didn't???"

I have absolutely pissed myself laughing at these fucking xenophobic shitheads and their alternate reality, but man, eventually the threshhold for "blood is leaking from my eyes" gets reached.

Anyway, here's a bunch of links to different Haggadah booklets so you can all see for yourselves how many different translations, iterations, and adaptations ACTUAL FUCKING SYNAGOGUES AND THEIR JEWISH MEMBERS have been making over the last few centuries.

A shortened Haggadah for "first timers, people with short attention spans, and hungry families with noisy kids":

A more standard length Haggadah emdorsed by the Jewish Federation of North America's Rabbinic Cabinet

One version of a Reconstructionist Haggadah

Another Reconstructionist Haggadah based on the work of several Reconstructionist Rabbis

A Reconstructionist synagogue's supplemental material to the first Reconstructionist Haggadah chosen to incorporate more work and writing from Jews of color from several significant JoC communities

One of the most well known Feminist Haggadahs

The National Council of Jewish Women's supplemental Haggadah material

The overarching Reform Judaism leadership's main page FULL of different haggadot

A "Haggadah for everyone!"

Chabad's take on the Haggadah

I'm out of space to add more Haggadot, but please understand that even if you try to seek out a "traditional" "orthodox" haggadah, you will still be directed to A BUNCH of different translations, transliterations, content structure, and messaging. Literally, there IS no such thing as "what the Haggadah is supposed to say" and deciding that someone isn't Jewish because *they're just using different Haggadot than you* is some of the most hateful kind of intracommunal erasure I can fucking imagine. It would be like Israel having a history of saying that the Jewish people (and their descendants) who renounced their faith under duress during the Holocaust need to convert to Judaism officially in order to be considered eligible for Israeli Jewish citizenship, or that only converts to *specific* sects of Judaism "counted" legally as Jews

Oh wait....

https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1329&context=psilr

Truly, I love being a Jew in a deeply antisemitic country where neonazis have more rights to free speech than Jews criticising holocaust deniers do lmao. Truly, it is a pleasure and a delight to be denied my history and my heritage by people who insist that accepting and endorsing war crimes is the price I have to pay for "safety". I have never been happier to revel in the beauty of my faith than now as I watch the world justify crimes against humanity in our name when literally two years ago, all those same people were insisting there were "good people on all sides" in Charlottesville. What a lucky little traitor I must be to my people, my faith, my G-d, and my family if I dare to think that we Jews have the right to evolve and grow culturally in line with halacha, even when that means rejecting established tradition in favor of modern halachic and Talmudic conversations about equality, justice, and compassion. How silly must I be not to realize the necessity of denying our own people their existances because they dared to disagree with you, oh great speaker for Hashem itself!

May your names be buried in the muck you sling, and may you receive all that you wish upon others.

And to anyone who decides NOT to be rabidly antisemetic in my notes, I hope you have fun looking through a bunch of Haggadah formats because truly? Pesach has always held a special place in my heart. It's the religious holiday I have always most loved and treasured. Like yeah, Purim's fun, yeah Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are important (don't tell my rabbi, but she talks sooooooo long on Yom Kippur and it's hard to sneak out to keep my blood sugar from harming me without disrupting my loved ones in their practice, so between RH/YK and the erevs, everything is usually just a fuckin blur for me by the end of it. My rabbi's dad, our former rabbi, does a great story hour tho). But pesach is about grief and love and meaning making, and the memories we treasure, and I could spend a lifetime talking with my aunties and my adopted mom and her friends all talking and sharing stories and singing in the kitchen.

There are SO many different interpretations of the haggadot, and I don't think I've ever used the same one two years in a row, but I've almost always loved the one chosen. Jewish introspection at Pesach speaks to me in my so, and I hope it makes yours sing too.

[unicornofgt]

alright, i have come to the decision i am keeping this blog up as an archive and leaving the gt tumblr community for the foreseeable future.

when i made my post about chamomile-g-tea’s damaging treatment of my story, gtms, my goal was to acknowledge the situation so i could hopefully move forward and restore gtms/my blog as mine again, without her influence. and while i anticipated backlash, some of the responses were just...downright disturbing. lots of comments echoed a victim-blaming sentiment that i am responsible for the emotional and creative damage done to me by another person because ‘why didn’t you just say no or tell her to stop?’ not only does this ignore the several attempts i did make to express discomfort and set boundaries—which were not respected—but even if i didn’t manage to express a ‘no’, that doesn’t make what happened ok; it doesn’t erase the year of crippling pressure and guilt i lived with and still struggle to shake daily. realizing that so many people in this community think otherwise is just...disturbing. it’s disturbing. that’s the only word i can think to use.

the response to all this does not make me feel safe being here—that’s what this situation has unfortunately showed me: that the audience i hoped to allow to view my reclaiming process would also contain the same crowd who make me feel so unsafe—and why the fuck would i let those people see something as personal as that? why would i let them see anything? it’s made me understand i can’t continue to heal myself and my writing if i am posting it for other people, especially harmful people. and even though it turned out this way, i’m glad i gave it a shot; that i made that post as an effort to see if it was even possible or worth it to restore this space—even if the answer was no! absolutely fucking not!—because it saved me from even more time spent sharing my work with people who do not respect me as a person or a creator. i’m glad i tried, however much it sucked, because it allowed me to understand: it is not just one person in this community i feel unsafe with, but a solid percentage of the community at large that i just cannot healthily engage with, and no amount of blocking will fix that.

but of course this is not the only situation that showed me this community’s true colors—the dismissive or outright aggressive response to the calling out of racism in our tropes has also been deeply disturbing. to clarify, there is no problem in identifying with and finding comfort or catharsis in problematic tropes such as the pet trope, but there is a problem with using that comfort to make others feel unsafe and speak over people of color. and the solution to this trope problem is very simple—generally apply critical thinking skills to the media you enjoy, and tag your shit properly (dead dove, particularly when the giant owner/abuser doesn’t face consequences and/or if the abused/abuser fall in ‘love’—dead dove is not actually currently used in this community, that’s the problem). but rather than taking this as an opportunity to listen and improve, it was instead used as a chance to lash out at and make clear that poc are not welcome in this community and come secondary to the feelings of white creators and readers.

over the last few years, this community has fostered and been exposed for bigotry such as terfs, ableists, racists, etc, and especially in the current political era, this is no longer a community i want to share my work with or even just lurk in. and i know on the surface this community seems progressive, but take a better look and you’ll find members of the community doing and saying…questionable things, or keeping quiet and enabling their friends who do and say questionable things because they would rather be passive and polite than be genuinely kind and compassionate through active accountability.

of course this is the risk you take interacting with any person ever—but it’s especially taxing to look around at such a small, close knit community you know is riddled with these problems and wonder if the people making innocent posts are actually harmful; if they prioritize their comfort over the safety of marginalized people, if they even see you as a full person, and for me, personally—if they are willing to overlook consent to blame you for your trauma and defend the person who inflicted it. it’s taxing to explain basic basic concepts to strangers over and over in a place that prides itself on being a safe space, where people just have fun and mentally escape from irl hardships. it’s taxing to ride out shitty, hateful treatment when you are just simply one person (voluntarily providing free services btw) with only so much energy and fucks to give. it is not worth the strain it puts on you as a person, nor is it your responsibility to sit there and accept it, and i am not the only creator in this community who feels this way. we are fucking tired.

quite simply, this is not a community i feel comfortable participating in or sharing anything with. and that’s a shame, because there are wonderful, creative and caring people here who i have enjoyed sharing this space with, and maybe someday i’ll give this community another chance, but currently it’s just not worth the time of day. and i want to make it clear: my leaving is not simply because of just one person or just one situation—that i could handle—it is the community itself that is the root problem; that continues to be harmful, in multiple contexts—that is the reason why i and several other creators are leaving for greener pastures and more enjoyable communities—or just simply for a fucking moment’s worth of peace, because lord knows you won’t find it here.