#but I learned that community is important. they violence in defense of others is justified required and admirable

[neverendingford]

.

[torque-witch]

Getting Back into Witchcraft - 10/30/23 - Who Can Use Witchcraft?

Literally anyone can use witchcraft. Simple as that.

But, for the sake of (me) delving back into witchcraft, let's talk about the historical and relevant point of this idea - that witchcraft has primarily been used as a tool of the oppressed, undermined, marginalized, chronically ill, mentally ill, poor, othered, etc. This includes various cultures and indigenous practice (where referred to by these groups as such).

While it is somewhat difficult as just someone on the internet to find specific examples of this, it shouldn't be a surprise that the constant onslaught of government control, societal conservatism, religious colonialism & imperialism, the wiping out of various cultures, the entirety of the feminist and lgbtqia+ movement around the world - provokes ordinary people to disconnect from the norm in order to find peace, power and to fight back in ways that money and class can't afford them, because it often isn't accessible.

One example of course is the spell that was cast by Gerald Gardner and his group of witches in an attempt to keep Adolf Hitler at bay in the 40's. Whether you believe that it actually made a difference or not, it represents a time when people were so incensed about injustice and protecting their land, that they chose to conjure a defense mechanism built out of pure will and theory.

(Barring of course the very real criticism of Gardner, this is just an example we can use)

*And important note though in regards to this story, is that Gardner also volunteered as an air raid warden and provided some weapons as a part of tangible defense. In the same way, I think it's important to recognize that -

a) Being a witch implies that you are at odds with society, and you need to participate in activism in real life, and

b) doing so only increases the likelihood of your spells to work because you've already put energy into tangible actions

We will definitely talk about that idea more under the topic of spellcrafting, but I think it's important to recognize that being a witch is inherently political and socially at odds with the mainstream. It seems like as witchcraft becomes more acceptable and watered down, people do and will tend to ignore this for the sake of false positivity, love and light etc. But if we are using witchcraft as a tool to better ourselves or to protect ourselves from negativity, we should also be using it to do that for those around us that are disadvantaged or targeted.

Another point is that especially in the 00's, as we've learned about how dangerous covens can be, especially for women, that connection within the witchcraft community is becoming harder and harder to cultivate. People are wary, weary and there is always the looming risk of white supremacy leaking into our circles. So it is even more important to be knowledgeable about politics, dog whistles, scams, cults and about what sexual abuse can entail. At the end of the day, it is more dangerous for you to be uninformed and avoiding all negativity. Knowlege is what gives you protection and power.

On a related note - although there is still a big social implication that witches can only be women and a lot of the violence has been targeted at women, it is historically incorrect and factually incorrect that only biological females (ew) can practice witchcraft. That's not even considering that most of the original texts on witchcraft were written by men because women were either not allowed to be authors or had a very hard time accessing education or support in that sense. This contributed historically to afab people having to practice in seclusion or private and being demonized while men had an easier time sharing their own ideas. *Some people tend to think that this further justifies men being barred from being welcome in witchy spaces - and there are valid concerns - but at the end of the day that's enough proof that men, women and anyone in between can participate in occult practice and study it. I think it's also fair to say that while gender isn't a true factor in being able to cast spells, it can certainly shape your practice in an individual sense, and there are lessons to be learned from anyone who practices regardless of gender, or because of it!

Then comes the great debate -

Is "witch" a gender neutral term?

And yes, I think in 2023 we have come to the conclusion that it is - that witchcraft transcends gender - but there are always alternatives for those that may not feel comfortable with the social implications of gender that come with that term, or similarly Wizard or Warlock.

For that we can use practitioner, magician, mage, sorcerer, enchanter, occultist, (insert sect here)-mancer, etc.

I'm not sure if it's still used widely, but at one time "Wix" was also introduced as a non-binary version of Witch and is totally acceptable.

So, let's end this off with another Tarot reading!

Who can practice withcraft - The Hermit, Reversed

Personally I feel like the connection here is the idea that isolating and gatekeeping the practice of witchcraft in regards to gender is limiting and harmful to the overall potential of knowledge available to us. Becoming so bent on a single idea or belief can be harmful and limits us as a community and a resource of power, and putting yourself (or your gender) above others when it comes to access doesn't gain you any favors or special privilege. We can all walk individual paths within witchcraft, but closing off the experience as a whole is harmful.

Is being a witch inherently political - 10 of Pentacles

This makes me think about the dynamic that the oppressed and underserved are constantly at odds with - the desire and fight to have the same resources as those with generational wealth, access to healthcare, access to education, even having access to community in general. A critical point of witchcraft is to put control back into our hands where society or global power has taken away that luxury. The 10 of pentacles represents all of that, and how that wealth of knowledge and even tangible wealth spreads out to our communities when we actually foster that kind of environment. To me, witchcraft is a path for a lot of people to build safe spaces and thriving communities while under a much larger pretense of control.

What gives a witch power - The Wheel of Fortune, Reversed

The Reversed Wheel represents confusion and the inability to predict the future; it is a feeling of being out of control. So consequently, what gives a witch power is the ability to flip the card and produce clarity, bold decisions and wrangling all of the ways that the world throws you off. This could be through personal inner work, breaking generational curses. This could be through building up your own confidence and trusting your intuition. This could be through calling on various other powers and taking problems head on in unconventional ways. Just because the world is spinning in a different direction doesn't mean that you cannot find and cultivate a personal balance by tapping into your own power. Witches are path makers. Where there is none, a witch's power is to make one.

It's not a competition.

There it is. There is no point in trying to put yourself higher than others when it comes to witchcraft. It is a personal tool and experience, and people unlike you practicing it doesn't make you any less able to reach your goals. It is for everyone.

Be sure to visit Death's Head Divination for Tarot readings, pagan statuary, stickers, prints and more! Subscribe to an e-mail list here at the bottom of the page Insta | Tiktok | Blog

[shrinkrants]

Advice from Kelly Hayes for Protesters at the DNC.

"To be clear, I am not trying to discourage anyone from protesting. As I have mentioned, I will be in the streets next week. Protest always involves risks, and those risks can be worthwhile. However, I also believe that for our actions to be righteous rather than reckless, we must be well informed. I also have some limited advice to offer. 

First, and perhaps most obviously, watch what you say and who you say it to. Sometimes, people talk big or say things sarcastically (especially while under the influence of alcohol and drugs), which can be highly incriminating. Jokes and bravado do not translate well in court transcripts.

If you are someone who engages in illegal tactics, I probably don’t have to tell you not to converse about those topics with strangers or over drinks. People who participate in such actions usually have infosec practices to protect themselves, their comrades, and their actions. If someone doesn’t have those kinds of safeguards and is, therefore, spilling all of their plans or attempting to recruit you (someone they just met at a convergence), they should not be trusted, regardless of whether or not they are cops. If someone is being cavalier about security culture and the safety of others, that is reason enough to disengage. 

Historically, when the Chicago police want to justify repression, they conjure the boogeymen they need to do so. Do not make yourself an easy mark for this kind of witch hunt. 

Also, please remember that when you are protesting a national security event, things can escalate very quickly. Chicago police already have an extremely violent reputation that is well-earned. In 2012, some were spotted in t-shirts that joked that they got up early to beat the crowds. However, if you are protesting next week, you won’t just be facing our notoriously violent and racist police. 500 police from across Illinois and from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, are expected to join Chicago cops in policing the DNC protest. Notably, CPD is refusing to share the training materials it will use to prepare those police with the public. In my experience, police who assemble for massive moments of protest often engage in recreational violence when they can. Some of them get off on the opportunity to swing a baton. Safety planning is important. One simple step that everyone can take is to learn how to treat pepper spray and tear gas exposure. If you don’t know how to do that, you can find that information in the appendix section of Let This Radicalize You or in the Get In Formation Toolkit (which has a lot of other great information about safety planning).

Take advantage of the fact that Chicago is a well-organized city. There will be workshops and community events around the DNC, like the counter-conference Chicago Dissenters has organized. Take the opportunity to connect with seasoned organizers and hear what they have to say about what this moment means and how to make the most of it. This is an opportunity to march and take action, but it’s also an opportunity to learn, connect, and build relationships. 

Avail yourself of local resources. Need a Know Your Rights rundown for Chicago protesters? You can find that here. Also, be sure to write this number somewhere on your person: 872-465-4244. That is the National Lawyers Guild Chicago��s Mass Defense Hotline. It will be staffed 24/7 during the DNC. If you are arrested, facing charges, and need help, you can also call that number. You can also use the hotline to report arrests if you witness someone get grabbed up at an action or if you have been contacted by law enforcement.

(Note: If you won’t be at the DNC, you can still share the resources I am mentioning here online in order to help folks who are attending.)

Lastly, please remember that, sometimes, after moments of mass protest, people can wind up facing serious charges. Supporting those people is part of supporting our movements. It’s crucial that we do not fall into the trap of reinforcing good protester/bad protester binaries and that we focus on getting everyone out. As I write these words, I am thinking about organizers in Ferguson, Missouri, who have faced targeted repression for years since the Ferguson uprising a decade ago. Since last week, when protesters marked the anniversary of Mike Brown’s death and the protests that followed, local police have been engaged in what organizers have described as a mission to “destroy” local activists. Activists are facing bogus charges with extremely high cash bail. In one case, police claimed that a Ferguson protester, who had been taken into police custody, caused property damage by repeatedly ramming their own head into the wall of an interview room, thereby damaging the wall. Why do police believe they can get away with spinning such far-fetched tales? Well, for one thing, they probably don’t think anyone’s paying attention. 

Attention matters, and solidarity is about much more than cheering people on in heated, high-profile moments. So, let’s be conscious of what we can do to support people who are criminalized for acts of protest in Chicago, Ferguson, and beyond. 

And with that, I’ll see you in the streets. "

Full article here.

[aronarchy]

A short (and incomplete) history of community organising against intimate and gendered violence

By Victoria Law Issue: cjm 85: Women, violence and harm

Download: 09627251.2011.599664.pdf

Victoria Law gives a brief tour against violence from the ground up

On 18 December 1752, the New York Gazette reported that an “odd Sect of People” had been appearing in New Jersey. Calling themselves the Regulars, they dressed in women’s clothes, painted their faces and then visited the homes of reported wife-beaters. They stripped the abusive husband and flogged him with rods, chanting, “Woe to the men that beat their wives.” The author of the article noted, “It seems that several Persons in the Borough (and ’tis said some very deservedly) have undergone the Discipline, to the no small Terror of theirs, who are in any Way conscious of deserving the same Punishment” (Cutler, 1969).

The following year, the New York Gazette printed a letter by a “Prudence Goodwife” whose husband had incurred the wrath of the Regulars: “[T]hey have regulated my dear husband, and the rest of the Bad Ones hereabouts that they are afraid of using such Barbarity; and I must with Pleasure acknowledge, that since my Husband has felt what whipping was, he has entirely left off whipping me, and promises faithfully he will never begin again” (Cutler, 1969).

The example of the Regulars demonstrates the potential of community responses to stop gender violence, especially at a time when wife beating was both legally and historically been unable to rely on traditional police forces to protect them from violence, particularly violence from family members. In earlier times, women’s status was essentially that of property belonging to their fathers [or] husbands. This status has not only been used to justify violence against them, but has influenced modern-day police attitudes and response (or the lack thereof) to gender violence. Even in the late twentieth century, police continue to respond to domestic abuse calls with indifference. In large part because of this indifference, women and other vulnerable populations have organised grassroots responses to intimate violence.

These responses have taken various forms—from self-defence classes for women to creating community support structures that can mobilise to respond to gendered violence. While some of these endeavours evolved from police inaction, others recognise that the accelerating growth of the prison system is not about public safety as much as a means of state repression, disempowering oppressed communities and disenfranchising huge segments of the population. (Critical Resistance and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, 2001)

Self-defence

With the onset of the Women’s Liberation movement in the USA, police and judicial indifference to gender violence led to increasing recognition that women needed to take their safety into their own hands and learn to physically defend themselves from male violence. In New York City in 1974, the belief that all people had the right to live free from violence and the recognition that women, especially those with the least access to resources, were often disproportionately impacted by violence, propelled Nadia Telsey and Annie Ellman to start Brooklyn Women’s Martial Arts. “I have felt that it [self-defense] is connected to self-determination,” stated Ellman.

It’s really important to be able to be taking [seriously] our safety, health, well-being, and right to live free from violence and try to create an organisation that was going to make this happen… [We wanted to] take our training into our own hands to prevent and avoid violence. We developed programs very much to reflect and to really understand that many people who came to our program were oppressed not just because they were women. There were multiple oppressions going on and we felt it was important to address them all… It was really important to us to see that intersection of oppression… and to see oppression as the glue that holds violence together. (A. Ellman, interview, 23 December 2009 with the author.)

Feminist martial arts teachers also saw learning self-defence as a way to empower those who had survived intimate violence.

Whenever we’re working with people who have been abused, a big part of our program is helping people work through the violence and reclaim strength and pride and resiliency that we’ve always had… Women lose it [their sense of strength] once they’ve been attacked, especially if they’ve been attacked as children, and it’s very hard to get it back. (Ibid., 2009)

Collective resistance

Women have also acted in other ways to keep survivors of abuse safe. At a 1986 conference on ending violence against women at UCLA, Beth Richie cited the example of a community-based intervention programme in East Harlem, a New York neighbourhood that was predominantly Black and Latino. Recognising that the existing choices that an abused woman faced—leaving her home or turning her abuser over to a racist judicial system—community residents organised to take responsibility for women’s safety. “Safety watchers” visited the house when called by the abused person or the neighbours. They encouraged the abuser to leave; if the abuser refused, the watchers stayed in the house. Their presence prevented further violence, at least while they were present (Bustamante, 1986).

More recently, “queer communities of colour” in the Pacific Northwest recognised that community-building could both prevent and address partner abuse by breaking through isolation, forming FAR Out (Friends Are Reaching Out) in 1999. Recognising that isolation is a crucial, but underestimated, element of abuse, FAR Out encourages friends and family members to keep in touch and to develop processes to openly talk about their relationships.

In abusive relationships, the abuser distorts their partner’s perceptions of reality and self-worth. No matter what the reality actually is, the abuser twists it to demonstrate how worthless the other person is. If the abuser acknowledges that harm has occurred (and many times abusers do not), they twist the course of events to blame the partner for provoking it. Over time, with no other mirror to reflect reality, the abused partner begins to believe these lies and to believe that they deserve this abuse. However, this tactic often goes unrecognised by the abused partner’s friends and potential supporters, thus contributing to their sense of isolation from the larger community.

Having friends commit to staying in contact with an abuse survivor enables them to challenge and counter these distortions. FAR Out’s reliance on pre-existing friendships rather than impersonal social service agencies or the police strengthens the capacity of the community to handle abuse (Smith, 2005).

Pink sari gang

It would be an oversimplification to assume that past anti-violence efforts relied on physical force while current initiatives involve nonviolent community-building. In present-day India, for example, women have literally fought back against abuse, employing tactics similar to the Regulars of the 1750s. In 2005, India passed the Protection for Women from Domestic Violence Act, criminalising gender violence not only against wives but any woman residing in a shared household, including sisters, mothers, daughters, widows and divorced women. However, in the Banda area, one of the poorest regions of India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state, the Act has halted neither violence nor police indifference. Recognising their inability to rely on police protection, the women in that region formed the Gulabi (or Pink Sari) Gang. The several hundred women in the Gulabi Gang wear pink saris and carry pink lathis (sticks). The lathis are purportedly for self-defence, but they have also been used to thrash husbands who have abandoned or beaten their wives. “Nobody comes to our help in these parts,” stated Devi. “So sometimes we have to take the law into our hands.” While some may dismiss their actions as no better than vigilante acts, it must be recognised that these women are acting to not only protect themselves and each other, but also to visibly challenge societal acceptance of violence against women (Reeves, 2008).

These stories make up only a short and very incomplete history of community organising against gender violence. Many more examples, both historical and present-day, exist and should be researched, explored and learned from. Knowing about these possibilities allows us to draw on others’ experiences and begin conceiving of and actively working towards a world in which communities, rather than police, take safety into their own hands.

Victoria Law is a writer and photographer. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars, New York City, and author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women (PM Press, 2009).

References

Bustamante, C. (1986), “Planning to End Violence Against Women,” off our backs, 26(5), p.14.

Critical Resistance and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (2001) “Critical Resistance - INCITE! Statement: Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex,” www.incite-national.org/index.php?s=92 (accessed on 20 April 2011)

Cutler, J. E. (1969), Lynch-Law: An Investigation Into the History of Lynching in the United States, New York: Negro Universities Press.

Reeves, P. (2008), “Female Gang In India Operates Dressed In Pink,” Morning Edition: National Public Radio (radio broadcast), 24 November, New York: WNYC, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97383208 (accessed on 18 April 2011).

Smith, A. (2005), Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

[korrasera]

vaspider and lateral aggression

I was originally going to send this message to vaspider directly, as I thought he had asks open publicly, but that's not the case and I'm not going to violate his block to make a point. As such, I'll just leave this here and call it good.

Long story short, vaspider reblogged another user that was spouting bigoted nonsense stereotyping gay people. When I pointed out that the discussion of the OP was bigotry, Spider got really angry at me for talking back, eventually blocking me.

Here's the post in question:

He responded when he blocked me but I can't actually read it, though I presume it follows a pretty simple script. I told you I'd block you, how dare you, etc, etc.

Spider knows that what the OP was doing was wrong, because he's talked about the problem of lateral aggression before. Making up nonsense bigotry about gay people doesn't help make trans people anymore safe. Hating JK Rowling for being a bigot doesn't justify being a bigot towards anyone else. It seems clear to me that he just got heated because he felt defensive towards the OP's post and that overrode his otherwise good judgment.

In case you're unaware, lateral aggression, or lateral violence, is when a member of a marginalized community engages in bigotry towards another member of their community or another marginalized group. Attacking your community instead of the people oppressing you. It's harmful because it's the same kind of bullying, immature behavior that bigots engage in. It's literally just another form of bigotry.

And while it does suck to get treated like shit by someone like Spider (this isn't the first time he's acted like an asshole to me in particular) I'm a lot more concerned about Spider cosigning someone else's prejudice. We shouldn't be teaching people to come up with nonsense bullshit to justify bigotry.

I have no illusions that I'll ever get an apology from anyone on social media, but it feels like it's important to keep asking. People can make mistakes and fuck up and learn and get better and I think it's important to try to encourage that behavior whenever I can.

The letter is under the cut.

Full honesty: No, I don't think Spider is yet emotionally mature enough to actually apologize for his behavior. I'm just hoping that getting pushback on this kind of thing will help Spider and other people who feel like he does continue growing and maybe make better decisions in the future.

Hello Spider,

In our last exchange I mentioned that I'd consider asking for an apology once some time had passed and tempers had cooled. As such, here I am.

I'd like you to apologize for your recent behavior. You acted like a real asshole to me and it's the second time you've tried to tear my head off in particular. As I recall, your excuse last time was that you're an angry person and everyone knows this, so it's acceptable for you to act like an asshole when you lose your temper.

And that's just about how you treated me. The real problem is that you said everything you did in defense of someone else's bigotry. You lost your shit because the OP decided to trot out some garden variety bigotry that you happened to agree with and then didn't like someone pointing out that the OP was teaching prejudice and didn't have an accurate point.

You've talked about lateral aggression before, so I know you aren't ignorant of it. The OP was upset and chose to express that anger by stereotyping someone on twitter and then holding that up as an example of how terrible an entire group of people are. That's a pretty clear case and what you said in that thread was no excuse or defense of that behavior. It's harmful bigotry, plain and simple.

I'm asking you to apologize for myself, but I'm also asking you to do it because you're popular and people like your content and I think you have a responsibility to not teach people how to be causal bigots as a result.

There's nothing wrong with admitting when you got something wrong, and in this case, you got something very very wrong. You stepped into something either without understanding it or without caring, and thought that giving me a bloody nose would let you ignore it.

My expectation is that you'll either ignore this letter or you'll use it as an excuse to get angry again, since your first attempt didn't work, but I hope you'll consider what I've said.

[didanawisgi]

by Alexis Levit

“The political Left takes pride in its tolerance and acceptance. In my experience, that pride is not justifiable.

Stanford, like most universities, is an extremely liberal institution. The University also goes to great lengths to foster an inclusive environment. Stanford provides numerous on-campus counseling services, ethnic-theme housing, and community centers for identity groups. Surely, allowing conservatives to hold events every once and awhile, even though most students are liberal, would be acceptable in this vision of inclusivity. Some liberals on campus think otherwise.

Ben Shapiro spoke at Memorial Auditorium in November, causing intense upheaval. Following the speech, Daily headlines asked, “When will Stanford begin to protect its students?” Activists portrayed Shapiro as a cockroach to be exterminated. A large crowd amassed outside Memorial Auditorium to harass attendees, shouting loudly about the lives that had “come under attack” as a result of Shapiro’s appearance.

Does something so trivial as a speech by a conservative really warrant this type of hysteria and outrage?

The mainstream at Stanford singles out conservatives as evil, a familiar feeling to many Republicans in liberal hotbeds like California. But there is no critical reflection of Left-wingers who are wildly popular on campus. Take Bernie Sanders, a man who has praised Fidel Castro for his “literacy program,” complimented the USSR on their “youth engagement,” and said that breadlines are “a good thing.” One wonders what standards can possibly justify Stanford’s definition of “mainstream” political views.

As crazy as these positions are, you would be hard-pressed to find a crowd to protest Bernie on Stanford’s campus. As expected, many of the same people protesting Shapiro and the audience for being conservatives are die-hard Bernie supporters. Nobody seems to even acknowledge the moral quandary in supporting figures like Sanders, yet attack those willing to just listen to conservative ideas!

Many left-wing and socialist ideas are offensive to those who respect the process of democracy and a society based on personal and economic freedoms. Consider unfettered markets, which have lifted billions out of poverty (despite inequality that comes with it), versus the en vogue Democratic Socialist stance pushing for more hold over the private sector. The latter position has a less-than-succesful track record in places like the USSR and Nazi Germany. Conservatives have accepted a more defensive role on campus, which perhaps is to our disadvantage. At least, unlike Leftists, we tend to highlight why their ideas can have detrimental ramifications, rather than claim those ideas put our lives in danger.

Activists on the Left have deemed basic conservative ideas -- capitalism, individualism, limited government -- to be dangerous, even violent. Therefore, violence may be necessary against any who hold them on campus.

Even in California, Republicans do exist. People hold conservative values for a number of reasons, and the Left’s breathless assertion of moral superiority beggars belief. Stanford students hail from a myriad of backgrounds, countries, and family structures. They also think differently. No one should make the assumption that everyone grew up in a PC bubble like the Bay Area. Stanford strives to have a heterogeneous student body, and that should include politics.

Diversity and tolerance are important, but must also be afforded to political minorities on campus. We should be celebrating diversity of thought in the same way we celebrate all other forms of diversity. Sharing unique experiences and offering varying viewpoints can only strengthen a community more. Who wants to go to a politically homogeneous school, where everyone accepts one ideology? Apparently, some of our liberal peers do.

I hope that as a student body, we can break down the barriers preventing civil discourse in our classrooms. Stanford has a long way to go in terms of political tolerance, but the longer it takes us to get there, the worse it will be for our vibrant intellectual environment. Suppressing certain opinions because you aren’t comfortable with them, through public shaming, is degrading to Stanford as both an intellectual institution and a collaborative community. Through accepting differences and debating from equal standing, we can do so much better and learn even more than we already do from our peers. Liberals and conservatives alike stand to benefit.”

[jewish-privilege]

In October 2015, I found myself in a frightening situation: My name and face on a Neo-Nazi website identifying me as a Jew along with several hundred other Jews in politics, civics, and philanthropy. The website, which I will not name, warned its readers that Jews were too influential in American life; that we were a corruptive influence on America. While it didn’t advocate actually killing me, I was marked as a person to be silenced.

“How likely are these people to actually kill me?” I asked the expert at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-hate group that researches white supremacist groups. I had called them seeking answers. My husband was sitting beside me, his face full of fear. I felt a tiny kick, a flutter inside me, my hands dropping to my belly. “I should probably mention that I am 8 months pregnant.”

There was a pause at the end of the line. “It’s very rare for these threats to escalate offline,” the nice man began. “They want to scare you. They want to scare you so much you decide that you never want to write again. That’s their goal. What you decide to do next is a personal decision.”

You can see that I decided to keep writing. But thinking back on the advice he gave me, it almost seems quaint: In the four years since those threats, especially since the 2016 election, white supremacists spewing anti-Semitic hatred have marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” shot up synagogues in Pittsburgh and California, and murdered gay Jewish student Blaze Bernstein. Anti-Semitic assaults are up 105% since 2017, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit on American anti-Semitism. More Jews have been killed in anti-Semitic violence around the world in 2018 than in the last several decades, according to the Kantor Center, based out of Tel Aviv University, which researches and analyzes global anti-Semitism. In New York City, a major center of Jewish culture and life, the NYPD has reported an 82% spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes in 2019. In fact, Jews are reporting the highest number of religion-based hate crimes — this is particularly troubling given that Jews are only approximately 2.2% of the U.S. adult population.

And while the majority of incidents and assaults are committed by white supremacists on the right, there has been a concerning spike in incidents and rhetoric from the left wing, too...

As a child growing up in Boston, I knew anti-Semitism existed. I even experienced it from time to time — including when my childhood synagogue was defaced with a swastika. But overall I felt safe in America... I was grateful for a country that had provided Jews with peace and prosperity. America was a rare safe place for us.

Today, that’s different. The baby I was pregnant with is now a thriving, rambunctious toddler. But when we tour Jewish preschools, my first question isn’t about education philosophy, recess or student teacher ratios — it’s always about security. In just a few short years we’ve gone from history to fear.

To understand what can be done, first we need to understand what it is: Anti-Semitism is the hatred of Jews as a distinct people, as opposed to anti-Judaism that targets our religious beliefs and practices. Anti-semitism is a conspiracy theory. It depicts Jews as a cabal secretly controlling the world for evil ends, hurting innocent people to further greedy, cruel agendas. How those agendas manifest changes based on your worldview. If you are far left, it may be that Jews are imperialists who start wars to enrich themselves. If you’re a white nationalist, it’s that Jews are the ringleaders of the White Genocide. If you’re Minister Louis Farrakhan, it’s that Jews were the secret orchestrators of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Anti-Semitism is an ancient, chameleonic monster. It adapts to circumstances and seemingly new excuses for age-old prejudices to take hold. This is especially true in periods of political and economic insecurity.

...It doesn't help that we are also living in an era when conspiracy theories can so easily spread (from anti-Obama birtherism to Pizzagate to QAnon). President Trump and his cohorts on the far right capitalize and promote them, fomenting hatred and division through fake news and an assault on the truth. They accuse prominent Jews like George Soros of treacherous crimes, while consorting with and justifying white supremacists and their actions (“very fine people” Trump called them.). They act shocked and appalled when fear mongering, the mainstream legitimization of white nationalists, and dangerously lax gun control leave them with blood on their hands (as it did at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue).

And yet while I fear anti-Semitism on the right will lead to more violence, I fear anti-Semitism on the left will cause that violence and hate to go unchallenged. As American Jews face rising hate crimes and domestic terrorism, progressives have grappled with a string of unsettling scandals. At first, it was the way left wing groups downplayed anti-Semitism. In the wake of the 2016 election, for example, the Women’s March conspicuously left anti-Semitism off its unity principles, while left wing groups erased it as a core issue in Charlottesville, and were silent during hundreds of JCC bomb threats. Then it got worse. The anti-Semitism scandal surrounding Women’s March leadership unfolded over several tense months, during which they publicly associated with anti-Semitic Farrakhan and engaged in anti-Semitic dog whistling and bullying.

This controversy was followed by statements by freshman Representative Ilhan Omar, in which she fell into anti-Semitic tropes referencing dual loyalty, foreign allegiance, and Jewish money in her criticisms of Israel. Omar had many defenders who dismissed the charges because Omar herself faces Islamophobia and racism. But such tropes do feed the beast. As Ilhan Omar struggled to contain criticism and put forth multiple apologies for her comments, David Duke, the Grand Wizard of the KKK, came to her defense dubbing her the “Most Important Member of Congress.” It’s not to say that Omar should be held accountable for the words of David Duke. But it does indicate the way anti-Semitism — be it from the left or the right — can connect to amplify the threat.

While the Women’s March has taken positive steps to mend fences, like expanding Jewish leadership in the organization and including Jewish women in their Unity Principles, and Omar and the New York Times have apologized, the situations have led to increased division as anti-Semitism continues to spread, and becomes a political wedge issue, all of which creates increased danger for the Jewish community. In a time of increased concern about Jewish security, these scandals have had a devastating emotional impact on the Jewish community. We were taught by our grandmothers to watch for signs of danger — hateful words from across the political spectrum is one of them.

Over the past three years, I have seen anti-Semitism break and undermine strong community relationships and budding movements for justice. This what anti-Semitism does: It attacks democracy and transparency, giving authoritarian actors scapegoats for national problems. It endangers women, people of color, and immigrants as it strengthens and animates white nationalism, xenophobia, and extremist movements.

American Jews know this intrinsically and are frightened. The jump from hate speech to exterminatory violence has been a short one in the history of global Jewry. Many of us were taught about the dangers of anti-Semitism and how quickly it could rise against us from very young ages, especially for those of us who had family who were Holocaust survivors or who endured violence against Jews in the Middle East or Soviet Union. We need Americans to listen to our fear and take a stand.

The first step is to call it out when we see it in our houses of worship, living rooms, libraries, college campuses and kindergartens. This doesn’t mean we dismiss or “cancel” our friends, families, colleagues, and community leaders who engage in anti-Semitism. It means we tell them they are wrong. We educate. Jewish history is over 5,000 years old, and learning what narratives have been used to oppress Jews can be lifesaving. And then, let’s build relationships between communities that are under attack and frightened.

...This is what we need to do for each other: Come together to fight not just anti-Semitism but racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. If we learn each other’s histories, warning signs and dangers and fight for each other, we can make the monsters afraid of us. 

[nandalorian]

Since I posted my thoughts about how Roswell has adequately represented queer men on the show and completely shit the bed on their representation of most everything else, I need to address the epically fucked-up treatment of female queerness and the queer female gaze in the context of Isobel and Rosa. This has been bugging me for a few weeks, and the reveal of Noah as the fourth alien pretty much cemented my feelings on the matter. I know there are people who feel the way I do about it, but if there’s another post on the subject I just haven’t seen, please link me. And if you disagree completely about this too, that’s cool. Let’s discuss.

While in my last post I applauded the show on its treatment of Michael’s bisexuality, I still don’t feel great about the introduction of a Michael/Alex/Maria love triangle. It’s one thing for Carina to double down on her defense of love triangles and insist they are not an overused and biphobic trope in popular media--news flash, it is, and in this case it’s also potentially damaging to the one black woman on the show, who will almost certainly bear the brunt of fans’ ire for “stealing Michael away” if they go through with a Maria/Michael relationship. I’m sorry if I don’t take a random straight white woman’s insistence to the contrary as gospel. Saying your formative years were shaped by straight love triangles doesn’t change the fact that it’s an insulting trope to women and an outright damaging one to queers, not even taking into consideration how the two intersect, or further when you consider POC characters, etc. You can’t compare straight relationships with queer ones, in the same way you can’t compare white experiences with nonwhite ones. To insist otherwise denies a whole system of privilege that drastically shapes and influences people’s lived experiences. 

But that isn’t what I want to address, because it’s another thing altogether to come for female sexuality and queerness. If I was willing to maybe give Malex a pass on the good-intentions-written-badly front, this is a hill I’m ready to die on. Isobel’s arc in season 1 of RNM demonstrates a lack of understanding that these are identities equally vulnerable to attack, exploitation, and misrepresentation--maybe even more so--as male queerness. That the outrage about Malex drowns out this other but no less important conversation kind of reaffirms the point I’m trying to make.

More under the cut.

Female sexuality has always struggled to find positive representation in popular media, no matter the time period or culture. Compared to male sexuality, it is not taken seriously, always played against the male gaze, or disregarded altogether because it excludes men. Queer female desire challenges societal structures around male desire and sexuality because it just… doesn’t require men to function and in fact actively rejects them. This is obviously a problem because the patriarchy loves it when men are shown to be extraneous and irrelevant. 

A lot of us know what it is to be invalidated as queer women, socially and sexually. Put your hand up if you’re a woman (in which I include cis and trans women, of course) or nonbinary individual who desires women and has been told, oh, you just haven’t met the right man yet, or oh, you’re just putting on a show for male attention. We have all been there and experienced this kind of erasure to various degrees of aggressiveness. This refrain is especially loud for bisexual women, who suffer erasure and ridicule from queer and straight communities alike, but the fact is, women’s sexuality has always been portrayed as less than or dependent upon that of a man’s. That isn’t to say bisexual men don’t also experience bi erasure. They do, and this is as much a product of homophobia as it is the primacy of the queer male gaze even within queer spaces and contexts. But in this case I’m addressing that of female and nonbinary bi-erasure and biphobia.

Furthermore, the role of queer women in society and popular media has always been underrepresented compared to that of gay men, or seen as more harmless or less significant, groundbreaking, or offensive for a couple of reasons: namely that a lot of people have played down or played off the existence of female sexuality and desire because they doubt its validity to begin with, or it’s “allowed” because it’s desirable to the male gaze. In some ways this has worked in our favour because subversive or queer female behaviour and desire in media have been able to fly beneath the radar, but it’s still a symptom of a greater problem.

I include this preamble because the writers of Roswell New Mexico have stunningly managed to ignore or remain ignorant to this context. The straight women on the show are shown to express their sexuality in upfront or positive ways, even opening up conversations about kink and reversing gender roles, but often in problematic ways too. The show sometimes fails the Bechdel Test or reduces characters, especially WOC like Maria, to having no purpose but to desire male characters and be desired by them, or portrays them as unable to want sex without quickly falling in love the way Maria seemingly has done with Michael. They’ve known each other for over a decade, and yet Maria only catches feelings after they’ve had sex, a night that, supposedly, meant nothing to her but quickly is revealed not to be the case. Interesting.

But beyond even that, my beef is with the whole Isobel-might-be-bisexual-and-in-love-with-Rosa-Ortecho storyline. I was excited about it at first; I couldn’t believe our luck that we had not one, but two bisexual characters on the show, and one of them was a bisexual woman married to a really awesome and seemingly caring South Asian man. But it was not to be, and this to me is ridiculously tone deaf and offensive in light of the fact that she was possessed by a male alien the whole goddamn time.

This tells us two equally disturbing things about the writers’ take on the queer female gaze and queer female sexuality: a) according to them, in this context, it literally doesn’t exist, and b) it is wholly a product of and subject to the male gaze.

From the promo for 1x12 it looks like they are going to delve a little bit into the mindfuck around consent due to Noah effectively brainwashing/tricking Isobel into marrying him, but one aspect of this I’d be surprised if they acknowledge is how he has also robbed Isobel of agency over her own sexuality. Not only has she been in a nonconsensual relationship with Noah this whole time, but he’s stripped her of the ability to discern whether her desires are her own, including the possibility that she is bisexual. As a woman, how can Isobel take her own sexuality seriously/see it as valid when she’s been forced to reconcile with the fact that, until now, it hasn’t been?

And that’s not even scratching the surface of the fact that a man used a woman, against her will and without her knowledge, to kill another woman. All over the simple fact that Rosa didn’t desire him/Isobel by extension. This stupid-as-fuck storyline is literally about weaponizing queer female sexuality in order to do violence against women. 

Just think about that for a second.

To make matters worse, Noah is a South Asian man and represents a community that is already marginalized in white media and society. Brown men have, in white culture, been relegated to two-dimensional stereotypes, rejected as love interests, and often portrayed as villains, and instead of positively developing an Indian character in a multiracial relationship and using that representation for good, he’s been made to violate his wife and use her to kill another woman. My girl @insidious-intent has written a really fantastic post to that end and I’d encourage you to read it. According to Carina, hiring Karan Oberoi to play Noah was colourblind casting. But viewers aren’t naive enough to buy that it’s ever that simple, or it shouldn’t be. I don’t see how you can write a nonwhite character the same as you would a white one and not expect it to have deeper or more damaging implications.

So my point, or at least one of them, is this: the failure of Roswell New Mexico to its queer viewers isn’t just that they’ve desecrated a ship as sacred as Malex or, at best, totally failed to do it justice. Roswell has failed us by invalidating and retconning female sexuality, and if this isn’t something we should all be angry about, straight and queer viewers alike, I don’t know what to tell you. While people are justified in expressing their anger to Carina about Malex, I think it’s also important to acknowledge and protest JUST AS LOUDLY the queer female angle. When you are thinking about how to represent, express, and phrase your disappointment to the production team, remember this goes far deeper than Malex. She has let us all down in ways that have nothing to do with our ship potentially not becoming a reality by the end of this season. She’s let POC viewers down just as resoundingly hard, both distinctly and factoring in the intersectionality of their writing choices.

All writers make mistakes. I want to put that out there. And I also want to put it out there that the issues around queer and POC representation are serious and disappointing, but not insurmountable if the writing team shows a willingness to learn, improve, and listen if the show is greenlit for season 2. But that isn’t what they’re doing. Carina has taken a stand, via Twitter, that they’ve done nothing wrong, and that is a big red flag that the writing team isn’t as woke as it likes to pretend and definitely not interested in listening to criticisms about their politics or how they try to convey them. So are her efforts of trying to silence bisexual viewers with legitimate criticism, or POC viewers doing the same thing. She and the writers would rather praise themselves for their token representation than acknowledge, listen to, and learn from real people expressing real concerns and sharing lived experiences.

[destroyyourbinder]

trans experience and social isolation

Following up on that last post I reblogged, one thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of trans people (but not all) were abnormally isolated from other people or from normal social development as children, sometimes up into their adulthood. It’s one of the most consistent strains I have seen in the experiences of both trans and detrans people, from old case studies of “transsexuals” in the 1960s up to experiences of “trans kids” now. It is something I see in the histories of trans people I meet in my day to day life as well as a striking consistency in the stories of the detransitioned and reconciling women I know. I was one of these people, and it is sometimes difficult to explain the extent to which I was socially isolated from others. I think having autism on top of my family’s abuse, my geographical isolation (I quite literally grew up surrounded by corn and soybean fields), and specific cultural environment compounded the social problems I faced. Here are some common things I’ve seen. I can’t possibly name them all. Note again that being autistic or otherwise neuroatypical in a way that makes socializing difficult greatly modifies and intensifies these experiences. I won’t cover this here because it would truly take me all night to discuss how autism can affect and interact with experiencing these different scenarios, as well as can appear to others as a justification for isolating you directly, subjecting you to isolating experiences, or neglecting your needs for stimulation, social development, education, and independent action. These are all also colored by experiencing my childhood as female and predominately knowing female trans and detransitioned people; female children and young adults are often isolated deliberately from others, cloistered in restrictive same-sex environments or prevented from achieving education or experiences in the world, in order to prepare them for being handed off in marriage to a man. While this does not happen frequently in such an explicit way in the modern United States, it’s abundantly clear to any sister who had a brother that they were not treated the same and that they were limited from experiencing the world in ways that male children do not typically experience, either “for their own safety”, because they were not seen to have the same potential, because expending resources on them would be a comparative waste, or for other reasons. Again, I can’t possibly do this topic justice in this space but it is a unique form of harm when you are subjected to isolation and it is considered a kind of good, justified by others who you seek help from or who you try to connect to. Isolation becomes devastating and complete when your remaining attempts at reaching out are grossly and crudely cut off, something that happens to more young girls than you’d know. Isolating experiences common in transgender childhood, youth, and young adulthood, sometimes into later adulthood in particularly abusive environments:

Having parents or caretakers who were abnormally controlling about who you socialize with, sometimes to the point of refusing you most or all social contact with peers or insisting on directly monitoring all socializing. There may just be so many rules and requirements or surveillance strategies for social contact that you find it too burdensome to try to socialize with others. Family or caretakers may require that you allow them to or find it normal to invade your privacy, such as reading diaries, monitoring phone contacts, or reading internet posts, e-mails, and so on. They may demand passwords to your phone, computer, or accounts, or that you leave your personal belongings unprotected. You may have little or no un-monitored social experience outside of your family and possibly certain secretive contacts, sometimes having achieved social contact with others (often exploitative or inappropriate social experiences) only through deceit or “sneaking around”. You may spend a great deal of time and energy concealing not only your socializing but your personal thoughts, beliefs, and experiences from those who monitor you; you may feel isolated even inside your own head, with nowhere to yourself.

Having bizarre schooling experiences such as being pulled out of schools multiple times, changing schools frequently, unusual homeschooling, school neglect or tolerance of truancy, being expelled or suspended in ways that led to schooling gaps. Your parents or caretakers may be unusually controlling about your school experiences, frequently calling the school to insist on interventions, inserting themselves often in your normal school life, or insisting on surveilling your activities during school by demanding others monitor you or continually demanding recorded information. Alternately, parents or caretakers may be neglectful of your schooling needs, not caring that you are missing school or insisting that other things such as making money or family obligations are more important than education.

Having parents or caretakers who are abnormally paranoid about “stranger danger”, break-ins, abduction, rape, murder, or other violence to the point that they dramatically limit your natural play and exploration of the environment. May not permit you to go outside or visit public areas, even when you are a teen or young adult. You may have moved houses, often to an isolated rural or suburban area, so your family could escape the perceived danger of cities or areas with people. The family, general community, or a parent may have been obsessed with personal defense or security or preparing for disasters. They might expose you to inappropriate information about violence and disaster that frightens you so much you have trouble participating in normal life.

Being isolated from cultural peers or from information about people “like you”. You may be a person of color in an extremely white-dominated environment or who has family that has internalized white values, insisting on rejecting your shared heritage or refusing to recognize discrimination against people of your racial or ethnic background. You may feel like you have to choose between your family or your family’s choices and bonding with others of your race or ethnicity. You may be gay with little opportunity to socialize or meet gay people, unable to access information about gay history and culture, often because this information is deliberately concealed or banned from you. You may feel like your family or community would reject or even hurt you if you are gay or are seen socializing with or accessing information about gay people. You may be disabled without knowing anyone else with your condition, possibly not told the name, treatment, or extent of your condition, with family or other environment that refuses to acknowledge the disability, only recognizing it as a pathology or personal failing, or who overcompensates by “doting” on you instead of providing caretaking that respects your agency.

Being exposed to unusual or controlling religious beliefs or participation in a coercive religious environment. You may be convinced that outsiders are morally suspect and that socializing with others outside the family or community will corrupt you. May have had an exclusively or predominately religious education full of misinformation about the greater world. The religious environment you live in may be cult-like. Family may prioritize participation in religion or religious activities above all other activities, and you may have little time unstructured by religious ritual or uninterpreted by religious doctrine. Media, entertainment, and information sources available to you may be strictly filtered, and many sources of learning may be outright banned. You may be taught to distrust learning about anything but religion or your community, and may be taught to abide by strict hierarchy rather than associate with others freely and casually.

Having extremely abusive or neglectful parents. You may have been literally held captive in the house, not permitted to leave family property, or unable to escape family. Family may be so abusive that you cannot safely invite peers to house, or so neglectful that conditions of living are shameful or dangerous. You may be in a“Stockholm Syndrome” type situation where it does not even occur to you that socializing with others is desirable or where all outsiders seem like a threat. You may be so traumatized by your living conditions or treatment by others that socializing is too difficult or threatening. You may have been in an isolated, abusive or neglectful living situation so long, sometimes into adulthood, that you have interrupted social skills, and your social motivation has been lost or distorted.

Being in institutional care or institutionally disciplined for much of childhood. You may have been sent to juvenile detention, family court, observed by social workers, or been on parole during part of your childhood. May be in and out of alternative schooling, particularly schooling provided while undergoing treatment for mental illness or while being jailed. You may have been in residential treatment for mental illness or continually hospitalized for a medical condition or mental illness. Socializing may predominately occur under conditions where your peers are people with severe life issues that may make their attempts at socializing unusual or disruptive, where peers are of highly stigmatized populations, and where socializing is continually monitored by authority figures particularly for signs of pathology or need of discipline. Institutional contact may have led you to be ostracized from your peers outside these institutions, or conditions of institutionalization may make it difficult for you to contact or stay in touch with friends and family “outside”.

Having family or others that seek to make you dependent on them or find it convenient or fulfilling that you are dependent, either through abusively removing ability to support yourself, through neglecting to teach you life skills, or through overbearing parenting that leaves you inappropriately childlike and anxious while trying to exercise independence. Parents may be “helicopter parents” and try to resolve your problems with little input from you, may be inappropriately controlling of your environment or opportunities, and may seek to arrange your life for you even if this is not common in your culture. Parents may seek to accompany you or monitor you during situations where this is extremely inappropriate or unwanted. Family or others may discourage you or prevent you from learning to drive, finishing your education, or seeking employment or employment skills, may encourage you or demand that you live with them even once you reach adulthood. Independence skills or resources may be given to you with “strings attached” that make you dependent on your family or a particular person for opportunities or make it impossible for you to escape an abusive situation. Family or others may find it convenient that you are disabled, mentally ill, or experiencing life difficulties and use their support or its withdrawal as a means of communication or means to control you. Support given by others outside the family or beyond a particular person’s domain may be rejected, belittled, or you may be discouraged or outright prevented from taking it.

Having an unusual or stigmatizing condition or disability. Family, caretakers, or doctors may insist that your condition requires secrecy or isolation from others. There may be the implication that the condition will “taint” others as if it is contagious or “horrify” others so much that it must never be revealed. Your condition might require so much medical treatment that it interferes with normal life and child development. May regularly miss school or socializing due to the condition or its treatment. The condition may be one subject to surveillance that interferes with your trust of others or regular unstructured social development. You might only socialize with a small group of other children, who either all have this condition or are a generalized group of “special education” children, isolated from other peers and perhaps typical family members like siblings and cousins. You might have been isolated from other children with same or similar conditions out of concern that you might accept your condition instead of seeking to normalize yourself at all cost.

Experiencing other frequent, strange, or stigmatizing life events or crises. You may have lost a parent to illness or violence. You may have family members who are in prison or who regularly face criminal discipline. You may have family members with high-need medical conditions or disabilities, who may be in and out of hospitalization or whose conditions require a great deal of care or resources. You may be regularly neglected or ignored because a sibling or parent is deemed to have higher priority due to a medical condition, mental illness, or experiencing life crises. Your family may live in unusual conditions (i.e. hoarding, strangers in and out, too many pets) or have an unusual belief system that is difficult to explain to others and that you may not fully realize is atypical. A parent or caretaker may regularly lose jobs, have wildly inconsistent income or ability to provide resources, have an occupation that is exhausting and disruptive to the family’s life, or may keep the source of their money secretive. You may face an unusual form of abuse or neglect that seems ridiculous or humiliating to explain to others and leads you to self-isolate. Your family may move housing frequently or unpredictably. You may have a parent or multiple parents or caretakers that date frequently or bring unknown sexual partners home all the time. Your home or community life may be so unpredictable or strange you cannot socialize normally, and you have little control over your social contacts or context.

Having a family, community, or schooling that is abnormally “cold” and prioritizes parenting or teaching methods that emphasize authority, obligation, hierarchy, educational development, discipline or other values over loving connection to others. Your family does not touch each other or uses touch to punish or threaten rather than show care. Touch or connection to others is belittled. Sexuality is considered dirty, dangerous, or distracting rather than a normal part of human life. You do not observe parents or others showing warmth to each other, but may observe fighting, rejection, or violence instead. You may observe or be encouraged to develop coldness to those outside the family or community and other beings like animals; coldness may be modeled as essential to certain social roles like working or marriage. Your environment may inconsistently or unpredictably demand warmth and coldness and demands for warmth may occur primarily during abusive scenarios. You may become so confused about appropriate social boundaries that you act out or shut down, alienating yourself from peers or becoming subject to punishment.

Experiencing your sexual development being ignored or hyper-monitored. Parents may comment inappropriately on your development during puberty or neglect giving appropriate sexual education at all. You may undergo puberty atypically early or late or there may be medical issues with your sexual development, making you and your body a subject of discussion among your family, peers, and doctors. Your sexual development might be considered dirty or inappropriate even if it is discussed. Your family or other environments may vacillate between condemning you and distinctly ignoring your sexual development. Family may ban you from opportunities to date or socialize with the intent to form and explore romantic connections, you may have dating opportunities inappropriately surveilled and monitored or arranged with no personal choice, or be completely left with no appropriate social feedback on safe and healthy dating. You may have few social connections outside of romantic or sexual partners, who may be much older, abusive, or otherwise wildly inappropriate; parents or other adults may endorse this behavior or fail to intervene despite knowing. You may be inappropriately exposed to pornography or adult sexuality through sexual coercion or violence or because your few social contacts are in sexualized online environments or abusive/exploitative people. You may be so traumatized by sexual abuse that you cannot socialize without great difficulty or the way you perceive social expectations are distorted.

Seeking social connections exclusively or predominately in age-inappropriate groups, online social groups, or subcultures where norms of social connection are distorted. You may tend to find social connection within groups of people with severe mental health issues, drug addiction, or life instability. Norms of online or peer subcultural groups you participate in may permit or encourage antisocial behavior such as interpersonal violence, self-harm, drug use, narcissistic behavior, abusive or offensive behavior, escalation of conflict for entertainment, etc. Exploitation and abuse are common in your social circle, may be lauded as model behavior, or others may refuse to name this behavior as harmful. You may be manipulated or extorted into harmful behavior towards self or peers that benefits powerful people in the group, or may regularly witness this behavior with no opportunity to intervene or speak up. Your environment may be extremely controlling or even cult-like, and you may lose perspective on the outside world, believing that norms of social behavior common to the group are normal or correct. Group might socially punish pro-social behavior, independent thought, critical thinking, or socializing outside of the group, leaving you isolated and dependent on the group.

[transastronautistic]

queer history: a chat with Anne Lister and Leslie Feinberg

you know what i’d love to witness? a conversation between Anne Lister and Leslie Feinberg. can you even imagine it??

Lister wrote, “I am made unlike anyone I have ever met. I dare to say I am like no one in the whole world.” but i think she’d quickly realize that Feinberg is “made like” her -- that Feinberg has a very similar sexuality and gender expression to her own, and truly gets what it’s like to be persecuted for those things. Lister’d be so thrilled and relieved to find she’s not alone!

and Feinberg? when ze was younger, ze was desperate to find hirself in history -- just like Lister, ze was convinced that “No one like me seemed to have ever existed” (Transgender Warriors, p. 11). Feinberg would absolutely recognize Lister as a part of the big beautiful queer history that ze eventually discovered.

there are many parts of Feinberg’s story that come to mind as i watch Gentleman Jack -- such as when Lister is talking to the little boy Henry, who asks if she’s a man, and she replies:

“Well, that's a question. And you are not the first person to ask it. I was in Paris once, dressed extremely well, I thought, in silk and ribbons, ringlets in my hair. Very gay, very ladylike. And even then, someone mistook me for a...Mm. So, no, I am not a man. I'm a lady. A woman. I'm a lady woman. I'm a woman.”

when i watched that scene, i immediately thought of this passage from Feinberg’s Transgender Warriors:

“...I was considered far too masculine a woman to get a job in a store, or a restaurant, or an office. I couldn’t survive without working. So one day I put on a femme friend’s wig and earrings and tried to apply for a job as a salesperson at a downtown retail store. On the bus ride to the interview, people stood rather than sit next to me. They whispered and pointed and stared. ‘Is that a man?’ one woman asked her friend, loud enough for us all to hear. The experience taught me an important lesson. The more I tried to wear clothing or styles considered appropriate for women, the more people believed I was a man trying to pass as a woman. I began to understand that I couldn’t conceal my gender expression” (p. 12).

over a century separated these two, but people who could or would not conform to their assigned gender suffered in both eras. both of these people longed for a connection to a wider community of people like them, longed to know why people like them were persecuted and hated and told that God reviled them. but while Lister did manage to cultivate a tiny haven for herself of loved ones who accepted her, she never found the wider community that Feinberg found -- the world of “drag queens, butches, and femmes,” a world in which “I fit; I was no longer alone” -- a world that extended beyond gay bars, deep into past millennia as well as across the entire globe!

Feinberg worked hard to dig up the answers to all hir questions of why -- “Why was I subject to legal harassment and arrest at all? Why was I being punished for the way I walked or dressed, or who I loved? Who wrote the laws used to harass us, and why? Who gave the green light to the cops to enforce them? Who decided what was normal in the first place?” (p. 8). what ze concluded was that the rise of class so many ages ago is what sowed the seeds of transphobia.

in Transgender Warriors, Feinberg argues that in ancient societies that followed a matrilineal system and shared all resources communally, whenever agriculture enabled some men to begin accumulating and hoarding resources, an intolerance for gender diversity would also arise (see pp. 42-44, 50-52). once these men had capital, they had power. the Few could use their capital to bribe, to threaten, and to control the Many. eventually these men would twist their communities into a patriarchy in order to ensure that they could keep the power in their own hands. for patriarchs rely upon a rigid gender binary to keep their power, wherein those assigned male are placed above everyone else. after all, if men behave "like women," how can we place them above women? if women behave "like men," will they try to force their way into the dominant group? if some people are too ambiguous to be categorized into either group, what does that say about our argument that this binary is the natural way of doing things or divinely ordained?

i think that there are some aspects of this history that Lister would be excited to learn. she’d recognize herself as one of those women trying to force their way into the dominant group, and agree that the patriarchs of her day were not happy about it. she’d appreciate Feinberg’s scholarship around those religious texts that she as a Christian and Feinberg as a Jewish person shared, how Feinberg shows that it was not God but men who decided that the gender binary must be enforced. Lister would heartily agree that her nature is God-given, not God-hated.

but the conversation between Lister and Feinberg would very quickly break down, for the same reason that transphobia sprung up: because of class.

not long into their discussion, Feinberg would be like “and that’s why Capitalism is the root of all evil and people like us will thrive only once we’ve overthrown the landed gentry and disseminated all the wealth” and Lister would be like. “excuse me. i am the Landed Gentry. the lower classes will get their callused hands on my wealth over my dead body"

and the relationship would promptly dissolve from there -- and i’d take Feinberg’s side 1000% and hope ze could knock some humility into Lister’s classist ass!

but anyway to me the similarities between these two historical figures combined with the stark differences in their worldviews only goes to show what an enormous factor class is! Feinberg notes this fact, that “trans expression” has existed among all classes -- and that social privilege makes a big difference in a trans or gnc person’s life:

“For the ruling elite, transgender expression could still be out in the open with far less threat of punishment than a peasant could expect. For example, when Queen Christina of Sweden abdicated in 1654, she donned men’s clothes and renamed herself ‘Count Dohna.’ Henry III of France was reported to have dressed as an Amazon and encouraged his courtiers to do likewise” (80).

(to be fair to Henry III, his gender non-conforming ways were used against him to justify his overthrow. but for a time, he had the means to express himself and to gather others who were like him into his court.)

if Feinberg had been born in the uppermost class of hir society, would that have protected hir from much of the cruelty and violence they experienced? after all, ze would never have had to scramble for a job, to try desperately to conform to gender expectations just to survive. Lister was able to spend much of her life refusing to listen to the hateful words circulating behind her back because to her face people tended to be much more polite. would Feinberg have had that experience too, had ze not been of the lower working class? would ze have never gone through the pain and struggle that caused hir to dig so ferociously into the history of transphobia and queerphobia?

it’s much less likely for someone at the top of the food chain to question the food chain -- even if they notice how the Way Things Are does work against them in some ways. Lister was unlikely to notice how a social hierarchy that pits the wealthy above the poor is intrinsically linked to the structures that pit men over women and confine each person into a rigid binary box -- because to notice that truth would have been to her own detriment. she may not have wanted to keep the cissexism, but she did want to keep her wealth.

As Feinberg puts it in Transgender Warriors when discussing afab people who fought for the Confederacy in the US Civil War, “just being [trans] doesn’t automatically make each person progressive.”

Lister was not prepared to fight a battle against her own privileges, even if it would also have been a battle against her own oppression. that doesn’t mean that those of us looking back at her story today can’t treasure what we have in common with her! we can. after all, in Transgender Warriors, Feinberg recounts the stories of the more “problematic,” complicated figures in queer history right alongside the ones that better fit hir own views. ze finds value in their stories despite the flaws, and we can too.

but at the same time, we have to acknowledge where Lister fell short, and do the hard work of examining our own privileges and considering how we can be better than Lister. we can instead be like Feinberg, whose marginalization -- as a butch lesbian, as a Jewish person, as a transgender person, and as a lower class person -- inspired hir not to cling to the privileges ze did have as hir only foothold in the power structure, but rather to be the best ally ze could be to people of color, to trans women, and others:

“We as trans people can’t liberate ourselves alone. No oppressed peoples can. So how and why will others come to our defense? And whom shall we, as trans people, fight to defend? A few years before he died [Frederick] Douglass told the International Council of Women, ‘When I ran away from slavery, it was for myself; when I advocated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of women, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act.’ I believe this is the only nobility to which we should aspire -- that is, to be the best fighters against each other’s oppression, and in doing so, to build links of solidarity and trust that will forge an invincible movement against all forms of injustice and inequality” (p. 92).

so, yeah. i’d love to hear these two people chat. i relate deeply to both of their experiences and think they’d find a lot of commonalities between themselves. ...and then with Feinberg i’d love to give Lister a piece of my mind when it comes to her classism.

[bryanfaganlaw]

What is family violence mean in conjunction with family law cases in Texas

If you have need a best suitable service your Child Law experience, What is family violence mean in conjunction with family law cases in Texas with the great process!

Divorce Houston: Family violence commonly refers to a pattern of sustained abuse by a perpetrator against a victim with whom the perpetrator shares a familiar, dating and or marital relationship. The purpose of the violence is usually to control the victim and is repeated usually because once a perpetrator experiences his or her desired results the behavior is repeated. A judge will need to consider both the effects of the violence that are visible and those that are more easily camouflaged by other aspects of your case.

Now that we know what family violence is- what does family violence not mean?

Family violence does not describe physical force that you have utilized in order to provide for your or your children’s defense. Likewise, if you have disciplined a child using appropriate force or simply returned the prior aggression of a spouse or partner with force then you still have not engaged in family violence.

Often times, an alleged perpetrator of family violence will state that he or she was merely “returning the favor” against a prior incident of family violence that you started. When a court must combat mutual allegations of abuse then your court has to figure out whether you or your spouse were acting in self defense or if one of you have a history of unprovoked violent behavior towards the other person. Many times I have seen people try and justify their past acts of family violence as a normal response to aggression based on cultural or family norms. A court will not accept this explanation.

When acts of family violence occur the community at large suffers

Family Lawyers Houston: It is bad enough if you have been the victim of family violence, but when your spouse or partner abuses you physically then your community suffers as well. The reason for this is that family violence is a societal problem and does not just affect you and your immediate family. Law enforcement, emergency medical personnel, members of the legal community and social workers are just a few of the groups that become involved when you are involved in an incident involving family violence.

Consider the strain that your partner or spouse puts you through due to lost work hours if you are injured sufficient to require time off from work. Medical treatment, subsequent doctor visits and time away from your work are all consequences to you that also affect other people that you live and share a community with.

Family violence is premeditated- it is not an unintentional reaction

Many men and women who commit acts of family violence attempt to rationalize their bad acts by arguing that he or she is not a bad person. Their argument goes on to say that their reaction was a split-second one that while regrettable, does not reflect upon their true character.

I would argue that family violence is a behavior that is learned and repeated because as we stated at the outset of this blog post, the perpetrator learns that the behavior creates positive results for him or her. The result is the compliance of you or any other victim in doing what the perpetrator wants.

If you are being told by a perpetrator of family violence that the violence is only occurring because of how you are treating him or her do not take this to heart. Family violence is not normally a reaction, but a purposeful behavior instigated by the perpetrator. Your reaction to that bad behavior does not justify additional acts of violence- whatever your reaction may be.

If you have need a best suitable service your Child Law experience, What is family violence mean in conjunction with family law cases in Texas with the great process!

Divorce Houston: Family violence commonly refers to a pattern of sustained abuse by a perpetrator against a victim with whom the perpetrator shares a familiar, dating and or marital relationship. The purpose of the violence is usually to control the victim and is repeated usually because once a perpetrator experiences his or her desired results the behavior is repeated. A judge will need to consider both the effects of the violence that are visible and those that are more easily camouflaged by other aspects of your case.

Now that we know what family violence is- what does family violence not mean?

Family violence does not describe physical force that you have utilized in order to provide for your or your children’s defense. Likewise, if you have disciplined a child using appropriate force or simply returned the prior aggression of a spouse or partner with force then you still have not engaged in family violence.

Often times, an alleged perpetrator of family violence will state that he or she was merely “returning the favor” against a prior incident of family violence that you started. When a court must combat mutual allegations of abuse then your court has to figure out whether you or your spouse were acting in self defense or if one of you have a history of unprovoked violent behavior towards the other person. Many times I have seen people try and justify their past acts of family violence as a normal response to aggression based on cultural or family norms. A court will not accept this explanation.

When acts of family violence occur the community at large suffers

Family Lawyers Houston: It is bad enough if you have been the victim of family violence, but when your spouse or partner abuses you physically then your community suffers as well. The reason for this is that family violence is a societal problem and does not just affect you and your immediate family. Law enforcement, emergency medical personnel, members of the legal community and social workers are just a few of the groups that become involved when you are involved in an incident involving family violence.

Consider the strain that your partner or spouse puts you through due to lost work hours if you are injured sufficient to require time off from work. Medical treatment, subsequent doctor visits and time away from your work are all consequences to you that also affect other people that you live and share a community with.

Family violence is premeditated- it is not an unintentional reaction

Many men and women who commit acts of family violence attempt to rationalize their bad acts by arguing that he or she is not a bad person. Their argument goes on to say that their reaction was a split-second one that while regrettable, does not reflect upon their true character.

I would argue that family violence is a behavior that is learned and repeated because as we stated at the outset of this blog post, the perpetrator learns that the behavior creates positive results for him or her. The result is the compliance of you or any other victim in doing what the perpetrator wants.

If you are being told by a perpetrator of family violence that the violence is only occurring because of how you are treating him or her do not take this to heart. Family violence is not normally a reaction, but a purposeful behavior instigated by the perpetrator. Your reaction to that bad behavior does not justify additional acts of violence- whatever your reaction may be.

Family violence involves elements of both criminal and civil law

Family Lawyer in Houston: As we saw in the outset to this blog post, the definition of family violence can be stretched to encompass any behavior that is exerted over a family member in order to control their behavior. Typically it is physical abuse or control that is categorized as criminal and emotional abuse or control that is categorized as being non criminal but nonetheless damaging.

I have seen time and time again a person be physically violent with a victim, only to come back at him or her with non criminal abuse that will weaken their self esteem and lessen their ability to provide a defense to their acts of violence. It is important that if you apply for a protective order in conjunction with a divorce or child custody case that your attorney make the judge aware of the effect that each type of abuse has had on you- both mentally and physically. Just because you have not been the victim of physical abuse in recent months does not mean that you will not be in the future. Usually what this means is that the perpetrator has gotten his or her desired results with only words rather than physical action.

The bond between you and the defendant may play a significant role in your case

Depending on the strength of the bond between you and the defendant, your case can be affected in different ways. For example, if you rely on your abuser for financial assistance then you may not be as likely or as willing to cut all ties with him or her for free of losing the economic resources that allow you to sustain yourself and/or your children.

Compare this to a situation where your abuser is not related or known to you. If a stranger were to have done the same things to you as your family member consider how different your reaction would be to it. Would you be more aggressive in your pursuit of justice? How much quicker would you have reacted to the incident by contacting law enforcement? Before you are able to understand how to go about protecting yourself it is worth considering the nature of your relationship with the abuser. If you know that you will have trouble confronting him or her, even indirectly, you ought to rely on your support system to help you.

Settling on assistance that does not involve the legal system

Houston Family Law Lawyer: Some people in your position will make a compromise with themselves and will opt to seek non legal remedies to their problems that involve family violence. You may have attempted to resolve the issue temporarily by personally negotiating with your spouse or partner or by physically leaving your residence that you share with him or her. Counseling through your church or other organization can yield results that are sustainable in some circumstances but are temporary fixes in others. Contacting the police or other law enforcement may prevent individual instances of violence but would not be advisable if you are attempting to stop the abuse altogether.

The problem that people run into when attempting to glue together this hodge-podge of remedies is that none of them can work one hundred percent of the time. Game-plans are abandoned in favor of others that appear to be more likely to yield positive results. A judge should consider that because your only goal is your safety and survival that whatever choices you have made in order to protect yourself to this point likely haven’t been made with any specific strategy in mind other than day to day survival.

Summarizing family violence from the perspective of the victim

Family violence is a pattern of intentionally abusive behavior that the perpetrator/defendant uses to control your behavior as a victim. Physical force is often times utilized in tandem with psychological abuse to create the desired effect for an abuser. Ultimately there are many factors at play when it comes to assisting the victims of family violence.

Questions about family violence? Contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC

Family Lawyers in Houston: If you have any questions about the subject matter that we have discussed today please do not hesitate to contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC. We can set you up with a free of charge consultation in our office with one our licensed family law attorneys. These consultations are comfortable and pressure free where we can address your concerns and help you to gain more insight and information into your particular circumstances ... Continue Reading

[communistvashoth]

Look, i'm not saying i dont see the parallells between illuminati/reptilian conspiracies and historical antisemitism. But the idea of a shadowy, corrupt group controlling the government is a common thread in a lot of fringe theories, and calling it a reference to Jews throws me so far under the bus you wouldn't fucking believe it

I’ve decided to write a pretty long response to this, and i hope you’ll read the whole thing. I promise, I have no desire to throw you under any buses.

(pertaining to this)

I'm sorry you feel unfairly piled on; I dont know who you are, but I doubt you deserve that, most people don’t. it's sadly common in more progressive communities, and the internet in general, for people to respond to mistakes and miscommunications with rigid condemnation and some sort of "excommunication". if that's what you're going through, that probably is unfair, and you're justified in feeling frustrated. it also, just generally, really sucks to be told that something you did or said may have been insensitive or harmful. most people dont mean to do that sort of thing, and when we're told something we did was racist, sexist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc. it often feels like we are being labeled a racist, a sexist, an anti-semite, a homophobe, etc. that feels really shitty, because those are shitty things to be, so being called that feels like being called a bad person. its vitally important, though, that we remember that those words are primarily adjectives. everybody does things that are racist, sexist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc. sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that we are those things. 

we don’t become racists, sexists, anti-semites, homophobes, etc. until we are confronted with harm we caused accidentally and, instead of hearing that, addressing it, changing for the better, and moving on, we become defensive, double-down, and resent the people we’ve harmed for having the audacity to make us feel guilty. 

in this instance, i’m afraid there are more than just parallels, and the anti-semitism is more than historical. many of those fringe conspiracy theories don’t just share the concept of a secret, evil cabal running the world and destroying western culture/white people/free speech/whatever ridiculous thing, they share specifically the idea that there is a secret, evil cabal of jewish people running the world and destroying western culture/white people/free speech/whatever thing. they seem like ridiculous garbage that only nutcases believe in, but when actually investigated and dissected, many of those theories are based in the same bigotries as the blood libels going back as far as the 11th century. the fact of the matter is, most if not all of those such conspiracy theories are not similar to anti-semitism, they are anti-semitism, and they are not historical, they are happening now, and they are motivating anti-semitic violence now. I mean, just look at Qanon and the “white genocide” conspiracy theory. and if you’re not very familiar with those, then you should count yourself very, very lucky that they aren’t things that demand your attention. 

I am sorry for how you are feeling; i know from experience that it feels really shitty to be told you’ve harmed someone when you didnt mean to, and i know what it’s like to be subjected to overreactions about it, and how shitty that is. assuming you are the OP of the post i commented on, i don’t think you meant to harm anyone, you were just making a joke that was, admittedly, funny, and if anyone is saying you’re a raging anti-semite, or evil, or irredeemable, or anything like that, that’s definitely an out-of-proportion response to one post. I hope that you can recognise when people are overreacting or taking out their own unhappiness out on you, and i hope that you can fortify and feel some comfort in the knowledge that they are wrong, and you dont deserve to be treated like that. but i also hope that your feelings of being thrown under the bus don’t harden you to genuine criticism. i don’t doubt it hurts, and you are definitely justified in feeling that a lot of that hurt is unwarranted, but being told you’ve done something harmful will never be painless. counterintuitively, it’s actually a sort of a silver lining to all this; that bad feeling, that unpleasant niggle of guilt, it means that you care when you harm people by accident. but as much as those feelings suck, and as much as it super, super sucks to be dogpiled by internet assholes, we can’t use those bad feelings to insulate ourselves from our mistakes. 

it hurts, but it doesn’t justify ignoring the harm we do to others; being called a racist has never hurt a white person as much as racism harms people of colour. being told we’ve done something anti-semitic is hard, but trying to navigate through increasingly common murky double-speak and covert dog-whistles as a jewish person is harder. they don’t deserve that, but it’s an unavoidable part of their lives. if we care about them, if we want to help them, if we want to help lay the bricks for a new world where they won’t have to suffer that, we have to shoulder that burden with them. sometimes that means examining our language, learning about unpleasant history and its modern forms, and letting a joke go by the wayside when it sounds uncomfortably like a dog-whistle, even if that isn’t how we meant it.

if it helps at all, you’re not alone in this. you’re not alone in your feelings, and you’re not alone in this experience. in fact, if you’re still feeling shitty/frustrated/unheard, i’d be happy to chat with you off anon (altho maybe not immediately, it’s getting late). I’ve also done things that were anti-semitic without meaning to and had to confront that, and i struggle with all sorts of learned prejudices that i want to be better about. If you need to vent about this, if you need someone you can just word-vomit at without worrying about hurting someone’s feelings, i am here, and i am absolutely willing to listen. 

and even if none of this affects you -although i dont believe it to be the case, it’s totally possible you’re coming to this discussion in bad faith; anon means i dont even know for sure who you are, so i can’t exactly check- i hope you will read it, as long as it is. and even if you don’t, or do and dismiss it, maybe it will reach someone else.

i hope you, anon-who-might-be-OP, feel better; i hope you feel heard. i hope you find your way to peace and understanding with this.

i hope any jewish people who were affected by this situation feel better; i hope you feel heard. i hope you find your way to peace and healing with this.

[sarkywoman]

Words cannot express how appalled I am right now at Liam Neeson. And I’m sickened by the people who are supporting his story. How is it defensible?! People are saying ‘right to be angry’ ‘right to be upset’ ‘brave to share’.

WHAT THE FUCK.

When a crime is committed and you demand to know the colour of the attacker’s skin over any other identifying feature, you’re already being racist. When you believe that people with that skin colour (and let’s be honest, it’s rarely white we’re talking about here) are interchangeable, that one black person should be killed for the crime of another, you’re a fucking racist. It doesn’t matter how angry you are! What revenge you feel you’re entitled to!

YOU’RE STILL A RACIST PIECE OF SHIT.

And to come out with that story years later and think it’s somehow relatable?? Like we’re all gonna sigh and say, “well who hasn’t been there, man. Mahesh stole my sandwich last week so I just up and took Vaneet’s take-out food because they’re both Indian and thus my revenge was justified.”

And the violence! My pithy little example makes light of the situation but he was walking the streets with the intent to kill in a racist attack.

This isn’t one of these ‘I was part of a hate group’ recovery stories that preach moving towards acceptance, tolerance, etc. It frames it as some random behaviour that he dabbled in briefly, with the focus on the violent attitude rather than the massively racist element. There’s just this vague paragraph at the end that says you might generalise a community after something horrible happens. Wow. 

‘“I think it may have something to do with the pre-existing biases,” says Harris, though remember this cannot be taken as a judgement on Neeson himself nor this specific incident.’

And this is not just relevant to race – for example, the thoughts one might harbour about young people, or old people as well as black people.

I cannot believe this article tries to ignore the racism of this. I am absolutely livid. Liam wasn’t cruising the streets looking for a pensioner to murder! He thought it would be justified to murder a black man because his friend was hurt. The article only uses the word ‘racist’ once, near the start, ‘for a week afterwards carrying with him a cosh and brutal, racist thoughts, and how this taught him that violence and revenge do not work.’ As if racism was a fucking hat he put on to learn an important lesson in a week.

I feel sick to my stomach.

[timeclonemike]

Random Idea: “Portia” Spider-Man AU

I haven’t actually seen Into The Spiderverse myself, but I have read that it has started a trend towards people coming up with their own Spider-Man AUs. More specifically I read that there’s a lot of people lashing out against that for some reason, which I don’t get.

I also watched a walkthrough of the PS4 game, which actually motivated me to work on a completely different project.

I might as well state right now that I do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of Spider-Man in particular, or the Marvel multiverse in general, much less the exponentially greater possibilities that come from a huge fan base. To the best of my limited knowledge, I don’t think I’m treading on anyone’s toes, and if it turns out somebody had the same ideas before me and reads this, I promise I’m not trying to steal your thunder.

The Origin: Pyotr “Peter” Parker is second generation Russian-American living in the Big Apple. He’s a scientific prodigy, and he was well on his way to getting a scholarship that would launch him to dizzying academic and technical heights when his life was demolished; his mother, father, and uncle were all killed in some sort of crossfire between different mob families. His academic performance and social life were also casualties, first from grief, and later from the impotent rage burning inside him from seeing nothing at all happen to find and punish those who had done so much harm. The kid who was on a fast track to following in the footsteps of such scientific visionaries as Tony Stark, Hank Pym, and Oswald Octavius did the bare minimum of work needed to keep his teachers and Aunt May (his only living relative) off of his back; the rest of his days and much of his nights were spent in an angry haze of revenge-based daydreams and fantasies.

The Transformation: Peter does not remember exactly how, but one morning he woke up with a painfully swollen spider bite. After a day or so, the swelling went away, but it was replaced by other “symptoms” that were decidedly more permanent. In no particular order, he could stick to various surfaces, detect motion nearby, and found that his strength and agility were dramatically increased. Most dramatic of all, he could jump much, much farther than any human being had any business jumping. To an angsty, hormonal teenager who had fumed and raged inwardly as he watched the injustice perpetrated on his family go unpunished for years, it was like Christmas morning. (It was actually Arbor Day, but that’s not really important.) With barely enough sense to get gloves, a ski mask, and goggles to hide his identity, he set out to to do by himself what the police and the courts could not, or would not, do through proper channels.

The Defeat: Superpowers or not, a teenager is not a match for multiple, competing organized crime families. Peter was shot four times, twice in the left leg, once in the right shoulder, and one glancing blow to the skull that would have punched his clock if not for his Spider-Sense based reflexes. With a concussion, a leg that couldn’t support his weight, and a whole lot of lost blood, Peter was forced to back off to some place safe, call 911, and nearly collapse right after tossing his “costume” in the closest dumpster. Emergency surgery and a blood transfusion saved his life, and while his recovery was almost miraculously fast according to the doctors and nurses keeping an eye on him, he still had to convalesce.

The Lesson: The time spent in bed, with nothing to do but mull over his defeat, forces him to reconsider what he is doing and why. He was about ready to throw all his dreams of revenge out the window and move on with his life... when the assassins showed up. After all, gunshot wounds are reported to police, and not every officer who swears to uphold the law actually keeps that oath. The assassins try to smother Peter while he pretends to be asleep; for their trouble, they get kicked with the same amount of force that previously launched Peter across streets and up the sides of buildings. Fortunately for them, they are in a hospital already. With a paranoia that has nothing to do with his new danger-detector in his head, Pete leaves the hospital without being officially discharged, makes it home, and discovers that his Aunt May ended up taking out two home invaders... and instead of the invaders being carted off, Aunt May is the one being held on trumped up charges. Peter has the consequences of his actions thrust into his face, and he angsts over his irresponsibility for all of five minutes before he has an epiphany that few Spider-themed superheroes ever figure out: Not everything bad that happens is automatically his fault.

The Comeback: While only a few days older, Peter is now much wiser, and begins a methodical plan of attack. The forces arrayed against his family cover the city like a web, but he’s learned a lot about spiders recently. Between phone calls, letters, and Duck Duck Go, Peter maps out the people he has to fight. These include a hanging judge, an attorney general living beyond her apparent means, and a couple of cops who have some black marks on other people’s social media, if not their professional records. With a new, thematically different costume, some cheap smartphones, and gadgets put together from dollar store specials and dumpster diving, Peter starts collecting evidence of corruption and leaving flash drives and SD cards in the mailboxes of the people who seem to be trustworthy. The gears of justice start to grind, while the gears of corruption have sand thrown into them. (What actually happened is that Peter found the AG was in the mob’s pocket, kidnapped her, called her “handlers” and played back some carefully edited sound bites recorded from a rival family’s conversations. Her “execution” was interrupted, but her home and worldly possessions went up in flames at the same time. She suddenly has much larger problems than she did before.)

The Arch Enemy: Aunt May’s two counts of justified self defense are properly rendered as such by a court that does not have multiple actors in somebody’s pocket. Turns out a whole lot of internal affairs investigations have opened up, and a laundry list of cold cases have been opened, in addition to the conflicts already set in motion. What keeps May and Peter safe, though, is what happens to a mover and shaker way up in the food chain (known as “Hammerhead” to his subordinates because of his shark-like ferocity). Hammerhead gets a mysterious visit from a masked figure who kicks his ass three ways from Sunday, and who lets him know that he’s taking his time to make him suffer for killing the masked figure’s brother. Three bullets are put into Hammerhead with his own sidearm, but the bullet that would have gone in the man’s skull misses, apparently because his guys finally showed up to help him. Hammerhead falls for the ruse hook, line, sinker and compressed air tank, and all the resources dedicated to finding this spider-themed vigilante get aimed in different directions, including the ones that had been sent after this Pyotr Parker kid, since he’s an only child. (The guys sent after Parker don’t have much to say, because his kicks packed a wallop and also because nobody contradicts Hammerhead when he’s angry.) This lays the foundation of a mutual hatred that lasts for the next decade at least, and “The Hammerhead versus The Spider Man” becomes a popular topic of discussion and speculation in the criminal underworld, law enforcement, civilian social media, and the hero community.

The Method: Unlike many Spider-Men, Peter isn’t explicitly an out and out hero. The last time he had ambitions of heroism, rushing in like Iron Man or Thor or Daredevil, he ended up in the hospital. To the contrary, by imitating the methods of his criminal prey, he achieved results far beyond his most optimistic predictions. In that sense, his spider-motif resembles that of the Portia Jumping Spider, a genus of spider species that hunt and prey on other spiders. His powers reflect this, with his impressive jumping abilities. Also like the Portia spiders, Peter stalks his prey and studies their strengths and weaknesses before developing the perfect way to take them down. Sometimes this comes from capturing sensitive information and delivering it to those who can do the most damage with it. Sometimes this means a more immediate response, like a kick that can ruin somebody’s whole day plus the rest of the week. What really sets Peter apart, though, is the “criminal” empire that he is growing using the resources he steals from his targets. Granted, his “Drug Labs” are churning out generic insulin at affordable prices, but it’s the principle of the thing. Likewise, the sex workers and street walkers in Spider-Man’s “territory” have seen a massive drop in violence once he cornered a particularly belligerent john in an alley and mentioned that a lot of male spiders have their sex organ bitten off by the female.

The Gadgets: Unlike most, if not all, Spider-Men in the multiverse, Peter never came up with the idea of web-shooters or web fluid. He has a number of other tricks up his sleeve, sometimes literally, that fill the vacuum when it comes to mobility, combat, and controlling the combat environment. The most complex of these would have to be his costume, which also diverges dramatically from what other Spider Themed Heroes use, in that it is designed to blend in rather than stand out. The basic suit color scheme is a grey-green mixture that’s hard to see under low-light conditions, and Peter has a number of optional “urban ghillie suits” that can look like grey concrete, brick, rusted steel, or other patterns. He’s also been known to take his enemy’s clothing, but it’s not clear how much of this is intended to help him infiltrate them and turn them on each other and how much of it is just humiliating his defeated foes. His mask incorporates multiple vision enhancement devices, from light amplification to infra-red to sonar and radar, and these give him a multi-eyed appearance in keeping with the spider theme. Defensively and offensively, he has arm-mounted weapons that incorporate compressed air guns that can fire chemical darts at range, and provide a close-range electrical charge to incapacitate people in close combat. (In the early days he carried a literal dart gun and stun gun but kept losing them during fights.) Finally, he carries a small arsenal of counter-intelligence tools designed to let him eavesdrop on targets, clone their cell phones, break into secure areas without leaving signs of forced entry, and jam or intercept enemy communications. All of them are incorporated into his suit. He has ambitions of getting an Octavius Harness, since extra arms would complete the spider motif and also make him far more dangerous in combat, but he can’t afford it and he’s years away from learning how to jailbreak the safety features that Doctor Octavius put on his technology to keep it from being stolen.

The Cover: When he’s not making life interesting for the criminal underworld of New York City, Peter works as a photographer. He’s done contract work for the Daily Bugle, including the occasional shot of this Spider Man character, but most of his income is from people needing photographs of their belongings for insurance reasons. After all, this is a world where superheroes and supervillains go toe-to-toe at least twice a week. He’s done weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, graduations, family reunions, anniversaries, baby gender reveal parties, and more. He’s also done some stuff that would normally be within the purview of a private investigator, despite the legal risks, in order to make ends meet. His social circle is limited to a handful of people who still tolerated him when he was lashing out at the world as a teenager, which is basically a handful of former classmates that have moved on to college, trade school, or something else, especially Miles Morales (who also lost family at a young age), Felicia Hardy, and Eddie Brock. His dating life is non-existant despite multiple attempts by both Eddie and Miles to play matchmaker.

The Rogue’s Gallery: The Spider Man has a long standing antagonism with Hammerhead, but has occasionally faced off against other supervillains and even some superheroes. On the villain side, Peter has defeated an electricity controlling lunatic named Electro, some guy in a rocket assisted flight suit the press called the Vulture, the enigmatic and theatrical Mysterio, and some one or something called the Sand Man. Unfortunately, Peter beat the Sand Man by fusing him into glass, and was not able to pull off the same stunt twice. The former Sand Man, calling himself Vitreous, had to be stopped by the Avengers, and The Spider Man’s role in the creation of a much more dangerous villain is what got him on the radar of so many heroes in the first place. For the most part, he knows he’s outclassed and doesn’t really want to fight people who, in theory, have the same general goals, so he tends to run from these encounters. So far he’s managed to evade Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Oswald Octavius in his superhero alter ego of Doctor Octopus. His encounter with Loki resulted in Peter getting the upper hand in classic trickster legend style, earning the God of Mischief’s respect. In other cases, Peter has not been so lucky; while he managed to escape each time, he’s been almost crushed to death by Giant Man, beaten to a pulp by Captain America, and drop kicked into the East River by the Hulk as if he was some sort of football. He has technically never fought Dr. Strange, but was involved in a fracas between the Sorcerer Supreme, Deadpool, and Dr. Doom that resulted in the Eye of Agomotto being lost for five years; everyone involved has agreed to never speak of what happened again. Finally, there’s the matter of Sean Gargan, an aspiring superhero with Scorpion themed powers who has sworn to bring The Spider Man to justice after his father, Mac Gargan, was injured while The Spider Man was fighting Electro.

[avergavi]

LOVE #LUNESDELUNATICAS

Love.

Love continually evolves and is always changing, is a dynamic thing, especially couples love. 

Family love, social love, work love, love, in general, is that thing we really like to feel, but basically is that thing that motivated us to keep doing the things we do.

Few of us are the privileged ones, that we can find love in life, I mean, everyone works, study, live and makes certain efforts for a basic necessity or survival, but we just don’t start loving what we do, we just simply do it because we must do it.

We do it in the automatic mode without paying attention to our privileges, without giving the value to our comfort or easy access, from small things like breading or walk, those things we take them for grounded, we don’t think or imagine even a parallel reality where we don’t have those small things in our life.

There are few of us that we manage to developed conscience and find that joy and eventually that love in what we do.

We all start by doing a minimum effort in what we must do, like dress up, eat, work, study. Then the necessity evolves to comfort, in this point, we don’t mind that from time to time we feel a little discomfort (long hours of transportation, bad lunch schedule, ‘normal’ harassment etc)  then we feel joy in what we do, that small feeling of tranquility even when we are in a discomfort part (extra hours, an argument, a gossip, etc)  then, there are only few that manage to eventually find love, that awareness of valance in what we do.

Awareness of your “efforts”, makes you feel good with you and with others around you, harmony around your daily-life a sense of happiness. 

There always discomfort moments that might make you rethink but end up deciding, not to stop, you to keep doing it, complaints are overcome by acceptance, injustice is overcome by actually find and apply that solution, the surviving pass into the thriving, that point is when you find individual love in life.

If you have achieved that feeling, means that probably family is also sorted out, (acceptable -no perfect idealistic- relation with mom, dad, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins) almost work-love helps to finds balance and happiness in other aspects of our individual life (in this point is where humanitarian feelings start to grow) and is beautiful. 

For couples-love is almost inevitable that women face more difficulties in to find that love, evolving, acceptance, kindness that type love we all deserve.

The societal and cultural establishment even in 2019 still impose and picture “standard” of what is “romantic love” between the couple regardless of gender (general public still thinks that is nothing wrong to ask you about your loved ones, or ask you if are single, divorced or have a relationship. personal details are only ok, when you delivered them by your self without being forced to share it) a lot of general population believes that 14 of February is a special romantic day, that we are obligated to spend it in a couple. 

Tons of feminist movement (there are hundreds+ types o feminism or gender studies lines of research) have empowered us to not follow a stereotypical romantic kind of love, but still, we face tons of challenge trying to evolve and grow in a couple relationship.

With this I mean, yes we know arguments and disagreement are part of our human interaction, everyone has bad days or months or years, we are all have individuals efforts and in different circumstances, that we try to solve them in the most logical or rational way possible, by different ways of communication channels (still, we are the most, those who face trouble in keeping our mouth shut and listen more) but in the best circumstances, the growing up type, we developed humility and acceptance to the other person arguments, we developed understanding and set our limits.

Setting limits is never easy, cause that implies, a recognition of mutual feeling but different goals, that after mutual understanding realize that are never going to be compatible and then the letting-go part must be involved with acceptance, in that part is where we must set limits and those limits have a “never cross” warning on it.

Violence is defined by the World Health Organization as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person (...) that results in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation” (WHO, 2002, p5 ) three parts are really important for me, the intentionality is going to be explained later, but the psychological harm and maldevelopment are the most important.

In the same report the WHO, recognize that “certain behaviors may be regarded by some people as an acceptable cultural practice, but are consider violent acts cause also have implications for the individual health” (WHO, 2002) here factors as culture or social background play a major role when victims (especially women) who are inside the relation are not having a clear understanding of what psychological violence and they are not having clear limits, that only helps to blurry the real aggressor behavior.

Justifying, exempting and accepting circumstances are only the first part to move out a violence circle, interpersonal violence ( intimate partner violence) can be also psychological, again the WHO understand the root of violence from an ecological model, divide by individual, relationship, community and societal, they take into account the following

Individual - behavior according to biological info, demographic, impulsivity, education, substance abuse and prior history of aggression.

Relationship - proximal social relations. 

Community - contexts in which social relationships are embedded, residential mobility, heterogeneity, population density, and geographical context.

Societal - factors that create an acceptable climate for violence, those that create gaps between groups. (norms that support violence, attitudes, health education, social inequality)  - (WHO, 2002, p 13)

In the relationship part, the inform mention that “in the cases of partner violence, interacting on an almost daily basis or sharing a common domicile with an abuser may increase the opportunity for violent encounters. Because individuals are bound together in a continuing relationship, the victim will repeatedly be abused by the offender” (WHO, 2002) here is why is really important to set limits by our self. 

Been aware of a certain situation and understanding the causes of violence might lead us to justify, exempt or accept violent behavior, especially from our partner, therefore from a public health model, a tertiary prevention model of violence are us, we are the one who set clear limits.

To criminal law, violence is related to a crime and in most of the “simple” cases implies an offender and a victim, the offender is pointed out to have committed a type of conduct that is punishable by law.

Then by the term justifying circumstance means, that the offender did commit an act against the law, but his context and motive made him/her react at “self-defense, defense of relatives, defense of stranger, state of necessity, fulfillment of duty and obedience to superior order” (Gregorio, 2012, p2) in general this type of causes lead the offender to less hard punishment. 

The term exempting circumstances implies “imbecility, insanity, minority, accident, the compulsion of irresistible force, impulse of an uncontrollable fear of an equal or great injury, lawful or insuperable cause” (Gregorio, 2012, p33) these cases also means less hard punishment, of course, the evidence of both require specific characteristics and circumstances that the jury and the judge will determine if it’s true or not.

The term acceptance means consenting to receive or undertake the action. these means that we fully know and we are aware of the causes, we know and recognizes the mistreatment but we still accepted. 

Then there is the question. let's picture a typical situation where two persons what to be together in a romantic-couple way, they are both grown-ups, they are both professional with a certain level of education and similar economic backgrounds.

Then one hurt the other, the one that is being offended and even is aware that it’s being hurt, keep contact, then eventually the one that commits the offense asked for an apology and a second chance, the 'victim' agree and try to forgive, then the other hurting situation happens again, committed from the similar way.

The offended argue that even she/he understand the motives and the facts of the hurting situation, is just a growing stage for them because they are trying to reconcile their difference and no there is nothing to be justified is just a different type of love.

Here is an example where the victim doesn’t set limits and the causes of that are because according to sociology slippery concepts of low self-esteem, Stockholm syndrome, codependency or traumatic bonding, learned helplessness (Krupka Zoe, 2016)

But then again we are blaming the victim, without recognizing the aggressor violent behavior or the Ecological-structural model that the WHO uses to analyze violence. 

And the point of this is, that we the “victims” should use this type of information to make the point to our aggressor, use this as evidence to analyze yourself, question if we are actually setting limits? we are blurring his/her behavior or we are again, repeating physiological patrons.

Para: Ti

[betadereader]

It’s “just” fiction.

How many of us have come across the typical phrase "it's just fiction"? Starting from a personal basis, I have always found it as a justifying sentence of an author with its content. And if the author has to get away with this defense, it is because someone has previously questioned said content. 

To begin with, I will clarify a point. Writing about a murder does not make you a murderer, just as writing a rape does not make you a rapist; role-playing a sadistic and abusive character does not make you that character, acting in your real environment just like them. 

In the world there are people who know how to separate the line of fiction and reality very well, while others do not. However, this is not the focus of this essay. I wanted to focus on the undervaluation of fiction in that very phrase "it's just fiction." I am going to articulate it with several examples that have occurred or continue to occur in reality, in addition to raising a series of questions. 

For better or for worse, the news media have configured a heritage of History. We are aware of History because there is written and / or audiovisual material, but the story offered by the media may not represent History itself. We know the version of history that they tell us. 

If I have gone to a very current example, the simple fact of creating a story in the format of an informative speech does not always reflect 100% of the object that occurred. 

With information abuse (the saturation of information) and so-called fake news, they also have the possibility of affecting the user's conscience, despite being a totally invented, fictitious story. 

Again, for better or for worse, and putting history and the media together, people tend to learn history more easily with fiction series. The fictional discourse can be educational and, at the same time, not represent History as such, trivializing some political aspects or creating a polarized world of black and white; good vs. bad. 

I also wanted to highlight a sociological experiment that was carried out on television, replicating Milgram's experiment. 

Milgram's original experiment, now cataloged by several experts as immoral, reflected very favorable results for the scientific community in its day. His main objective was to study the forms of obedience and whether they could find connection with those condemned during the Nazi era. Translated to the television world, in the documentary The Game of Death, they wanted to see to what extent a game show could become an authority, in addition to coming up with several theories. 

Like the original experiment, an agentic state (sometimes conformism too) was found in the contestant, relegating all authority to the guidelines of the program. There is an additional theory that mentions “belief perseverance”. In the contest, electric shocks are given to a subject who cannot be seen but can be heard. As the program progresses, the greater the intensity of the shock. Obviously it is an experiment and the pain is acted out, but in the participant —who did not know that they were part of the experiment— the following belief came up: "I can't really be hurting him because this is television."

“This is television” as a synonym for prior planning and pure spectacle; as a synonym for falsehood; just fiction.

I mentioned this example because, especially at the beginning of the documentary, it denounces a normalization of violence and physical and emotional torture on television. It denounces, also at the end, that commercial televisions, in their desire for money, "teach us that it is normal to humiliate, eliminate and be sadistic." (It’s an old documentary but if you want to see it, click here. It’s in French, I’m sorry).

Continuing with sociological experiments, how many experiments have tried to study the link between violence and video games? Or sexism and video games? Or xenophobia and video games? Or nationalism and video games? 

It should be said that the last mentioned are more common in the attitude of the player, using the video game as an expressive way to say whatever they want. However, we cannot ignore that, like historical television series, video games can also serve for nationalist discourses by demonizing the enemy and sanctifying themselves (especially when talking about video games which main topic is war).

I do not wish to dwell too much on each of the questions raised, since the emphasis is not the result of these experiments, but the undeniable interest and concern on the community of experts, as well as more and more students who are interested in these problems in order to analyze and debate them.

We are not indifferent to the images or books we consume. No matter how invented a story is, it stirs up real emotions. We grow with the media (traditional or digital media) and the content they have to offer us. There is socialization with the media at a very early age, and when we grow up we continue to learn from them.

Media acts on our emotions. And the stories that are told to us through media help to frame a collective imagination that even affects the vision of reality itself. Reality can also help build fictional worlds. And so the cycle would begin, since new ideals in fiction can act as a mirror for a future society and/or perpetuate harmful values (especially when under romantic treatments). They are two worlds that feed into each other.

For this reason the famous so-called "romantic love" has been so analyzed and criticized for promoting toxic ideas such as 1) love is the final happiness of every person and we are not complete otherwise, 2) we must to depend on someone else consider ourselves a "whole", 3) "for love everything is forgiven", "true love is eternal" and more idealizations that impacts on society and its perspective of love.

(Closely linked to romantic love, monogamy has been accused of being toxic and I wanted to make a small point that the decision of a closed relationship is as valid as an open relationship, and that an open relationship can be as toxic as a closed one. Here everything is said).

If fiction lacked that power, censorship would never have existed. The witch hunt in Hollywood or censorship that existed in the USSR for the control of the media and its content should not have happened. And many more historical contexts that I am ignoring. Governments were afraid of a content contrary to the predominant ideology, because it could break and violate their established values.

If fiction lacked power, propaganda would also lack power. Propaganda, especially in the context of dictatorships, offers a cult of personality; they idolize, endow dictators with divine values.

We just have to see the television advertising: it is all an idealized, invented version of the product. Don't give me that you've never been disappointed in buying the real product because "it wasn't like it was on TV."

We just have to see how certain groups in society (racial groups, different sexual orientation and gender identity groups, cultural ...) demand to be participants in fictional stories because fiction configures a mirror of the real world, where they are already participants.

Okay, taking a step closer to the "it's just fiction" statement ... so why do film academies exist? Depending on the film, they work with fiction to a greater or lesser degree, but it is still fiction. Why would there be jobs that are dedicated to worlds which work with fiction, if that is worthless? If "it was only fiction" nobody would pay for a movie or a book. And the same happens with television and animation series; no one would consume them. Any story that contains fiction, that is, any made-up story (depending on the needs of the script and the historical context), has no value.

By the same logic, any literary work would not have survived in memory and the writers we know as the "classics" would no longer be. By the same logic, any artistic movement (theater arts, literature, audiovisual and more), would have fallen into oblivion and its formal codes by which they acquire identity, would not be worthy of analyzing and studying. 

Because what difference does it make. It is just fiction. Nothing happens for the massive creation of very questionable content (the topics of which this blog will address later). 

Continuing with this essay, does anyone remember 50 Shades of Grey trilogy? Yes, that mess that originated (if I remember correctly) as a Twilight bad fic. How much movement was there on social networks denouncing an abusive and toxic relationship? Apart from BDSM and the criticism that it was painfully written (I started reading it by laughing and ended up wanting to tear my eyes out), there were countless posts in which the relationship of the characters was analyzed. Many voiced their complaint and amazement at how a book that focuses on and romanticizes a toxic relationship could hit the market.

I suppose that something problematic is even more when it becomes popular and it is about making money with it. And probably publishers don’t give a damn because they're going to make money anyway. Although the world of FanFiction is not destined —in principle— for commercialization, the fic that romanticizes problematic subjects is not "less important" for this reason, because it can do the same damage. There is a vast "FanFiction culture", and more than one fic has made the jump to the market. We have all seen a book with its brilliant promotion of "phenomenon on Wattpad".

Fickers —writers of FanFiction— are not film or television producers. It is good that FanFiction (and like FF we have Wattpad and AO3) is not a strictly professional universe. A fic, like a movie or a television series or a video game, can narrate very murky and dark things from life. A story can talk about drugs (or other types of addictions), the inhumanity of war, torture, sexism, rape, pedophilia and more that I’m ignoring. You can do it from the critical perspective of the characters and their actions, or from the point of view of the addict, inhuman, sadistic, sexist, rapist or pedophile respectively with the aforementioned.

Why if the producer/writer who whitewashes the image of pedophilia or terrorism (for example) or romanticizes them is considerated as a pedophile or as a terrorist but nothing is said against romanticization and the subsequent normalization of rape in the FanFiction world?

That question is one of many examples of harmful behavior by content creators, which toxicity can be seen thorugh fiction. That question is one from many others that this Tumblr account wants to develop as essays.

Because fiction is not “just” fiction. Whoever wants to rely on this phrase, is the equivalent of being a shameless person... as something to begin with.