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gatheringbones · 3 months ago

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wickie stamps, from I am your Frankenstein, from leatherfolk: radical sex, people, politics and practice, edited by mark thompson, 1991

[“My activism began right after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., with a donation to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In my twen- ties, in hopes of reaching women like my momma who were locked away from their children, I joined forces with men and women whose families, like mine, were imprisoned. A decade later, I expanded this work to include battered women who were incarcerated for killing their abusers. Although my activism has spanned the communist and anti- intervention movements, it was in the anti- psychiatry, the women's health, and eventually the violence- against- women movements that I would directly wage war against the madness in my past.

For over half my life, I've sat on dozens of progressive boards, volunteered thousands of hours, held down back- breaking, poverty- level movement jobs, and attended many protests. I have watched fellow activists collapse, and institutions and movements I fought to build dissolve. Because of ill health, poverty, breakdowns, and emotional abuse, most of my peers have left political work. My activism is the only weapon I have ever had against the domestic violence, alcoholism, homophobia, and sexism that have maimed me, my family, and my friends.

Since coming out as a sadomasochist, I have felt a perpetual scream of rage against a movement that has betrayed me. I do not know if I will ever be able to express how deeply I have been wounded. For my sadomasochism has turned me into a pariah. The compliant face of sisterhood, which once comforted me, has now cracked open to reveal a poisonous Medusa's head. My movement is now just like my familial home, a house filled with hissing vipers.

After twenty years of movement work, I am alone again. Right before a scene, in my leather or my lace, I sit on the edge of my bed and wonder, where are all those women activists to support me now? Where are they for my lover, who is much more experienced than I, and has paid dearly for pursuing her desires? If I tarry too long she must come into the room, sit down beside me, and hold me while I cry. Where is the army of women- “proud sisters" is what they said- to cheer us in our courageous act?

When an ex- lover who was angry about our breakup grabbed me and threatened my life, where the fuck were my sisters, so concerned with violence against women? Could I have found a haven in the scores of shelters I helped build? Or found my image in their literature, the words I helped write? Could I have asked for a return of the support that I’d given them? Or, now that I am a sadomasochist, are they wedded to their vicious theories that heap more blame on me than my lifetime of abusers?

In my family, words— in the form of eagerly awaited letters— were the only thing I had to cling to. Words, mailed across the madness, the miles, and the years, are the most cherished and untarnished heirloom that has been given to me. Violence and disease took everything else. Somehow in words we could love, laugh, and be the family we knew we weren't. When I received letters from my incarcerated momma, I would sit, late at night, cross- legged on my bed and gather them into a big pile on my lap. Then I drew them up into my arms and tried to squeeze the love inside of me. In my letters back to her I intentionally let my tears drip onto my childlike scrawl just in case she might not know that I was devastated from the loss of her or that my daddy was scaring me. To this day, when a letter from my sisters or my stepmother arrives, I carry it for days. Words were all we had.

And it is now words, the gift of my demolished family, that have become my source of strength. They are carrying me through rage and agony for a movement that has maimed me. With words, I can stake out my ground and wage my war. If I do not let their hatred against me come too near, I will not be hurt. For I am beginning to break the silence about the sickness within my movement. It is a way to help her heal. During those dark times, when my movement's fascistic sexual theories and hollow voices almost convince me I am sick, it is my anger rechanneled into clear prose that snaps me back from the edge that my feminist comrades persistently nudge me near.

There are amends to be made, reparations due, and many questions that in my writing I am beginning to ask. I want to ask," You, who demand accountability for batterers and rapists, what about the last decade of S/ M women you abused, denounced, and banned from your meeting places? When are you going to hold yourself accountable for your own violence against women?

After twenty years of devotion to a movement, I find myself searching for a new place of solace, and some reflection of myself. But where can I turn? To a movement gone mad? To old friends who love me but who, as I journey deeper into S/ M, feel so far away? To old theoretical iconoclasts- Andrea Dworkin, Mary Daly, Marilyn Frye my life- roots that now lie rotting? Or to the new leathermen and women in my life whom I know so scantily and whose support I need so desperately? When the final limb breaks and I am pitched into my abyss of fear, many eyes will see, but what hands will reach out to break my fall?

Although my voice is in growing disharmony with the matriarchal movement, I have decided that I will not betray that which bound my wounds. For she taught me to sound the depths of my rage and forge my fury into a sword to wield against my enemies. She gave me back the memories of my blood sisters and taught me to love my momma for her courage. She led me into my lesbianism, and eventually into my sadomasochism. But now she writhes in her own poisons. So while her sexually neutered goddesses are napping, I will slip into her lair and, with pen filled with my family's blood, confront her with the madness that she's trying to say is mine.”]

#wickie stamps #lesbian literature #history stuff #transcribed #cw abuse

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intersexbookclub · 10 months ago

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Summary: Chapter 4 of Critical Intersex

For many of us, Chapter 4 of Critical Intersex (2009) turned out to be a particularly rich source of information about intersex history. So I (Elizabeth) have decided to give a fairly detailed summary of the chapter because I think it’s important to get that info out there. I’m gonna give a little bit of commentary as I go, and then a summary of our book club discussion of the chapter.

The chapter is titled “(Un)Queering identity: the biosocial production of intersex/DSD” by Alyson K. Spurgas. It is a history of ISNA, the Intersex Society of North America, and how it went from being a force for intersex liberation to selling out the movement in favour of medicalization. (See here for summary of the other chapters we read of the book!)

Our high level reactions:

Elizabeth (@ipso-faculty): Until I read chapter 4, I didn't really realise how reactionary “DSD” was. It hadn't been clear to me how much it was a response to the beginning of an organized intersex advocacy movement in the United States.

Michelle (@scifimagpie): I could feel the fury in the writer's tone. It was a real barn burner.

Also Michelle: the fuckin' respectability politics of DSD really got under my skin, as a term! I know the importance, as a queer person, of not forcing people to ID as queer, but this was a lot.

Introducing the chapter

The introduction sets the tone by talking about how in the Victorian era there was a historical shift from intersex being a religious/juridical issue to a pathology, and how this was intensified in the 1950s with John Money’s invention of the optimal gender rearing model.

Spurgas briefly discusses how the OGR model is harmful to intersex people, and how it iatrogenically produces sexual dysfunction and gender dysphoria. “Iatrogenic” means caused by medicine; iatrogenesis is the production of disease or other side-effects as a result of medical intervention.

This sets scene for why in the early 1990s, Cheryl Chase and other intersex activists founded the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). It had started as a support group, and morphed significantly over its lifetime. ISNA closed up shop in 2008.

Initially, ISNA was what we’d now call interliberationist. They were anti-pathologization. Their stance was that intersexuality is not itself pathological and the wellbeing of intersex people is endangered by medical intervention. They organized around the abolition of surgical intervention. They also created fora like Hermaphrodites With Attitude for the deconstruction of bodies/sexes/genders and development of an intersex identity that was inherently queer.

The early ISNA activists explicitly aligned intersexuality in solidarity with LGB and transgender organizing. There was a belief that similar to LGBT organizing, once intersex people got enough visibility and consciousness-raising, people would “come out” in greater numbers (p100).

By the end of the 90s, however, many intersex people were actively rejecting being seen as queer and as political subjects/actors. The organization had become instead aligned with surgeons and clinicians, had replaced “intersex” with “DSD” in their language.

By the time ISNA disbanded in 2008 they had leaned in hard on a so-called “pragmatic” / “harm reduction” model / “children’s rights perspective”. The view was that since infants in Western countries are “born medical subjects as it is” (p100)

Where did DSD come from?

In 2005, the term “disorders of sexual differentiation” had been recently coined in an article by Alice Dreger, Cheryl Chase, “and three other clinicians associated with the ISNA… [so as] to ‘label the condition rather than the person’” (p101). Dreger et al thought that intersex was “not medically accurate” (p101) and that the goal should be effective nomenclature to “sort patients into diagnostically meaningful groups” (p101).

Dreger et al argued that the term intersex “attracts the interest of a large number of people whose interest is based on a sexual fetish and people who suffer from delusions about their own medical histories” (Dreger et al quoted on p101)

Per Spurgas, Dreger et al had an explicit agenda of “distancing intersex activism from queer and transgressive sex/gender politics and instead in supporting Western medical productions of intersexuality” (p102). In other words: they were intermedicalists.

According to Dreger et al, an alignment with medicine is strategically important because intersex people often require medical attention, and hence need to be legible to clinicians. “For those in favor of the transition to DSD, intersex is first and foremost a disorder requiring medical treatment” (p102)

Later in 2005 there was a “Intersex Consensus Meeting” organized by a society of paediatricians and endocrinologists. Fifty “experts” were assembled from ten countries (p101)... with a grand total of two actually intersex people in attendance (Cheryl Chase and Barbara Thomas, from XY-Frauen).

At the meeting, they agreed to adopt the term DSD along with a “‘patient-centred’ and ‘evidence-based’ treatment protocol” to replace the OGR treatment model (p101)

In 2006, a consortium of American clinicians and bioethicists was formed and created clinical guidelines for treating DSDs. They defined DSD quite narrowly: if your gonads or genitals don’t match your gender, or you have a sex chromosome anomaly. So no hormonal variations like hyperandrogenism allowed.

The pro-DSD movement: it was mostly doctors

Spurgas quotes the consortium: “note that the term ‘intersex’ is avoided here because of its imprecision” (p102) - our highlight. There’s a lot of doctors hating on intersex for being a category of political organizing that gets encoded as the category is “imprecise” 👀

Spurgas gets into how the doctors dressed up their re-pathologization of intersex as “patient centred” (p103) - remember this is being led by doctors, not patients, and any intersex inclusion was tokenistic. (Elizabeth: it was amazing how much bs this was.)

As Spurgas puts it, the pro-DSD movement “represents an abandonment of the desire for a pan-intersexual/queer identity and an embrace of the complete medicalization of intersex… the intersex individual is now to be understood fundamentally as a patient” (p103)

Around the same time some paediatricians almost came close to publicly advocating against infant genital mutilation by denouoncing some infant surgeries. Spurgas notes they recommended “that intersex individuals be subjected (or self-subject) to extensive psychological/psychiatric, hormonal, steroidal and other medical” interventions for the rest of their lives (p103).

This call to instead focus on non-surgical medical interventions then got amplified by other clinicians and intermedicalist intersex advocacy organizations.

The push for non-surgical pathologization hence wound up as a sort of “compromise” path - it satisfied the intermedicalists and anti-queer intersex activists, and had the allure of collaborating with doctors to end infant surgeries. (Note: It is 2024 and infant surgeries are still a thing 😡.)

The pro-DSD camp within the intersex community

Spurgas then goes on to get into the discursive politics of DSD. There’s some definite transphobia in the push for “people with DSDs are simply men and women who happen to have congenital birth conditions” (p104). (Summarizer’s note: this language is still employed by anti-trans activists.)

The pro-DSD camp claimed that it was “a logical step in the ‘evolution in thinking’” 💩 and that it would be a more “humane” treatment model (p105) 💩

Also that “parents and doctors are not going to want to give a child a label with a politicized meaning” (p104) which really gives the game away doesn’t it? Intersex people have started raising consciousness, demanding their rights, and asserting they are not broken, so now the poor doctors can’t use the label as a diagnosis. 🤮

Spurgas quotes Emi Koyama, an intermedicalist who emphasized how “most intersex people identify as ‘perfectly ordinary, heterosexual, non-trans men and women’” (p104) along with a whole bunch of other quotes that are obviously queerphobic. Note from Elizabeth: I’m not gonna repeat it all because it’s gross. In my kindest reading of this section, it reads like gender dysphoria for being mistaken as genderqueer, but instead of that being a source of solidarity with genderqueers it is used as a form of dual closure (when a minority group goes out of its way to oppress a more marginalized group in order to try and get acceptance with the majority group).

Koyama and Dreger were explicitly anti-trans, and viewed intergender type stuff as “a ‘trans co-optation’ of intersex identity” (p105) 🤮

Most intersex people resisted “DSD” from its creation

On page 106, Spurgas shifts to talking about how a lot intersex people were resistant to the DSD shift. Organization Intersex International (OII) and Bodies Like Ours (BLO) were highly critical of the shift! 💛 BLO in particular noted that 80-90% of their website users were against the DSD term. Note from Elizabeth: indeed, every survey I’ve seen on the subject has been overwhelmingly against DSD - a 2015 IHRA survey found only 3% of intersex Australians favoured the DSD term.

Proponents of “intersex” over “DSD” testified to it being depathologizing. They called out the medicalization as such: that it serves to reinforce that “intersex people don’t exist” (David Cameron, p107), that it is damaging to be “told they have a disorder” (Esther Leidolf, p107), that there is “a purposeful conflation of treatment for ‘health reasons’ and ‘cosmetic reasons’ (Curtis Hinkle, p107), and that it’s being pushed mainly by perisex people as a reactionary, assimilationist endeavour (ibid).

Interliberationism never went away - intersex people kept pushing for 🌈 queer solidarity 🌈 and depathologization - even though ISNA, the largest intersex advocacy organization, had abandoned this position.

Spurgas describes how a lot of criticism of DSD came from non-Anglophone intersex groups, that the term is even worse in a lot of languages - it connotes “disturbed” in German and has an ambiguity with pedophilia and fetishism in French (p111).

The DSD push was basically entirely USA-based, with little international consultation (p111). Spurgas briefly addresses the imperialism inherent in the “DSD” term on pages 118/119.

Other noteworthy positions in the DSD debate

Spurgas gives a well-deserved shout out to the doctors who opposed the push to DSD, who mostly came from psychiatry and opposed it on the grounds that the pathologization would be psychologically damaging and that intersex patients “have taken comfort (and in many cases, pride) in their (pan-)intersex identity” (p108) 🌈 - Elizabeth: yay, psychiatrists doing their job!

Interestingly, both sides of the DSD issue apparently have invoked disability studies/rights for their side: Koyama claimed DSD would herald the beginning of a disability rights based era of intersex activism (p109) while anti-DSDers noted the importance in disability rights in moving away from pathologization (p109).

Those who didn’t like DSD but who saw a strategic purpose for it argued it would “preser[ve] the psychic comfort of parents”, that there is basically a necessity to coddle the parents of intersex children in order to protect the children from their parents. (p110)

Some proposed less pathologizing alternatives like “variations of sex development” and “divergence of sex development” (p110)

The DSD treatment model and the intersex treadmill

Remember all intersex groups were united that sex assignment surgery on infants needs to be abolished. The DSD framework that was sold as a shift away from surgical intervention, but it never actually eradicated it as an option (p112). Indeed, it keeps ambiguous the difference between medically necessary surgical intervention and culturally desired cosmetic surgery (p112). (Note from Elizabeth: funny how *this* ambiguity is acceptable to doctors.)

What DSD really changed was a shift from “fixing” the child with surgery to instead providing “lifelong ‘management’ to continue passing” (p112), resulting in more medical intervention, such as through hormonal and behavioural therapies to “[keep] it in remission” (p113).

Cheryl Chase coined the “intersex treadmill’: the never-ending drive to fit within a normative sex category (p113), which Spurgas deploys to talk about the proliferation of “lifelong treatments” and how it creates the need for constant surveillance of intersex bodies (p114). Medical specialization adds to the proliferation, as one needs increasingly more specialists who have increasingly narrow specialties.

There’s a cruel irony in how the DSD model pushes for lifelong psychiatric and psychological care of intersex patients so as to attend to the PTSD that is caused by medical intervention. (p115) It pushes a capitalistic model where as much money can be milked as possible out of intersex patients (p116).

The DSD treatment model, if it encourages patients to find community at all, hence pushes condition-specific medical support groups rather than pan-intersex advocacy groups (p115)

Other stuff in the chapter

Spurgas does more Foucault-ing at the end of the chapter. Highlight: “The intersex/DSD body is a site of biosocial contestation over which ways of knowing not only truth of sex, but the truth of the self, are fought. Both intelligibility and tangible resources are the prizes accorded to the winner(s) of the battle over truth of sex” (p117)

There’s some stuff on the patient-as-consumer that didn’t really land with anybody at the book club meeting - we’re mostly Canadians and the idea of patient-as-consumer isn’t relatable. Ei noted it isn’t even that relatable from their position as an American.

***

Having now summarized the chapter, here's a summary of our discussion at book club...

Opening reactions

Michelle (M): the way the main lady involved became medicalized really made my heart sink, reading that.

Elizabeth (E): I do remember some discussion of intersex people in the 90s, and it never really grew in the way that other queer identities did! This has kind of helped for me to understand what the fuck happened here.

E: It was definitely a very insightful reading on that part, while being absolutely outraging. I didn't know, but I guess I wasn't surprised at how pivotal US-centrism was. The author was talking about "North American centric" though but always meant the United States!!! Canada was just not part of this! They even make mention of Quebec as separate and one of the opposing regions. I was like, What are you doing here, America? You are not the entirety of our continent!!!

E: The feedback from non-Anglophone intersex advocates that DSD does not translate was something that I was like, "Yes!" For me, when I read the French term - that sounded like something that would include vaginismus, erectile dysfunction - it sounds far more general and negative.

M: the fuckin' respectability politics of DSD really got under my skin, as a term! I know the importance, as a queer person, of not forcing people to ID as queer, but this was a lot.

E: it was very assimilationist in a way that was very upsetting. I knew intellectually that this was going on. There was such a distinct advocacy push for that. The coddling of parents and doctors at the expense of intersex people was such a theme of this chapter, in a way that was very upsetting. They started out with this goal of intersex liberation, and instead, wound up coddling parents and doctors.

Solidarities

M: I feel like there's a real ableist parallel to the autism movement here… It dovetails with how the autism movement was like, "Aww, we're sorry about your emotionless monster baby! This must be so hard for you [parents]!" And it felt like "aw, it's okay, we'll fix your baby so they can interface with heterosexuality!" [Note: both of us are neurodivergent]

E: A lot of intersexism is a fear that you're going to have a queer child, both in terms of orientation and gender.

E: You cannot have intersex liberation without putting an end to homophobia and transphobia.

M: We're such natural allies there!

E: I understand that there are these very dysphoric ipsogender or cisgender people, who don't want to be mistaken as trans, but like it or not, their rights are linked to trans people! When I encounter these people, I don't know how to convey, "whether you like it or not, you're not going to get more rights by doing everything you can to be as distant as possible."

M: it reminds me of the movements by some younger queers to adhere to respectability politics.

E: Oh no. There are younger queers who want respectability politics????

M: well, some younger queers are very reactionary about neopronouns and kink at pride. they don't always know the difference between representation and "imposing" kinks on others. In a way, it reminds me of the more intentional rejection of queer weirdos, or queerdos, if you will, by republican gays.

E: I feel like a lot of anti-queerdom that comes out of the ipso and cisgender intersex community reads as very dysphoric to me. That needs to be acknowledged as gender dysphoria.

M: That resonates to me. When I heard about my own androgen imbalance, I was like, "does that mean I'm not a real woman?" And now I would happily say "fuck that question," but we do need an empathy and sensitivity for that experience. Though not tolerance for people who invalidate others, to be honest.

E: The term "iatrogensis" was new to me. The term refers to a disease caused or aggravated by medical intervention.

M: So like a surgical complication, or gender dysphoria caused by improper medical counselling!

The DSD debate

ei: i think the "disorder" discussion is really interesting. in my opinion, if someone feels their intersex condition is a disorder they have every right to label it that way, but if someone does not feel the same they have every right to reject the disorder label. personally i use the label "condition". i don't agree with forcing labels on anyone or stripping them away from anyone either.

M: for me, it felt like a cautionary tale about which labels to accept.

ei: i'm all around very tired of people label policing others and making blanket statements such as "all people who are this have to use this label”... i also use variation sometimes, i tend to go back and forth between variation and condition. I think it's a delicate balance between being sensitive to people's label preferences vs making space for other definitions/communities.

We then spoke about language for a bunch of communities (Black people, non-binary people) for a while

E: one thing that was very harrowing for me about this chapter is that while there was this push to end coercive infant surgery, they basically ceded all of the ground on "interventions" happening from puberty onward. And as someone who has had to fight off coercive medical interventions in puberty, I have a lot of trauma about violent enforcement of femininity and the medical establishment.

ei: i completely agree that it's psychologically harmful tbh…. i was assigned male at birth and my doctors want me to start testosterone to make me more like a perisex male. which is extremely counterproductive because i'm literally transfem and have expressed this many times

Doctors Doing Harm

M: for me, the validation of how doctors can be harmful in this chapter meant a lot.

E: something that surprised me and made me happy was that there were some psychiatrists who spoke out against the DSD label. As someone who routinely hears a lot of anti-psychiatry stuff - because there's a lot of good reason to be skeptical of psychiatry, as a discipline - it was just nice to see some psychiatrists on the right side of things, doing right by their patients. Psychiatrists were making the argument that DSD would be psychologically harmful to a lot of intersex people.

ei: like. being told that something so inherently you, so inherently linked to your identity and sense of self, is a disorder of sexual development, something to be fixed and corrected. that has to be so harmful

ei: like i won't lie i do have a lot of severe trauma surrounding the way i've been treated due to being intersex. but so much of my negative experiences are repetitive smaller things. Like the way people treat me like my only purpose is to teach them about intersex people …. either that or they get really creepy and gross. I’m lucky in that i'm not visibly intersex, so i do have the privilege of choosing who knows. but there's a reason why i usually don't tell people irl.

M: intersex and autism have overlap again about how like, minor presentation can be? As opposed to the sort of monstrous presentation [Carnival barker impression] "Come see the sensational half-man, half-woman! Behold the h-------dite!" And like - the way nonverbal people are also treated feels relevant to that, because that's how autism is often treated, like a freakshow and a pity party for the parents? And it's so dehumanizing. And as someone who might potentially have a nonverbal child, because my wife is expecting and my husband and she both have ADHD - I'm just very fed up with ableism and the perception of monstrosity.

Overall, this was a chapter that had a lot to talk about! See here for our discussion of Chapters 5-7 from the same volume.

#intersex #intersex studies #queer theory #gender studies #actually intersex #intersex rights #intersex activism #intersex books #book reviews #book summaries #paper summaries #lit review #critical intersex #intersex history

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henghost · 11 months ago

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Twig Liveblog for Arc 5

omg good arc! maybe my fav so far. it actually reads like a proper spy novel. the lambs are really in their element--it feels like the previous missions have been training, this is the real deal.

the little thematic threads feel increasingly coherent, thanks to a very organized presentation here. the humors assassins are a great antagonist because they're such perfect foils. it comes more apparent than ever, through their conflict, that the lambs are closer to components of one larger projects, rather than discrete individuals--this is why it's so heartbreaking in that "intervention" scene (amazing scene btw, i like sy at his most messy, catty, queeny, etc.), when he fights back against the idea that he's been somehow "influenced" by the other lambs.

i also like the plague men--another very potent reminder that the lambs are themselves disfigured, though not quite so obviously. the plague men, though, are of course voluntary subjects: they have something they really believe in, a cause beyond themselves--unlike the lambs. perhaps this is what prompts the questions later on regarding whether they're really okay operating like this. LIVING STITCHED !!

gordon's premonition of expiration, for lack of a better term, is another interesting knot. it's his "death drive" flaring up, maybe also exacerbated by the presence of shipman. the detail about him previously being more rebellious was so heartbreaking--like he's been beaten into submission. my poor babies... it feels like they're so close to death and despair at all times 😭 they deserve better!!

PREDICTIONS (or, embarrassing myself for your entertainment_

gordon will die first (yeah, dummy, he's the oldest, yeah i know but it feels pretty perfect, days away from defection kinda thing)

sy will manipulate mary into being more anti-academy and then feel guilty (it is kinda strange that mary is among the more pro-academy--something about the grass being greener maybe)

#twigblr #henghost's twig arc #liveblog #twig liveblog #twig web serial

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mihai-florescu · 8 months ago

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the Izumi smoking headcanon is so real, he would hate it too and try to hide it but everyone knows. Guy who won’t eat sugar and fast food but stress smokes outside hiding behind a car

Im so sorry for ignoring this ask... well i wasnt but i kept forgetting to answer. I think he'd start smoking after moving to florence... and absolutely would hide it. I wonder what would trigger him to try for the first time (a party with other models perhaps?) and then make a habit of having a cigarette after every failed audition. Which would evolve into at the end of every day. And then having to hide it when he's back in japan, i imagine he'd be even more irascible than usual. Euthanasia wouldve gone different if he had the pack of smokes with him, just saying. I really think leo would know about it tho, not because izumi told him, he'd just figure it out. And once they start living together it really becomes hard to hide (i think izumi would be very good at concealing the smell of smoke though). I'd want to see tsukasa's reaction... i hope he stages an anti addiction intervention (*izumi sena defensive voice* it's not even that bad, do you know anything about the modeling scene in europe? At least i dont do cocaine)

#ask #anon

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haggishlyhagging · 4 months ago

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North American women are once again confronting the issue of abortion, in part, because the advent of and publicity given to the new reproductive technologies has created a social context and perception in which the rights of sperm providers and fetuses have become paramount. And as the ejaculatory father emerges as the protector of the fetus, fathers' rights merge with fetal rights.

In the panoply of many new reproductive technologies—in vitro fertilization, embryo experimentation, transfer, and freezing, and fetal tissue transplantation—we see the separability and severability of the embryo/fetus from the woman. As the new reproductive technologies increasingly separate and sever the fetus/embryo from the woman, the medical progenitors create an adversarial relationship between woman and fetus. Even when the fetus is still in the womb, doctors often become police officers of the pregnancy, reporting alleged abusive behavior from the mother, for example, alcohol and drug intake or refusal to submit to a cesarian. They monitor any female activity that is judged harmful to the fetus, not any medical interventions that might harm the pregnant woman. Women are expected to submit to any directives or any invasive, painful, and unnecessary technology that doctors judge necessary to protect or improve the quality of the fetus. Since July 1989, when the U.S Supreme Court gave the states broader authority to limit abortion, ten more fetal abuse cases have been filed against women in the United States.

If the fetus becomes the primary "patient" while still in the womb, how much more so when it is detached from the woman's body in procedures where fetuses can be grown, frozen, and thawed technologically. Modern obstetrical practice has confirmed the pregnant woman as mere maternal environment for the fetus. Surrogacy has confirmed the pregnant woman as incubator for someone else's child-to-be-born. And other new reproductive techniques such as IVF and embryo transfer confirm the woman as egg producer or baby machine.

It is no surprise then that in the 1990s, fetal rights are in the foreground. This is due not only to the activism of conservative and fundamentalist right wing groups, like Operation Rescue, but also to reproductive liberals who promote the development of and access to invasive new reproductive technologies. Those who care about women's reproductive rights are fundamentally nearsighted when they focus only on the glare of the anti-abortion movement without looking beyond to the more dimly lit scene of pro-reproductive technology liberalism.

-Janice G. Raymond, Women as Wombs

#janice raymond #reproductive technology #women’s rights #fetal rights #medical misogyny

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berniesrevolution · 2 years ago

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IN THESE TIMES

For nearly 40 years, Berlin Nightclub has set itself apart through its progressive, come-as-you-are atmosphere, late-night dance floor extravaganzas and bold, diverse drag performances. Now, workers at the club are seeking to set Berlin apart in a new way — by becoming the first nightclub in Chicago’s gay enclave with a unionized staff.

According to Jolene Saint, a bartender who has been working at Berlin for more than six years, on February 28th, workers at Berlin filed for union election with UNITE HERE Local 1 — a union representing more than 15,000 hospitality workers in Chicagoland. Two days later, staff notified management of their decision.

Saint says workers’ decision to unionize is “not personal, it’s not because we hate anybody — it’s because we know we could have better working conditions.” Two of Berlin workers’ key priorities resemble those of most union drives: better pay and healthcare. Saint, for instance, currently makes $9 an hour plus tips as a bartender, and does not receive health insurance from the club — both things she’d like to see improve. Workers In These Times spoke to said they would also like to see improvements such as proper breaks and consistent scheduling.

Yet other demands at the club have to do with its nature as a queer bar in a time when those spaces are under threat. As homophobic and transphobic rhetoric and violence increase nationally, Saint says she and her coworkers are also worried about violence coming towards the club from the outside. Workers In These Times spoke to mentioned security improvements they would like to see, including proper uniforms for all security staff as well as cut-proof jackets. Chelle Crotinger, who has been part of the club’s security staff for about five months, says they want to use the union as a way to ensure that security team members receive more in-person de-escalation and standard self-defense training.

“People often say that gay bars or queer bars are community spaces,” Saint says. “If they want to live up to that promise, they need to take care of the people who are making that happen … so that we can make people feel welcome, and loved.” Leo Sampson, who has been working at Berlin since fall 2021 and performs at the club as drag king Luv Ami-Stoole, sees fighting for the union as an act of community care.“In a time where the political climate is so anti-drag and anti-trans, I think it’s important to remember we are all we’ve got is this community and we have to support each other,” he says.

Berlin’s union drive follows other recent efforts to improve conditions in Chicago’s queer nightlife scene. During the summer 2020, Chicago drag queen Jo MaMa and other local drag performers held a Drag March for Change, which drew 15,000 protestors. In the wake of the march, a group of performers formed the Chicago Black Drag Council, which held town halls to address racism in the nightlife scene in Northalsted and launched a mutual aid fund for BIPOC nightlife workers. Since then, workers at two of the city’s largest LGBTQ nonprofit organizations, Howard Brown Health Centers and Brave Space Alliance, have been fighting to unionize, which Sampson says has made the community more aware of labor issues. On Friday, members of Howard Brown Health Workers United joined Berlin workers on a picket line outside of the club. “We’re sort of inspiring each other to fight for what is right,” he says.

Crotinger sees their union drive as a way to help ensure Berlin remains a safe space for future generations amid larger-scale systemic attacks on queer and trans people. “In queer communities, we don’t really have the privilege of relying on legacy because it’s largely been taken away from us, whether it’s been through legislation or been through neglect of medical intervention for the AIDS epidemic,” they say. “I feel it’s our responsibility now … to establish something that is going to last beyond us.”

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #in these times #lgbt #lgbt community #workers rights #organized labor #organizing #progressive #progressive movement

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tipsygnostalgy · 1 year ago

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On Grandpa/Jake Harley

you know shits about to be long as fuck when i add the keep reading line like four lines in lol

anyway anon all this is 4 u!! feel free to talk ab this by just tagging instead of rb i dont want 2k words to be posted over n over again

Grandpa Harley being some kind of pseudo-omnipotent deity figure who somehow figures out/guesses (my money's on guesses) extremely intricate details about the game and does everything he can to make things go right is something that we don't talk about enough. It's one of the only plans in Homestuck made that are orchestrated entirely by one person then ends up going right. It's that pattern of hoping that the cards fall into place in the right way (unless we're taking the Grandpa is practically God perspective, which is interesting in its own right)—but notably, he makes a lot of preparations beforehand. He's so... active. It fascinates me. I'll have to talk about this on the Jake English as Jesus Christ trope post (it's coming, I swear, brainrot's a bitch) but the sheer amount of things he does is astounding. But, lo and behold, he wasn't always like this. Cue: the Skaianet Systems Incorporated texts.

Quick note about all that. A very large portion of the things Hussie wrote for SSI is 1) dubiously canon, and 2) a bunch of anti-semitic bullshit that he probably never should have fucking released to the public, at least not like that. Like, holy shit, keep that and your weird comments about sexual slavery in your Notes app dude, we don't need to hear it. For this reason I suggest reading the actual material with extreme caution. Cool? Cool. On with it. Here's a lil' review of Jake Harley before the session.

Funny enough, Jake had always been kind of pathetic in the Beta session as well.

So Skaianet was actually established by HIC as a front for laundering technology from Alternia and Sburbian ruins. The key of SN was not to actually develop tech, but make it look like it so that people will believe you when your company just re-defined gravity for the hundredth time. Jake has to play the "famous genius shtick," but he doesn't do so well. When he fully inherits SN at 21 he runs it hands-on, and "believes" his success is due to hard work and diligence. He also "believes SN is now a considerably more distinct entity from Crocker Corp, and his leadership of the company is a result of his hard work and competence. Neither is true." He's manipulated by his at-the-time boyfriend (Charlie Chaplin, somehow) into letting a rebel force into the Crocker manor, though the effort is ultimately thwarted by HIC.

He also has a disastrous love life. His relationship at sixteen with Chaplin consists of Chaplin finding him "obnoxious and thoughtless" though he "can't seem to quit him," and Jake ultimately "[toys] with his heart, and [abandons] him." This later (much later, think decades) manifests into something way worse when Chaplin appears in an outing Jake has with one of his families (he's had many, though not at once) and tries to kill Jake for not just his involvement with SN/HIC, but for breaking his heart as well. Notably, in this scene, upon having a gun aimed at him Jake reflexively hides behind his wife, who ends up being shot in his stead. He's out-strifed so badly that he'd have died in the jungle (oh yeah he takes his wife and 5yo son to a jungle btw) if Chaplin didn't have a divine intervention moment afterwards.

At 32 he also abandons his post at SN for fucking around Europe. "[H]e's out exploring and adventuring, completely oblivious to whatever's going on in Europe. He hops from site to site, looking for Sburbian ruins to plunder." One, the "whatever's going on" is WW2, again, somehow. Two, he has a daughter there that he "takes custody of, apprentices as an adventurer, and takes all over the place on his adventures." When he takes her to Hawaii she ditches him because she's sick of her "douchebag dad." And there's that Jude family too, obviously.

Oh, and all the Beta guardians are also meteor babies. It's how Jake ends up finding Dirk and Roxy to begin with—he sets them up with trust funds in Texas and New York so that they can be of use to SN later, though whether he knew their importance in the larger context of SBURB is unclear.

All caught up? Great.

The exact details of how every event goes down aren't as important as the lessons you can draw from it, namely: Jake Harley is an absolute fucking mess of a human being. He continuously creates families—notice how he keeps having children with his wive—then is bereaved of them. A few times he abandons them, a few times they abandon him, and sometimes they get killed by your ex-boyfriend. It's a neat little insight into just how neck-deep these commitment issues lie, but it's also fun to consider that he seeks it so desperately. This man has on record has had:

one wife be shot dead in front of him

a son who was technically kidnapped from him by the man who almost beat him to death (his ex-boyfriend)

a daughter ditch him in the middle of hawaii for being a shitty dad

a daughter (joey claire) be teleported by portal to alternia, who hated jake so much she took her dead mom's last name

said dead mom/wife whom upon her death leaves her children "Semi Orphans" because he just straight up ditches his kids to go work on hellmurder island

probably more

And he still considers himself a grandfather to Jade. TBF, I guess the easier way of explaining it is that it's simply the natural explanation—they are sort of related after all. But considering that he once sired an illegitimate daughter and not only took her into custody but tried to raise her as his liege, I still find it the fact that he tries over and over again to the point of rending the family meaningless interesting. I think it's viable that Jake wanted a family—not one where he and Jane were raised by HIC and poorly—but a real one. His attempt to raise that first daughter to mirror his habits reflects the way HIC raised Beta Jane to mirror her. Yet after relationship after relationship goes horribly wrong, this desire fades into a kind of apathetic unsureness to the point where this is what he says about his last "full" family, the Harley-Claires:

He's been making good headway on his quest for the mysterious island in the pacific. Once everything is taken care of here, he'll leave this family behind and set up shop on that island permanently. That's when the real work begins. The discoveries on that island will finally unite him with the destiny he's been in search of his whole life.

Two things of note. One, his first recorded instance of permanently setting up jackshit anywhere is at first with SkaiaNet then at Hellmurder island. Both locations share that theme of "destiny" in common—notice how he considers SN divorced from Crockercorp because of his efforts and tries to make the place overall less HIC-controlled, but ultimately fails. And sure, he later achieves this kind of destiny by having his Sburb plan go "right" but before this not a single "plan" he established went correctly. Jake in either timeline isn't a guy who regularly makes plans for multiple efforts—they zero in on one goal that appears as part of their calling and makes it happen, damn it. To him, that's a success. Whether he "actually does" is up for interpretation.

See, HIC actually wanted the Beta kids to play the game. She'd been using the Beta session as a "testing" timeline, knowing which events and people to avoid and keep in mind so that she can play everything out exactly the way she wants it to. Part of the reason why Crockertier Jane was so firmly for marrying Jake and having children was because that had been HIC's idea of what Beta Jake's purpose was once he landed on a Meteor (after B!Jane). So he saw the "big picture" in a bigger way than quite literally anyone else, but it still isn't enough, at least not in the way he thought it might be at first.

Prior to his discoveries on the island, Jake has no idea this will result in some kids using the software he's unearthing, which will destroy all life on Earth. Nor does he have any idea that those kids will be using this same software to reboot the universe with different starting conditions, thus ending this "trial run" timeline for HIC, and giving her a fresh start. Exactly as she planned.

This implies there is some moment that Grandpa Harley realized that everything he was doing would end up playing into the HIC's hands anyway. This also implies that he carried out those actions regardless, Hoping that Jade would someday win the game in the process. Are you seeing the parallel for my interpretation of Ult. Jake yet? Fuck.

What was the moment he realized? Did he power through anyway, hoping there was a bright light for Jade at the end of this all?

He's also a hoarder. He keeps items and objects instead of people. He hangs onto the past to the point where he's seemingly unable to let go of it—trophies, guns, artifacts—but throughout the entire Harley Manor there is not a single picture of his families. And that's where his dolls come in—dolls are just human enough but not too human, you can control them however you'd like yet delude yourself they are company. I'm not saying all doll-enjoyers are this way, but the specifics in which Grandpa (and Bro to an extent, for that matter) interacts with his dolls makes me believe he's turning them into pseudo-human entities because at the end of the day he again craves company. But, unlike Jake, Grandpa Harley's had a lifetime of experience reinforcing over and over again that this will never happen with a real person. And fuck, don't even get me started on the taxidermy—it's the very act of taking something, bereaving it of life and subjectivity, then keeping it for yourself. You can see how this has even affected Jade in the sense that she thinks about her taxidermied dead Grandpa (who she taxidermied himself, by the way) like a living, breathing person. And Jadebot? A robotic, perfect replica of his granddaughter, designed to monitor her at all times instead of him? And the parallels that has to Brobot. Ughghgh.

Also, quick digression. You know how Beta Dad & Mom were on the Battlefield? And how Grandpa landed just to recover Jade's dead dream body, then left Dad and Mom behind. Sorry, I'm just not normal about that at all. How did we collectively miss the sheer tragedy of that situation, God, I wonder what Roxy was thinking. Digression over.

All in all, what these files tell me is that the way Jake was written was no way accidental. Yeah he got fucked over in the Alpha session, yeah he's tragic, but he's tragic for a reason that I ultimately appreciate even as I clutch my heart and dramatically fall over from pain. He knows just enough about the meta-reality to cause feelings of absurdity but powers through it; he's supposed to be put in seemingly insurmountable situations and emerge, through one way or the other, victorious. He's supposed to have the strangest relationship known to man regarding other people and, as a result, try to find compromise between the two halves of "complete fuck-all isolation" and "the company of any developed adult human ever." He's goal-oriented only when it presents a clear-cut destiny to him, when he can see the significance of it, and otherwise floats around doing fuck-all in this world. This goal is, most of the time, people: Dirk for LE Jake, and Jade for Harley. It's also fun insight into where Jake could potentially end up going—as this post by Cooper already pointed out, Ult. Dirk's actions mirror Bro's need to micromanage and control everything in his life to the point where he, much alike Bro, secludes himself in an apartment while running his inner machinations unknown to most others. I wouldn't be surprised if Jake ends up in a similar way to Grandpa, giving his all to a dreary situation and maintaining Hope through it with the desire that it'll eventually succeed.

It would also be fun if his Hopes only came true after his death.

Alright, analysis over, everyone clock out. Good work, people. [Vaguely gestures to the reader.]

#tgtakes #jake english #grandpa harley #homestuck #ultimate jake #ask

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never-seen-again · 1 year ago

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Redemption and Jägerman: The Half-assed Character Analysis

Hi, yes, this is going to be very long and probably a decently niche thing, so if you don't care about one random person effectively infodumping about how they view Max as a character, I'm not going to make you scroll for too long (aka I'm going to try to put in a break) (this bitch is so fucking long). (Edit: things get serious, so like, if you want things to be light and fluffy just keep scrolling my dude)

So, you've decided to suffer through my madness. Good luck. I'm going to be talking about a few main topics: Disillusionment & Confronting the Problem, Cognitive Dissonance & Rationalization Reinforcing Behavior, and Expectations in Redemption. I'm going to close out with some background info on myself to give context to the POV these ideas are coming from. If only one or two sections seem interesting I'm going to make the sections clearly marked out for better skipping around.

Disillusionment & Confronting the Problem

I don't think Max has heard a single thing he hasn't wanted to hear from someone he wasn't actively dehumanizing in several years. He's been surrounded by yes-men for at least the run of the musical, but almost definitely longer in "reality".

The Jocks we see (Kyle and Jason if I remember correctly) are, from what I've seen, cleansed of most/all culpability based off of their response to Max asked if they should let Richie go unscathed (and their later apologies to Richie and Grace, which are far more important, even if they are a bit half-assed with the 'until max comes back' part). While they do say "ha-ha, Yeah," It reads more as a 'oh, Max asked a question, just immediately agree with him' to me. They don't even stop to think about the content of the question. Blind agreement. I think the fact that neither moves from their position of boxing Richie in says that regardless of what Max asked, the response would've been the same.

These two even follow up with the unprompted commentary on Grace, who prior to Max's intervention in this scene was firmly in the "Loser" category. I bring this up because yes, these two stop the bullying after Max's death. But while Max is undoubtedly the catalyst, I can't be sure he's the cause. We would need to know what Hatchetfield High would look like either a long while before or after Max's influence or an alternate version of it wherein Max was simply never part of the equation to be sure.

(I'm going to go into the Pasqualli's scene and Jason's acceptance of Peter in the next section, so I'm not going to address it here)

While I was in high school, I had conversations, one on one, with people who I would, on large, consider assholes. In these conversations, they were like, decent people. But in their groups, they were still assholes. Could I see myself willingly hanging out with them as they were? No. But were they the people they were when one on one? Maybe. There is something to be said about social pressures to conform, but I won't get into that clusterfuck.

There are very few instances of anyone actually standing up to Max. Peter stands up to him, but he's a "Loser" (A concept I refine in the next section), Jason expresses doubt but doesn't direction challenge Max. The only person who isn't a "Loser" who shows intention of standing up to Max is Steph. Who, on the way to put into motion something that would possibly confront Max, gets pulled into Grace's Bully the Bully plan instead.

Not even adults seem to have put in any amount of work to actually trying to remedy Max's behavior. They just ship him out to an anti-bullying assembly and call it a day. In the Bathroom scene we learn that Max has "cool-kid privilege," in regards to actual disciplinary action, which to be fair likely wouldn't fix anything, but it shows the complacency of adults here if he has literally never been suspended or at least given detention for all the shit he's pulled both within the musical and what we can infer happening before it.

While I doubt Steph alone could break through the yes-men and "Fix" Max with just one conversation, I think she could place a seed of doubt in his mind. And Max isn't dumb. There's only two things that point to poor academics that I can recall: Remedial Algebra, and the tutor. And that doesn't really prove anything. I myself have nearly failed math classes, and I'm really good at math! Knowing this, either Max will either think through enough of the opposition of someone he respects, or he'll dismiss it entirely. Which is our first step toward Redemption.

Cognitive Dissonance & Rationalization Reinforcing Behavior

Max has categorized every student into one of two groups "Loser" and not that. These are somewhat absolutist titles. No one changes groups, ever. Except for Grace. Something I'll touch on later in this section. First I want to talk about this Fundamental Fixedness and how it contributes to my perception of Max. I believe he's constructed a very fragile way of maintaining himself. He's been to enough anti-bullying assemblies to get the gist that hurting people is generally considered bad. Whether that's internalized or not, I don't know. But again, I think he's smart. But he still hurts people. A lot. What if those he brands as "Losers" aren't quite people in his eyes. Still human, still whatever else, but lesser. Able to be abused without consequence. After all, he doesn't get any.

Now, I don't think he was birthed into this world with this conception. I think he trended toward popular crowds in primary education, and became a standard order bully. Emulating the behaviors of those above him in standing at this point, something small at first. Something justifiable. Like beating up a kid who snitched on a friend of Max's. As small actions had to be justified, the gulf between "Loser" and not expanded, to the point of dehumanizing "Losers." Then as he kept rising the ranks of popularity, he reached the top. But then he needed to extend a gulf between himself and the other popular people, to make his position infallible. He became their god (or in "reality" developed a God Complex). He alienated the "Losers" before alienating himself.

Now, what would happen if a "Loser" rose to the rank of not "Loser"? suddenly Max would have to contend with that he's actually hurt someone worth something. And if one person can rise past his labeling, then others could to, and he's hurt way more people than he realized.

But where does this leave Grace? Well, I don't think Max has actually placed her out of the "Loser" category. I think he's giving her special privilege until he gets what he wants out of her. There's a few posts that talk about how Grace's abstinence is a symbol of her faith in the Christian god, and how in sacrificing her chastity to the LiB she also sacrifices her faith to them. What if Max has a similar thought. That in acquiring the 'forbidden fruit' as it were he gains power, or more realistically, a greater sense of control. Max presumably hasn't shown interest before now. He's likely had other games he played for feelings of control.

Now, how could any of this possibly be an argument in favor of Max. Well, the next Step to Redemption would be abandoning the Fundamental Fixedness and taking on the burden of his actions. He has to contend with all the things he's justified under the dichotomy. The only reason I ever considered Max to be redeemable is because he makes it halfway through this step in the Musical. He accepts that maybe these roles can't be Fixed positions, specifically for people he isn't trying to get anything out of. Then he fucking dies. But he does abandon this ideology. Unfortunately the acquisition of supernatural powers and the drunken anger he felt as he died didn't make for a healthy way to handle the resulting dissonance, and instead got him pushed further off of the God Complex Cliff into a 'Yep, I hurt people and that's okay to do, because I'm god and everyone is below me' rather than the arguably healthier 'oh fuck I really fucked up I hurt so many people, shit'.

We see that he has stopped caring who is a "Loser" and who isn't. When Richie stands up to him with the iconic "I'm not a Loser" Max agrees. But it no longer matters. He knows he's going to kill Steph. She hurt him the most. But hurting someone he deemed "Cool" is still something he has trouble with. So Richie and Ruth are his warm up. He needs that time to adjust to hurting people, regardless of their rank. They aren't "Losers" anymore, but he's hurt them before, he can hurt them again with fewer issues. After Ruth, Max just goes wild. He kills Miss Tessburger, the mayor, tries to kill Shapiro, so on and so forth.

Max needs to abandon the dichotomy without going full homicidal maniac. Probably the expected when you don't die and gain supernatural powers that allow you to engage in the one remaining coping mechanism you can actually engage with in death (the coping mechanism is violence, if that wasn't clear).

Expectations in Redemption

Now, even if he does deconstruct the issues he has and how he's exerting control, he still needs to apologize, make efforts to rectify what he's done to those that even want him to continue affecting them, and accept that many will be unwilling to forgive him.

No one has any obligation to forgive him. That is the main thing. The specifics of what would even come close to what Max did being 'rectify' what he's done are beyond me, they'd likely vary character to character. But it is achievable.

Closing Statement

Also, Max is 18. While technically an adult, that brain is so undercooked, and this kid is young. I'm sure most people have done things they regret. Even things they doubled down on at the time. Things that only through hindsight do they realize how poorly they acted. I've acted in ways I don't like that at the time I thought were perfectly justified.

If Max makes efforts to be a better person, he deserves that chance.

Writer Bias and Background

Hi, said I'd do this. I am working with my experiences as my framework. As such, being clear about what those experiences are in a broad framework may help inform you of how much of my opinion you deem valuable.

I've never dealt with bulling to the extent Max inflicted on the students at Hatchetfield. In elementary school I was tripped with an amount of regularity, in middle school some kids poked and prodded me during classes to get a reaction, or to laugh at my lack of reaction despite their actions. In high school I was called a [f-slur] several times and threatened with violence once. My experiences are incredibly mild.

I am presently in college, working towards a psych degree. I have taken very few higher level psychology classes. I am not an expert, I just know some base level stuff about some of the vocab, which I have utilized here. My usage of these terms is based on my present understanding of them. I probably made mistakes.

There may be some confirmation bias occurring, be it from the pretty privilege that max has from being portrayed by an attractive performer, or just a deep seated self-loathing that manifests as a need for characters to have a path to redemption regardless of their failings.

Fuckin' ridiculous that I feel the need to include this but I am a part of the "Michie nation" as it were. It shouldn't really matter, but yeah, this is more about Max Jägerman's ability to become a better person given the opportunity than any romantic entanglements he might engage with.

#nerdy prudes must die #max jagerman #after writing all this it feels like a bad idea #oh well too late now

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st0rmyskies · 1 year ago

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Stormbae! Who among the boys is/will go gray prematurely, and how will they cope? -- Oddi 🍄

I love the creative asks y'all have in a given day!

Four is going to go first, probably. No thanks to this fucking household. He's going to hide his hairline behind his headband and just keep working, all up until Shadow says something about it one night. Four is going to snark right back at him and act like he isn't affected. Then he's going to knock on Legend's door three days later and threaten him with who-knows-what blackmail to not tell a SOUL that he's asking for advice on how to use boxed hair dye.

Legend will start getting gray hairs early, too, but only 2-3 at a time. He will ignore all warnings about "pull one and seven grow in its place" or whatever. And he will only ever get 2-3 at a time, that only he or maybe Hyrule will notice.

Dr. Rulie will ABSOLUTELY be going gray next, and he's going to get a nice little salt-n-pepper side burn action going on. It's only going to improve his clinical cred, and make him an even bigger hit at the nurse's station at work. Might make Legend feel Some Kinda Way, himself.

Wind is going to have thinning hair way before he realizes he's going gray. He's going to have some very early thinning in the front that's going to give him a bit of a panic, and it's going to take a Warriors intervention to prevent him from doing something stupid and permanently-altering to try and address it. Just perk up your diet, dude, and maybe try some of these expensive beauty products...

Speaking of, Warriors.

Warriors.

I probably have to write this, actually. The day that he discovers his first gray hair is when Time opens his bathroom door to find Warriors kneeling on the vanity next to the sink and nearly in tears as he's holding down the hair on either side of his part and scrutinizing the single wiry gray he's found. Yes he's confirmed it's attached, yes it's the first one he's seen, and no he is not okay!!! At least someone can make use of all the anti-gray products Wars kept buying for Time and Time never gave enough of a shit to use. When Time realizes that Warriors is quite serious about this little crisis - Wars is supposed to be the catch, the trophy husband, etc. - he's going to do his best to assure Wars that it doesn't change how he feels about him. Warriors will always be the biggest thorn in Time's side.

I imagine that Twilight will go gray at a very respectable age, Champion will get a few stray grays that just blend in with his blonde no problem, Sky is going to get a little sexy salt-and-pepper after his and Sun's second child of four, and Time is already going gray, lbr.

Shadow will never appear gray, he dyes his hair too often. Damn scene kid.

Although Dark's face will never age, he will start going gray about ten years later than Time does. He'll go from raven black to brilliant silver-white nearly overnight, and it's going to look unfairly good on the man.

#stormy asks #oddi asks #hsh #townhouse au #some warrtime in this one #warrtime #hsh lore #st0rmyverse

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allthecanadianpolitics · 2 years ago

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"A Montreal-based anti-racism group is calling for the immediate release of any existing video evidence of a physical altercation that took place in a city jail and led to the death of an illegally detained man just before Christmas.

Nicous D'Andre Spring, 21, died at Montreal's Bordeaux jail on Dec. 24 when guards fitted his head with a spit hood and pepper-sprayed him twice. A judge had ordered Spring be released from the detention centre the day before, but he and two other inmates were still in custody a day later.

The Red Coalition, a non-profit lobbying organization assisting Spring's family, held a news conference Saturday morning. They said authorities have left the family in the dark concerning their son's death.

Alain Babineau, Red Coalition spokesperson and former RCMP officer, said it would "only make sense" to have any relevant detention centre video footage released directly to the family so they can get some of their questions answered "once and for all."

"There are versions of the people at the scene, but the family doesn't believe it, the community doesn't believe it, and what better than a video to understand what happened, like during the police intervention?" said Babineau.

The group made several other demands, including an investigation by Quebec's ombudsman into whether systemic discrimination played a role in Spring's death, a public coroner's inquiry, an independent autopsy and the creation of a citizens' committee to oversee the Quebec correctional system."

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics #canadian news #canadian #québec #montréal #murder tw #death tw #racism #systemic racism

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banananutmilk · 6 months ago

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Apocalypse Now Film Essay (1979)

"My movie is not about Vietnam... my movie is Vietnam."- Francis Coppola

Apocalypse Now is a film directed by the visionary Francis Ford Coppola, a film where all his touches are evident throughout the nearly 2 hour long film. A wild journey throughout a Heart of Darkness inspired Vietnam centered follow. A film that still stands the test of time, still shocking audiences today. Drawing it’s sources and inspiration from Joseph Conrad’s themes of imperialism and moral questioning converted from the Congo imperialism to the contemporary period of post Vietnam War, Francis Coppola set the stage for a film that depicts the moral corruption and ambiguity of the soldiers within the forefront of hell. By adapting Conrad's story to the Vietnam War, Coppola draws parallels between the imperialist ambitions of the 19th century and America's intervention in Vietnam. The film's exploration of the psychological and moral descent of its characters mirrors Conrad's themes of imperialism and the darkness within the human soul.

Upon it’s release Coppola’s film had received widespread critical acclaim along with mixed reception. Critic’s dismissing the film’s lengthy run time and more challenging narrative structure deter the audience.Along with criticisms for it’s contents, glorifying war more than criticizing it. The film doesn’t work enough as an anti-war message and more as a film following a cast of representatives thrown into chaotic situations. In Time magazine when the film first debuted, Frank Rich derided the film as "not so much an epic account of a grueling war as an incongruous, extravagant monument to artistic self-defeat". In comparison to reviews applauding and reveling in it’s philosophical story structure with stunning hallucinogenic visuals that captivate audiences. While Apocalypse Now follows a linear story structure with typical traditional character arcs from war set films. Due to The editing production of Richard Marks along with direction of Francis Ford Coppola and lastly Sound designer Walter Murch. The meticulously crafted film pacing and narrative structure, along with the usage of advanced editing techniques, the film seamlessly integrates surreal and hallucinatory sequences with the film's gritty realism. The incorporation of elements of surrealism and symbolism help to convey the psychological and moral descent of its characters. Dreamlike sequences and symbolic motifs blur the line between reality and illusion, inviting viewers to interpret the film's deeper meanings.

The film contrasts these structures with the utilization of surreal psychedelic visual cinematography, separating the piece from most traditional war films. Garnering a $118,558 upon it’s domestic opening and then eventually accumulating a $104,800 for it’s gross worldwide income. Proving to be a lucrative investment, using it’s $31,500,000 to it’s fullest. having multiple re-releases in theaters and home video formats over the years, further helped bolster its financial success. Now standing as one of the most iconic war films, Apocalypse Now lingers with a legacy of high regard.

Apocalypse Now benefited from advancements in filmmaking technology, allowing Coppola to create epic and visually stunning scenes. Utilizing the skill sets of director of photography Vittorio Storaro. Employing his innovative techniques to capture the film's surreal and epic visuals. With a combination of natural lighting and dynamic camera movements to create a visually striking atmosphere, contributed to the film's immersive portrayal of war. However, these technological feats also came with challenges, such as the logistical difficulties of filming in remote locations and Coppola's infamous struggles with budget overruns and production delays.

implemented in China in 1979, was a government-enforced population control measure aimed at curbing population growth. introduced by the Chinese government as a response to concerns about overpopulation and its potential negative impacts. Due to the enforcement of the policy, varied by region, the penalties for non-compliance would range from fines, loss of social benefits to forced abortions and sterilizations.

The USSR's invasion of Afghanistan, which began on December 24, 1979, was a significant event in both Soviet and Afghan history. The Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan to support the Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan government, which was facing increasing opposition from Islamist insurgents and other rebel groups. The conflict contributed to the destabilization of Afghanistan, leading to the rise of the Taliban and years of civil war.

In conclusion, Apocalypse Now a cinematic odyssey transcends the boundaries of traditional war cinema, offering a mesmerizing journey into the heart of darkness. resonates with a raw intensity that lingers long after the credits roll. As we navigate the moral abyss alongside Captain Willard and confront the haunting monologue of Colonel Kurtz. Through its epic scale and visceral imagery. Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece captivates audiences with its exploration of the human psyche amidst the chaos of war.

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