#We demand equality!

[electrosquash]

Follow the news. The Folkwang Museum's cancelling of Anaïs Duplan's exhibition (and still profiting from his work) is not the only institution overreacting preemptively in light of the current crackdown of israel-critical voices on a slippery slope to fascism.

These developments didn't just start with Hamas' attack on Israel of Octobre 7th:

But the political landscape is using its performative solidarity with Israel to restrict fundamental rights more and more especially with the rightwing parties heating up the migration debate again and the Ampel dropping all semblance of a backbone. And they aren't nearly done - keep in mind the upcoming elections where everyone wants a piece of AfD's fascism pie as they are projected to reach majority in three states.

[thenwethrowitonthefire]

Shout-out to everyone who survived a "fun" easter with the family

[artsyaprilmr]

Insane how they know everything but are not doing anything.

[petrichorium]

If the fifth member of the quintet is just flat-out dead I’m rioting btw

[minarcana]

fgo-xiv nero outfit swap so i can put nero in stupid slutty outfits. someone pick a number 1-8 and i will afflict you, against your will, with nero scaeva

[radioscientist]

The Eye Saga: Moments That Make Me Cry

2/???

[homophyte]

mmhhgm 2 AM thinking about HRT…………..perhaps my urgency is influenced by the belief that my transness only becomes acceptable after certain parameters are met and that it is in some way inappropriate to present myself as a trans person while being pretransition . something radical about the exposure of the whole process instead of being one of those instagram transes who pop into existence 7 years on T and post top surgery

[saturnsuv]

.

[batemanofficial]

i have to write a mock cover letter for a class and the urge to just mad libs luke's speech to jabba in rotj is overwhelming

[estravenlover]

I was talking the other day with people about how English doesn’t have deferential verb forms and stuff like many other languages do but how in English we still have hierarchical ways of speaking to each other. Obviously race class and gender play huge rolls. Also this is not universal but I notice that at least for me and most women around me that we talk to men in an extremely deferential way that men seem to take absolutely no notice of. I think most men that I interact with have literally no idea women speak to them differently than we do to each other. Even when things are not dangerous, like the other day I was talking to a random man in the grocery store and he was insisting that the Barbie movie already came out, and I know that’s just like factually not true but after he told me I was wrong I immediately agreed with him and continued with the conversation. Like I wasn’t scared of him I had no actual belief he would have hurt me in public because I insisted that the Barbie movie was not actually out yet lol. It was just the first reaction I had to placate him and agree verbally even though I knew it wasn’t true. And obviously it didn’t really matter in that interaction but I do this in my professional life, I do it when talking to strangers, and I even do it when I’m with friends even though I try hard to stop doing it then. It’s my tone of voice, it’s the literal words I say, and it’s even the body language. And it’s not a new idea that women make themselves smaller around men, many other people have said it before and more elegantly but idk crazy to me that so many men in the world don’t know we do this? Like this was also sparked by me working on some internal stuff with men and some white women I work under where I was angry because they seemed to be so dismissive of all the work I put into offering them deference and respect in our interactions and my friend literally had to tell me that they didn’t actually know I was doing that. that’s just how they think I am all the time and how they expect me to talk to them. Which, obviously lol but it was kinda jarring to realize in the moment.

[vaugarde]

got inspired by the bad writing in wc again that i saw in a post and i know they wouldnt do this bc the erins cant write and this isnt me giving them credit but the idea of leopardstar making mistyfoot her deputy after murdering her brother and trying to starve her and two children to death just because of their heritage not really being an olive branch but leopard attempting to start revisionist history like “oh!! no i loved her family this whole time i wouldnt WILLINGLY get her killed.... i was just tricked bc im so naive and small hahaaaaaa” so that later generations believe that she played no part in what happened and was just a victim

[4rk-in-the-road]

I think the reason a lot of leftists struggle with disability justice is that they haven't moved past the concept that discrimination isn't bad because it's objectively "wrong." yes, sexists are objectively wrong when they try to claim women are dumber than men. yes, antisemites are objectively wrong that jewish people are inherently greedy and run the state. yes, racists are wrong when they try to claim that white people are the superior race. and so on.

but then with disabled people, there are a lot of objective truths to the discrimination we face. people with IDs/LDs do fall behind and struggle with certain concepts. physically disabled people are often weaker and less capable of performing demanding tasks than able bodied people. many of us with mental illnesses are more reckless and less responsible. a lot of us are dependent on others and do not contribute much "worth".

and guess what? disabled people still deserve a place in the world. disabled people still deserve the supports they need. because they are people, and that should be enough to support them and believe they deserve a place at the table.

if your only rebuttal against discrimination is its objective inaccuracies, you are meeting bigots where they are at. you are validating the very concept that if and when people are truly incapable of being equal to the majority, that means they are worth less. this causes some leftists to then try to deny the objective realities of disabled people and/or become ableist themselves.

your rallying behind marginalized groups should start and end with the fact that people are completely worthy of life and equity, because they are fellow human beings and that should, frankly, be enough.

[chitsangenthusiast]

"my beloved nemesis" AND THERE'S ONLY 133 FICS ON AO3????????

[ssc-monarch]

Individualism and the bourgeoisie mindset is when black people have concerns about a thing that repeatedly occurs to them as a whole and is enabled by the power we have over them.

Class solidarity is when black people are quiet and mind their business.

[narrie]

jewishvoiceforpeace: This is what genocide looks like. These are the 2913 Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military this month, as of Thursday, October 26. As the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza intensify, we recognize with horror and grief that this death toll is already inaccurate.

We demand a ceasefire now to save lives. To stop a genocide. The Israeli military has already erased 47 entire Palestinian families from Gaza's population registry; all members of the family, from all generations, are dead. This is loss beyond measure.

The U.S. is also responsible for this horror. 80% of the bombs that the Israeli military drops on Gaza, that are used to kill these children, are American-made. We are called to do everything we can to stop this genocide.

As we continue to demand a ceasefire and fight for a future where everyone is free and equal and safe, we refuse to forget these lives. We will always affirm that every life is precious.

Every single one of these deaths was preventable. When we say Never Again-for anyone, this is who we mean. Never Again is right now.

Source: Gaza Ministry of Health

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

so: masking: good, unequivocally. please mask and please educate others on why they should mask to make the world safer for immune compromised people to participate in.

however: masking is not my policy focus and it shouldn't be yours, either. masking is a very good mitigation against droplet-born illnesses and a slightly less effective (but still very good) mitigation against airborne illnesses, but its place in the pyramid of mitigation demands is pretty low, for several reasons:

it's an individual mitigation, not a systemic one. the best mitigations to make public life more accessible affect everyone without distributing the majority of the effort among individuals (who may not be able to comply, may not have access to education on how to comply, or may be actively malicious).

it's a post-hoc mitigation, or to put it another way, it's a band-aid over the underlying problem. even if it was possible to enforce, universal masking still wouldn't address the underlying problem that it is dangerous for sick people and immune compromised people to be in the same public locations to begin with. this is a solvable problem! we have created the societal conditions for this problem!

here are my policy focuses:

upgraded air filtration and ventilation systems for all public buildings. appropriate ventilation should be just as bog-standard as appropriately clean running water. an indoor venue without a ventilation system capable of performing 5 complete air changes per hour should be like encountering a public restroom without any sinks or hand sanitizer stations whatsoever.

enforced paid sick leave for all employees until 3-5 days without symptoms. the vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through industry sectors where employees come into work while experiencing symptoms. a taco bell worker should never be making food while experiencing strep throat symptoms, even without a strep diagnosis.

enforced virtual schooling options for sick students. the other vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through schools. the proximity of so many kids and teenagers together indoors (with little to no proper ventilation and high levels of physical activity) means that if even one person comes to school sick, hundreds will be infected in the following few days. those students will most likely infect their parents as well. allowing students to complete all readings and coursework through sites like blackboard or compass while sick will cut down massively on disease transmission.

accessible testing for everyone. not just for COVID; if there's a test for any contagious illness capable of being performed outside of lab conditions, there should be a regulated option for performing that test at home (similar to COVID rapid tests). if a test can only be performed under lab conditions, there should be a government-subsidized program to provide free of charge testing to anyone who needs it, through urgent cares and pharmacies.

the last thing to note is that these things stack; upgraded ventilation systems in all public buildings mean that students and employees get sick less often to begin with, making it less burdensome for students and employees to be absent due to sickness, and making it more likely that sick individuals will choose to stay home themselves (since it's not so costly for them).

masking is great! keep masking! please use masking as a rhetorical "this is what we can do as individuals to make public life safer while we're pushing for drastic policy changes," and don't get complacent in either direction--don't assume that masking is all you need to do or an acceptable forever-solution, and equally, don't fall prey to thinking that pushing for policy change "makes up" for not masking in public. it's not a game with scores and sides; masking is a material thing you can do to help the individual people you interact with one by one, and policy changes are what's going to make the entirety of public life safer for all immune compromised people.