#but at the same time interpret everyone to be trans and violently making out with eachother

[emrys-rusts]

I keep seeing medival arthurian literature pop up on my dash, and I did a little digging because I'm a huge literature, arts and language nerd

I dont know you, and you dont know me, but I really love you guys, wherever you may be

Good for you good for you

I admire the dedication

[thedancingclowns]

Soooo...

Intros.

Yeah– that's a thing, right?

Name:

I go by Evan or Vinnie (Vinnie being a nickname FOR Evan), but I also use the name Alex or Lex.

Pronouns:

he/they (well... he/him or they/them)

Stuff I do here:

head cannons, fanart, oc stuff, maybe polls, random stuff that I think is amusing or like "oh wait-- huhhh??"

Stuff about me:

I have AuDHD, I like to at least attempt to create stuff and have for pretty much my whole life, I am trying to be a functional grown being, my birthday is April 22. I am interested in film and writing, and plan on making a movie or series at some point in my life.

Human Synopsis:

my name is Evan (I also go by Vinnie for short), I am a (ftm) man, I am here to like fanart and writing and cool people (and also memes sometimes) while posting the most random shit known to humankind, I am legally an adult, a polyam quoi demi and nebula pan or omni dude (dunno man, romance is weird), I call people man/dude/bro gender neutrally (sorry bout that), I'm constantly worried about pissing people off, I have ADHD ASD, and GAD, and my birthday is April 22nd.

Do's and Don't's

please Do not

- ask NSFW stuff (I don't feel comfortable with it)

- ask for personal information (I won't give it to you, I don't want to)

- Continue to try to get me to do or say something if I turn you down. (If I turn anything down it's because I'm uncomfortable.)

- Send me "send this to _ more people!" things in asks, I understand they're popular but they make me freeze up because I don't want to make people angry with them, but I also REALLY want to participate. (I'm all for @ -ing stuff because that I can more easily point out that it's 'no pressure' and feel like I can answer whenever I want. With asks, I feel more limited in the amount of time I can wait before answering.)

- Tell me to "chill" on my vent posts. If I CHOOSE to post about things that piss me off, I am NOT asking you to tell me to chill. I fucking hate when people say that. It only makes me angrier.

- Tell me to "chill" or try to dictate how I should post (ESPECIALLY on my fixations) this is a dick move. And NOT okay.

Do

- be respectful (most of my content will be opinions / up to interpretation stuff. my views might not be your own, but that doesn't mean you get to argue with me about them; respectful disagreements are chill though!)

- in general just try to understand that everyone has boundaries (meaning, follow my rules when interacting with me; and I'll do the same when interacting with you)

DNI stuff (will be worked on when I have energy/motivation):

*cw because I'm pissed as fuck right now, and tell some of y'all to fuck off. – 7/25/2024*

Racism, Homo/Trans/LGBTQ+phobia, MAP, TERF, like... super proship stuff, pure NSFT blogs, anti-kin/anti-therian, anti-agre, anti-petre, NSFW agre/petre, Zionists, anyone who is anti-palestine, anyone pro-KOSA, anyone who supports the shithole that Christian nationalists, religious extremists, political extremists, pro-life people etc plan to turn America into.

If you are, get the fuck off here, and if you interact you are INSTANTLY getting blocked. Go to hell you stupid cocks, I fucking hate you. (You are making things worse and the world needs to get its head out of its ass and deal with shitheads like you.)

^^ that last violent ramble is talking about racists, lgbtphobes, sexists, terfs, swerfs, maps, zionists, anti-palestine fuckers, pro-kosa fuckers, Christian nationalists *I don't give a shit if you're just religious but if your GOAL is to make AMERICA A FUCKING CHRISTIAN NATION FUCK OFF*, political extremists, pro-life people, and people who support the Amercian Idiocy that we've let fucking fester for some reason. *which will DESTROY ALL REMNANTS OF A FUCKING DEMOCRACY*

(will likely add more guidelines, but those are the ones I can think of for now)

Do not stop fighting, we have to make things right. Free Palestine, fuck KOSA, vote blue, etc, etc. Do NOT let this world continue its fall to shit.

I never hoped to be political but life is a fucking shitshow right now, so if I don't I'll feel like just another ignorant American ass. I don't want to be just another fucking coward blending in and hoping things will get better without trying.

PFP does not belong to me.

Using some of those: "this user ..." things.

(None of them belong to me and I continually forget where I get them from...)

(Wait- fuck, that last bubble is a lie. I made the Sally Face one. That one actually is mine??? I only noticed that after someone used it like??? WOAHHH?? Someone used it???)

Sideblogs!!

@theclowndoes-selfships (my selfshipping side)

@iamdevouring-god (my Endless One / Devourer of God Sally Face RP side blog)

@habitual-creatures (my HABIT / Evan Myers kin/SORTA rp ask blog *primarily based on kin as I am a fictkin. 👍 I feel okay admitting it here now. :']*)

@everymanvenom side blog for all of my EverymanVENOM AU dabblings and stuff!!! this is an EverymanHYBRID x Venom crossover AU sideblog!

HELP PALESTINE 🇵🇸

(and see other blogs for more resources!

I do not compile them on this site!)

(Last updated September 14th, 2024)

[uncanny-tranny]

Alas, you're experiencing the unfortunate stigma of "maleness=inherent aggression" that the cis love to peddle. As an AMAB nb person, i see you, and i assure you you're no more "aggressive" than you ever were "bc testosterone".

The frustrating reality is, if a cis person (often, in my personal experience, cis white women) see you as male, and they don't like what you're doing or how you're doing it, a lot of them will accuse you of being "aggressive" in order to force compliance.

It's a sickening behavior that takes advantage of the increased accountability we as a society hold toward shitty men nowadays, and twists it to simultaneously manipulate others, and mask the behavior of shitty people that aren't men or amab.

I'm not trying to imply that everyone's trying to manipulate you, and some people might genuinely be working off of trauma/survival instincts to come to a conclusion. Unfortunately it can be difficult to tell if you haven't dealt with such before.

I will say, be wary of misogynists masking their hatred for women in a supposed "concern for men". As I'm sure you probably know, anyone making broad claims about "women are lying snakes that want to ruin men's lives" are not your friends, and just want to create likeminded mobs of shitheads for their echo chambers.

Please do your best not to take any claims of aggression personally unless it turns out that the worst is true. And if so, please stay strong and be safe if you decide to confront over it. Keeping records and screenshots of arguments/disagreements will be your best friend in situations like those.

I'm sorry that this has started for you now, but know you aren't alone. There are many people with these same experiences, and are more than willing to help.

-A Friendly AMAB Enby

(apologies if ive jumped the gun, i saw your post in my recommended and ive got strong feelings about situations like that so i wanted to throw my hat in the ring with advice and commisseration as someone with lived experience)

This was definitely something I was prepared for before transition - that people would interpret me in different ways because of their baggage. Honestly, though, it was really weird to see the same people who knew me pre-medical transition and post-medical transition interpreted me wildly differently than just a few months ago. I think that's why I had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't because I had become a violent, aggressive Male™ in the span of a bit over a year.

I will say that many people have a ton of gender-based baggage that they may or may not apply to you based on their interpretation of you. That has nothing to do with you, like, ninety percent of the time, and while it can be annoying and you deserve the space to voice that, just know that you are likely not what instigated that. The idea that "men are inherently violent" is a gender essentialist idea I really hope we can move on from precisely because I've seen it used too often for abuse apologia. It does nobody a service to do this, it certainly doesn't prevent abuse because it doesn't tell you what abuse is in the first place, and how to be alert for instances of it.

Gender essentialism doesn't help anybody, least of all trans people who often have a very different relationship with gender and imposed gender than many people (which is also why sex essentialism doesn't work for most of us). It's really weird to impose one's biases onto a completely seperate person, though I do realize that's something most people do unconsciously. Be critical of the idea that any gender has essentialist, intrinsic characteristics that Define Every Experience and Every Action They Do. Be weary of the idea that only one gender can be abusers and aggressive. Those rhetorical devices are often used to cover up abuse in itself.

[mouseratz]

sorry your posts earlier are still in my mind . i made a post about it already but minor safety online is really important to me because i Was groomed so when i see people online doing callouts and labeling others as ‘shitty people’ when they’re outwardly expressing clear signs of trauma or abuse etc it irks me so badly . rolling it back to what you said about the porn industry i do think that , to some extent , the porn that people consume during their formative years has an affect on what they end up turning out to be later on , whether or not that shows up as violent misogyny or just weird kink stuff is from person to person i guess but obviously i don’t think it’s the Sole reason . people who are misogynistic have Far more going on in their lives than just watching porn where some guy chokes someone and then their brain interprets it as Good Thing because oftentimes ( and i think you said this ) they’re surrounded by people in their life who are agreeing with those statements and regurgitating them for said person to believe . i think to say that the media we consume ( even pornographic ) has no bearing on the real world or personality development at all is a lousy statement because time and time again it’s proven that we become what we’re exposed to the most and while that’s always subject to change with time the people who say that it doesn’t affect us at all are stupid but the people who say that it affects us to the extent that say , fox news or whatever says it does , well they’re equally as stupid . idk i think im just rambling at this point but i really wish there was some good way for parents to be equal parts involved with their kids life and making sure they’re not exposed to harmful content online while kids are also allowed to just exist in online spaces because they are so often harmful and made as off putting as possible

yeah, fair, I would agree with all of that, and broadly I don't want my earlier posts to be interpreted as "nothing you interact with matters ever" but I do feel people are very reactive to anything remotely taboo even if it's kept relatively private even if it's mostly vanilla especially for women it's seen as like a Shocking Scandal if they might Enjoy Sex & interact with other adults about it (and doubly if you're gay or trans because of the idea of the sexually predatory lesbian or predatory trans woman being so widespread)....but I also think the taboo-ness of even very simple sexual things can make people really unprepared for even just emotionally handling topics of sex and sexuality; much of it is not done to keep anyone safe (which sexual education CAN do in certain scenarios/types of abuse), but rather because of that Christian belief of moral impurity.

that being said, on the internet, I don't think the wild West/anything goes type style works well to keep minors safe either. In general, I think the Internet and the way it's changed the way people can interact in all ways has left everyone very ill-equipped as to what the best way to moderate vs not will be effective (and in lieu of a proper, well-thought-out answer, advertisers are answering for us.) (also, this is not me saying Internet All Evil, but rather the problems we already had with keeping kids safe sexually are only being magnified through it.) There is also a conflict between what's a reasonable expectation for privacy (which is ALSO a safety issue, especially in cases of abusive family situations) vs protection (often through supervision or restriction) on the internet for minors is......and thats a real discussion, but again, advertisers and governmental interests cut them short (ie the tiktok ban is not for any of the right reasons and extreme mostly because the us would like to keep the money here and doesnt 'trust" china with it, despite every other social media having the same damn problems). Idk. It's fucked

[lilyliveredlittlerichboy]

there was some kind of baby terf in my notes this morning and she didn't even wait long enough for me to actually read whatever she wrote before blocking me. great job, showing all your cool radfemmy pals your burning hot take on a trans persons post complaining about terfs. did you secure the likes. did you get the applause

anyway with all of this bullshit going on i really wish we could make ppl see that gendered oppression affects pretty much everyone, and that the fights against misogyny and against misandry overlap, are not opposites, are not enemies.

you think you'll hate men out of being violent? when was the last time hate stopped you being violent?

certainly not this morning when you found a ranty post of mine and interpreted it as hate and decided to double down on your brainrot radfemmy ideals.... why do you think it will work on men?

anyway I'll die on this hill forever but we have more in common than we don't. and the fight against gendered oppression needs to be a multi-pronged approach.

yes of course we need to fight misogyny, it still is one of the most pervasive forms of oppression in the world. we've come super far since the beginning of last century though, especially in Western countries, and to uphold womanhood as "the most oppressed" in the UK or US isn't just myopic, tone-deaf posturing (playing oppression olympics has NEVER served ANYONE), it's also an ideal base from which to ignore countless other forms of oppression (or participate in them and make them worse - great job TERFs on that one!!)

Anyway. Yes misogyny exists and needs to be fought. No one is saying that we should stop fighting for the women.

But we need to fight for the men too. Toxic masculinity and misandry are part of the problem. The way men and boys are raised and socialised leaves them little option to be anything but violent.

And that's a PROBLEM!!!! and you'll agree with me on that!!!! i know you will since most of your entire argument is "men are violent and that violence is making us women unsafe"!!!!

which is a true statement. it also makes other men unsafe. and let's not even get started on trans and gender nonconforming people, who get the worst of misogyny AND misandry combined.

so the culture that brings up men to be violent is making us all unsafe, right? women, men, queer people, children. everyone.

and you won't hate them out of being violent. in fact when people feel hated and prosecuted, they're more likely to lash out!! surprise!! it's human nature.

and we need a wide spread, probably even global strategy to take men into the 21st century with us. like. we can't just put the onus of this on individual men. mostly because it won't work, and men are operating within society, and it is society* that rewards them for anger and punishes them for kindness. so a big societal shift is needed.

one that paints men as loving.

kind.

emotive - capable of experiencing the same range of emotions as everyone else. and allowed to express them.

people who are in pain, who have been hurt and traumatised by society and people around them.

not inherently dangerous.

capable of love and goodness and change for the better.

we need to believe men are human beings. we need to humanise them.

and before anyone says that "men would never fight for you the way you fight for them" yeah and? my little pet cat would probably eat me if she ever got the chance, im still gonna take care of her? people don't have to like me or even be super aware of their oppression for me to fight for them. a lot of men lack the words and understanding to describe the absolute hell society makes life for them but does that mean they deserve to suffer under it forever? fuck no and if your answer would be different please. I'm fucking begging you to reexamine your priorities & start seeing men as people. who deserve better. just like everyone else

*"society" means other people (both men and women and others) as well as systems and processes that structurally prefer angry, violent men over calm, kind ones. policies or culture in a work place for example, which is not usually tied to any one person. there was an entire post about how societally, men who are kind and respect women, are punished for it. it is not just other men doing this, it's plenty of women and queers doing the same thing, and it's baked into society on a fundamental level, where we CAN'T fix it by changing just individual behaviours. we CAN'T fix it by making all men go to therapy I promise. this is a cultural thing that we need to deal with on a cultural, societal level, and we can only do it if we work together, and love ourselves and men enough to believe we are all capable of change. hope this helps

[bloody-f4g]

queer themes in discovery season 3, part one here

spoilers, obviously.

One of the most common aspects of the queer experience is the struggle of visibility within a hetero- and cisnormative society.  Feeling invisible with straight and cis being assumed as default, feeling seen by other queer people, feeling invisible without seeing yourself in those around you and the media around you. 

Throughout almost the entire season, Gray has been literally invisible to everyone but Adira, and in turn Adira had only been out to Gray until about halfway through the season.  We can see Gray’s invisibility as a metaphor for being seen as yourself as a queer person (as cliche as it is).  Literally not being seen by anyone but the one other trans person in the show parallels how as a queer -- and especially trans -- person, there is a level of understanding and solidarity one has with other queer and trans people by virtue of that similarity. 

In the season finale, due to some scifi shenanigans, Gray becomes visible to Hugh, Saru, and Su’kal (and Adira still).  

Gray gaining visibility to these characters was a very good choice, with Hugh being another queer person and Saru a person of authority.  When gaining visibility as an individual or a group, these are the the groups that visibility is granted to most commonly.  Because of an ability to understand each other’s experiences, other queer people are easier to come out to, and Gray being literally visible to Hugh was a natural extension of him being visible to Adira.  (This is similar to when Adira does come out to someone (other than Gray), it is first to Stamets, another queer person.)  On the other hand, Saru, as captain of the Discovery (at the time), serves as an authority figure in this situation.  Those with power over oneself are also common to become visible to (come out to), often in a far more violent way than with other queer people. 

I really don’t think this was intentional, but I love that Gray being finally visible to people other than Adira somewhere safe.  This holodeck was created specifically for Su’kal’s childhood as a safe place.  I think there’s something comforting knowing that being perceived as a trans person in the future is something you can do safely. 

Before the holodeck is shut down, Hugh says something along the lines of “We'll find a way that you’ll be seen by everyone."  This makes me hope next season Gray being trans will be more explicit next season.  I was pretty disappointed about Gray not being explicitly trans, and Adira’s non binary identity presenting itself in them telling Stamets their pronouns and that they “never felt like a she.”  Adira and Gray weren’t the main focus of this season by far, and I understand them not having a lot of screentime, but Blu and Ian have been confirmed for the next season, so I can hope for more explicit trans representation next season. 

Queer people have valued found family over biological nuclear family for decades, maybe centuries.  This is from being physically kicked out of the nuclear family one was born into by virtue of homophobia and/or transphobia, or because of a feeling of isolation and separation from one’s nuclear family if they weren’t kicked out of their parents’ house due to an inability to relate to the hetero/cisnormative standards of development.  Thus, queer people search out other queer people they can relate to better than their biological family, and those that support them more.  This idea of found family has taken many forms within the queer community, most famously in the houses in urban black and brown ballroom culture.   

The found family trope has long been prevalent within Star Trek, and I love the form it has taken in Discovery.  Everyone has already talked about this (me too, we’re all emotionally invested in this) but i have to talk about it it: Paul and Hugh essentially adopted Adira.  This is straight-up text, with Hugh telling Georgiou that he wishes he had children at the beginning of an episode that ends with Paul and Adira bonding over their scientific project, Adira telling Paul their pronouns (again, something very intimate that they had only told Gray).  In the second-to-last episode of the season, Paul directly calls Adira his child, Hugh and Adira his “whole life.” 

Adira has a close connection with Hugh because they both love(d) someone who was (dead/presumed dead but actually in a mushroom dimension?).  They’ve emphasized multiple times that they are the only ones who know what this experience is like... just like how their queer experiences makes them able to understand each other’s point of views.   Because of their jobs on the ship, we see Paul and Adira together more, but, as Paul said at Georgiou’s memorium, they’re “kind of a package deal.”  Further than that, Gray’s hug with Hugh in the finale was so beautiful, and Paul taking a father-in-law type of position telling Gray off for disappearing for a few days. 

(Kind of a sidenote, but some people have taken Hugh and Paul’s interactions with Gray as “that’s kinda weird that Adira’s dads have also taken in their boyfriend, does that make them like siblings?” and I really think that the dynamic is better because of this: it’s a reaffirmation of the rejection of the nuclear family model; found families are never as cut-and-dry as biological ones because they aren’t formed under the same oppressive framework.)

The thing I love about Discovery’s queer rep is that these characters aren’t just stated to be queer, and then fit into the assimilationist standards of the cishets around them, but they go through queer experiences that queer viewers can relate to on a level above “kisses someone of same gender, bye.”

(That isn’t stating it’s perfect by any degree: I’ve already stated my hopes for Gray and Adira’s identities in the next season; I want to see more of Reno; out of these five characters, it’s disappointing that all but one are white.)

//these are just my interpretations, feel free to add on and/or disagree, in fact please do//

[inadequate-nefelibata]

Okay, so I like queer!Johnny and l@wrusso just as much as anyone, but lately I’ve been having some thoughts about the way media and fandom frames violence in men as an indicator of potential queerness. Particulary on the way this can sometimes change how people interpret classic macho behavior, such as misogyny or agressiveness.

Despite the stereotypes that exist about gay men being more feminine, there’s also this narrative in our culture that men who are aggressively masculine, especially if is in a way that’s harmful to others or themselves, are probably acting out because of repressed homosexuality or queerness. This is easy to observe in media: there’s the trope “Armoured closet man”, and Rantasmo mentions some examples in his video “The homophobic hypocrite”. And like he explains, this is  something people sometimes apply to real life situations. For example, I have a friend who is usually pretty chill about engaging in gay behavior with other dudes for the laughs, and one day he was discussing it with a friend and they were like “Yeah, we don’t care. Some people care too much about appearing gay and we know why”. This idea it’s not limited to men: you can also find it in Lily Singh’s video “A Therapy Session For Homophobic People” where the homophobic lady ends up asking her out. Those are the first example’s I could remember, but there are more.

I’m not saying it’s not something that happens. Obviously, being homophobic or being conservative about gender roles does not guarantee that someone’s straight or cis. We were all raised in a homophobic, heteronormative society, after all. I was, at some point, scared of being gay. And I understand where the specific connection comes from: sometimes when you’re guilty or ashamed of something, you lash out more easily. That’s why there’s such a complex relationship between repression in queer men and violence: if you can’t express your desires in a healthy way, that can lead to channeling those feelings into aggression, which is more “socially acceptable”.

So it’s not automatically wrong to make the connection. What’s been bothering me lately is how interpreting homophobic, misogynistic, or just generally violent behaviors as secondary effects of repressed queer desire sometimes suggest that homophobia or misogyny are not enough on their own. Just like my friends said that one time: if you’re a man and you’re homophobic, it has to be for a reason. And that reason is not that you live in an homophobic, misogynistic society that makes you hate queer or feminine people, it has to be something particular about you that makes you more susceptible to those ideas.

The thing is that this is pretty convenient for cishet, conventionally masculine, men. It ends up suggesting is that homophobia, misogyny, aggression or other harmful attitudes have actually nothing to do with hegemonic masculinity. It’s only when men don’t fit into this ideal that these toxic behaviors start leaking out. And it’s not just convenient for them as individiduals, it also absolves our culture; if it’s the result of a particular experience, we don’t need to start thinking too hard about how our gender roles affects us in general.

Which reminds me of a video I saw recently, by Lindsay Ellis. She’s discussing transphobia in film, but there’s this moment when she’s talking about the movie Psycho, and she mentions Ed Gein, the real life version of Norman Bates. Apparently, he was originally presented in the media as a man who had unresolved queer tendencies, which served as an inspiration for the character in the film. But. That was a lie. There was no evidence that this was actually true for Ed Gein. As far as everyone knows, he was a straight cisgender man who killed women. And she brings up this quote, from Richard Titthecott, “Of men and monsters”:

So, the video is specifically about the perceived relationship between serial killers, trans women, and how this relates to transphobia. And I was talkig about seeing agressively masculine men, so I know it’s not exactly the same thing. But I keep thinking about that and about what Rantasmo said on his video. He goes from talking about canonical homophobic queer characters to talking about real life situations. And he mentions how sometimes when a homophobic hate crime takes place, people start speculating about whether or not the killer in question is queer himself, often implying that maybe it wasn’t really an explression of homophobia, but an example of the self-destructive tendencies of gay people. What he concludes is that this idea of the “homophobic hypocrite” is often used to “push the responsibility of homophobia and hate crimes off of heterosexuals and on to the victims”. 

While these examples have to do with particularly strong forms of misogyny and homophobia, it’s not out of the question to consider how this relates minor forms of violence. 

All of this is just about Thoughts. I’m not going to reach any conclusion here, because it’s impossible. Especially when it comes to what is and isn’t a Good or a Bad headcanon or ship. Like I said at the beginning, those ships can be fun and can be interesting for many reasons.  I just want to think about the things that may be influencing my interpretations of a story without my knowledge. If we start to believe that just living in a world where you know that being a straight man gives you certain privileges over women and queer ppl is not enough to be hateful towards them, it becomes harder to hold privileged people accountable. Or to explore how those privileges work and why they are put in place. Obviously, there are many ways to talk about this topic, and people can be more than one thing. A man can be queer and misogynistic for example, both privileged and opressed. I don’t know.

Basically, I’m just going to end this post by saying that the idea that “queer interpretations of mainstream media are a way to expand the narrative and include ourselves in the stories we love, and these interpretations are often mocked or rejected by mainstream writers and audiences that think that labelling something as gay is insulting, so they often go against the current” can coexist with the idea that “interpreting homophobia, misogyny, aggression or other harmful attitudes as indicators of potential queerness can be pretty convenient for straight cis conventionally masculine men, and also the association between queer men and violence and self-destructive tendencies is really prevalent in mainstream media and in our homophobic culture”. ???

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

[amphtaminedreams]

The Women of Euphoria and Personal Style: Lookbook no.8

Hi to anyone reading,

I hope you’re well considering everything going on! It feels weird to want to talk about fashion or TV shows or red carpets or whatever when 90% of my Google searches are COVID-19 related but there you go. It’s all about trying to power through as normal (minus the social interaction) and pretend the world isn’t ending, right? Queue nervous laughter.

And as if things aren't shitty enough, production of season 2 of Euphoria has been postponed until further notice. 

Okay, in the grand scheme of things, having to wait a bit longer for a TV show isn’t catastrophic but it does just about sum up the transition from 2019 to 2020 thus far that after HBO redeemed itself by broadcasting Euphoria in the summer following an ending to Game of Thrones that has made the whole series unrewatchable, the glimmer of hope in me reignited by the prospect of series 2 this year has been quickly dashed. 2021, I’m rooting for you, because it doesn’t seem like things are getting better any time soon, and in all seriousness, I think everyone needs a break from the collective suffering of the last few months.

For me (and undoubtedly for many others if the hundreds of makeup looks and styling videos are anything to go by), Euphoria’s effect on the world of fashion and beauty is unprecedented. I really can’t recall a TV show in living memory that has had as much of an impact on the way young people dress. I mean, this might partially be because the style of the characters already kind of caters to and draws from the target audience but also, aside from Blair Waldorf did anybody really give THAT much of a fuck about what anybody in Gossip Girl wore?

The draw of the styling on Euphoria is that it has something for everyone. The style of each of the main girls, Rue, Kat, Maddy, Jules and Cassie, all of whom I’ve attempted (emphasis on attempted!) to base (emphasis on base!) outfits around, is varied and distinctive but still so current and realistic at the same time. It’s also consistent; even if you don’t own the specific pieces worn by any of them, similar shapes and details reoccur enough in different looks throughout the series that it’s not hard to create an outfit which matches your favourite character’s overall vibe without buying anything new. That’s kinda what I have attempted to do here and without further ado, I’m gonna get on with it! First up:

Jules (Played by Hunter Schafer)

When it comes to whose style is the most experimental, Jules is the obvious answer. A lot of her outfits are what I imagine a cartoonist in the near-distant future will envision their cool girl protagonist wearing. Whilst her ensembles are generally whimsical and girly for the most part, there’s usually a few slightly punk-ish finishing touches thrown in there too be it through chunky shoes or bold makeup or that incredible mesh trench coat she wears in the series finale with the trans symbol on the back which, honestly, deserves a moment of silence. 

There are definitely nods to current fashion trends sprinkled throughout her wardrobe too. I'm not going to lie, despite someone at work seemingly thinking it was an insult to tell me I look like someone who does (I still don’t know but this person has a Rick and Morty keyring so I don’t give it too much weight), I’ve never watched any anime. BUT, that being said, given the abundance of anime screenshots posted by all these aesthetic oriented Instagram and Tumblr moodboard accounts, I have a vague idea of what some of the more iconic characters look like and a lot of Jules’ looks seem to be very much modelled after or at least inspired by them. In a way, I see a lot of her looks as a blend between modern “e-girl”, Y2K skater chick (yes, I’m thinking early Avril Lavigne), and 2013 Tumblr “hipster” a la 2014 Joanna Kutcha and Charlie Barker, and though on paper that sounds like a nightmare combination, it works. I know-if that sentence were a Depop description I would’ve just gained 30 followers.

When it comes to my own interpretation of Jules’ style, it’s definitely something I like to channel when I’m putting together a proper OUTFIT outfit. Meaning an outfit I actually put effort into and thus will most likely want to get a good photo in, lol. The way her character dresses is almost quite Christopher Kane in that it’s fresh and unusual but still understated enough that I wouldn’t walk into a room wearing any of these feeling like I’m doing a Rick Owens runway.

I’m not TOO far out of my comfort zone but still at the same time, I’d be trying something new and maybe a little bit more zany than I'm used to. As for noting where any of these pieces are from, only a few have been bought in the last 6 months, but from left to right clockwise I have marked out those that have in case they’re still available (though be wary of the fact that it seems a lot of online clothes stores are still forcing warehouse employees to work in close confines at the moment and so perhaps aren’t operating the most ethically):

LOOK 1

Corset-Jaded London

Shoes-TK Maxx

LOOK 2

Dress-Motel Rocks

Boots-Koi Vegan Footwear

LOOK 3

Dress-Jaded London

LOOK 4

Dress-Jaded London

Beret-Ebay

LOOK 5

Beret-Ebay

LOOK 6

Mesh Top-Depop

Hair Clips-Urban Outfitters

Kat (Played by Barbie Ferreira) 

Eurgh, Kat. 

I LOVE THIS BITCH.

If I had to choose my favourite character in the show, it would be a very close toss-up between her and Rue, and though I think Rue might just about nab the top spot for her relatability factor, Kat is the girl I want to be or wish that I had been when I was at school. I mean, there’s definitely an argument to be made in that a lot of what she’s doing with her cam work could be seen as a means of validation (Sam Levinson has basically said everyone on the show has some kind of an unhealthy coping mechanism and I would guess due to the circumstances in which her cam girl career was borne and the fact she’s underage, this would be hers) but I do think in other ways we really see Kat reclaim her power and recognise herself for the smart, capable, gorgeous woman that she is. Honestly, the definition of divine feminine energy, and I would completely let Barbie Ferreira/basically Kat if she was also actually 23 dominate me.

Plus! Her! Style! Is! The! Bomb! Definitely the easiest character to base looks around because if I’m totally honest Kat’s energy is pretty much just what I want to emulate in every day life. 

It’s either pieces that are typically feminine, cutesy, and even slightly preppy at times drenched in everything grunge OR vice versa where you have something semi-gothic and then add a colourful, more playful touch in there that harks back to the beginning of the series before Kat had began to explore her identity and sexuality and dressed slightly more Forever 21.

I’d say, not yet with my whole chest, that on a good day the outfits I put together when making an effort aren’t too far off something Kat would wear, minus the more overtly BDSM touches; if wearing a ring choker in London is enough to get me a creepy comment from a gross middle aged shopkeeper (because I apparently forfeited my right not to be perved on when I decided to buy a bottle of Oasis summer fruits), then you can only imagine the kind of looks wearing a full-on harness would get in my conservative OAP dominated hometown. Not the most doable right now, especially considering the only time I get out is to work and to go for a run. The chafing I could deal with but the horrified glares of pensioners whose M&S prawn mayo sandwiches I’ve ruined by simply being in their eyesight not so much.

LOOK 1-

Corset-Urban Outfitters

LOOK 2-

Bodysuit-Depop

Skirt-Zara

Harness-Ebay

LOOK 3-

Co-ord-Depop

Lace-up Corset-Missguided

LOOK 4-

Dress-Vintage

LOOK 5-

Belt-Ebay

LOOK 6-

Coat-Topshop

Dress-Jaded London

LOOK 7-

Fishnet Top-Ebay

Skirt-Urban Outfitters

Maddy (Played by Alexa Demie)

Not gonna lie, I was kind of scared to do Maddy. I’m scared to be posting this, lol! Alexa Demie has played this character for a single season and she’s already one of the most iconic women to grace our screens in years. This is a huge undertaking and I don’t have the bank balance or the body confidence (lmao) to raid IAmGia. 

And this is where I want to stress: THESE ARE NOT OUTFIT RECREATIONS. THESE ARE INSPIRED BY. I HAVE ADDED ELEMENTS OF MY OWN STYLE INTO THEM. PLEASE DON’T DRAG ME. I KNOW, I’M NOT ALEXA DEMIE. I WOULD NEVER ASSUME TO BE ALEXA DEMIE. I’M NOT ABOUT TO TAKE THE LORD’S NAME IN VAIN LIKE THAT. So now we’ve got that out the way (wipes bead of sweat off forehead), let’s continue. 

Everything about Maddy Perez is extra. She has very much been established as a centre of attention character, and her outfits are a key part of that. They’re daring, they’re hyper-feminine, and they are always glamorous. We’re told that she competed in beauty pageants when she was younger and it’s clear that level of excess and coordination and glitz and all-round-boujeeness wormed its way into her DNA during that time. Even the “depression” outfit she wears to school following Nate becoming violent at the fair is costume-like, a 2019 Bratz doll Off-White street style collaboration.

Do you know how HARD I had to try to be HOT!? For these photos. Alexa Demie is one of those blessed women who doesn’t have to try at all, and that translates into the character completely. At any given moment, Maddy could add or remove one item or clothing and be let straight into the VIP section of a club, and that, honestly, is inspiring to us all in these dark times. 

One thing I tried to keep in mind is that she always looks polished and coordinated, I.E the kind of look I would prepare for a night out is something Maddy would wear on an average day. Co-ords and delicate prints seem to be more subtle wardrobe staples along with mesh and PVC and glitter and feathers and fur and basically anything that toes the line between expensive looking and tacky. Yes, I am aware we may toe different sides of that line but please let me stay delusional and believe that’s not the case for 5 minutes. Much appreciated xoxo

LOOK 1-

Bodysuit-Jaded London

LOOK 2-

Bralette-Depop

LOOK 3-

Co-ord Suit-Boohoo

Bodysuit-Boohoo

LOOK 4-

Dress-Motel Rocks

Shoes-Schuh

LOOK 5-

Bodysuit-Zaful

Trousers-Depop

Coat-Topshop

LOOK 6-

Dress-Zaful

Belt-Zaful

LOOK 7-

Top-Jaded London

Hair Clips-H&M

Rue (Played by Zendaya Coleman)

I have a complicated relationship with Rue as a character. When I started season 1 of Euphoria, I was like “Oh my god, this girl is the worst. Jesus, she’s so negative and draining and willingly self-destructive and-”

Then, oh my god is this what it’s like to live with me!?

I will say, to my own credit, that I don’t think I've ever been quite as hard to deal with as Rue (a lot less smashing stuff up and a lot more moping), and to HER credit, by the end of the season we come to realise she’s been through a fucking lot and so it makes sense, but wow. I don’t think I have ever seen a teen show handle drug abuse and mental illness in such a brutal way. It’s quite a talent to be able to show a character cause so much pain to those closest to them and yet do so through a sympathetic lens. And issues aside, whether it’s her occasional social awkwardness or her relationship with her family or watching bloody Love Island (still quite surreal to see Zendaya Coleman witnessing the Amy/Curtis drama unfold), Rue is just my favourite character to follow. 

Her style, though. AH. The thing is, I can hardly drag it, because it’s pretty much what I wear when I’m moping about the house-or just any time I can get away with it to be honest-to a T. I want to stay true to character, but that being said, creating a “Seth Rogen”-esque outfit that’s worth posting on here is difficult. So, with the same kind of artistic license that had me wearing berets whilst cosplaying Maddy Perez, here is the best I could do:

I know, I know, it’s probably too much colour and jewellery for Rue but this is as toned down as I could do and I tried to stick with the key silhouettes we see from her throughout the season; I mean, I can’t see her wearing leopard print but the structure of the coat in outfit 1 is very similar to the one seen in Shook Ones pt.II. I think the bottom line when it comes to her character is keeping things effortless and not overly-feminine; you want to mix street style, athleisure and your dad’s wardrobe favourites like your life depends on it. Plus messy hair and smudged makeup, both of which I’ve already got down according to the completely inappropriate number of customers who’ve asked if I'm tired at work so thanks for that guys, and glitter tears. Lots and lots of glitter tears.

OUTFIT 1-

Dungarees-Vintage

OUTFIT 2-

Trousers-Depop

Cardigan-Urban Outfitters

OUTFIT 5-

Beanie-Depop

OUTFIT 6-

Shirt-Boohoo Man

Sports Bra-TK Maxx

Trousers-Urban Outfitters

OUTFIT 7-

Shirt-Jaded London

Cassie (Played by Sydney Sweeney)

Style-wise, Cassie is a hard one. When putting outfits for her character together, I found myself gravitating towards a direction that’s probably a bit too bohemian for her character, under the guidance of loose terms like “girl-next-door”, “floaty”, “delicate”, you get the idea. She definitely feels the least fully-realised in terms of all the main girls and I think it’s fair to say she’s probably got a bit of self-discovery to do. Most of her storylines in the season are dictated by her relationships to other people: McKay, Maddy, Lexie, her parents and so on. 

Nevertheless, I tried to stick to the airier, more traditionally “pretty” pieces whilst still channelling the confidence and ease with which Cassie pulls them off. Sydney Sweeney has the most incredible figure and I feel like whilst the clothes the on-set stylists put her in flatter that and don’t hide anything, they’re still the focus. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything more inherently sexual about her character than any of the other main female characters despite the way the men within the narrative view her, and I think it’s a testament to the the wardrobe department that to me she still gives off big modern Disney princess energy and a certain innocence even whilst we hear her being continuously sexualised by her male peers. 

If anything, Cassie probably dresses the most like an actual teenage girl, and her style, whilst less distinctive than the other girls, still does a good job of capturing the youth and romanticism of her character. 

The colour palette of her wardrobe tends to be quite neutral, with a couple of pastels thrown in there, and if there are any details, they’re usually quite dainty. Similarly, Cassie is probably the least experimental when it comes to her makeup; we don’t really see her wearing the bold eyeshadows or liners or gems like the other girls at any point.

OUTFIT 1-

Bodysuit-Motel Rocks

Hair Clips-Bershka

OUTFIT 2-

Dress-Jaded London

OUTFIT 3-

Trousers-Urban Outfitters

OUTFIT 4-

Top-Urban Outfitters

Hairband-H&M

`OUTFIT 5-

Top-Urban Outfitters

Jeans-Zaful

Headband-Primark

OUTFIT 6-

Top-Urban Outfitters

OUTFIT 7-

Dress-Urban Outfitters

Hair Clips-Boohoo

SO, I guess that’s it for my Euphoria lookbook! As always, let me know what you think (nicely pls, my ego is fragile lol) and I’d love to hear your opinions on the show too! I really haven’t got this excited over a new TV show in ages and I just think that it does everything so excellently-from the writing to the cinematography to the soundtrack, you can tell each element is so carefully and purposefully constructed. It immerses you into the dramatic highs and lows of being a teenager in a way I haven’t seen since UK Skins and I never thought I’d watch a show which held a candle to that. 

In terms of what I’m doing next, I’ve got a very delayed fashion week masterpost in the works as well as something to fill the Met Gala shaped hole in our lives, which I hope to get up over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, if you read to the end, THANK YOU! And I hope you’re staying safe and AT HOME where possible. I know this self-isolation feels never-ending and if I’m honest, it is having a hugely negative effect on my mental health, but NHS staff are doing their very best with the shitty recourses they have and whilst it seems that our government have thrown workers under the bus once again, we can all do our bit to combat that by slowing the spread of the virus. Also thank you to anybody who’s out working now in such a scary and uncertain time! I work at a grocery store and can say from experience that the best way to show this thanks is just through kindness and following employee’s instructions without giving them grief for it. Everyone’s scared right now and the best we can do is pull together and look out for each other, as difficult as that might seem at times.

Anyway, sorry for the ramble, and like I said, stay safe! Thanks once again if you read til the end or even if you’re just here for the photos. Appreciate it more than you know either way!

Lauren x

[whitehotharlots]

Andrea Long Chu is the sad embodiment of the contemporary left

Andrea Long Chu’s Females was published about a year ago. It was heavily hyped but landed with mostly not-so-great reviews, and while I was going to try and pitch my own review I figured there was no need. Going through my notes from that period, however, I see how much Chu’s work—and its pre-release hype—presaged the sad state of the post-Bernie, post-hope, COVID-era left. I figured they’d be worth expanding upon here, even if I’m not getting paid to do so.

Chu isn’t even 30 years old, and Females is her debut book, and yet critics were already providing her with the sort of charitable soft-handedness typically reserved for literary masters or failed female political candidates. This is striking due to the purported intensity of the book: a love letter to would-be assassin Valerie Solanas, the thesis of which is that all humans are female, and that such is true because female-ness is a sort of terminal disease stemming not from biology but from one’s inevitable subjugation in larger social contexts. Everyone is a woman because everyone suffers. Big brain shit.

But, of course, not everyone is a female. Of course. Females are females only some of the time. But, also, everyone is a female. Femaleness is just a title, see. Which means it can be selectively applied whenever and however the author chooses to apply it. The concept of “female” lies outside the realm of verifiability. Suggesting to subject it to any form of logic or other means of adjudication means you’re missing the point. Femaleness simply exists, but only sometimes, and those sometimes just so happen to be identifiable only to someone possessed with as a large a brain as Ms. Chu. We are past the need for coherence, let alone truth or honesty. And if you don’t agree that’s a sign that you are broken—fragile, illiterate, hateful, humorless.

Chu’s writing—most famously, her breakthrough essay “On Liking Women”—establishes her prose style: long, schizophrenic paragraphs crammed with unsustainable metaphors meant to prove various fuzzy theses simultaneously. Her prose seems kinda sorta provocative but only when read on a sentence-by-sentence level, with the reader disregarding any usual expectations of cohesion or connection.

This emancipation from typical writerly expectations allows Chu to wallow proudly in self-contradiction and meaninglessness. As she notes herself, explicitly, meaning isn’t the point. Meaning doesn’t even exist. It’s just, like, a feeling:

I mean, I don’t like pissing people off per se. Yes, there is a pleasure to that sometimes, sure. I think that my biggest takeaway from graduate school is that people don’t say things or believe things—they say them because it makes them feel a particular way or believing them makes them feel a particular way. I’ve become hyper aware of that, and the sense in which I’m pissing people off is more about bringing that to consciousness for the reader. The reason you’re reacting against this is not because it contradicts what you think is true, it’s because it prevents you from having the feeling that the thing you think is the truth lets you feel.

And so she can get away with saying that of course she doesn’t actually believe that everyone is a female, the same as her idol Valerie Solanas didn’t actually want to kill all men. The writers, Chu and Valerie, are just sketching out a dumb idea as a fun little larf, to see how far they can push a manifestly absurd thought. If they just so happen to shoot a gay man at point blank range and/or make broader left movements so repulsive that decent people get driven away, so be it. And if any snowflakes complain about their tactics, well that’s just proof of how right they are. Provocation is justification—the ends and the means. The fact that this makes for disastrous and harmful politics is beside the point. All that matters is that Chu gets to say what she wants to say.

This blunt rhetorical move—which is difficult to describe without sounding like I’m exaggerating or making stuff up, since it’s so insane—papers over Chu’s revanchist and violent beliefs. Her work is soaked with approving portrayals of Solanas’ eliminationist rhetoric—of course, Chu doesn’t’ actually mean it, even though she does. Men are evil, even as they don’t really fully exist since everyone is a woman, ergo eliminating men improves the world. Chu goes so far as to suggest that being a trans woman makes her a bigger feminist than Solanas or any actual woman could ever be, because the act of her transitioning led to the world containing fewer men. Again: big brain shit.

I’ll leave it to a woman to comment on the imperiousness of a trans woman insisting that she is bestest and realest kind of woman, that biological women are somehow flawed imposters. I will stress, however, that such a claim comes as a means of justifying a politically disastrous assertion that more or less fully justifies the most reactionary gender critical arguments, which regard all trans women as simply mentally ill men (this line of reasoning is so incredibly stupid that even a dullard like Rod Drehar can rebut it with ease). Trans activists have spent years establishing an understanding of transsexualism as a matter of inherent identity—whether or not you agree with that assertion, you have to admit that it has political propriety and has gone a long way in normalizing transness. Chu rejects this out of hand, embracing instead the revanchist belief that transness is attributable to taking sexual joy in finding oneself embarrassed and/or feminized—an understanding of womanhood that is simultaneously essentialist and tokenizing. When asked about the materially negative potential in expressing such a belief, Chu reacts with a usual word salad of smug self-contradiction: 

EN: You say in the book that sissy porn was formative of your coming to consciousness as a trans woman. If you hadn’t found sissy porn, do you think it’s possible that you might have just continued to suffer in the not-knowing?

ALC: That’s a really good question. It’s plausible to me that I never would have figured it out, that it would have taken longer.

EN: How does that make you feel? Is that idea scary?

ALC: It isn’t really. Maybe it should be a little bit more, but it isn’t really. One of the things about desire is that you can not want something for the first 30 years of your life and wake up one day and suddenly want it—want it as if you might as well have always wanted it. That’s the tricky thing about how desire works. When you want something, there’s a way in which you engage in a kind of revisionism, the inability to believe that you could have ever wanted anything else.

EN: People often talk about the ubiquity of online porn as a bad thing—I’ve heard from lots of girlfriends that men getting educated about sex by watching porn leads to bad sex—but there seems to me a way in which this ubiquity is helping people to understand themselves, their sexuality and their gender identity.

ALC: While I don’t have the research to back this up, I would certainly anecdotally say that sissy porn has done something in terms of modern trans identity, culture, and awareness. Of course, it’s in the long line of sexual practices like crossdressing in which cross-gender identification becomes a key factor. It’s not that all of the sudden, in 2013, there was this thing and now there are trans people. However, it is undoubted that the Internet has done something in terms of either the sudden existence of more trans people or the sudden revelation that there are more trans people than anyone knew there were. Whether it’s creation or revelation, I think everyone would agree that the internet has had an enormous impact there.

One of the things I find so fascinating about sissy porn is that it’s not just that I can hear about these trans people who live 20 states away from me and that their experiences sound like mine. There is a component of it that’s just sheer mass communication and its transformative effect, but another part of it is that the internet itself can exert a feminizing force. That is the implicit claim of sissy porn, the idea that sissy porn made me trans is also the idea that Tumblr made me trans. So, the question there is whether or not the erotic experience that became possible with the Internet actually could exert an historically unique feminizing force. I like, at least as a speculative claim, to think about how the Internet itself is feminizing.

Politics, like, don’t matter. So, like, okay, nothing I say matters? So it’s okay if I say dumb and harmful shit because, like, they’re just words, man.

Chu can’t fully embrace this sort of gradeschool nihilism, though, because if communication was truly as meaningless as she claims then any old critic could come along and tell her to shut the fuck up. Even as she claims to eschew all previously existing means of adjudicating morality and coherence, she nonetheless relies on the cheapest means of making sure she maintains a platform: validation via accreditation. This is all simple victimhood hierarchy. Anyone who does not defer all of their own perceptions to someone higher up the hierarchy is inherently incorrect, their trepidations serving to validate the beliefs of the oppressed:

I like to joke that, as someone who is always right, the last thing I want is to be agreed with. [Laughs] I think the true narcissist probably wants to be hated in order to know that she’s superior. I absolutely do court disagreement in that sense. But what I like even better are arguments that bring about a shift in terms along an axis that wasn’t previously evident. So it’s not just that other people are wrong; it’s that their wrongness exists within a system of evaluation which itself is irrelevant.

Chu has summoned the most cynical possible interpretation of Walter Ong’s suggestion that “Writing is an act of violence disguised as an act of charity.” Of course, any effective piece of communication requires some degree of persuasion, convincing a reader, listener, viewer, or user to subjugate their perceptions to those of the communicator. Chu creates—not just leans on or benefits from, but actively posits and demands fealty to—the suggestion that her voice is the only one deserving of attention by virtue of it being her own. That’s it. That’s what all her blathering and bluster amount to. Political outcomes do not matter. Honesty does not matter. What matters is her, because she is her. 

This is the inevitable result of a discourse that prizes a communicator’s embodied identity markers more than anything those communicators are attempting to communicate, and in which a statement is rendered moral or true based only upon the presence or absence of certain identity markers. Lived experience trumps all else. A large, non-passing trans woman is therefore more correct than pretty much anyone else, no matter how harmful or absurd her statements may be. She is also better than them. And smarter. And gooder.

Designating lived experience and subjective feelings of safety as the only acceptable forms of adjudication has caused the left to prize individualism to a degree that would have made Ronald Reagan blush. And this may explain the lukewarm reception of Chu’s book.

While they heaped praise upon her before the books’ release, critics backed off once they realized that Females is an embarrassingly apt reflection of intersectional leftism—a muddling, incoherent mess, utterly disconnected from any attempt toward persuasion or consensus, the product of a movement that has come to regard neurosis as insight. The deranged mewlings of a grotesque halfwit are only digestable a few pages at a time. Any more than that, and we begin to see within them far too much of the things that define our awful movement and our terrifying moment.

[autumn-foxfire]

Okay so I'm gon'na try and explain what I think villain stans are trying to say but are sort of failing at. The problem people have with how Hori wrote the LoV (and really only the Lov, cuz villain stans generally don't care about any other villains) is that alot of their characters and writing flaws into harmful stereotypes/tropes that can enforce harmful things. Like it Hawks wasn't ablest because he killed Jin. Jin was himself an ablest character. having the only canon mentality ill (1)

character as a violent villain who needed to be killed off for the public's safety, reinforces that mentally ill people are more dangerous then others, and totally goes against the reality that the mentally ill are far more likely to be abused and killed then the average person. The same goes for the Heroes. No they aren't police but they are defiantly performing very similar tasks as the police. Part of the problem people have with the Heroes is that they're not corrupt like cops in RL (2)

The fact they're shown as reasonable, good people just doing their best and that the violence they dish out is necessary plays into the trope of police/law enforcement having justified reasons to hurt/kill those that oppose them. By making all the villains who have some sort problem with the system killers with little regard for anyone, or with little plan past 'kill everyone' it furthers the idea that those that attack the system are either doing it for selfish reasons or so violent that (3)

what they have to say is undermined by that violence. I don't think it's unreasonable to bring up the sort of problematic tropes Horikoshi uses (and, yes this is a Japanese manga so of course it's going to be written differently but alot of those tropes started in American media so even if Hori doesn't know they are harmful it's fair to bring up where they come from) but I think alot of villain stans take the fact these are problematic tropes and decide weirdly act like the story both has (4)

these problems but totally endorse the characters like they're not written badly and get annoyed when people actually point out that story wise the Lov is wrong (which is what their problem is with the story--that the Lov are written as violent killers). I get that it's frustrating to see characters u see urself in be written as nothing more then killers and wish they had been written better, but by pretending that they aren't written that way in cannon, undercuts their point about them

being badly written in the first place. I also don't think it's fair to get angry at others who simply read the manga the way it was intended. Sure those are problematic elements but as long as people understand that, there's no reason to read what's on the page and say, yeah, Shigaraki is killer, or Hawks was right to kill Twice. In a way that type of reading just supports their idea more because it shows those tropes are working the way they were intended. Yet they're so focused on what they

they're so focused on the story they wanted that they forget to explain their problems with it in a understandable way, and a lot of times resort to just saying all Heroes are cops and should die, or acting like the story backs up their interpretations of said characters. In a way it seems they use it to feel morally superior to others then actually explain to them some of the problems the story has in a polite way, and admit other people have a point. Sorry this was so long.

Sorry for my late response! I haven’t been feeling the best lately T-T

Hmmm, I know that Horikoshi can use problematic stereotypes in his manga (such as how he draws trans people which has been brought up by others in the past) but call me stupid and/or naive but I just fail to see how Twice is an ableist character and that his portrayal says that all mentally ill people are dangerous and violent.

Not once was Twice labelled dangerous because of his mental illness from what I can recall, more so it’s just that he happened to be a dangerous man that was mentally ill. Maybe you can reach by saying that he was only considered a true threat after overcoming his trauma but surely that would then be the infantization of mentally ill people, not labelling them dangerous. There are issues with him being the only character to be portrayed with his type of mental illness but his illness was more to be a plot point then anything else (him being unable to use his quirk properly due to his past trauma) and he’s still not the only character to be mentally ill as we have Tamaki on the hero side. I have many issues with Twice and his portrayal of mental illness that I’ve expressed in the past but I just don’t see this being one of them.

As for the heroes using violence, I’m not sure why that’s such a massive complaint in a action shonen with heroes and villains. If people really wanted social commentary on why using force against criminals is bad, maybe they shouldn’t be reading BNHA that enforces that sometimes heroes have to resort to force because no other options to stop villains will work.

Also, the villains aren’t the only ones who have brought up issues with the system. We’ve had heroes question the discrimination against certain quirks (during Shinsou’s fight in the sports festival), we’ve had civilians question heroes and there ability to protect people (during the press conference after the training camp) and again we had Hawks draw attention to the issues in current system during his speech at the billboard charts. Just because the heroes and civilians aren’t as vocal about their complaints (or perhaps just like their trauma, they don’t make it central point of their character) doesn’t mean they’re completely complacent. It reminds me of that meme with the birds with the League being the bigger bird that talks over the smaller one, just because the League is louder doesn’t mean they’re the only ones talking about the issues.

Plus, I don’t see the issue of the League being written as killers. They’re the villains, they need to do something villainous in order to be so! Even if they bring valid points to the table, how they express them will always undermine them and that’s been a trope in manga/anime/books for years! We need to be able to relate to our villains as that’s how you know you have a good one (in my opinion). But that doesn’t mean they have to be excused for everything they’ve done. I just... I don’t know what people want from BNHA.

...Sorry my reply also got too long. Thank you for trying to explain this in a much clearer way then villain stans have in the past. I still don’t necessarily agree but I can at least try to understand their points.

[praisetheaxolotl]

I’d like to get your thoughts on this, hope this is okay!

Look at this quote from this article:

“It’s easy to pick on the “this wouldn’t be happening if these characters were coded as male,” but it’s nonetheless true—as a fan of the unrepentantly (gloriously) awful Bill Cipher, among others, I can promise you I see it regularly.”

I immediately thought of this blog when I read this. 

Not saying you’re misogynist, of course. This blog is just so fascinating, and for someone to dismiss it all like that is frustrating. 

I mean, of course they weren’t referring to you directly, but still. 

For someone to brush off people’s interesting, thought-provoking theories as nothing but misogyny is kind of close-minded, in my opinion. 

But this makes me curious. Do you think you’d still feel the same way about Bill if he was more feminine-coded? Would it matter?

And what do you think about that statement? Are you as annoyed by it as I am?

It’s always alright to get my thoughts on certain subjects, Anon! And lucky for you, I have lots of thoughts on this.

First of all, thank you for liking my blog! I put a lot of work into it, and I still look back on everything I’ve done here fondly. This blog is my only fandom-specific blog that’s still semi-active even after I’ve left the fandom. 

And, about what you said about misogyny... I don’t actually think that’s what the article is talking about. It’s not misogyny for someone to pick apart Bill Cipher, but it’s misogyny if someone offers that level of potential depth to a male character while instantly condemning a female character. 

But... honestly, from my experience? These two groups of people are different groups. 

I used to run in those “anti” circles, back in 2015? 2016? Before the whole “SU criti/cal” thing started to become popular. But I could still kinda see hints of it? It was back when SU was hailed as THE perfect show, before people knocked it off the pedestal they put it on. 

Anyway. These people hated redemption arcs. They saw Bill as this irredeemable monolith of a character, and any alternate interpretations were met with outright malice. I got called out once for, and I am not joking, headcanoning Bill as an abuse victim. They claimed I was “excusing his actions,” but when I asked to please show a screenshot of where I said that this excused him, they couldn’t. Because I never said that. 

(I ended up publishing the whole headcanon on my main blog, and people loved it. That reception is what pushed me to create this blog.)

I don’t doubt at least some of those people became the type to nitpick SU. So I feel that the same people that nitpick male characters are also the type to nitpick female ones. They’re just nitpickers with a black-and-white sense of morality.

But there are always exceptions to the rule- people who love morally gray male characters but hate morally grey female characters. Yes, some of these motivations may be spurred on by misogyny. But what frustrates me is the initial assumption of malice. I’m not saying the article itself is guilty of this, as it seems to be speaking to a general problem, but more those tumblr posts or tweets trying to “call people out” if they gravitate towards more morally gray male characters than female ones.

Which brings me to my answer to your question: No, I don’t think I would like Bill as much, had he been a woman.

But please let me explain first. 

First, you need to know some facts about me:

I am transmasculine. (Not a trans man- I’m nonbinary.)

I have a personality disorder. I’m not comfortable disclosing which one, but it’s one of the cluster B ones.

I was abused, and my reaction to the abuse was extreme anger and irritability. (Hence the PD.)

Another important fact is that my abuser was a woman. She’s my mother. I had to live with constant emotional abuse, gaslighting, neglect and other forms of malice for my whole life. I’m still not free yet, and I’m turning 20 in a month. (No, literally, exactly one month to the day.)

I was abused my whole life by a vindictive, manipulative shit of a woman, and it made me into a vindictive, manipulative shit of a person. The key difference is that I am actively trying not to be a vindictive, manipulative shit.

When I pick apart asshole male characters, I see myself in them. I do a deep dive into the whys, the hows the whos of why they ended up the way that they did, because it makes me feel liberated. It’s personally liberating to see someone like me, whom everyone sees as a monster, have a backstory that shows that monsters aren’t born, they’re made. It’s liberating to see them try and change, it’s liberating to give them someone to help them change no matter what, it’s liberating to look harder. Because that’s what I wanted. I wanted someone to look at me and see past the violent, angry 15 year old that I was, and actually help me. I wanted someone to see I was a victim, that I didn’t like being the way that I was. I wanted someone to help me and be there for me, even though I was messed up and awful.

(But don’t feel too bad for me- A few years ago I met someone wonderful through this very fandom who was exactly the kind of person I needed. And last November I proposed to him and he said yes!)

When I see a morally grey female character... all I can see is my abuser. I see in them the person that hurt me. I don’t want to look deeper, just as I don’t care about my mother’s long rambles about how shitty her childhood was. Was she also abused? Yes. Do I care? Nope! I don’t feel that same drive to pick apart female characters that act like the male ones I like, because of my trauma.

 And honestly? Just because I gravitate towards male characters more doesn’t make me a misogynist. How I treat actual real life women does. I do examine my behavior to make sure I’m not being misogynistic- in fact, it was worry that I was being misogynistic in my dislike of these characters that made me think hard enough to have such a long answer to your question. 

Maybe someone liking only male characters is an indicator of misogyny. Maybe it isn’t. I’m not shy about talking about what happened to me but people should not have to disclose their traumas in order to be “allowed” to consume fiction in a way some stranger doesn’t like. 

And there actually is a specific subset of morally grey female characters I like: my own OCs. 

I guess it’s the fact that I created them and thus can control how they act? They’re all assholes and I love them so much, but I don’t feel that same aversion as I do with characters that aren’t mine. Because the lack of control I had over my own abusive situation is what fucked me up so hard, but now I do have the control. If I watch a TV show, I don’t have any control over what the characters do, they’re not mine. But I do have control over my OCs.

(Psst- if you wanna see those OCs, I’ve since moved to the Invader Zim fandom, and am working on a HUGE fic series for it. (It’s not published yet- I’m working on it behind the scenes.) Those OCs I’m talking about star heavily. Here’s my blog, if you’re interested. I kinda wanna do some metaposting for that fandom, too, but I’ve no idea where to start. I love the Irkens, though, haha. Anyway if any of you happen to like IZ and have a meta-question for me... the askbox IS open!)

Anyway. This got really long. But misogyny in fandom is a thing, and the article does call it out well. I just get frustrated that people immediately assume malice. The statement does annoy me, but because it does happen if the characters are coded as male, too. I see it all the time. People just tend to either be fans of the morally grey, or... not.

[breakingbadfics]

Death of the author

CW: Light discussion of politics, mentions of the Alt-Right, and White Supremacists. 

Consider this a “Change of Pace” entry. I’m trying to figure out what the next essay is to be about as well as the eventual long term for this blog. 

I wrote this essay back in mid 2019, long before the idea of this blog would come to mind, it’s been lightly edited prior to posting and added to. and I think this essay shows some of my influences much more heavily than my other writings.

What does My Little Pony and The Matrix have in common?  Death of the Author. 

Death of the Author is not to be confused with “Separating the Artist from the Art,” a self explanatory concept to distance a work from a creator who’s beliefs are more than a little unpleasant, easiest example is acknowledging that, yes,  H.P. Lovecraft was a Mega-racist, however, his contributions to the horror genre have created a base that is nearly ubiquitous with the genre to this day, like wise with Orson Scott Card. this concept in itself is an especially controversial subject, but is not the focus of this piece.

Death of the Author is what allowed The Matrix, a movie with a collection of metaphors about being an lgbt person, and an activist for the rights of yourself and your allies to be grossly misinterpreted as a way to justify being a bigot, the most egregious misinterpretation being that of “The Red Pill Scene.”

In the context of the film, The Red Pill Scene is the part of the traditional heroes story where the hero “accepts the call”, Neo is quite literally making the choice to leave the safe world he’s been living in behind and embark on his adventure that will result in a death and rebirth into being The One who will save humanity. In the now very much understood to be the direct metaphor, it’s a scene in which Neo, the stand-in for a lgbt person, specifically a trans person, is being told by a much older lgbt person “You are trans, you have the choice to embrace it, but regardless of what choice you make from here on out the road ahead is going to be bumpy and rough on you, because the system around you is designed to make sure people like us aren’t able to prosper, and if you join us, you won’t be able to opt out.” 

That is the very understood metaphor that most people accept with the modern understanding after The Wachowski’s came out as Lily and Lana in the “post-matrix trilogy” reality of the real world.

However due to the Moral Neutrality of Death of the Author in other circles the Red Pill(and all the other metaphors in the film) takes on an alternative meaning. And I can be “polite” in my explaing the bad take on how this scene plays out, but just to hammer the point home we’ll get dirty so you can know where the take is coming from, The Red Pill Scene for White supremeacists, and The alt-right (but I repeat myself) is such.  Neo, a disgruntled white person is being told that the world is controlled by soulless machines. Jews, people of color, etx. Everyone around him is mind controlled and can and will attempt to stop him from saving the people smart enough to also realise they’re being held captive by non-whites and save them all. This of course, all being told to him by Morpheus, a black man. So have fun working your head around that. 

This of course the most extreme example being the most ubiquitous, poke around on chan sites and sooner or later you’ll see the phrase “red pill” having been memetically adjusted to mean “hey tell me about this thing” or even more specifically “I already had an opinion about this but either way I want you to confirm my choice.” But I digress. 

These two interpretations are so wildly on the opposite ends of the spectrum that the only commonalities between them is “You will likely need to be violent at some point” 

I’m naturally only covering the two interpretations, the matrix itself has been picked apart by an untold number of people and people interpret it in as many ways as possible in terms of philosophical meaning. That is the nature of Death of The Author. 

Death of the Author also covers in a round-a-bout fashion, selective canon, a subjective acknowledgement of canon elements throughout a long lived franchise- see; Star Wars, Star Trek, the belief that there was never any sequels to The Matrix. This variant of the philosophy allows one to be able to continue interactions with a text, specifically a text that consists of multiple volumes (or contributions, each one made by an individual author) but also deny interactions with parts that they personally dislike. 

More often than not, you can attribute the death of the author to a bad take in a case of fiction, another primary example being Fight Club, often missed for the scathing critique of unhealthy male behaviour and propped up as some sort of moral guideline for how to live your life. Which is again, not to say this is the fault of Death of The Author as a philosophy, it is morally neutral, these bad takes can more often be attribued to the simple fact that unless directly stating it most attempts at satire or parody will have a contingent of people who agree with what is said, not what is meant, and death of the author unfortunately does make that..very easy, for good, or ill. 

Where does My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fit in with all this?  Well there are certainly alt-right members of the brony fandom who are painfully missing the point, but we’ve already dwelled on the negative enough, so let’s get happy. 

In Episode 1 of Season 1, the first part of a two part pilot, in the background of a shot during a party scene; a pony with a grey coat and blonde mane and tail is seen in the background. This particular pony stood out the most amongst other background characters due to a mistake caused by the animation staff. According to the supervising director at the time, this particular error was spotted after hasbro greenlit the episode for air, and because it amused him he chose not to order a correction so it was left in as a nice little easter egg. 

The nameless background pony would eventually be caught by 4chan among other places and very rapidly developed a following of fans and given a nickname, Derpy Hooves. This particular following and new nickname would echo back to shows staff becoming the name internally referred to by the show’s staff. 

Friendship is magic creator Lauren Faust, who also enjoyed the popularity of the character when asked in an interview would state that a character named Ditzy Doo existed in an unaired episode, that would be implied to be this particular background pony, So naturally now depending on the fan this particular character would be reffered to as either Derpy Hooves, or Ditzy Doo.  

Ditzy Doo would go on to become a recurring easter egg with in the show, something similar to that of “where’s waldo” but with horses. This practice would continue until episode 14 of season 2  where the character would have a set of spoken lines and would be addressed by name. This however resulted in a degree of controversy in which some people expressed concern that the presentation of the character was an offensive attempt at portraying people with mental or physical disabilities. This event resulted in the episode being altered in future airings and the character disappearing from the show for the vast majority of Season 3. Beyond Season 3 the character would continue to appear until season 5 where they would finally have a voiced role in the 100th episode of the show, and then eventually having another speaking role in the christmas special “The best gift ever.”  It is also worth noting that Hasbro never gave her an “official name” with almost all of Ditzy’s merchandise either having no name present, or more often than not a singular image of a muffin in place of a name, even going so far as to have “Muffins” be the credited name she was given in all voiced instances of the show. 

Muffins, Ditzy Doo, or Derpy Hooves isn’t the only case of background characters growing a large following of fans with in the show; a variety of characters have been swept up by the fans, given names and personalities built entirely out of bit gags. Lyra, Bon Bon, Vinyl Scratch, Octavia Melody, and who knows how many more have all been seen in background moments which would be built on by fans and then echo back into the staff to be integrated into the show further. One would say this is fanon but at the end of the day, the writers and show staff had very little more intent with the characters beyond “does this background character look good?” and “Does this bit part character stand out enough to automatically be recognizable for the bit they need to be doing” it is still what I believe to be an example of Death of The Author, an act of choosing to ignore the intended meaning,and giving what amounts to window dressings a full life as fleshed out characters in fan content and in small instances of the show; an interpretation separate from the writers original intent. 

Now the question is does someone need to actively defy the author to participate in The Death There-of? No. I don’t believe so.  In much the same fashion no one need actually be a clan member to inadvertently say or do something that's passive aggressively racist(yes a bit of an extreme, I know) one need not actively defy the author, merely ascribe to an alternate interpretation of a work of fiction. Refer to Fight Club, the film does everything it can with out directly stating “most of the people in Fight Club and later Project Mayhem are bad people, because they were already doing the things Tyler Durden was ascribing to” and almost unilaterally all the bad takes are built around this idea that they’ve achieved the perfect ideal masculine because they’re the “living in the moment, violent psychopath” nihilist the movie is actively condemning. 

The simple fact is that death of the author ultimately, in a grand scale amounts to this; did a writers intent show through hard enough for their intent to be heard? And Subjectively, how much does a person believe in the meaning that they, or the writer themself have imparted into the story? 

[transrightsjimin]

I'm asking as a confused trans and gay person regarding some of your recent posts saying aphobia doesn't exist, etc. Do you consider asexual people to be inherently LGBT even if they are cisgender and straight (heteroromantic)? I don't want to discriminate at all, I'm just confused because I see people fighting on here all the time about whether aces are part of the LGBT community or not. Do you have some insight for me as an ace nonbinary person? Thanks in advance!

no it’s fine lol dw!

i’m not sure how to explain this w/o being too extensive in what i say bc i’ve talked about this before but more in private conversations (and maybe some rants in tumblr posts) nd i tend to ramble abt it.

first of all i do not actually like the common conception that there is one way to define LGBT or the idea that everyone should fall within that category term or not, for example because the English language is colonial and rigid and does not reflect on experiences of all cultures, bc being gay or trans are not distinctly different experiences everywhere while they would be divided into different categories. so whereas i was more insistent on saying ‘you must be gay / bi / lesbian / trans to be LGBT / suffer from homophobia or transphobia’ i’ve come to realize now that this argument is rather exclusive of many gender diverse identities that do not correspond to all experiences or cultures. so i will stay away from using that argument.

however, i am speaking from my experience with online LGBT and asexual communities and have seen how the latter has tried to force itself into the other. i think a large issue with the asexual and aromantic communities is that they are partially based upon the creation of AVEN, an online forum founded by a homophobic and antisemitic man, and partially (though related to the former) by just blatantly made up statistics and history. not once have i seen a good argument or research or even personal accounts that illustrate very well why aphobia is a thing. i am asexual myself but do not want to take the lack of discrimination i faced for it as proof. there have been accounts of ‘aphobic’ discrimination that are either 1. much more a general concern with the OP facing misogyny and girls being sexualized, 2. someone making a remark based on a misconception of OP’s experiences or 3. misappropriation of terms and applying them to asexuality, e.g. ‘corrective rape’ was coined to refer to (African) lesbians who were assaulted under the presumption that it would turn them straight. asexuals have appropriated this term years ago to claim asexual people face rape on a large scale because perpetrators try to force them into liking sex. some people don’t even know the original meaning of the term because of this. i’m also not a big fan of this new interpretation of the term anyway, because legit sexual attraction is not the main reasons people commit rape; it is to seek power. this kind of mindset of asexual people being inherently vulnerable to sexual violence due to lack of feeling sexual attraction is seriously harmful; in the crime show Law and Order SVU, a suspect was let off because some main character said the suspect was asexual and this couldn’t have done it. people can be and sometimes are raped by an asexual person, because it is about taking advantage of someone and not attraction. the sole fact that so many authors of overly fetishistic fanfiction are asexual should prove this much, but instead the lack of attraction is used to distance oneself from the harm one can still cause.

and yes, asexual people can face discrimination, especially if you’re a girl you’re expected to be sexually submissive, which is pretty horrifying on its own. but this is not the same as targeted discrimination on a mass scale or institutional whatsoever. we are not thaught as we grow old that asexuals are disgusting, are a joke, or need to be violently murdered. my biggest issue with the asexual and aromantic community that we (as i have removed myself from it years ago) keep telling it that anecdontal accounts of being mildly discriminated is nowhere near the same as risking being kicked out of your house, being violently attacked due to the way you appear or having a partner of the same gender, being systematically discriminated by all sorts of institutions in society and being thaught that what you are is bad from an early age on. and then the counterargument is that LGBT is more recognized but asexual and aromantic isn’t, so ‘ace / aro’ people deserve to be included because they are underrepresented in media. but that is not the case at all. the speed at which asexuality has suddenly been incorporated and included into LGBT spaces, also offline, has been ridiculously fast. nowadays when you see a bunch of LGBT flags you see the asexual one being included a lot, sometimes in 3 different versions, while the lesbian flag is nowhere to be seen. lesbians are consistently excluded from their supposedly own community and they are not included in LGBT due to a need to change underrepresentation or lack of awareness, but because they face their own version of homophobia. the most mind-boggling thing about cis / cishet asexual and aromantic people being told that they are not oppressed, is that the response is not relief (’oh i’m glad i don’t face systematic oppression for this thing’) but anger (’how dare you not let us into your group!’). LGBT is seen as a fun party that is unnecessarily mean to anyone it gatekeeps, as if it is not actually necessary to keep out cishet people who benefit from their privilege and can use that against the rest in the group if they join.

my largest issue with the asexual community however, and i’ve touched upon this a bit before in the post, is that it victimizes itself, to such a degree where it puts itself oppositional to ‘allosexuals’. the whole idea that people who experience sexual attraction to another person are inherently privileged over abd hold power over asexual people is just not true (and the same goes for this rethoric for aromantic people). this idea is so wrong and the whole concept of the ‘allosexual’ as oppressor collapses once you consider that people who are attracted to the same gender are actually in danger and oppressed for their very attraction. not only are those who experience attraction (that isnt platonic) to other people portrayed as oppressors, but also as perverted freaks. once i decided to stop associating myself with acearo people and instead interact with LGBT people with other experiences, i realized just how much stigmatizing abd frankly, homophobic and transphobic bullshit i’ve adopted within the spaces i used to be in and that i still see gather a lot of traction (now their harmful points are also used on twitter and IRL in the public domain). the community has a huge issue where it teaches you to be puzzled and grossed out by people who want to date / kiss / have sex with other people, and this results in GSAs that now include asexuals to prohibit kissing your partner per request of asexual / aromantic members, asexual people showing up at pride with ‘can we just hug?’ signs, the common serophobic jokes (’at least we dont get hiv!!’ blergh), and for me it led to a great discomfort with kissing and sex imagery and it wasn’t until i left the community that this was in fact subtle homophobia because so much content on here is lgbt themed and to combine that with the increasing aversion to romance or sex without critically looking at that is... very toxic to say the least.

so where it’s standing right now, i don’t think including asexual or aromatic people in LGBT spaces on the basis of those identities is a good idea. one community advocates for the acceptance of sex, whereas the other is stigmatizing it and painting off those who are in fact oppressed for their transness or homosexuality, as the oppressors. it clashes and it doesn’t work. the ‘ace / aro’ community (quote unquote bc i see ‘ace’ being used a lot to imply superiority over ‘allosexuals’ like, theyre being the ace at something) has too many issues, which it is largely based on, to figure out. it can be a community on its own and i do not think you need to join LGBT to have a valid identity that has something to do with sexuality or gender and deals with a form of stigma.

it woukd be a rant, i warned you lol

[somnilogical]

transgenderer: okay so you know the trope where when you get too much eldritch knowledge and suddenly you start seeing giant monsters everywhere that are invisible to everyone else? that’s what being a trans woman is like.

this cluster of abilities keeps being instrumentally useful to model for reasoning about transfems. promethea and bendini independently talked about this:

[08:56] Bendini: This sounds like parody, but with californians it is difficult to tell

[image of fb post:

Daniel Powell: That report claims both that all entrances were blocked and also that a police vehicle entered and exited the camp; was that because the police vehicle was capable of offoad movement that typical vehicles are incapable of? My heart goes out to the kids on the high course who were subjected to unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering as a result of seeing people in Guy Fawkes masks, and all the people who had their personal liberty violated.

Like Reply 11h]

[09:02] Bendini: also this is a lot less credible if you haven't forgotten what happened with Brent

[09:02] Bendini: regardless of whether Anna is secretly a transphobe

[09:03] Bendini: rather than just scared of one particular trans person

[09:03] Bendini: the same sort of defence was trotted out for brent, and he was guilty

[09:05] Bendini: yeah, ziz is crazy and a lot of stuff posted is just ramblings

[09:06] Bendini: but I can see the model of everyone being sufficiently cowardly that the crazy bring forward the accusations before the courageous do

[09:23] promethea: gotta love how nobody can quite agree exactly how the people involved are Bad and Evil but people are nonetheless confident that they are schizophrenic/narcissistic/abusers/violent and must be confined and put on chemical mind control

[image of fb post:

Romeo Stevens: I'd recommend whomever has comparative advantage to familiarize themselves with the narcissism/bpd/aspd cluster, more evocatively called energy vampires. Such people are not stable and can grow violent when they are deprived attention they believe they are entitled to. The book Character Disturbance is fairly good for a start. It is a known falilure mode for communities of people who have faced their own social isolation to fail at filtering. To be clear, such people deserve compassion, but they need professional help. They don't benefit from a bunch of people whose time is valuable (one of the reasons they are attracted to such people because more validation) paying attention to their narratives.

9h Edited]

[09:24] promethea: there's been an awful lot of "not saying, but just saying" of a type that screams of monkeyball hysteria and attacking any characteristics that can be painted as vulnerabilities open for attack

[09:26] promethea: (also Ben the reason why you find Ziz's blog full of "just ramblings" is that you have a particular neurotype that is very... I don't have a good value-neutral way of expressing the difference but maybe "mundane" as opposed to "eldritch")

[09:35] Bendini: yeah the idea of someone saying get professional help is a strong sign they have not thought through what they are saying

[09:36] Bendini: like, a quick glance at what professional mental health treatment looks like in the US (therapy in the UK is afaik good for low hanging fruit, but not much else)

[09:37] Bendini: "these people should be reported to the mental health authoritities to be dealt with"

[09:37] Bendini: "Uhhh, I mean get the compassion they need"

[09:38] Bendini: I have to say, you would be the first person in the history of ever to call my neurotype mundane

[09:39] Bendini: I see what you are getting at

[09:39] Bendini: but it is like, how many standard deviations of weirdness are you on

[09:39] Bendini: and I said most, not all

[09:40] promethea: I think it's more like what direction your weirdness is in; "grounded" or "basic bitch" were other words I considered

[09:40] promethea: it's similar to the difference between EAs who want to find out how to best help the global poor, and the ones who get very preoccupied over whether insecticides are causing catastrophic suffering

[09:43] Bendini: "tethered to reality, somehow" would be an alternative

[09:45] Bendini: I think it's due to having like 50% really normie emotions

[09:45] promethea: "tethered to consensus reality" is how I'd adjust that phrasing

[09:46] promethea: it may be something to do with a sense that the world is fundamentally sane but just really bad at its job, vs the world being fundamentally insane and only aligned with the actual reality by little more than grace of gnon

[09:49] promethea: and probably some kind of a fundamental unshakeable-to-barely-shakeable prior rather than something that responds to ordinary reasoning

[09:50] Bendini: what do we mean by fundementally sane vs insane here?

[09:51] promethea: good catch, that's a nightmare to unpack

[09:53] promethea: a lot of the early LW stuff is comparatively eldritch in this sense, especially for the context of not having had LW yet

[09:56] promethea: in an environment where being trans isn't normal trans people have a certain inherent eldritch-ness, but a person fitting neatly into a third gender social role in a culture where that has always been a thing is not eldritch in that way

[09:57] promethea: it's the difference between "other people are trying their best even if their best isn't that good" vs. "other people are systematically gaslighting you about everything until proven otherwise"

[10:01] Bendini: ah

[10:02] Bendini: I'd put the difference down to people being really really crap at explaining things because the message is in there but it's between the lines

[10:02] Bendini: not intentionally, but because they don't know how else to do it

[10:03] promethea: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sYgv4eYH82JEsTD34/beyond-the-reach-of-god this is probably the most explicit work by EY on what I've been calling the eldritch

[10:04] Bendini: and if you don't have enough of the fuzzy experience knowledge to do it, following what they are saying will be experienced as gaslighting

[10:04] promethea: and specifically, Beyond the Reach of God is trying to shake a component of the fundamental sense of security and move people towards the eldritch side

[10:05] Bendini: this sounds like the fundamental autist experience which cleaves into paranoia or extreme submissiveness to authority

[10:08] promethea:

I'd put the difference down to people being really really crap at explaining things because the message is in there but it's between the lines

not intentionally, but because they don't know how else to do it

and if you don't have enough of the fuzzy experience knowledge to do it, following what they are saying will be experienced as gaslighting

I'm thinking more of the thing about "seek professional help"

[10:09] Bendini: the yud post does not

[10:09] promethea: a mundane interpretation is "professional help isn't actually that helpful but I don't know that" while an eldritch interpretation is like "these people should be reported to the mental health authoritities to be dealt with"

[10:09] Bendini: as I'm rereading it

[10:10] Bendini: I do not believe the world is just

[10:10] Bendini: or that things will work out fine in the end because they always do

[10:11] Bendini: given, y'know, that I used to be a prepper

[10:15] Bendini: also I may have figured out how to reconcile "anna is a transphobe and admitted it outright" with what has been said

[10:16] Bendini: which I suspect pete knows based on what he said, but he doesn't say it outright

[10:18] promethea: "eldritch" isn't about just-world beliefs, it's closer to "a quality that makes one faster to disalieve things like just-world or other aspects of consensus reality"

[10:21] Bendini: I think there's some conflation between beleif in verbal consensus reality and belief that you can anticipate what other people will do probabalistically

[10:22] Bendini: I do not beleive in the former, but I think I had enough natural talent at the latter to reach a kind of escape velocity

[10:24] Bendini: i.e. have enough to build on/enough peices of the jigsaw put in that I could keep filling it in

[10:26] promethea: it's not about "eldritch means you can't model other people"

[10:29] promethea: if anything, mundane models are the ones that are sacrificing modeling ability

[10:30] promethea: ...seeing patterns where people insist is only noise but that noise just so happens to be awfully conveniently shaped...

[10:30] Bendini: if I am defined as the non-eldridch side, this sounds like something that could be falsified

[10:31] promethea: I'm feeling like this is a beautiful meta-level illustration of the difference between the neurotypes but way less useful on the object level or to someone who doesn't already have an unspeakable sense of what the difference is

[10:33] promethea: I don't know how to get the qualia across to someone who doesn't already have the thing and be thus able to possibly grok it from what I'm vaguely gesturing at

[10:34] Bendini: is there a way to demonstrate information transmission between 2 eldridch people?

[10:36] promethea: ziz's blog has a lot of content that makes perfect sense to people who have a quality that's probably strongly aligned with eldritch, but apparently looks like ramblings to people who don't

[10:38] promethea: some things are just ordinarily difficult to understand in that they require a lot of work, while others are actually mind-bending to properly comprehend, and eldritch minds are more bendy in that way?

[10:41] promethea: which also increases vulnerability to infohazards, cognitohazards, overfitting, demonic possession and generally going nuts, but the idea that eldritch is inherently less sane only applies to socioculturally mediated definitions of sanity

[10:42] Bendini: my immidiate reaction to "socioculturally mediated definitions of sanity" was "yes, and creditworthyness is a social construct"

[10:43] promethea: if reality is less well-matched with consensus reality then the bendiness of eldritch minds means that they can more easily construct accurate maps of the territory

[10:44] Bendini: can you think of a way to compare viewing that map to the territory?

[10:44] Bendini: as in, not being able to show the map is a given

[10:45] Bendini: but the outputs of the map

[10:47] promethea: seeing power, seeing prejudice and bias, seeing other things polite society pretends aren't real...

[10:49] promethea: and it's polite society all the way down

[10:49] Bendini: that's not really what I meant

[10:50] Bendini: I mean for example, using the ability to see those things to predict other things in a way that can be isolated from fuzzy confirmation bias

[10:51] Bendini: like I can very much believe ziz's blog is relatable and intuitive to you

[10:52] Bendini: and you have to do less interpretive labour to get a true insight from it

[10:53] Bendini: but the thing I'm pointing at as ramblings is seperate from that

[10:58] promethea: would it make sense if I rephrased it as "less cognitive filtering"? being able to see more signal in noise, especially where the signals are something you aren't supposed to be seeing for some reason or another, but at the cost that you're more likely to see signals where there is only noise

[11:02] Bendini: that makes sense

[11:03] Bendini: but it assumes that all people who don't do the eldrich thing can't go down the abstraction ladder

[11:04] promethea:

can't go down the abstraction ladder

can you elaborate?

[11:04] Bendini: what is salient to someone isn't completely a choice

[11:05] Bendini: but what you notice is based on what you've learned is useful to pay attention to

[11:07] Bendini: I could say something about forests leaves and trees

[11:07] Bendini: but it would be a bit cliche

[11:08] Bendini: something that might sink in would be more like someone paying attention to what is going on at the binary level as bits are moving between the hard drive memory and cpu

[11:09] Bendini: yes, it is useful to know what is going on so you understand other things

[11:10] Bendini: but hyperfixating on that while you are writing code on a much higher level of abstraction

[11:10] Bendini: in a sense, you are "seeing things that others have been trained not to see"

[11:10] Bendini: or don't understand

[11:10] Bendini: but doing that on a frame by frame level rather than an intutive "you know what's up" kinda level

[11:11] Bendini: is going to result in glaring errors from the stuff you aren't paying enough attention to

[11:15] promethea: it's not autism except possibly to the degree that autism weakens one's priors

[11:16] Bendini: agree, there are plenty of basic bitch autists

[11:17] Bendini: but like, the autistic catgirl cluster

[11:18] Bendini: it is a recurring pattern that some of them obsess over social reality in the way ziz does, yet keep getting into abusive relationships which were predictable from the outset

[11:18] Bendini: which idk, maybe this is a bit of a basic bitch take here

[11:19] Bendini: but this seems like the opposite of what should happen if they had reached the higher plane of knowledge that cannot be explained in words

[11:20] promethea: I'm not expecting all men to be able to do twenty pull-ups just because testosterone improves upper body strength

[11:22] promethea: the "eldritch" neurotype might also be called "psychoticism" but in the sense of a personality trait like extroversion and not in the sense of mental illness

[11:22] Bendini: no, but if those men claim to be much stronger because they have the magical testosterone elixir

[11:22] Bendini: and they keep getting beaten up by 5ft anorexic girls

[11:23] Bendini: at what point do you say "no, you do not have the thing you claim to have"

[11:30] promethea: no what I've been trying to say is that there appears to be a neurotype-level difference in how people process some types of information with predictable (in terms of not requiring loads of epicycles) upsides (having an easier time making accurate models where they contradict consensus reality) and downsides (having an easier time making inaccurate models where they contradict consensus reality)

[11:30] Bendini: the psychotiticism framing does help explain part of it

[11:31] Bendini: but that feels like the motte

[11:31] Bendini: it's the bailey I have trouble with

[11:31] promethea: I can't comment on the precise situation with the Bay catgirls because I'm not familiar enough with it to feel comfortable making non-obvious inferences

[11:33] Bendini: okay

[11:33] Bendini: I wonder how my experiences with psychedelics map into this though

[11:34] promethea: a bit of a shitpost-y formulation might be that high psychoticism-as-a-personality-trait is like having the safety guards off the [insert power tool that best fits the analogy] of your mind; it makes it easier to make some cuts that you'd otherwise struggle with, but it also makes it easier to cut things you wouldn't actually want to cut like yourself

[11:34] promethea: psychedelics would be expected to increase psychoticism-as-a-personality-trait

[11:35] Bendini: you'd expect them to do it while on them though

[11:35] promethea: both temporarily (very strongly) and permanently (from what it seems)

[11:35] Bendini: I seem to get neither in some important ways

[11:36] Bendini: like certain kinds of art and music

[11:36] Bendini: it was a sanity check of sorts

[11:37] promethea: (this also fits with my experience that when my dopamine levels are increased I get better at the thinks but also more likely to be overconfidently wrong, and that most antipsychotics are dopamine antagonists, etc.)

[11:38] Bendini: if I cannot see mediocre art as anything more than mediocre art while I'm hallucinating, it really isn't a case of me not being open to it

[11:39] Bendini: it's a case of wine in expensive bottles

[11:40] Bendini: I do think I have had some changes though

[11:40] Bendini: more sympathy to points of view people cannot express verbally

[11:46] promethea: I don't think "finding deep meaning in mediocre art" is any kind of a necessary characteristic of increased PAAPT (psychoticism-as-a-you-know-what), especially given that "mediocre art actually has deep meaning when on drugs" is the social reality

[13:28] Bendini: I mean more the ability to be open minded and see the beauty in things

[13:28] Bendini: because I could totally see the beauty of a brick wall

[13:28] Bendini: just some girl showed me her pretty mediocre drawings

[13:29] Bendini: and I was pretty speechless because the mediocrity was the salient characteristic

[13:30] Bendini: I find it suspends judgement for a longer period

[13:31] Bendini: but when my mind speaks out to me my concience is much louder

[13:32] Bendini: this does not seem to be the standard reaction to psychadelics

[13:32] Bendini: the basic bitch lurks deep in my lizard brain

(dont agree with all of promethea's characterization of the phenomena; but its clearly seeded from looking at the same phenomena that i am. bendini does not get whats going on at all here.)

ive referenced leveraging this to do what seems impossible or unpredictable to normies as creepy transfem mind powers. then people are like 'saraaah ccc somni said trans women have creepy mind powers thats crazy talk right?' and sarah c's like 'well yes its true trans women have a high iq'.

but this is kind of eliding over different kinds of intelligence as neurotypes and collapsing it all into "iq". transfems and ashkies arent just generically "intelligent" theres specific neurotypes behind the inteligence. like for ashkies the sort of things that get recorded in metrics are high "verbal" iq and "math" iq and average "spatial" iq. thats a specífic signature.

see: http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf

"high intelligence" can look like hyperlexia and it can also look like dissociative mind powers that let people see through the matrix and be unnervingly good at reasoning over embeddings of yourself.

like as intelligence increases, general capacity at solving problems increases. but maybe you shunt symbols instead of rotate objects to solves a problem. which affects what kinds of problems you can easily solve, given some are more amiable to one approach over another. there are many instances where visual proofs without words are much shorter than doing lots of algebra and vice-versa.

these specificities allow high-inteligence subpopulations to collude within neuroclades along these lines of similarity. downstream of this is that a lot of ppl accuse both jews and transfems of conspiracy and being "friends" with each other when a lot of mutual information comes from neurotype similarity not meeting and deciding on a plan. (thats not to say, you know, that there are never meetings about how to take over the multiverse...)

its amusing how like transfems will talk with each other about stuff and then ppl will be like "arghh!!! my eyes! this writing is painful static! its an infohazard!! its a glitch in the matrix!! AIEEEEGYRGHLSMERGLEGLunk pshhhur" and then say they dont understand what you are saying but it probably means you are a creepy violent misogynistic deeply sick male who is experiencing a psychotic break or something. give me tokens of submission to prove me wrong. if you were really prosocial youd drop this act right now and "act like a human".

part of the reason im writing this is reading things like:

<<promethea: gotta love how nobody can quite agree exactly how the people involved are Bad and Evil but people are nonetheless confident that they are schizophrenic/narcissistic/abusers/violent and must be confined and put on chemical mind control>>

has a healing quality. like i independently derived this. people keep trying to erase these simple shapes of how things fit together. try to destroy peoples ability to build common knowledge and talk with each other. the authoritarians dont usually try to give good excuses about why they pretend its wrong besides saying "its absurd". when you are in a prison planet surrounded mostly by people who have decided to be cops or submit to them, reading this is like:

https://youtu.be/DSTknzzBT9Y

you have to fractally reason through warpy things like people distantly noting "patient appears to be suffering from delusions of persecution'. and people trying to tell you that you are psychotic when like hi im writing this and not "psychotic". and you dont even have the social reality of people doing actual info-processing and at the end saying "well yeah its pretty obvious you arent suffering from a psychotic break, weird that anyone would claim that".

what you have is people giving you strange looks and acting like what youve written is a tear in the fabric of reality releasing trillions of shrill screams from a place beyond time.

its not because they dont understand, its because they have chosen not to. with different social groups of humans, different things elicit this response. like in a plural server i joined i talked about maybe there could be something in between being plural and being a singlet and they acted like id spoken static until someone said "oh thats [short handle for this concept]" and then everyone relaxed and stopped acting as if they couldnt understand what i was saying because there was no longer any local social threat to dynamically processing this information in front of other humans. they learned from the exclaimer that it was a Thing in their culture.

when people cant anticipate a priori where dynamically processing information in front of a lot of people will land them wrt the local overton window, as a solution they will just refuse to do this. one way to refuse to do this is to say "im sorry i dont understand what you are saying its like painful static. ack! stop trying to explain i dont want to understand it might turn me evil or something!!" which is an accurate assessment if they were coerced into using the words good and evil to mean alignment and disalignment with local social consensus respectively.

like the strategy of people who want to contain those floricdly hemorrhaging eldritch knowledge all over the place is to have a constarnt investment of authoritarian power to suppress this:

<<Reject invest-y power. Some kinds of power increase your freedom. Some other kinds require an ongoing investment of your time and energy, and explode if you fail to provide it. The second kind binds you, and ultimately forces you to give up your values. The second kind is also easier, and you'll be tempted all the time.>>

https://squirrelinhell.blogspot.com/2018/01/superhuman-meta-process.html

unlike true things which will keep reforming and can be lazily evaluated from looking around you with no memory. you dont need as much energy poured into constantly refreshing the cache of who you are supposed to pretend is having a psychotic break.

the authoritarian strat loses out in the long term against anarchist cooperation between agents that have learned enough to be able to consistently exploit their knowledge of Dread Horrors of the Abyss. who no longer need to dodge bullets.

[badgirlsinterviews]

The Paths of Beauty [Interview]

Interview with writer and actress Camila Sosa Villada, author of ‘Bad Girls’.

Written by Sergio Alzate.

11/05/20

Source: El Tiempo.

In her novel, Camila Sosa narrated the experience of a travesti community in Córdoba, Argentina. (Photo credit: María Palacios)

Camila Sosa Villada likes to take in the world with her eyes. For her, life is made up of images: vignettes that catch her eye from which she discerns a speck of light, a dash of colour, a certain meaning. Through her eyes, she listens, she feels, she smells, she sounds out, she travels and she consumes the world around her, a world which is made up of images that she treasures and stores away. Through these snapshots, she forms a collage of her reality and her experiences. They are, in other words, parts of a puzzle which she pieces together, bit by bit, creating a unique, absolute, indescribable final image: one of beauty.

Beauty (not as an anatomical category, nor as the opposite of faithfulness) runs through the pages of Bad Girls, her most recently published work which recounts the experience of a group of travestis who gather each night in the Sarmiento Park, in the city of Córdoba, in Argentina. As such, a travesti mother is able produce milk with her silicone breast; a mute woman turns into a bird; headless men fall in love; gardens burst and cover everything with their lush and uncontrolled vegetation; people declare their bodies as their home; laughter, embraces, words, and love become the shelter from violence; shouts echo with one brutal, resounding, infinite message: “being travesti is a celebration”. Miracles and sparks of beauty unfold with furious tenderness from page to page.

Some of these themes were discussed by Camila in her 2014 TedTalk. The actress, theatre-maker and writer spoke of the suffering of travesti and sex worker bodies, her father’s prediction that she’d end up dead, left in a ditch, the life of a pregnant girl who would meet her clients in the park, her hair filled with weeds from having done her job lying down in the grass. After recounting all of this, Camila asks in a broken voice: “Have any of you have ever imagined that there could be anything more concretely poetic than that?” That’s exactly what Bad Girls is: poetry, concreteness, beauty. 

The novel contains a theme which appears over and over again: beauty, the search for it, the curse of it, its joys and sorrows. What made you write about it?

I think I’ve always been privileged. I’m able to see the world in a way that’s different to others. I felt like a dealer: at night I’d be out with the group of travestis, and then during the day I’d go to university. In those worlds, there were moments I observed that were so defining, spectacular and profoundly beautiful that they affected me on an emotional level. I wasn’t speaking about them arbitrarily: things have always appeared beautiful to me. Not for what they look like our sound like, but for what they emanate. Beauty is the foundation of my book. 

In ‘In Praise of Shadows’, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki speaks of the beauty of shadows, which goes against how beauty in the canon of Western literature is based on light. The beauty of travestis, that which inhabits the shadows, the parks, away from the light, is a bit like that, don’t you think?

Yes, exactly. We were gorgeous during the day as well, though. Like something out of a Tarantino film, we’d go about in the sun, very early in the morning, strutting of the park under the morning sun towards McDonalds, where we’d have breakfast. We’d walk to the bus stop, the red sun over the city, everything glowing orange. Our beauty was a disruption, interrupting the aesthetics and order of a city as catholic as Córdoba. We tried to be beautiful in the light of day, and we succeeded. 

In his essay ‘The Simulation’, Severo Sarduy says that women don’t exist, with travestis constructing their identities based on that knowledge. What do you think of that?

I think we gave in to feminine beauty at some point. But we also moved away from imitating them. We began to explore sensations which still haven’t been defined, and which exist only amongst us travestis. It’s not to do with sexuality or identity. It’s a declaration of our existence in the world. Meeting a travesti who had money or was from a well-off family was rare. While all of us were marginalized, we all had our own bodies through which we constructed our unique existences, capable of being in our own ways. 

Speaking of bodies, the narrator in your novel state we can judge countries by the way they treat travesti bodies. Are these bodies national history? What can we read in them?

Men decide how the bodies of travestis should be, their desires dictate how our bodies are to develop. How incredibly unjust and terrifying! In the past, they wanted travestis to have hips like Sofía Loren. Then they said: “No, we want them tall, slim, and tan”. Now, they want us to be natural. Luckily, girls are therefore no longer obliged to get surgery. But this is just a first approximation, because there’s also the class struggle, something which has never been so concretely exemplified as through the bodies of travestis. Claudia Rodríguez (writer and trans activist from Chile) says that society doesn’t inform us of the danger of certain surgical procedures. All we knew was that, in order to change the world, we first had to change ourselves, our bodies. We fought to become beautiful, marketable, attractive, and when we didn’t have money for silicone, many of us would inject ourselves with industrial silicone, sentencing ourselves to a slow death. And we’d also be at risk of getting AIDS and other diseases, because we’d be terrified of going to the hospital. No one like you can be found there; no one there caters to us, listens to us, reassures us. All of them are hugely different to you. 

However, in the midst of it all, beauty and tenderness always remain. Do you see these as means of resistance? 

It comes naturally to me: I say without thinking that I’m looking for beauty in horror, or flowers in the mud. I tell it as I see it. I think discussing violence is akin to goldsmithing - it requires you to be extremely meticulous, and to take care to make sure what you’re working on doesn’t turn into something finicky or terrible. I have to have the patience and the eye of someone whose job requires them to be millimetrically precise. You have to be like a shaolin monk, wandering through the desert with a staff, looking for beauty. Without beauty, life is unable to exist. 

There’s also a series of miracle that occur throughout the book - some happier than others, but, ultimately, all of them are miracles. What drew you to this miraculous calling?

Neither of us would be here today if it wasn’t for the tale of a miracle. In Argentina, there’s a popular saint called the Difunta Correa. My parents brought a little medal to her sanctuary, and left it there with a promise: that the three of us would go back there together if I left the street and sex work. Three months later, I debuted in my theatre show Carnes Tolendas. I began gaining recognition and I never took cocaine, nor did sex work, ever again. I stopped being exposed to violence. The same year my parents made that promise, I experienced two violent instances with two clients. My parents sensed that, and prayed for a miracle to happen to me. So yes, my reading of it is that magic does happen. 

When Auntie Encarna, one of the characters in the novel, becomes a mother, this stirs up hatred within the community she lives in. What upsets is so upsetting about the thought of a travesti becoming a mother?

Every day, through their various methods and systems, capitalism and the patriarchy are competing for authority over childhood. They therefore want to ensure that it’s them who are raising the children of our country. The danger for them, is that they know that a travesti is incapable of perpetuating their systems of control. I prefer to look at it romantically, and refuse to believe that travestis would ever work for capitalism. That’s what bothers them. They’re scared of losing their control on the order which bestows them with their privileges. They also fear the thought of the existence of families formed through instincts, feelings, and emotions as subversive as love. 

The narrator asks herself how many times she’s written the word “violence”. Twenty years have passed since the events of the book - how many times do you think that word continues being written down today?

News about recent deaths still come up in conversation. We are trapped in a violent system. Violence is still there, but the support for us travestis, as well as other sectors of society, has increased. That possibility has arisen because of us, because of the girl who goes out to buy vegetables, the girl who does sex work, the girl who leaves her CV in a clothes shop for the first time, the girl who opens up to the people she’s living with to tell them she’s going to dress as a woman, the girl who writes books, the girl who sings, the girl who acts,the girl who creates a new kind of knowledge. All of us are creating an animal-like support where we resist and say “look, everyone, we aren’t genocidal, we aren’t rapists or child abusers, nor do we want to steal from anyone.” Violence still exists, and it has become even more intense.  

The travestis which appear in the book find a way of speaking and existing through their biting sense of humour. How does this particular type of language allow bonds to grow between people?

I think one of the most reductive takes on the topic is saying that “we treat each other like that to numb the pain.” In other words, we treat each other cruelly in order to later face the cruelty from the outside world. Last year, I read Claus and Lucas by Agota Kristoff, and there it may be interpreted that, like in the book, we are training in order to become desensitized. And I may be mistaken about this, but I believe that it’s to do with how we knew that language is the most powerful thing that exists. Through words, we could play speech in ways others didn’t expect. We’d say the most horrible things to each other with the greatest affection, and we’d say the most affectionate things in cutting and hurtful ways. We’d make up words, we had secret codes, nicknames that belonged to us. Our lack of privilege drove us to become very intelligent, and we soon realised that language was the only thing that truly belonged to us. As a result, we occupied it in the way we saw fit.

[ademocrat]

A judge refused to recognize pro-trans law in a hate crime case. That’s judicial misconduct.

On July 23, 2018, Kimura Steuball went to a Mobil station on Seven Mile Road in Detroit. Upon arrival, she saw Deonton Rogers inside the station with a woman. When Steuball got in line to make a purchase, Rogers began talking to her using derogatory, transphobic language.

Rogers then began asking about her sex organs – specifically whether he could see “it.” Steuball tried to ignore him, but he persisted in calling her a man. Then he got violent.

Related: Utah just upgraded their ‘worthless’ hate crimes law, while Indiana passed a worthless one

He pulled out a gun and threatened to kill her. The woman with Rogers told him to leave Steuball alone and leave. It was at this time that a child who had been in Rogers’ car entered the station. As Rogers began moving toward the exit, gun in hand, he walked threateningly close to Steuball, who reacted by grabbing at the gun to get it away from him.

A struggle ensued. The gun discharged.

Steuball was hit in the left shoulder. Still, she did manage to grab the gun, after which Rogers’ companion took it – only to give it back to him as she, Rogers, and the child scurried away.

As for Steuball?

Her shoulder was shattered and she spent several days in the hospital.

Rogers was eventually apprehended and charged with being a habitual offender, discharging a firearm in a building causing physical injury and serious impairment, felonious assault, possessing a gun during a felony, felon firearm possession, and fourth degree child abuse.

And also ethnic intimidation.

At a preliminary hearing, Rogers objected to the firearm discharge charges, claiming a lack of intent. Notably, at the same hearing, the court found that “gender,” in the ethnic intimidation statute, included “transgender.”

At the next court level up, Rogers again sought to dismiss the building-firearm charges – as well as the ethnic intimidation charge, arguing not only that the prosecution had failed to demonstrate that he’d committed a malicious physical act accompanied by a specific intent to harass Steuball because of her gender but also that the Ethnic Intimidation Act – the state’s hate crime law – did not apply to trans people at all.

The judge there blamed the victim for initiating the physical contact that led to the firearm discharge and agreed with Rogers that trans people were strangers to Michigan’s ethnic intimidation statute.

The prosecution appealed this decision up to a panel of the Court of Appeals, which split 2-1 with the majority opinion being authored by Mike Gadola, a product of Republican former Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration (though, sickeningly, he was unopposed when he ran for a full term in 2016) and a member of the advisory board of the Michigan chapter of the Federalist Society.

21st century Republicans are well-professed law-and-order conservatives – but they have a tendency to stop caring about law and order whenever the order of the law stands poised either to hold Donald Trump and his henchmen accountable or to merely respect LGBTQ existence.

Gadola accurately pointed out that the Ethnic Intimidation Act, enacted in 1988, had no internal definition of “gender,” a fact which gave him permission to consult dictionaries.

You know what comes next.

I know what comes next.

Everyone knows what comes next.

“Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, published in 1990, gives a one-word definition of the word gender, as follows: ‘SEX,’” Gadola wrote, noting that the same dictionary defined “sex” as being “either of two divisions of organisms distinguished respectively as male or female.” He then concluded that “the term ‘gender’ was synonymous with sex, being the biological roles of male and female.”

But no radical conservative judge engaging in judicial legislation ever stops with the rote, binary definitions of “sex” and “gender.”

Gadola didn’t disappoint. He cited to a 1993 opinion rejecting a “sexual orientation” claim under the state’s anti-discrimination law. “Plaintiff has failed to meet the requirement that the harassment be gender-based,” that appellate panel had opined.

Anyone who has ever dealt with transgender law in any way knows the words “sexual orientation” would never be interpreted to include transgender people.

But not only did that 1993 opinion make no reference to anti-trans discrimination but the same opinion actually did rule partially in favor of the plaintiff regarding “alleged specific homosexual advances directed to him by his supervisor. These actions were directly related to plaintiff’s status as a male, and thus render the act applicable.”

Gadola didn’t mention that part.

Instead, he said the 1993 opinion “suggests that gender, at least through the early 1990s, held the same meaning as sex, which has long been understood to denote biological sex (i.e., male or female)” and he went on to declare “There is simply no indication that the term gender would have been understood to encompass one who is a transgender person when this statute was enacted in 1988.”

Would have been understood by who?

Now, it was fair of him to point out that the term “transgender” was not in common use at that point. But he set out a definition of “transsexual” which he asserted “would then have been understood to mean someone who had physically transitioned from one sex to the other.”

There isn’t a source – from 1988 or three decades either side of it – which holds that the term “transsexual,” vintage word that it may be, can only apply to someone who has fully transitioned.

But if you think his leaning upon dictionaries is problematic, it only got worse when he delved into what he asserted is legislative history.

The bill that became the 1988 law at one point had included the category “sexual orientation.” But that was supplanted in favor of “gender.”

Therefore, according to Gadola, “To conclude that the term ‘gender,’ adopted in 1988 in place of the term ‘sexual orientation,’ included the modern-day understanding of what it is to be a transgender person, strains credulity.”

Perhaps at Federalist Society cocktail parties, but not in the outside world.

What will strain credulity is any inevitable claim by Gadola that he is not a partisan political hack whose opinion in People v. Rogers conclusively demonstrates judicial misconduct (either via incompetence, bias or perhaps a mix of the two) warranting his removal from the bench.

For he, too, blames the victim for how she identified herself. Rogers’ actions, according to Gadola, “were not motivated by Steuball’s biological gender, but rather resulted from the fact that Steuball identified herself as a transgender person.”

Think about how likely it would be that Gadola would have ruled that Rogers experienced sex discrimination had the matter been an anti-discrimination case in which Steuball “identified herself” to a prospective employer as the biological sex designation chiseled onto her original birth certificate and she sued after that employer said, ‘I don’t care, but you’re transgender and that’s not covered under state civil rights law. I’m not hiring you.’”

You know how he would rule.

I know how he would rule.

Everyone knows how he would rule.

And everyone by now should be able to guess that nowhere in Gadola’s opinion is there any mention of the fact that ten years prior to enacting the Ethnic Intimidation Act the Michigan legislature had enacted a transgender birth certificate statute.

A statute that changed “sex” in Michigan.

Gadola concluded his opinion by asserting, “Our judicial oath simply does not empower us to amend the criminal law.”

That includes amending it by refusing to acknowledge a prior legislative enactment that can only logically be interpreted to impact the word “sex” throughout the state’s body of law (particularly when claiming that “sex” is the applicable definition of “gender”).

Judges can no longer be allowed escape sanction for refusing to acknowledge that the legislative bodies whose laws they claim to faithfully interpret have included recognition of the reality of transition among those laws.

Now, to be fair, this would also result in sanctioning the dissenting judge, Deborah Servitto. She too felt no need to reference the 1978 trans birth certificate statute, though she nevertheless came to the proper conclusion.

She laid waste to the notion of using vintage dictionaries as interpretive guides as having legitimacy, pointing out what should be obvious: “[W]hen the Legislature does not designate a particular dictionary that it referenced in crafting a particular statute, it cannot be said that one dictionary is the best, let alone conclusive, determiner of legislative intent.”

And, as to the actual issue that was before the court, she also honed in in what should have been the only thing any court to hear the matter needed to say. “[A]pplying the term ‘gender’ in any sense, whether it is interpreted as equating with ‘sex’ or has a broader meaning, defendant engaged in harassment and intimidation of Steuball based on her gender. It is only when one wanders beyond the specific language in the statute that the opposite result can be reached. Very simply put, would this incident have occurred had the victim not been biologically assigned male? Undoubtedly not.”

Yes, Servitto should have mentioned the legislature’s recognition of the reality of transition, which necessarily includes the process of transition and not merely the completion thereof. But she reached the proper conclusion, so only a minor reprimand is warranted.

No rational observer can conclude that Gadola approached this case with any intent other than to effectuate raw, naked 21st century Republican erasure of trans legal existence while masking it with the party’s patented veneer of faux compassion. A few throwaway assertions that Rogers’ actions were “abhorrent” and “reprehensible” ring as hollow and deceitful as a pronouncement of innocence following a body of water not rejecting an alleged witch.

Michigan’s conservative legislature is unlikely to take any action against Gadola (hell, if it weren’t for his age, I’d assume he was on Trump’s federal judiciary short-list), but perhaps the Judicial Tenure Commission or the State Bar of Michigan will.

They certainly should.