#but i will NOT be lectured on bigotry and racism in 'my' own community by some petty white american girl with an axe to grind

[beardofkamenev]

TIL I’M AN ANTISEMITE?

Imagine wildly accusing an entire group of people of being “unrepentant antisemites” and “laughing about bullying Jewish people in group chats.” And imagine your entire basis for your unsubstantiated accusations about our group chat is that one member we are loosely associated with didn’t reply to a random anon from your ‘Jewish friend’ accusing this callout post of being antisemitic, despite it referring specifically to YOUR words and actions and despite none of you people ever pointing out the ‘obvious offensiveness’ of the tweet you were mocking until after you were called out for your petty and completely unprovoked behaviour. By the way, I’ve been warned by multiple others that dealing with you lot requires receipts. I submit it to the good faith and honesty of anyone reading this post to judge for themselves whether failing to answer this anon in this context is an act of antisemitism that warrants these accusations.

Seeing as you’ve basically confirmed what we’ve all suspected all along — that you and your friends read our WOTR group chat for the purpose of using our words and discussions against us (like co-opting our discussion of 15th century catholic antisemitism to use in the anon above) — I’m surprised you didn’t pick up at some point that one of the users you just blanket accused of being an “unrepentant antisemite” is an openly ASHKENAZI JEWISH PERSON, as well as users you know for a fact to be black and brown POC, some of whom have openly criticised your petty and tone deaf behaviour in the past.

As a POC from a literal ‘third world’ country who has dealt first hand with your brand of ‘white performative wokeness’ before, I will not allow anyone — let alone some white American girl — try to guilt trip me into policing my content and interactions on this site, and I sure as fuck won’t let anyone try to make me personally accountable for the behaviour of other users here. If another user not answering an anon from your ‘Jewish friend’ who NO ONE even knew existed makes them and everyone they ever associated with an antisemitic bully, what the fuck does your behaviour now make YOU? Do you have any sense of self-awareness or irony? Or are you just going to keep trying to gaslight everyone when called out for your questionable actions? Don’t blame me for using your own logic against you; these are the standards of ‘discourse’ you have set for this never-ending Tumblr drama you insist on perpetuating. This is the hill you are choosing do die on. Perhaps you’ll finally learn from this whole experience, but somehow I doubt you will.

Feel free to ‘vague’ about me on your blog. Seeing as you’ve already blocked me (despite the fact that I have NEVER interacted with you in all my years here) when I tried to tag you so you can at least respond directly, I thought I’d give you the courtesy of showing your url.

[themadamespod]

The Great White Gripe

A lot has been said about the “social commentary” within The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. 

“Since when is Marvel a bunch of SJWs? I don’t need this shit.”

“All this race stuff feels SUPER forced.”

“Oh here we go Marvel tryin to be all woke to get the libs on board.”

If you personally know anyone who spews this brand of ignorance, we’re sorry. 

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: there is no social commentary on TFATWS. Showrunner Malcolm Spellman and director Kari Skogland simply show the reality of life in America. It’s not their fault that so many (white) people (men) don’t like looking in the mirror.

And some people claim they have no problem with film and television addressing politics and social change.

“Just keep it out of my comic book movies. It doesn’t belong there.”

They could not be anymore wrong, even if Chandler Bing himself was lecturing them. 

If you asked 100 people to name the top ten movies of all time, you’d get 100 different lists. But one thing we can all agree on is that film has power. It has the power to move us, to divide us, to unite us. Entertainment can lead to the kind of discourse that prompts action and positive change.

And that’s why The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the conversations it’s sparking are so important.

One World, One Reality

“Marvel has always been and always will be a reflection of the world right outside our window.” - Stan Lee

There are two takeaways from that statement:

One: Stan Lee didn’t say that in the 1960s, 1970s, or even the 1980s. He said it in 2017.

Two: Our window, not your window, is a subtle but important distinction, particularly as it relates to TFATWS. The Flag Smashers, led by Karli Morgenthau, live by a simple creed: “One world, One people.” The core message of the show is that white Americans and Black Americans experience the world very differently, but there’s still only one world, one reality. 

It’s just a matter of people opening their eyes and seeing it.

TFATWS is an extension of Marvel’s early support of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, Stan Lee created the X-Men as an allegory for the ongoing struggles of the African-American community. Though he didn’t explicitly base Professor X and Magneto on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, there are ideological similarities.

Five years later, following the assassinations of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy, Stan wrote the following:

“Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today. It’s totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race—to despise an entire nation—to vilify an entire religion. Sooner or later, we must learn to judge each other on our own merits. Sooner or later, if a man is ever to be worthy of his destiny, we must fill our hearts with tolerance.”

In 2021, Stan’s words still resonate. Racism in the United States is as virulent and damaging as it’s ever been. Black Americans are facing deadly policing, Jim Crow 2.0 voting laws, mass incarceration, and countless other roadblocks to mobility that most white people have never encountered.

Through the journeys of Sam and Sarah Wilson, Lemar Hoskins, and the heartbreaking Isaiah Bradley, TFATWS shows the unvarnished truth of what Ira Glass might call Black American Life. And through John Walker, the writers nail home the message that’s really making certain people squirm:

White men are the greatest threat not just to Black Americans, but all Americans, because TFATWS is as much an indictment of toxic masculinity as it is of bigotry. 

As aggressive racism has spread like wildfire since 2016, so has hostile sexism towards women of all colors. John Walker is the embodiment of the hyper aggression that the Proud Boys applaud. The clearest example of this comes when Walker dares to clap the shoulder of Ayo, one of Wakanda’s Dora Milaje.

Her swift and, ahem, pointed response had women the world over screaming like they’d just won the lottery. 

One could also argue that Walker’s dogged pursuit of Karli and displaced peoples supporting the Flag Smasher cause mirrors the Trump administration’s war on immigrants. 

There are plenty of parallels to draw. The point is, none of them are forced or manufactured or exaggerated. And whether we’re talking about a fictional road in Latvia or a real street in Minnesota, white Americans need to stop avoiding conversations that make them uncomfortable.

The Politics of Comics 

In 1938, Americans were still reeling from the Great Depression. Enter Superman, the everyman hero, who made his comic debut while the nation was facing widespread unemployment, rampant poverty, and blatant corruption at every level of government.

Superman could have faced off against any number of supernatural villains. But Siegel and Shuster went a different route, setting a precedent for comic books that has prevailed to this day:

They got political. 

Throughout Superman’s earliest adventures, he fought against evil politicians, apathetic bureaucrats, aggressive police officers, greedy businessmen, and even a Washington lobbyist. 

Then in 1941, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby introduced Captain America just in time to fight the nazis and free the world from fascism. A couple decades later, Kirby and Stan Lee would tell the tale of the aforementioned Erik Lehnsherr, who survived the horrors of Auschwitz. These comics endured because their passion and nuance transcended entertainment. So what was the secret sauce?

Like Siegel and Shuster, Simon, Kirby, and Stan Lee were Jewish. Representation matters, folks. 

Later on, the X-Men weren’t the only conduit through which Marvel supported Civil Rights. In 1966, on the heels of the “March Against Fear” from Memphis, TN to Jackson, MS, Stan Lee & Jack Kirby unveiled Black Panther. When African-Americans were fighting harder than ever, Black children could suddenly read a comic book about T’Challa, the noble warrior king of a highly advanced African nation. 

Marvel has never been shy about critiquing foreign policy either. Tony Stark and Iron Man debuted in 1968 as the conflict in Vietnam was escalating. And let’s not forget, Tony made his MCU debut in a film that is a clear indictment of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We could do this all day, but you get the idea. 

Comic books have always reflected the politics of our times, and so has the MCU. Fanboys can’t start crying now just because they’re on the wrong side of history. And when they do, we defer to the great Jon Bernthal when asked about alt-righters appropriating the Punisher symbol:

“Fuck them.”

Life Imitates Art

In 1986, American men felt the need for speed. After Top Gun was released, applications to U.S. aviation forces increased by a staggering 500%. 

Two years later, Errol Morris exposed police corruption in his film The Thin Blue Line. The documentary prompted a new investigation that eventually exonerated death row inmate Randall Adams for the murder of a police officer.

That same year, the Polish government ceased all executions after leaders were swayed to do so by A Short Film about Killing.

Following the release of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine in 1999, Kmart bowed to public pressure and stopped selling handgun ammunition. 

And 5 years ago, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif changed the law on honor killings in response to the critically-acclaimed film A Girl in the River. 

Like we said earlier, film has the power to spur social change. Even if the effects aren’t always so direct and immediate, television and movies have always contributed to the process in America. 

Seeing the Ricardos sharing a bed allowed some Americans to start relaxing their prudish ways. 

The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Maude empowered women as they fought for reproductive rights.

The Jeffersons and Good Times facilitated calmer discussions about race relations.

And The Ellen Show led to greater representation of queer people on screen and greater acceptance of queer people in society. Though Ellen herself has become a problematic figure in the last year, that legacy still remains.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is hardly the first show of its kind. And given the impact film has on society, we believe Hollywood has a moral obligation to produce content that exposes society’s ills and fosters productive debate. 

Stan Lee would be very proud of the team behind TFATWS for bringing the stark reality of American life into people’s living rooms. The next time you see someone bitching about it, remind them what Stan himself said just a few years ago: 

“Those stories have room for everyone, regardless of their race, gender, religion, or color of their skin. The only things we don't have room for are hatred, intolerance, and bigotry.”

[who-is-page]

Thinking about what I'm gonna do for next year's OtherCon on this fine Tuesday morning ...

I really liked my panel this year and would love to do another one, but the amount of work that went into just that simple 45 minute presentation was seriously no joke. I'm also a little amused because it felt like more fights broke out in the chat section of my panel than in any of the other lectures, but I'm hoping that's not reflective of the way I was speaking about my topic and instead is just an inevitable result of talking about something as sensitive and loaded as religion, racism, and societally-ingrained bigotry. (I expected there to be some minor disagreements, but I didn't expect the atheists vs. the non-atheists debates, or the arguments over whether white people are allowed to talk about issues of racism they've noticed, or all the comments on secularism and the American Civil Religion, and...just, woof. There was So Much.)

I don't think I can handle being an artist and a panelist again. I felt like I neglected what I wanted to do with my art channel because I just had no time to divert to it while preparing my lecture. Next year, it's gonna have to be one or the other.

I'm currently playing with the idea of doing a panel on personal mythological narratives and alterhumanity, and/or a panel on the Cartesian views you can find in the therianthrope and otherkin community. Or a panel dissecting the results of the Body Modification and Decoration Survey from this year (which I'm currently working on a formal write-uo for!). Or a panel on terminological shift, and how we've seen certain words change over the years (and certain words not). But that last one is more Chi's wheelhouse than my own.

I think the first two appeal to me the most, especially since I have an in-the-works paper on the Cartesian perspective and my folcinteric identity means I have a huuuuge soft spot for personal mythology. I'm not sure how interesting these topics would be for other alterhumans/nonhumans, though.

There's still plenty of time before I have to decide anything, but I'm for sure mulling stuff over.

[will-o-the-witch]

Heyo! Obviously feel free to ignore this but I saw your post on antisemitism&witchcraft. I'm a germanic pagan but not in the shit neo-fascist, antisemetic sense. However naturally because those people are so prominent in this corner and use our symbols/beliefs we can't just refuse to take responsibility by saying "well that's not me". From your perspective, how can we act and be proactive to ensure that our presence online does not make Jewish people feel unsafe due to the possible connotations?

Hey there! This is a very good question. I’m actually working on a lecture currently all about antisemitism in witchy/pagan spaces and how to make them more inclusive. So I’m going to pull from my notes from that! 

Treat antisemitism as its own beast. A lot of people try to lump it in as a subcategory of racism, xenophobia, or religious discrimination, but any one of those labels doesn’t really cover everything antisemitism can be. A lot of people within the pagan community to a great job about speaking up against racism and other forms of bigotry, so explicitly saying “we don’t support antisemitism” can mean a lot when we can’t infer it. 

Don’t just condemn hate, but show clear support. Pretty self explanatory! Especially in today’s climate we’re not always sure we’re welcome! Plenty of anti-nazi folks still don’t like Jews (or at least don’t seem to care about them.) Anything to make it clear you are a safe space is a good thing. :)

Be mindful of your language. A lot of people talk about the troubles with “monotheism,” or “Abrahamic religions,” or worst, “Judeo-Christian beliefs” when actually they just mean Evangelical Christianity. So make sure you’re not talking smack about Jewish people (and other groups) about a trait their religion doesn’t even have. Even better, let Jewish people speak about their own path, beliefs, and culture. Ask genuine, good-faith questions if you have them*. Engage with us. 

Be an ally.  A lot of us are really tired from having to deal with the same bs over and over again. Support us and call out antisemitism when you see it! Even if there are no Jews around to witness you being an ally. Educate people and direct them towards Jewish voices on why something is harmful. This might mean you have to eduate yourself on what antisemitism looks like when it isn’t the obvious nazi nonsense. 

*Note on questions: Most Jewish folks I know are happy to answer genuine questions, but don’t demand emotional labor from people if they’re not in the mood. Also, asking about our opinions on Israeli politics JUST because we’re Jewish is a no-no. 

[dontcare77ghj]

Sandwiched

 Steve x reader x Peggy

Note: in this fic Peggy was given the same serum as Steve, the two were involved before they were both frozen in the same plane crash. Also, mentions of homophobia and racism (Fuck those people), just a few mentions of some assholes.

Masterlist     Sleep Series Masterlist     Halloween/Supernatural Masterlist

Dating two people from the 1940’s wasn’t something everyone in 2019 could say. Steve and Peggy were everything you could want in a relationship though. They had gorgeous souls, they loved humanity and they cared far too much. They were your match in every way.

When they woke up in this decade Fury had asked you to help them adjust into their new lives. It was almost inevitable when you fell for the two of them. The shock of the century was when they admitted they fell for you.

You easily fit into the relationship, Steve and Peggy often said it was because they were subconsciously waiting for you, and you couldn’t be happier. The three of you shared many traits but the one the everyone noticed was how you wanted to help. Now of course you couldn’t save everyone and there were people in this world who made it their goal to hurt those around them, but you all still tried. Though sometimes when all else failed the three of you comforted each other.

Out of the three of you Steve took things the most to heart. He liked saving people, he like defending the little guy and stopping the bully, you and Peggy knew he always gave his all but sometimes it just wasn’t enough. It doesn’t matter if you put your heart, soul and body into something, sometimes things just happen, and you can’t control it.

Steve had been out of the country for a few months now. After finding Bucky and finding out what they did to him all these years, Steve snapped. He wanted revenge for his friend, he wanted to make sure that HYDRA never hurt anyone else ever again.

In his quest to stop HYDRA, HYDRA began to retaliate. They began more experiments, attempted decimate towns and tried to ruin the lives of anyone they could. For the first time in months, Steve was coming home for a while.

A recent mission had gone wrong. Terribly wrong. Innocent lives had been lost and he had been fruitless in his attempts to save them. Fury seeing Steve’s rapidly deteriorating mental state, especially after the last mission, had sent him home.

The fact he reportedly put up no argument, really alerted you and Peggy as to what kind of condition your boyfriend was in.

Currently, you and Peggy were waiting, anxiously, in the hanger for Steve’s jet to land.

“Stop pacing.” Peggy said in her strong accent. “You’re making me feel anxious.” She complained, crossing her arms.

“I can’t help it.” You told her, turning sharply to face the brunette. “You heard him on the phone last night.”

“Yes, he sounded absolutely dreadful.” She pointed out, reaching her hand towards you to pull you into her. “But we are going to fix that.”

“We don’t even the extent of the state he’s in. What if we can’t help him?” You asked, biting your lower lip in worry. Peggy leaned down and gently pressed her lips to your making you stop biting your own to kiss the woman back.

“We will work it out. Together. Like we always do.” Peggy assured as you pulled away. Before either of you could say another word, the hanger creaked open and the loud sound of a quinjet arriving reached the pair of your ears.

The two of you watched as Steve’s team left the jet first, all of them appearing tired and a few maybe even injured, until Steve finally appeared. He was clearly exhausted, both mentally and physically, his face looked gaunt, his entire body was hunched over and he appeared ready to drop at any minute.

You and Peggy rushed over to the man and each wrapped an arm around his waist, attempting to support him. Though Peggy was probably doing more of the work with her super soldier strength, you still attempted to help the exhausted blonde.

Steve didn’t say anything as you helped him into the bedroom. The three of you sat on the bed with Steve in between you and Peggy. It was after a few minutes of silences, that Steve finally spoke.

“I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t help anyone.” He muttered, not looking away from the ceiling. He’d been staring blankly at it since you brought him up. “All I wanted to do was to help.”

“We know, Stevie.” Peggy murmured, placing a kiss onto his shoulder. “But there wasn’t anything you could do.”

“You can’t control these things, Stevie.” You told him, shifting to look up at him. “You went out there with honorable intentions, but these people aren’t honorable people.”

“They are pure evil.” Peggy added. Steve looked down between the two of you and nodded his head minorly.

“I just wanted to help.” He repeated, shifting so he was laying down rather than sitting. Steve did not release his grip on the two of you, so you were forced to follow his actions. He held you tightly to his chest as you both laid with him.

You and Peggy would switch off on saying soothing things to the brooding man and drawing soothing shapes on his chest, until he fell asleep with the two of you crushed to his chest.

“He’s still going to be blaming himself in the morning.” You whispered long after Steve had fallen asleep.

“I know.” Peggy said, reaching across his large chest to grab your hand. “But we will ensure he does not feel like this for long.” She added, giving your hand a comforting squeeze.

“I love you, Peg.” You said, kissing her hand before settling down on Steve’s chest. She leaned over and kissed your forehead gently and then Steve’s chest.

“I love you too, Y/N.” The two of you fell asleep with Steve’s arms tightly wrapped around your waists and yours around his shoulders. A comforting position.

Peggy took a lot to heart. She was passionate, she made changes and she did things. She liked to change things, make people see where they could fix things and make their own life changes.

Back in the 40’s there were a lot of bigoted people. People who expected her to act like other ladies of the decade. Didn’t appreciate how she took charge. Didn’t think she could fight or should for that matter. The fact she was bisexual was not something to brag about in her day either.

When she woke up 70 years later with Steve by her side, she thought things would’ve changed. Women were involved in the military and S.H.E.I.L.D, they took charge and sexuality was often an open thing. She and Steve were told they’d won the war, but no-one told them they were still fighting a war.

Bigotry had not died with the turn of the century. There were still plenty of people who thought women were weak, the LGBT+ community was wrong, and that people of different ethnicities were bad people.

Peggy actively spoke out against those people and would give long opinionated lectures to them and the moronic masses surrounding them. Unfortunately for Peggy, these people were so locked in their one-track thoughts they couldn’t see how they were wrong, and they wouldn’t believe that they could be wrong for once in their miserable lives.

Peggy had volunteered to speak at an LGBT+ event. She had a whole speech planed about being who you are, that it shouldn’t matter to anyone what your sexual preference or gender was and that you should always feel safe in whatever type of relationship you were in.

One narrow minded, foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach who had to interrupt her before she’d even really started. Of course, Peggy had told him where to go and where he was wrong, but she was still fuming at his attempt to belittle her and the people she was speaking to.

She had come home practically breathing fire, vile words about the heinous man falling out of her mouth as easily as she breathed.

“And then he had the nerve to say I was greedy and selfish for being bisexual and for being polyamorous.” She ranted, pacing the length of the room. You and Steve sat on the bed watching the woman pace furiously. “Who the bloody hell does he think he is?”

“He’s no-one.” You assured, standing up and grabbing her by the shoulders to stop her. “He’s just another nameless, faceless, asshole who thinks things no-one cares about.”

“But that’s the thing, N/N, he’s not faceless. Not this time. I saw him, I had to look at him as he shouted these vile things to not just me but those kids there.” She sighed, placing her hands on yours.

“And they were all able to see what a coward that man was.” Steve said, moving over to stand behind her. The two of you wrapped your arms around Peggy who went limp at the comforting touch the two of you gave her.

“The man is scum, Peg.” You murmured into her ear as you played with the ends of her hair. “People will come to realize how wrong he is one day.”

“But you were so strong today.” Steve added, kissing the top of her head. “You showed him what was what and all those kids saw how strong you are.”

Peggy didn’t say anything. She just relaxed further into the tight grip you held her in. Steve maneuvered the two of you over to the bed and laid the three of you onto the soft sheets.

Peggy lay sandwiched in yours and Steve’s arms and let out a few shuddering breathes as she attempted to quell her anger. You and Steve ran your fingers through her hair, played with her fingers and just let her know you where there for the woman.

“I love you.” Peggy murmured after several minutes. “Thank you.” She whispered, closing her eyes and letting out a deep breath.

“Love you too, Peg.” You said, kissing her cheek. “Love you, Stevie.” You added, taking his hand in yours.

“I love both my best girls.” Steve told you, squeezing your hand and throwing his arm across the two of your waists. Within seconds Peggy was fast asleep, held in Steve’s and your warm embrace.

Out of the three of you, you opened your heart the most. Steve and Peggy could see this as a positive thing at times, after all, you’d opened your heart to the two of them and easily accepted them into your life. Though, there was a downside to wearing your heart on your sleeve.

Your parents hadn’t said anything when you came out as bisexual. They did stir a little when you declared S.H.E.I.L.D. had hired you. Their reaction to you joining The Avengers initiative was mostly the same. They had caused a bit of a fuss when you’d announced you were in a polyamorous relationship, but when they found out you were in a poly relationship with Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter.

“They are dangerous, Y/N. We kept quiet when you said you were joining The Avengers, but this is ridiculous.” Your mother sighed, narrowing her eyes at you.

“I recall you saying I was going to get killed but sure, let’s say you kept your mouths shut.” You said, rolling your eyes at the two in front of you.

“Y/N L/N, this is not a joking matter.” Your father scolded. “You are getting yourself involved with some dangerous people. People who are older than us for God’s sake.”

“Physically they are my age. I know you can’t see past the numbers but they are the right people for me. Is it the age that makes you bulk or the fact involved with a man and a woman?” You asked, crossing your arms over your chest.

“Maybe it’s both.” You mother said, standing from the table you were all sat at. “Y/N you are going down a dangerous path. You are constantly risking your life and your ‘love life’, if you can even call it that, is perverted.” 

“We would have been fine if you had just stuck to being bisexual, but this is too much. You are in a polyamorous relationship with Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter, with your lifestyle you are going to die an early death and when you do, we believe you will be going to hell.” Your father added, standing next your mother and taking her hand.

“We can help you darling.” Your mother said, giving you a sickly sweet smile. “Leave that team and end your perverted relationship and we can help you.”

“No.” You exclaimed, jumping from the table. “Fuck that. I will not be given an ultimatum, and not by the two of you. I love my job, I save the world for Thor’ s sake, I love my friendships and most of all I love Steve and Peggy. I will not leave any of them.” You snapped, slamming your hands on the table and glaring at them.

“Then neither of us want to see or contact you again.” Your father said, pulling your mother into his side. “Get out of our house and never darken our doorstep again. You are not our daughter.”

“Good.” You snarled and stormed out of the house. You jumped into your car and drove furiously back to the base. Your anger prevented you from bursting into tears, but it hurt that they had treated you like that.

Once you got back to the compound you moved as quickly as you could back to your room without drawing attention to yourself. Making it to the floor you shared with Steve and Peggy, the dam finally broke.

You sat on the couch and began to sob. You couldn’t breath. You couldn’t think. All you could hear was the sob of your own sobs and your parents echoing words.

Arms wrapping around your shoulders made you jump in surprise and you snapped your eyes to see your brunette girlfriend looking at you worriedly.

“Shh darling, it’s alright. You’re okay.” She said, pulling you in closer. 

“They don’t want me.” You cried, burying your face in her shoulder. “They told me I was disgusting and they never want to see me again.”

“Your parents?” She asked, running her fingers through your hair. You nodded tried to stop the tears streaming down your face. “They don’t deserve you, darling.”

“No, they don’t.” Steve said, sitting behind you and pulling you and Peggy onto his lap. “It’s their loss, doll.”

Steve and Peggy held you tightly, reassuring you of their own love for you. After several minutes of sobbing, your tears dried up and your breathing began to become rhythmic. 

“I love you. I love the two of you.” You said, sleepily leaning up to kiss Steve’s jaw and Peggy’s cheek. Laying your head on Peggy’s shoulder you began to fall asleep. A loving position.

With the three of you, comfort involved soothing words, gentle touches and laying sandwiched between the other two. You showed your comfort in physical ways and it was what worked for the three of you.

Taglist;

@piper-koko-barnes-rogers     @skeletoresinthebasement      @hopingforbarnes  

Show your support. Give it a like. Leave a comment. Share with your friends and reblog. Inbox/Message me comments, ideas, pairings or if you would like to be added to the taglist.

Coming soon;

Natasha x reader x Bucky

Steve x reader x Bucky

Bucky x reader x Sam

Steve x reader x Natasha

Natasha x reader x Sam

Steve x reader x Sam x Bucky

Steve x reader x Sam

Natasha x reader x Bucky x Clint

[rwby-redux]

Deconstruction

Worldbuilding: History

In hindsight, I probably should have called this topic political sciences, or social studies, or the humanities. Literally any of those would’ve been more accurate than simply calling it history. Sort of shot myself in the foot with that one. Oh, well. I guess we’ll just have to make do.

History (as it’s defined by the Redux) is an umbrella term for human geography, economics, legal systems, global affairs, anthropology, civil rights, technology, and resources. Its primary concern is analyzing how all of these studies shaped the actions of people in the past, and the ripple effects that carried those societies into the present. Being an interdisciplinary topic, it’s nearly impossible to talk about any of these studies in isolation without accidentally overlooking crucial details. Anyone who’s ever opened a history textbook knows that with that complexity comes controversy, and RWBY isn’t exempt from that trend. As we’re told by Salem in the show’s debut, modern-day Remnant was forged by that forgotten past, by the omission of the gods and monsters that set things in motion.

It’s often said that history is written by the victors. And if history is indeed a book, then you’ll quickly find that RWBY’s has pages missing.

Let’s start by laying our cards on the table and talking about what facts we do have. RWBY’s canon can be roughly divided into three vague time periods: the era of Humanity v1.0, prior to the gods’ exodus; the era where Salem and Ozma’s first host briefly ruled together, several million years after Humanity v2.0 evolved; and the era characterized by the aftermath of the Great War, about several thousand years after the collapse of Salem’s and Ozma’s apotheotic kingdom. Anything in-between is obfuscated by the show, either accidentally (due to a lack of worldbuilding) or intentionally (as an attempt to make the series “mysterious”).

My first instinct is to start calling bullshit left and right. There is no justification for spoon-feeding your audience crucial lore through a spin-off series, and then waving your hand and saying that the show doesn’t have the time for worldbuilding. If I had to start pointing fingers, I’d lay the blame on the writers for prioritizing animating bloated fight scenes that ate up the episodes’ already-stunted runtime. I say this knowing that some people will balk at the accusation, because there exists a demographic of viewers that does prefer watching the fight sequences with their brains turned off. And I’m not above that. (I could spend an hour raving about the choreography of the fight between Cinder and Neo, or about the coordination of the Ace Operatives in their takedown of the Cryo Gigas. Believe me, I’m not knocking the absurd enjoyment of spectacle fighting.)

My problem is that RWBY’s premise is so deeply-entrenched in rule of cool that it left its worldbuilding malnourished by comparison.

But fine. Let’s, for the moment, give RWBY the benefit of the doubt. What in-world reasons would the series have for its history being believably underdeveloped? (And no, we’re not talking about the erasure of the Maidens and magic. We know that information was deliberately expunged from the annals of history. We’re focusing on the parts of Remnant’s history that deal with ancient cultures, defunct countries, and influential past events.)

The immediate solution that comes to mind is the Creatures of Grimm. As we’re told by numerous sources, the Grimm not only prioritize attacking humans and Faunus, but they discriminately destroy any of their creations. [1]

“With every alternative form of communication that was proposed, there seemed to be the perfect obstacle. The destructive nature of the creatures of Grimm severely limited the reliability of ground-based technologies.” | Source: World of Remnant, Volume 3, Episode 3: “Cross Continental Transmit System.”

This leads to the conclusion that Remnant’s past was physically destroyed, and any traces of it were removed by the Grimm. This would include archeological records—artwork, architecture, books, clothing, jewelry, burial sites, tools, ecofacts, and so on.

The issue I have with this explanation is that it’s not consistent. Throughout the show we see ample evidence of immediate-past and distant-past societies. The remains of Mountain Glenn and Oniyuri still stand, despite the high presence of Grimm at the former (and the presumed presence of Grimm at the latter). Brunswick Farms is relatively intact and provisioned with food and fuel, even though the Apathy are quite literally hanging out under the floorboards. The Emerald Forest even has the derelict ruins of an ancient temple that Ozpin incorporated into the Beacon initiation.

Petroglyphs (parietal stone-carving artwork) of early hominids fighting a Death Stalker. | Source: Volume 1, Episode 7: “The Emerald Forest - Part 2.”

If the Grimm are RWBY’s get-out-of-jail-free card, then they’re certainly not being used to their full effect. The examples I provided tell us in no uncertain terms that Remnant does have an accessible history in the form of archeological artifacts. For fuck’s sake, Oobleck is literally an anthropologist. He teaches history classes at Beacon Academy and has a PhD on the subject.

Similarly, if we assume the format of World of Remnant (a classroom lecture given by Qrow) to be applicable in-world, then that means the history of the last few centuries pertaining to the kingdoms is common knowledge. [2] The existence of this information tells us that Remnant has a flourishing history, and yet we see little of it represented in the show.

I chalk up the lack of history to a nasty habit of the writers. You see, CRWBY has this infuriating tendency to treat RWBY like “it’s like our world but…” It’s like our world but with magic; it’s like our world but with Dust; it’s like our world but with bloodthirsty monsters. You get the idea. As I said back in the Worldbuilding: Overview, if you make your fictional world a one-to-one analog of your own, you end up either ignoring, underdeveloping, or erasing the history exclusive to that setting. And RWBY is largely bereft of any historical identity that it could call its own. Here, let me pitch a few examples of what I’m talking about:

If slavery was only outlawed less than eighty years ago, why don’t we see Mistral creating legal loopholes to retain the system, like through indentured servitude or penal labor? An empire built on human rights violations doesn’t lose that disregard overnight. While we see plenty of poverty-stricken neighborhoods in Mistral, [3] and we’re told about its infamous criminal underworld, [4] these aspects of Mistrali culture seem rather disconnected from the recent history of the country, and ultimately have no impact on the main characters or the plot.

The Faunus Rights Revolution was a three-year conflict that (presumably) took place across all four kingdoms, and involved countermanding the reparations made to the Faunus after the Great War. From a chronological perspective, this was extremely recent. I know Rooster Teeth has a track record of poorly handling systemic racism. Usually this manifests in characters doing tokenly racist things, like using slurs or refusing to serve Faunus customers. But here’s the thing: a discrimination-based conflict this recent should have more bearing on current events. We should see examples of things like police profiling, higher incarceration rates, a lack of representation in media, social pressure to conceal Faunus traits or assimilate into human culture, fetishization, inadequate healthcare, forced sterilization, a lack of clothing retailers which stock apparel that accommodates Faunus traits, and so on. To put it bluntly: Faunus are an underprivileged minority, and immediate history should be influencing how that plays out in the show.

To reiterate: the Great War was eighty years ago. Meaning that there are likely still people alive that fought during it. How have their attitudes and beliefs shaped the world in the last few decades? Did they pass on any lingering hostilities or biases to their family members or community? What about in the present-day? Do people from Vale that migrate to Mistral ever deal with bigotry? Do people in Atlas harbor any lingering ideologies from that time? Is authentic pre-war artwork from Mantle considered priceless because most artwork was destroyed during Mantle’s suppression of creative expression? Did immigrants from the other kingdoms help rebuild Atlas’ cultural identity by supplying it with the values that they brought with them? What about shifts in culture? Did kingdoms have to ration resources like sugar or cream? Did this result in cultural paradigms, where nowadays drinking black coffee is more prevalent as a result of adapting to scarcity?

Because Vacuo’s natural resources were heavily depleted by invading countries decades before the Great War, did this have a major bearing on technology? Does modern Vacuo have wind farms or solar arrays to compensate for a lack of Dust? How does this affect their relationship with other kingdoms? Mistral loves to pride itself on its respect for nature. [5] Does this attitude ever anger Vacuites from the perspective of, “Yeah, I can really see how much you ‘respect’ nature. You respected it so much that you invaded our country and destroyed our oases.”

As you can see, history can’t be idly ignored. It has long-lasting impacts on the people who lived through it, and it continues to inform the attitudes, beliefs, and actions of people to come. What we get instead are traditions that only exist within the relevance of the immediate past, like the color-naming trend that emerged in response to artistic censorship. Anything which predates it, though? Remnant might as well have sprung into existence a hundred years ago with how little its history exists beyond that context.

It’s frustrating and disheartening. We know precious little about Remnant because its history either exists separately from the story (and is delivered supplementarily through transmedia worldbuilding), or it wasn’t developed in the first place. This doesn’t even take into consideration how much the writers deliberately withhold for the sake of artificially creating suspense. (A suspense, I might add, that frequently lacks payoff, either because it gets forgotten by the writers, or the characters never bother to seek out knowledge from available sources, like Ozma. Seriously, why do these kids never ask any fucking questions? They did this throughout all of Volume 5—Ruby in particular, who I badly wanted to strangle when she said “I have no more questions” back in V5:E10: “True Colors.”)

RWBY didn’t even bother to give us a calendar era, like the BCE/CE one used today. Hell, if the writers wanted to buck the system, they could’ve gone with something similar to Steven Universe or The Elder Scrolls, where eras are divided by significant historical events.

Sorry. I swear, I’m done dredging up examples. I’ve already made my point. As we talk about the other topics in their respective posts, we’ll be able to analyze these problems in greater detail.

Trust me. We’ve only just scratched the surface.

-

[1] Volume 1, Episode 1: “Ruby Rose.” Salem: “An inevitable darkness—creatures of destruction—the creatures of Grimm—set their sights on man and all of his creations.”

[2] World of Remnant, Volume 2, Episode 2: “Kingdoms.” Salem: “In the countless years that humanity has roamed the planet, civilizations have grown and fallen. But four have withstood the test of time: Atlas, Mistral, Vacuo, Vale.”

[3] Volume 5, Episode 6: “Known by Its Song.”

[4] Volume 5, Episode 1: “Welcome to Haven.”

[5] World of Remnant, Volume 4, Episode 2: “Mistral.” Qrow: “There's one common thread that links all these people together, though, and that's their respect for nature. Particularly the sea and the sky.”

[blog-sliverofjade]

Hearth Fires 12: Chiaroscuro

Pairing: Remi Denier x OFC

Summary:  Lorel Maddox just wants to live as a human, run her bakery in peace, and forget. Unfortunately, the alpha of the local leopard pack has very different ideas.

Remi Denier doesn’t know what to make of the female Changeling who wants nothing to do with him or the RainFire pack. He does know that he has a driving need to protect her. Even if it’s from herself.

While they’re embroiled in a battle of wills, there’s a war brewing on the horizon. The outside threat could not only destroy everything they hold dear, but tear apart the fragile new bonds of the Trinity Accord, plunging the world into bloodshed to rival the Territorial Wars of centuries past.

Word count: 2138

Content warning:  Content warning for references to child abuse and overtly racist cops.  Bear in mind that it was already written into the plot before 2020 happened.

Hearth Fires Masterlist

Beta read by the brilliant pandabearer

“I am disheartened by this reprehensible act against two of our citizens.  We do not condone hatred, bigotry, racism, or intolerance of any kind here.  I hope this brings us together as a community.”

         -Narinder Rao, Bryson City Mayor

         The sheriff was trying to play dominance games with an alpha.  He left Remi cooling his heels in the waiting area for ten minutes despite the fact he’d arrived promptly for their scheduled meeting.  Shaw had tried to avoid him outright, but Remi pulled the media card and he relented immediately; he’d won his position by a scant margin and didn’t have the political clout to withstand a media frenzy.  If he still refused to play ball after this, well, Remi still had a few more cards up his sleeve.

         Several deputies seemed to have important business in the front office while he waited.  While he wasn’t in the mood to play, RainFire needed to cultivate as much rapport with Enforcement as possible.  So he donned his easy-going demeanour like the well-worn armour that it was and flirted and charmed while not promising anything.

         “Mr. Denier,” Shaw called, noticeably irritated he had to come in person since his receptionist was currently slipping his phone number into Remi’s hand.  He’d scented the other man before he spoke, of course, but there was no need to be rude to the young psy in front of him who was obviously inexperienced in flirting.

         “À plus tard, cher,” he winked, tucking the slip of paper into a pocket to dispose of later.  Red flagged the younger man’s cheeks and he ducked past his boss to make his way back to his desk.

         The sheriff’s polite smile was strained as Remi sauntered over to him; he made sure to keep the leopard in his line of sight as they walked back to his office in silence.  Stale coffee and the maelstrom of dozens of people assaulted his senses.

         “I always wondered, what made you decide to come here?” Shaw asked, southern accent thick, as Remi settled in one of the two chairs facing his desk.  He stifled the urge to bare his teeth in annoyance at the small talk when all the animal wanted to do was tear out the throat of its enemy.  It was too uncivilized to bother with social niceties, especially when it saw the man as a threat to be eliminated

         “It was what was available for a new pack,” he shrugged, seeing no need for prevarication.  The information was out there for anyone who cared enough to look, and he had a feeling the Sheriff had done his homework.  There was more to the process, of course, but that was the bare bones of it.

         “Doesn’t seem right that the good folk of this county don’t get a say in a pack of predators moving in,” Shaw feigned bewilderment and shook his head, light glinting off a pate shaved to hide the fact he was mostly bald.  “It would’ve been better for everyone if we’d all stayed in our own lanes.  Nothing good ever came of pandering to the other races.”

         “Talk to your Trinity representative about that,” he said flatly.  “Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, where are you at in the investigation into the assault that occurred outside Acapella two nights ago?”

         “Mr. Denier-”

         “Alpha,” he corrected.  “My proper title is ‘alpha’.”

         “Alpha Denier, it’s still the early stages.”  In a false display of sympathy, Shaw leaned forward to loosely weave his thick fingers together on top of the desk.  “We have no fingerprints, no DNA, no witnesses, and no suspects.  You must understand that we have limited resources and an inquest would require much of that with very little chance of success.”  Shaw spread his hands as if in remorse.

         “DNA evidence was taken at the hospital.”  What he didn’t say was that the pack had taken their own samples, while theirs wasn’t admissible in court, there was still a chance that it would help identify the assailants for some extra-judicial justice.

         “The hospital didn’t have a protocol for preserving evidence, no need for it before you people moved here.  The samples weren’t logged properly and got destroyed.  A damn shame, but I’ve been assured they’re remedying the situation.”  It didn’t take the nose of a changeling to tell that Shaw was lying, he didn’t bother to hide his smugness at stonewalling Remi.

         “RainFire offers its assistance in the investigation.”

         “You don’t have the authority.”  The flat rejection was no less than what Remi had expected.

         “One of the survivors is changeling, therefore changeling laws apply should RainFire choose to exercise our rights.”  What went unsaid was that changeling justice was swift, brutal, and brooked no interference.

         “Forgive me if I doubt you’n’s impartiality.”  The smirk that had been dancing in the human’s eyes died, leaving them flint hard.

         “Local Enforcement leadership has already proven its own lack in that area.”

         A vein in the officer’s forehead throbbed as his blood pressure and heart rate increased.  The cat wondered how hot the blood would be, how far it would gush if it sank its teeth into the human’s carotid arteries.  The temptation to allow the leopard to surface was callow, yet strong, and completely unnecessary.  Fear filled the office, hovering beneath the thick cologne Shaw wore.  He wondered if the sheriff’s sense of smell was dulled or if he thought the cloying concoction would hide his reactions from Remi.  It might have worked against a changeling who hadn’t grown up surrounded by the stink of constant fear, but the acrid bite was etched too indelibly in his memory.

         “It’s becoming increasingly clear that local Enforcement’s reluctant to protect the changeling community but is more than willing to police it.  RainFire will respond to any attack on changelings or humans with changeling affiliations within the area we have claimed.”  Remi let the leopard rise in his eyes, not enough to change his pupils, just enough to remind Shaw he was right to be afraid.

         “I won’t tolerate a witch hunt.”  The sheriff gave his best imitation of a snarl.

         “Nor will we.”  The leopard’s growl was genuine.

         Whenever Lorel found herself in need of parental advice, she inevitably called her aunt.  Maternal, of course, since she only knew her father’s name and that of his now-defunct pack.  Even though her grandparents raised her, calling them was out of the question, unless she felt like a lecture and shame; in her experience, there was no such thing as unconditional love.  No, what she needed was a calm perspective from someone who wanted the best for her.

         Pacing the living room while the call went through, she rubbed her palms up and down her arms.  There was a strange buzzing under her skin.  All the feelings and sensations bouncing around in her head drove out what she intended to say by the time her aunt Nora answered.  What came out instead was peevish.

         “Did you know that RainFire intended to expand their territory?”

         “Sorry… you… breaking… up.”  Her aunt’s words came haltingly even though there was no interruption in the video itself.  Lorel could still make out every coil of hair that was so like her own, albeit auburn compared to her copper, glowing in the Australian sunlight.  The vague, pastel memories of her mother showed in the older woman like ghosts.  Her childhood impressions of her mom were of someone a little less colourful, gentler, but with the same mass of curls.  The familiar sight seemed to chase back the gloom of early evening filling the corners of her own living room.

         “Static hasn’t been an issue for nearly fifty years.”  Not since the psy had invested in international telecommunications infrastructure.

         “Yes, I did know, and I knew you wouldn’t have taken over the bakery if I told you.  You deserve to-” she sighed and held up her hands, apparently at a loss for words.  “To be whole.”

         “I’m fine,” snapped Lorel.  “What I don’t need is a pack of leopards threatening to kill me for the crime of living where they want to stake a claim.”

         “What you need is something you’ve never been given,” she replied evenly.  “And I’m partly to blame for that.  I should have done more.”  At that, Lorel swallowed the acerbic words on her tongue.

         “We’ve been over this: you’re barely fifteen years older than I am and were in college halfway around the world,” she reminded her aunt with as much gentleness as she could summon.  “Speaking of which, how are your classes going?”

         “Harder than I remember, but I’m enjoying it so far.  Nice attempt at changing the subject, though.”  She wagged a finger at her niece, who pretended to be abashed.  “Give them a chance, Lolo.  If it’s not what you need, my cousin’s still willing to buy you out, but at least you’ll know.”  Unable to look into a face filled with such tender love and concern, Lorel hugged herself and looked down at her feet.

         “Besides, some of those cats are drop-dead gorgeous.”

         “Aunt Nora!” she snapped her head up to gape at the other woman.

         “I’m old, not dead!”  Laughter lit up her entire being, wrapping around Lorel like a warm hug, and she couldn’t help but smile along with her even as she shook her head in fond exasperation.  While she was on the edge of forty, her aunt could be- and had been- mistaken for her sister, and certainly young enough to be studying for a second career as a marine biologist.

         “I love you, Lolo, and I know you wouldn’t have taken this risk on your own.”

         “Yeah, who wouldn’t want to risk death threats?”  Lorel unfolded one arm to wave her hand in a flippantly sarcastic gesture.

         “You have choices: give the leopards a chance or sell to Marselo.”  Her harsh, no-nonsense tone had Lorel twisting her face into a moue of distaste.  Sometimes she wondered how Nora and Klaudia Maddox could possibly be related, but then, when least expected, her aunt revealed a spine of pure steel and the family resemblance was undeniable.

         “You didn’t even want SweetCheeks, something about moving to Hicksville, Nowhere?  I had to guilt you into it.”  The older woman’s insistence had seemed strange at the time but made sense now that Lorel knew what her ulterior motives were.

         “Yeah, well, I like it so far,” she admitted begrudgingly, burrowing her bare toes into the Aegean blue area rug.  “You built up a good business.”

         “Damn straight,” Nora sniffed with obvious pride.  “So, you better take good care of it, ya hear?”

         “Yeah, yeah, love you, too.”  She rolled her eyes and thrust both hands into her hair.  “They’re dangerous, No-No.”

         “You’ve survived things that would break other people.  I know you were taught to fear them,” a shadow of remorse crossed her face, “but my money’s on you.”

         “What if I can’t?”  The question was a whisper because she couldn’t speak past the knot in her throat.

         “What if you can?  Imagine what you’d be capable of.”  The strength of her aunt’s love and confidence in her was still a kick to the heart and she’d always regret not confiding in the other woman when she was younger.  Nora had fluttered like a vibrant butterfly at the edges of her youth; shame and a twisted sense of protection had kept Lorel from reaching out to her sooner, she didn't want her spirited aunt to put her life on hold for Lorel's sake.  What support Nora could provide, no matter where she was in the world, had gotten her through some of her toughest years.  As an adult, she soaked in as much of Nora's love as she could, and tried to return it as best she knew how.  “I have to go, I have a date with some algae.  Let me know what you decide.”

         “I will.  I love you, No-No.”  She kissed two fingers and pressed them to the comm screen.

         “Love you, too, Lolo.”  Her aunt mirrored the gesture on her end before they both hung up.

         Twilight seemed to rush back into the room once the screen went blank; for once, she didn’t bother turning on a light and allowed the shadows to envelop her.  It wasn’t fully dark to her eyes, never had been, yet she still kept nightlights around the house; a childish habit Nora had never ridiculed her for, seeming to understand without words why an adult changeling would fear the night.

         “We are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness.”  Her grandfather’s voice echoed in her head, accompanied by the remembered pain of sudden light on her sensitive eyes.  “Why are you sitting in the dark?  What are you trying to hide?”

         Maybe it was time to stop hiding.

[herefortheace]

Masterpost: People in “Ace Discourse” DO Hate Aces and Aros

And it’s despicable and scary and it needs to stop.

I’ve made most of this post before, but I’m creating a new one because 1) I didn’t expect how long it would get and failed to include a by now much needed “read more” at any point and 2) tumblr won’t let me update the old post anymore via reblogging.

So before I copy the old links and add new ones, a not so brief explanation of why this is necessary.

People, for some reason, after years of blatant evidence to the contrary still claim “ace discourse” has NOTHING to do with anyone hating aces and aros, that not even a single person involved (or anywhere) does. By blatant evidence for people here hating aces and aros, I mean everything from pathologizing our identities to comparing us all to violent misogynists and white supremacists to wishing harm and death on us. Yet the anti-ace/aro crowd will claim we’re just making it all up because we’re hysterical liars who “wanna be oppressed”. It’s a blatant and nasty silencing tactic, but sadly not ineffective because people fall for that shit.

Which is why I originally made this post and am now making it again.

A too influential bunch of people on this site have spun a wild narrative wherein aces and aros are this super privileged group of people who essentially can’t be harmed and whom it’s therefore funny to treat like shit. They also act, over and over, as though asexuality and aromanticsm are some sort of evil idoelogy rather than minority orientations.

A lot of us - most of us I see around - belong to various oppressed groups, but the anti-ace/aro crowd has worked hard to erase that, because it becomes very obvious very fast that it’s not funny to sexualize aces and aros or compare us to Trump or claim our orientations give us an “oppression fetish” when you keep in mind who exactly they are saying it to (I’ve spoken at length about the anti-ace/aro crowd’s efforts to erase aces and aros of color and how they make me furious as a WoC here, but you’ll find plenty proof among the links below). This is not just incredible bullshit, but harms especially the most marginalized of us.

As does the more general willingness of the anti-ace/aro crowd to throw misogyny, racism, ableism and all sorts of bigotry around as a weapon against us. A ton of the links here contain some seriously dehumanizing shit.

Whatever else you may believe, asexuality and aromanticism as identities do not confer any social privilege and do not make people impervious to or deserving of harm. And frankly I should not need to say this.

But apparently I do, and I also (after all this time still) need to prove we’re not just making it all up for attention or to trick people, so here we go. I’m mostly copying the old parts (1-8) of the list as-is because I don’t have time for anything else. Also, while my point definitely isn’t that every single person involved loathes aces and aros, this crap didn’t suddenly come into an already existing “ace discourse” (by that name) either - it’s a huge part of how it got started and was a deliberate move by many to make it gain traction.

This is by no means a complete list, but the shit the anti-ace/aro crowd on this site has pulled includes:

Comparing aces and aros to Trump  (and pretending this is funny)

Comparing aces to Pence 

Comparing aces to Ronald Reagan (and pretending this is funny)

Comparing aces to a literal slave owner

Making fun of aces not being accepted by their parents and of aces finding this upsetting (making it into a crytyping “joke”)

Making aces feel shitty/shaming them for telling their parents they’re ace because it’s supposedly “unnecessary”

Saying if we tell family about being ace, it’s no wonder if they send us to therapy

Doing their best to sexualize the orientations of aces, in so many cases. The link before these two is also connected to that. They treat our orientations like (graphic) details about “our sex lives”, frequently acting like if we want to talk about them ever we’re gross/creepy

This one is also “nice” re sexualizing aces (one of many examples of ppl also engaging in sex-shaming while they’re at it, saying only one’s partner should know anything about one’s “relationships with sex”. Except this person goes kinda even further)

More sexualization, when I say this freaks me out as a WoC, I’m told this white person gives no fucks and wants me to be miserable

Another person who says the identities of aces but also of aros need to stay between them and their Partners because they’re “TMI” and inherently sex-shaming somehow

Oh yeah did I mention, much the same with sexualizing aros and ppl frequently link our identities to misogyny and to using people while they’re at it

Making light and fun of ace WoC asking to not be sexualized because don’t we know aces have done Bad things and so we deserve it/don’t get to complain

One of many examples of white people who hate aces+aros talking over PoC and trying to erase us from our communities (+usually when we call that shit out they don’t care. This is actually one of the more cordial responses I’ve come across despite the lack of apology lol.

Another example of white ppl in the anti-ace/aro crowd talking over aces and aros of color here complete with that person condescendingly lecturing a PoC about racism

People like this saying outright they hate aces

Saying sex ed shouldn’t teach about asexuality

Outright stating they think being ace/aro gives people privilege (because supposedly aces+aros both benefit from conservatives pushing for abstinence)

Outright invalidating the identities of aces (who don’t have the attitude towards sex they think they should have)

Calling asexuals demons

Outright calling aces and aros a “plague” and saying aces/aros regardless of other identities all need to be kicked out of the LGBT+ community.

Erasing the identities of people who speak out against anti-ace/aro shit to declare them “straight” or “cishet” …or saying that treatment is what they get for being “traitors to their own community”

Ignoring the boundaries of aces/aros who have them blocked and don’t want to be vagued to make fun of them …

…or even to continue sexualizing them after they have made it very clear that shit freaks them out (cheerfully doing this to a WoC)

Someone saying asexuality does not exist and “encourages slut shaming”

Spamming the ace positivity tag with vile hate (ppl have talked a lot about how this harms and endangers especially mentally ill ppl)

“aces are embarassing“ in the positivity tag

Posting nsfw content in the ace positivity tag and being completely unapologetic, apparently using the reasoning that our identities are inherently nsfw anyway (see the “TMI discourse” aka people sexualizing our identities)

Calling aces and aros a “sexuality fandom” while pretending we’re a group full of people with every privilege imaginable, bored of being accepted by everyone and of having no Actual Problems in our lives. This kind of nasty erasure constantly goes on and is a big tactic in this mess tbh

Wanting aces to be “exterminated”. For good measure putting this in the ace positivity tag

This disgusting vile shit that I don’t even know how to sum up but it includes wishing death on someone

Talking about wanting aces/aros dead after somehow misunderstanding(?) a post that was very clearly not about asexuality or aromanticism

Graphically telling aces to die

Specifically telling ace kids to kill themselves

Did I mention that many people in this mess have wished death on aces and aros and that they often put it in positivity tags. Some of the most messed up shit I’ve seen is missing because I didn’t reblog/respond to it at the time or can’t find it right now

And I know anons don’t count as hard “proof” for anything but have the less graphic one of the death/rape threats I got  in my inbox for speaking out against anti-ace/aro shit (still kinda eerily detailed though. Not linking the other one because it is extremely graphic)

Part 2:

Comparing aces to a literal white supremacist (in the positivity tag)

Again someone invalidating the identities of aces who don’t have the attitude towards sex they think they should have

Sexualizing aros again, not caring about how it affects particularly aro PoC. And here two other ppl sexualizing and demonizing aros, like in posts further above claiming (non-ace) aros just use people for sex (said on positivity post).

Someone sexualizing aces again and engaging in sex-shaming at the same time, as usual with the claim that literally no one but a partner “needs” to know our orientations

Those Rachel Dolezal comparisons I mentioned made by non-black/white people who want to use antiblackness for what they call “ace discourse”? Yeah here is one white person doing it and here is another, even worse example where a white person goes “this is like if I pulled a Rachel D. and put on blackface and used the n-word…” (paraphrasing here). Here is the latter person utterly dismissing me being upset by their antiblackness (because black ppl’s pain only matters when it’s useful)

[For ppl who don’t know: Rachel Dolezal is a white woman who pretended to be black and built her career on it. White people sure as hell do not get to compare this shit to anything that is not antiblackness and use black people’s pain for their own purposes.]

A white person using antiblackness as a weapon against aces and aros in general (aka “ace tumblr”), acting smug regarding how supposedly we’re all so racist and “get triggered” by black people existing. (I am so tired of white ppl using racism as a cheap “gotcha” against aces and aros - groups which include PoC. And who then ignore or belittle PoC who call them out)

White person randomly informing WoC aces/aros can have white privilege

Again someone claiming ace privilege exists and here another person doing it adding to the post further above, claiming aces/aros have privilege for being ace/aro and that this is the case bc people who don’t have sex are privileged (wrong definition of asexuality… also of aromanticism??… and also no. No.)

What I mentioned about ppl telling us asexuality/aromanticism are not orientations but only ever modifiers? It’s happened a lot but here’s one example. And here’s someone outright saying aro aces don’t have an orientation but only modifiers.

Here’s the same person who said aro aces don’t have an orientation later turning around saying the orientation of aro aces is determined by how they behave and who they have sex with.

Another person putting nsfw shit in the ace positivity tag (link is to nsfw text)

And people try really hard to justify despising aces and aros by pointing to shitty people who share our identities/orientations. Honesty is secondary in this. Here you have someone taking a shitty post from an obvious nasty troll blog to say this is why ppl hate aces, and later when having the troll thing pointed out to them saying they already know. The post got over 3k notes.

“asexual shouldn’t even be a way people identify themselves”, with a second person in the thread agreeing

Part 3:

Someone saying they hope all aces “get checked out by a doctor” first (holy shit)

Saying asexuality is not a sexuality aka more invalidation like in posts further above

Someone calling aces a “turbo virgin club”, then declaring if an ace gets upset about it this shows their immense privilege

I’m 96% sure this is a troll and/or worse but here’s someone using absolute bullshit reasoning to claim asexuality is an inherently racist/antiblack identity (…on a black person’s post)

Speaking of racism, someone claiming vile crap and utter bullshit about aces including that we are all white

Once again a white person trying to use (extremely vile) antiblackness for so called “ace discourse”

Another incident of a blatant troll post getting nearly 3k notes because people wanted to use it to demonstrate how horrible aces/aros are, since we supposedly made up the fake slur “arobot”. Explanation in link, but basically no, “we” didn’t, it was an ancient pretty blatant troll post.

Again someone linking aromanticism to misogyny and to using people for sex

Someone in our positivity tags basically claiming aces and aros in relationships are selfish leeches who demand things but don’t give anything back. Talking as if we don’t deserve “time, effort, attention and love” and as though people in relationships with us are to be pitied

People spamming the ace positivity tag with nasty negativity and hate (once again)

Someone repeatedly wishing rape and like so often death on aces and aros (among other things) in our positivity tags. This person also put nsfw content there and spammed the tags

Again someone specifically wanting ace kids dead, talking in the positivity tag about hoping they get hit by a bus

After someone in this thread talks about the worry of being sexually assaulted for being ace, a person responds with the vilest victim-blaming, claiming shit like “it is easy to learn how to defend yourself“ and worse that I don’t want to put here. If you want details check the link

A number of screenshots of extremely vile posts, out of which two older ones weren’t listed here before: one is about wanting aces/aros to have “full blown panic attacks” and “cry themselves to sleep” over being marginalized/erased by society;

the other utterly disgustingly talks about wanting aces/aros to face torture and medical experimentation and death (the person brings in concentration camps)

This anon was also among the screenshots just now: extremely graphic torture and death threat I got from someone because they hate all us “ ~uwu~pure~smol~aceys~”. There’s wanting to peel the skin off my body as well as gun violence and sentiments that echo the post above

Since we’re already talking anons, somewhat graphic rape/death threat I got in my inbox, this time using the “dare I say meme” that is frequently employed to shit on aces and aros (still leaving out the most disgustingly graphic threat I’ve received bc I don’t want to link it)

Part 4:

“I would actually fucking slaughter aces if I could“

Listen this crap is terrifying and at this point I’m just tired. I could add the same sort of shit to this list over and over. Yet there’s still a huge crowd here denying any of this is happening, who’ll come to posts about ppl hating aces and aros to declare that no one does and we’re all just making it up or too clueless to understand what’s Really Being Said, because that’s how they like to paint aces and aros and anyone who supports us. It’s unbelievable and so so horrible and draining.

It needs to stop. I hate putting this negative crap on ppl’s dash but what’s going on is just so harmful and there’s not much else to do about it I can think of. Aside from people condescendingly explaining to us all the time none of this is happening (or outright calling us liars the moment we don’t put the links directly on a post and claiming we’re making this all up to make other aces/aros feel unsafe holy shit), I’ve also had ppl come to this very post (the original version) saying it’s just “mean words on the Internet” so I shouldn’t talk about -isms here and ppl literally wishing us dead.

Please help get word around that this is happening and a serious issue if you can? (But also if you can’t please don’t feel bad about that)

Part 5:

Someone saying ppl only get to headcanon extremely privileged characters as ace/aro

Someone spouting the incredible, unironic line: “isn’t that the point of being ace?? to desexualize yourself??“  

Telling aces to date non-aces otherwise they’re automatically abusive for “taking sex away” from their partners (holy shit)

As I mentioned, if we speak about the anti-ace/aro shit on this site, ppl love to try and shut us up by coming to our posts acting like we don’t know what we’re talking about or are deliberately lying for example because they’ve not personally seen what we’re talking about, and they can get really utterly horrible about it

Someone making up an insult (”stiff”) for aces to mean “a prude who cant keep their trap shut abt it “ (the person also posted a screenshot of a dictionary entry of the word in the positivity tag where “a dead body” is listed as one of the definitions)

Same person saying aromantic means “a boring person nobody will ever love”

Yet another person sexualizing aces, making fun of how supposedly we constantly talk about wanting to “fuck”… and about wanting to be led around on a leash in public

Two people defending hating all aces and comparing this to statements about privileged groups like white people, because ace/aro privilege I guess

A white person mocking me having experienced racism in “ace discourse” while heavily implying I must be lying (while demanding proof and no I’m not saying asking me for links is the problem)

Another person outright defending hating aces, except it’s okay and not bigotry according to them because it’s… not our existence that’s the problem but us existing as aces??

Part 6

Saying ace/aro identities belong in the DSM

And also a post I really want to talk about that made me add to this post again:

Saying asexual/aromantic people are “weird” and “ugly as fuck” and we id as ace/aro because “no one wants us” (I got an extremely vile anon once that made a similar “argument” and this line of thought is neither new nor harmless)

The thing about this post that makes it especially horrible and made me put it here almost right away? The notes. There are tons of people who responded to that post with approval and if you check, you’ll see them acting like aces/aros being treated like this and getting upset about it is just one big joke. There are many people going “lol that’s mean but true” and “lmao careful they’ll use this as proof they’re oppressed haha” (paraphrased)  and otherwise talking nasty shit about aces and aros. This is fucking vile and the kind of shit you’d expect from anti-sjws, but nope, “ace discourse” everyone

Someone saying ace awareness week should not be a thing because they’re already “painfully” aware we exist

Did I mention when we talk about any of this people immediately in big numbers rush to silence us, dismissing and mocking us out of hand and painting us as hysterical liars who “just wanna be oppressed“ because who gives a shit about aces/aros saying they’re being harmed

As a bonus, let’s return to the anons for a moment, which I’ve not talked about much before:

Someone telling me to die after I made more posts calling this sort of anti-ace/aro shit out

Someone telling me they want to ally with conservatives and shoot me and also other aces, calling aces a “plague”

Someone telling me sending the above to a black person has nothing to do with racism, and also that asexuality is a symptom of mental illness/trauma that needs to be corrected, not a sexuality. They tell me to “get fucked” so I’ll be fixed

Right after these asks I also got a nazi in my inbox (”88″ is nazi code). Make of that what you will

Another person coming to my inbox calling aces a plague and wanting us all dead

“Tumblr aces are deserving of every drop of loathing they get”

And now back once more to the posts people actually put their blog names on (aka most posts by far on this list, so no one skimming better try to claim this is primarily about anons just because I put a few in)…

Reacting to hateful vile anons by claiming we must have sent them to ourselves (why? because they say so), such as graphic anon rape/death threats. Nasty on so many levels and encourages people who hate us further to send shit like that

Part 7

People thinking it’s appropriate to tell a black ace woman (me lol) she has an “oppression fetish” just based on her minority orientation, in response to her asking ppl to not do EXACTLY that

Someone comparing asexuality to a kink to mock the idea of and paint as gross aces talking to family or anyone not involved in “their sex life” about their orientation

Same person in a wild post calling all aces “demons” (as ppl keep doing)

Someone not only as so often comparing aces to Trump with a moodboard, but also including the word “fascism” in ace colors in it (this is an older post)

Someone coming up with the wild conspiracy theory that people upset by aphobia (along with inclusionists) are actually largely the alt-right trying to disrupt activist communities wtf I can not make this shit up  (the person being ace themselves does not make this better or any less anti-ace/aro. This is fucking vile)

Someone mocking all aces by calling us “aceys” and talking about wanting to fight us, and another person approving of this and calling aces speaking out against it “dumb” and my legitimate anger “cute”. Also apparently being upset by this at all means I’ve “deluded” myself into thinking I’m oppressed

Same person who said the above claiming aro aces are somehow straight

Mocking aro terminology and aros for calling their partners (who they may or may not be married to) anything but “friends”

People (once again) painting aros as monsters who by virtue of being aro treat their partners without basic respect and decency. Also making aro identities all about wanting to “fuck” people without loving them, or caring about them in any shape or form. This shit is both sexualizing our identities (as usual) and nasty as hell in general

Another person outright saying they hate aces and trying to justify this by comparing it to venting about a privileged group, as if ace privilege exists rather than asexuality being a minority orientation

Someone (as too many ppl have done) comparing aces to “incels”, dangerous misogynists who are frequently rape apologists/rapists

Silencing tactics still include viciously mocking aces/aros speaking out against any of this shit and painting us as irrational, Senselessly Angry, and evil like in this bullshit “parody” post of what I (and two others?) have supposedly been saying. Apparently when I make posts like this one, that is what the OP gets from that… somehow. People keep doing shit like this to me, and painting black women as hysterical and angry for no reason when we’re legitimately upset is not a new move?

While we’re on the topic of antiblackness and misogynoir, remember how ppl love to send me graphic anon threats? Yeah this person purosely invoked the image of lynchings while doing so, aware themselves it’s racist and admitting they don’t care, as long as they can tell a black person they’d like to “hang me from a tree” and then also all other ace ppl, because “ace discourse” has proven to them we’re evil apparently

Part 8

Saying there’s somethong “wrong” with aces and aros and that we need to get professional help, and that our orientations are “unnatural”. There’s way too much pathologization among these links

Comparing aces to Ayn Rand, a racist rape apologist among other things. Apparently it makes for a fun moodboard about how we’re evil (and hate poor people?? wtf)

Once again someone comparing aces to incels (for some reason people love associating aces with misogynists, rape apologists and rapists, hmm)

Someone sexually harassing a user for simply saying to ignore/block aphobes, putting extremely explicit sexual content into the post’s notes, very possibly trying to deliberately trigger the OP. This is disgusting af

Someone saying asexuality isn’t a real sexuality (again)

As usual someone putting negativity in the ace positivity tag like we don’t deserve to have positivity - this time about how we’re “idiot aces” and all “cishet”

Talking about how this masterpost that, you know, has literal death threats on it and not few of them is hilarious

Here we have someone after being linked to this masterpost defending the Ronald Reagan and Trump moodboards (while completely ignoring all the other shit on this list)

Someone spewing the old bullshit notion that conservatives love aces for our supposed “celibacy”, with the typical implication of ace privilege or at least the idea that being ace makes those of us belonging to various oppressed groups less oppressed (or that we don’t exist at all lol)

Here’s an older post where someone cruelly made fun of an anon on an ace blog non wanting to get a pap test, presuming it’s due to internalized oppression and treating that as funny and inherently mock-worthy (the post got lots of approving notes at the time), because haha aces “valuing their virginity more than their health”, even though 1) the anon said nothing of the sort and 2) even if they had, people not wanting to get health care due to messed up ideas surrounding “virginity” is not funny either. (And this sort of ridicule is nowhere near comparable to correcting actual misinformation)

Making Kylo Ren ace/aro moodboards because aside from real life fascists it’s fun to compare us to fictional ones

Since we’re on the topic, another, older post that has a lot of people comparing aces to various fictional abusers, mass murderers, fascists, etc., “joking” about how these are the characters we can have as “ace representation”. And then ppl going “lol it’s just a joke haha silly aces not getting the concept of humor” in typical bigot fashion, something the anti-ace/aro crowd does A LOT

Meanwhile once when I in response to someone comparing aros to Voldemort (based on him being incapable of love) made an aro-spec Hermione positivity post using the same meme the Voldemort post had used,  emphasizing her good qualities/sense of justice, a whole wild mess happened that included people making jokes about (house elf) slavery on my aka a black woman’s positivity post and calling one of the most commonly hc-ed as black characters demonic and equating her to Taylor Swift… for among other things the evil trait of having an issue with, you know, slavery.

(Later a white person tried to in a separate post paint me as hysterical/irrational for getting upset about this, completely [and deliberately] erasing the fact that it was about race at all in that retelling of things. Not that it’s not bullshit and extremely telling to gleefully heap negativity on a positivity post like this in general, but damn.)

But back to comparing us to real life fascists, someone literally said “cishet asexuals act almost identical to white supremacists and nazis” because saying this about a minority orientation which includes aces TARGETED by white supremacists isn’t fucked up at all I’m done

For the xth time someone outright saying they hate aces

Here we get tons of misogynoir again from someone making a sort of Nicki Minaj ace moodboard that compares ace inclusionism to her breasts/”silicone implants“, and someone else approving of how hilarious that supposedly is. It’s pretty fucking gross tbh, the OP even put it in the Nicki Minaj tag

Fitting in with the above nicely: someone suggesting that subsets of aces and aros be called “breeders” (this is an older post)

Calling asexuality and aromanticism “cults” and comparing them to scientology among a ton of other vile shit including once again pathologization

Calling (non-ace) aros “objectifying assholes”

More demonization of aros, claiming as so often that being aro is the same as fetishizing and using people

Once again someone calling aces (or well just ace girls this time because misogyny is fun) ugly and claiming we’re all white (because racism is also fun)

Part 9

And here finally the new part that tumblr wouldn’t let me add to the original post the usual way. Not to repeat myself but I’m exhausted. And pissed. Remember these are all just examples. And I’d like to say there won’t be more in the future but who am I kidding.

Making light of comparing aces to incels, who are still dangerous misogynists/rapists/rape apologists. How dare aces and especially ace women be upset about it

Another person making light of (nasty moodboards) comparing aces and specifically ace teenagers to vile af dangerous bigots

Again someone comparing aces to incels (....who apparently no longer oppress women, at least if they’re ace)

They really love that incel comparison

They love it a lot. Yet another person comparing aces to incels (while defining asexuality as “not wanting to fuck”). Someone else joining in and going, “Is ‘turbo virgin’ better for u”

The same ppl as in the link above continuing to be horrible+apparently thinking ace and aro WoC are no longer oppressed by racism and misogyny. Did I mention I could not make this shit up

Also if you scroll a bit, there’s a link there to one of them telling an ace to “get laid” to be fixed (this link here leads to the same thread as the one above)

Once more comparing aros to Trump

White person thinking it’s a good idea to equate aces/aros of color upset about being compared to white supremacists with white ppl upset about jokes about white ppl

“asexuals go to hell”

Claiming it’s just “crying racism” and funny that I call call out, you know, all this pretty blatant racism, such as comparing aces and aros to slave owners/white supremacists to give just one example of the literal dozens here (even sth on the level of that anon wanting to lynch me apparently doesn’t count as racist for the OP there what the hell even)

Pathologizing our orientations, saying aces all have some “underlying issue” and that we just id as asexual as an excuse bc we don’t wanna “work through” said issues

Again someone claiming aces can’t have sex, making fun of ppl saying otherwise (apparently we physically can’t this is so wild)

Again ppl claiming aces and aros are basically all white, hurting (and pissing off) aces and aros of color bc that’s always fun. Also I’d argue some not that subtle misogyny there but decide for yourself

Among other things claiming aces are obsessed with sex which uhh uncomfortable+creepy. If ppl’d stop sexualizing us that’d be fucking nice

Another nonblack person comparing ace inclusionists to Rachel Dolezal (not giving a shit about black ppl’s opinion on the matter)... and then claiming antiblackness isn’t racism (when coming from other PoC)

Claiming asexuality is a “specific sexual preference” that no one wants to know about and also the same as “not fucking”. Literally saying (as ppl in this mess do so often) we should literally mention our orientations to NO ONE but our partners bc of this. AND not giving a shit about being told this sexualizes aces including aces of color

As usual pretending we make all the shit documented in this post up (and let me repeat this post was just meant to have EXAMPLES, there’s way more horrible crap out there)

Ace girls are apparently “like straight girls, only worse”. And that regardless of other identities

Using the term “acehets”

Another person referring to “acehets and arohets”

Apparently asexuality and aromanticism are “technically het” now

Calling aces (explicitly+deliberately ALL aces) a “cancer to the lgbt community”

Saying a black aro ace woman wouldn’t have time to be “melodramatic” (=make posts like this one lol) if she had more sex. I CAN NOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP it’s so incredibly sexist, racist, and creepy omg. There’s already examples further above of this person’s misogynoir BUT DAMN

Here we have some pro Trump, pro gun person after going “fuck tumblr ace culture” talking about how aces aren’t oppressed (especially those of us to whom guns or ppl like the president they support are an incredible danger I’m sure lol) and how dare we make our orientations “our entire personality”. This is all so wild help me??

Remember when we talked about how ppl like to when we talk about this despite all the easily available proof accuse us of lying/being hytserical/just “wanting to be oppressed” as a silencing tactic? Yeah here we have someone calling me speaking out against some of the (racist) shit listed further above “delusional”

Linking being ace to being a nazi (”Been noticing a lot of these “Asexuals” are also nazis”)

More linking being ace to being a nazi (”You can't spell asexual without axis power”). Did I mention the anti-ace/aro crowd is wild and despicable af

The solution to people being this horrible to us is CLEARLY for us to “log off” so why the hell are we whining

This white person wants millions in “emotional damages” from people with ace headcanons for characters belonging to various oppressed groups, including characters of color. Because clearly others acknowledging the existence of aces of color must be incredibly painful for them. Wtf is the anti-ace/aro crowd even. Also, this is what aces and aros of color mean when we talk about constantly being erased by ppl wanting to pretend our orientations are somhow “white” identities - frquently like here under the guise of protecting us from those evil aces and aros aka ourselves.

Putting “your flag is ugly and so are you“ in the ace positivity tag

Same person posting in the ace positivty tag about wanting subsets of aces to get hit by a bus

Okay I know further above I’ve directed you to such unbelievably vile anons they must be getting old but I’m gonna put just one in this part: wanting aces dead but it’s our own fault because the ace community on tumblr made them into a shitstain devoid of decency who thinks fondly of people dying based on them sharing a minority orientation!! They had no problems with aces before!! And it’s just if we’re on tumblr that they want us dead really!! Using this site like other people makes us... wait for it... “incel equivalents” apparently

Aaand here the nonblack ppl go again with the comparing ace inclusionism to antiblackness/Rachel Dolezal, one of them specifically complaining they got called antiblack for it when clearly this white person also doing it proves it’s okay

After as the anti-ace/aro crowd loves to do pretending none of this is happening, this person admitted that yeah sure their crowd compares aces and aros to misogynists and racists, but it’s not because of our orientations but because we’re Bad, and if we claim otherwise we’re manipulative and just wanna victimize ourselves!!

racism and comparing PoC (because their asexuality continues to not magically turn aces of color into white ppl) to their oppressors are apparently still funny (”date an asexual who thinks reverse racism exists“)

Someone talking about wanting “porn of aces” where aces are raped and turned into “hypersexual sluts”. The person adds, “ESPECIALLY if it’s real”. This shit is VILE AND DISTURBING AF HOLY CRAP

And apparently aces who have sex are by virtue of this themselves rapists now, along with anyone who consensually sleeps with people they’re not attracted to?? Wtf even. (These people REALLY want to villify us and for us to not enter relationships - if we don’t have sex with a partner, we’re absusive, but if we do, we’re rapists. We’ve had both these “arguments” now I fucking can’t.)

Again someone posting (in the ace positivity tag) about wanting an “ace concentration camp”

“asexuals get death challenge”

And listen I WISH I was making this shit up and that these posts all didn’t exist. Then I’d not have to deal with the knowledge that a ton of people here don’t even see aces and aros as human beings, constantly throwing -isms and nasty af shit in general at us and pretending when aimed at us it’s somehow okay. People are doing all this to us, and trying to claim we deserve it, based on our MINORITY ORIENTATIONS.

It’s wild, it’s despicable, and it needs to stop. And I’m going to say it as many times as necessary.

[mrmrsvegan]

Are you really vegan-privileged?

The concept of privilege is a double edged sword, I used it in recent post to show how affluent parents believe their $/privilege will buy them added health by consuming expensive fish.  They really believe through their affluence they are afforded a chance at a healthy life that is unattainable for others and act from a position of privilege to try to greedily ‘take’ from a limited pool of perceived advantages afforded to them by their wealth or position in a developed country.

 I was in a lecture on a study of low income families given DHA (algal) during pregnancy and the IQ tests of the children getting the DHA were higher than those who did not.  I suspect that the DHA has little to do with the IQ boost vs thinking your child is getting some advantage and perhaps how the families will challenge them further thus raising their IQ vs thinking life is all about privilege & who has it and who doesn’t?  Are you starting to see the danger in telling any group they are “less privileged”?  Breeding apathy? worse?

Its not a privilege that we are born into the world we are, millions of people fought and died for it, it becomes privilege when we don’t honor their sacrifice and act ungrateful for the world our ancestors and current hard working people have built for us to prosper, that is not privilege that is the culmination of incalculable hard work and defeat of the British Monarchy and two World Wars with horrific body counts.  None of those who died for what we have today, your parents who toiled or their parents or their parent’s parents would think their children privileged.  Its a toxic concept that removes the means from the result and robs people who are fed it the ability to learn and prosper.

The force that divides vegans is the force that divides us all, its the Narcissism of Small Differences.  It can be intoxicating to “stand up for the down trodden” while not thinking about how your actions could keep them down.  Its intoxicating to think about how you can be different to make yourself feel more important, when really being humble and letting others shine is the real mark of a leader.  Our goal is to elevate our community not ourselves because we want to live in such a place not be a ruler over it.

I want to remind everyone how profoundly disconnected we are in this country.  http://profoundlydisconnected.com from the opportunities that exist by the millions for those not disillusioned by the concepts of privilege over prosper.  The concept of privilege is rooted in small minded bigotry that persists because academics and anointed “justice warriors” have not walked in the shoes of ALL people they pretend to be protecting or demonizing (no one can), nor have they traveled beyond their often affluent university bubbles to realize that across this planet different people are minorities or effected by racism & bigotry & there are even places where minorities who possess the most powerful weapons rule over majorities.  What is important is what we have here in the USA and what we are really struggling to hold on to in a world so hell bent on taking away our liberty that was earned by our forefathers.  Don’t fall for slick words, think of everyone who sacrificed for what we have today, that isn’t privilege and people who say that are ignorant to the facts and disrespectful to our history. 

I remember reading Rich Dad Poor Dad and how impactful it was on me and how it mirrored my own life.  You want everyone to know they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps in a free society.  You want everyone to know that those who did got their because they worked their butts off or their parents did.  Wealth does not often survive two generations and the wealthiest tax payers drop out of the 1% FAST!  Only 1% stays in the 1% for 10 years.   The divide many in academia and the media push on our society is bizarre.  If you fall into those “social justice” traps you are doomed to propagate the injustice placed on those you claim to be protecting.  

“Costs of achieving justice matter…What, after all, is injustice but an arbitrary imposition of a cost—whether economic, psychic, or other—on an innocent person? And if correcting this injustice imposes another arbitrary cost on another innocent person, is that not also an injustice?”

“One of the crucial differences between political and non-political ways of dealing with undeserved misfortunes is that the non-political approaches do not acquire the fatal rigidities of law nor require either the vision or the reality of helplessness and dependency. Nor does it require the demonization of those who think otherwise or the polarization of society.” Thomas Sowell

To put it into plain terms, we need to empower our activists, society to science, economize & business our way out of Animal Agriculture.  That is lab grown meat, better meat alternatives, better marketing, better activism based on data & reflection, better synthetic materials, better health studies, better medical and nutrition education, etc.  Its market solutions, not political or social justice that reduce suffering.  There are also no perfect solutions, outrage over animal testing on vegan alternatives is an example of an imperfect solution that can reduce animal suffering.  The moral of the story is you aren’t vegan privileged or any type of privileged, that negates everything and everyone that got you to where you are and eliminates the road map for anyone else to get there, too and that is tragic.  Instead show others the steps and reach a hand down to pull them up by sharing your success road map.  

[sofard]

"I’m not a racist, but...”

A friend of mine once used a fake name on a job application. He had the kind of pedigree that would have all but guaranteed him at least an interview were it his name was of the fairer skinned variety but as it were, he was deep in a several-months-long streak of rejected applications and the skin suit he was blessed with at birth was of the Indian persuasion.

Evidently what inspired his decision to lie about his name was a study published around that time that showed that people with traditionally “black” names were a third less likely to be called back for an interview than those with “white” names and he figured what might be true of the Daquans and Tyrones of the world might be true of the Daneshes and Tanvirs. 

In what proved to be a fortuitous state of affairs for him and a sad state of affairs for humanity, he was right. He landed the interview (and the job) and apparently explaining to your would-be boss that your name is actually Navin Modi and not Nathan Madison is indeed as awkward as one would expect. Upon receiving word of Navin's deceit, his boss was predictably upset but also afraid of the HR nightmare that might ensue should he raise an uproar, and Navin, for his part, was left with the kind of morose self righteousness one feels when our worst suspicions are vindicated. 

This story is worth sharing because it bears on the pernicious subtlety of contemporary racism. Racism with a capital R still exists, but we have mostly silenced it. The tragedy of today is that even in the upper echelons of progressive, liberal, socially-conscious society, there remains the kind of racial biases we assume we have shed. And because calling someone a racist has become more taboo than actually being racist, accusations of “race based decision making,” to put it kindly, are welcomed with a kind of awkward denial the likes of which you might expect if you publicly point out someone’s hair plugs. 

I think the shaming of racism speaks to why there is so much silent disagreement over its prevelance. Political correctness has done too great of a job of shutting out explicit bigotry in the public sphere, and so pointing out its more complicated or subdued manifestations can make you sound like a conspiracy theorist at times. 

We are wired to notice change and ignore the consistent. It is why we miss partners most when they are gone. And because lynchings and residential schools are a thing of the past, we are left bickering over things like whether or not police brutality is indeed discriminatory, each side cherrypicking favourable details from academic papers and criticizing study flaws to make their point.  

There is a scene in Django Unchained where Leonardo Dicaprio’s character, Candie Calvin, owner of Candie-land, a prosperous plantation, threatens to murder his slave (the protagonist’s love interest), Broomhilda, by bludgeoning her with a hammer, unless his unwelcome guests pay him twelve thousand dollars. Regardless of your opinion of the civil war or race politics today, I imagine any viewer, save perhaps psychopaths, was reeling in empathy watching that scene. Even the most bigoted amongst us will find it easy to condemn the racial-slurs-screaming antagonists portrayed in films; those characters who are portrayed with an ugliness on the outside to suit the ugliness inside. 

Candie Calvin threatening to murder his property, Broomhilda.

These kind of extremes, in film or history books, serve as a sort of healing stone, placating our conscience and forgiving us of the kind of daily prejudices that go unnoticed. This is why it is possible for some to simultaneously hate german nazis from World War II and sympathize with modern white nationals who extol similar rhetoric under the guise of preserving history or cultural identity. 

In this way, art and media pacify our conscience. I am not yelling chink at every Chinese person I see crossing the street and so I am better than the worst portrayed in film, I am conditioned to believe. This is what our understanding of racism today looks like, if you can call it that. The very word evokes such a garish or violent extreme of bigotry that we become blinded to its more detrimental and subtle varieties the way staring into headlights blinds you to the muted glow of the stars. 

People like resolutions. The tearing down of the Berlin wall was a great symbolic end to the cold war. The images of young men and women, sledge hammers in hand, swinging at the graffitied wall bear some kind of cathartic victory over a darker past. There is no physical wall separating races, no monument celebrating racism (though if there were I would be the first person to volunteer its design) we can tear down and so instead we erect one-dimensional symbols of intolerance and make peace with our history by defeating them. 

I once had a conversation about race with a white friend of mine who said sincerely “I wish I took advantage of white privilege” as though it is government-issued token you can cash in opportunistically. “Sorry, I am seeing someone” — “Wait, I have 3 white privilege vouchers” — “Why didn’t you say so? Where should we fuck?" 

There are endless statistics to measure at least the empirical manifestations of racism. White people are less likely to be arrested for the same crime as minorities, more favoured romantically than any other race on dating sites, more likely to be hired with the same resume, more likely to be cast in film roles, more likely to be acquitted for a crime, more likely to be given a loan — the list goes on and on. 

We call this kind of stuff systemic racism. I believe we do so in part because it helps absolve any particular individual from prejudice. It’s more comforting to know that institutions and socioeconomic classes are responsible for prejudice than we are as complicit, voting, individuals. Racism, and other isms, in this way, have evolved from a choice of an individual to a phenomenon as natural as hurricane winds; something to be studied and measured and explained through psychological and socioeconomic theory. 

How privileged a race is on the spectrum of societal tolerance can be measured by the extent to which their improprieties are afforded context. A white woman who murders her cheating husband is understood to be blinded by temporary insanity or moment of passion. We might punish her out of civil duty, but deep down we extend some empathy to the heart stricken widow. Films will be made and books written attempting to explain what compelled an otherwise lovely woman to commit a crime of passion. Psychologists will be interviewed to assess how, perhaps, her father’s frequent trips overseas and the condom she once found in his travel bag plagued her with a mistrust of men throughout adulthood and how that combined with an abusive boyfriend in her past all but guaranteed destiny would bring her to this horrible act. 

Stereotypes are a burden carried by minorities and individuality a luxury afforded to the light skinned. When I go to a restaurant, I make sure to give a nice tip even if the service is terrible. I feel that in social settings I am an ambassador for Middle Eastern people the world over, like I am carrying a lanyard with the words “Iranian Male Corp. Name: Saeid Fard. Ask me about how non threatening I am.” One act of rudeness or impropriety might be generalized to my entire community, I fear, and conversely all the stereotypes of middle eastern men, the chauvinism, homophobia, or proclivity to douse ourselves in a shroud of cologne, are assumptions I have to actively invalidate. 

I recall one corporate training session years ago when conversation of diversity in the workplace came up and the lead administrator, the kind of person who gets off on being offended, asked the group to raise their hands if they have a gay friend. One of my closest friends at the time was gay (which I hate to bring up because invoking friendship with a minority is the go to defence of any bigot), but I declined to raise my hand on grounds of how ugly I found the question to be. I wondered if he would feel as comfortable asking the group if they have a black friend. Did not raising one’s hand imply that one is necessarily homophobic? Needless to say, I was the only one with my hand down. I was hoping this would spark some kind of dialog where I could make the point of how I found his very question insulting and unproductive. Instead he made eye contact with me, lectured us briefly with platitudes about the importance of diverse perspectives, and moved on. That was it. It was a homophobes-anonymous roll call and apparently I was the only member. Perhaps it was my own insecurity, but I imagined him looking up my name on a clipboard later with the words “hates gay people” next to it and a box labeled “verified” which he gleefully checked.

I have spoken to many members of visible minority groups who feel the same way — feel that they must proactively fight against the assumptions made of them. Even “positive” stereotypes are destructive in that they strip us of complexity. Blacks as athletic or asians good at math, are the kinds of expectations that strip  people of the freedom to self actualize. Slavoj Zizek touches on this point in his talk of political correctness and racial cliches. In one binary cultural narrative of the west, natives are cast as stewards of nature living in harmony with the environment, while the white colonialists on the other hand conquered their environment and are now dealing with a rapprochement of sorts. The truth is, of course, more complex. Natives, for instance, employed what would be considered today barbaric hunting practices that brought the buffalo population of North America to near extinction. Giving people the benefit of being fully human requires giving them the dignity to be horrible. 

Modern day racism is the stripping of individuality and complexity. We spend more effort trying to understand why people of European descent do things and yet generalize the behaviours of coloured people to inherent flaws (or virtues) of their race. A white serial killer is a case study in human psychopathy. A brown one is a terrorist. A white drug user is self medicating, or exploring their identity or navigating societal norms. A black drug user is a thug. It’s worth noting now that there is also an undeniable element of social and economic class at play but describing our penchant to strip minorities of individuality cannot only be deconstructed by race. 

When I was in seventh grade I had the misfortune of being granted the nickname Saudi Arabia from my class of mostly east Asian and White children. Kids will be kids and most of them will tease and be teased, but it’s not if but how you are teased during your formative years that defines what talismanic insecurities you will exercise into adulthood. Already different from every student, I became acutely aware of how physically different I was from my peers at the time. Darker, hairier, wide-nosed, the list goes on. Insults and defamations aside, words have a way of mirroring your identity, a literary conduit into the perceptions of others. I was brown (or olive or whatever) and that brownness or oliveness or whatever really seemed to mean something to people. 

Two paths emerge when people are persistently reminded of their differentness from such a young age, they either let that differentness empower them or swallow them whole. We carry our adolescent identities and insecurities to our grave. And it is through those formative experiences and labels that we develop the racial pride and resentments that bias the decision making of even the best of us. 

Our present inability to rid ourselves of this whole messy racism thing is in part due to the fact that we have been trained to care about race in the first place. The moment you devise an arbitrary way to separate people, whether it be race, national boundaries, or gender, the pernicious “ism” won’t be too far behind. Make too much of a fuss about the sexes (as we have for centuries) and sexism will brew and, like a parasite, snake its way into the most fundamental assumptions we make about each other. We have collectively decided that talking of the “positive” elements of our race is permissable but talking of the “negative” is not. The problem is they are two sides of the same coin. The instant you allow a place for value judgments, there will be both good and bad judgments. 

I don’t believe we can ever truly rid the world of racism, but we can make progress to reduce it. And that starts with the inconvenient step of thinking twice when we celebrate our particular race or culture. That is hard, and perhaps controversial, because many would argue that celebrating our race, particularly as minorities, is a step towards empowerment. And that’s true, but empowerment perpetuates the very acknowledgement of race that can stifle progress. 

Our tendency is to cling to identity myths to help give our lives meaning. Race serves as a kind of semi-exclusive club we are born into. Some clubs have better member benefits than others, but better to be a part of a club than a pariah. 

We are tribal, after all. Study after study has shown that when you give groups of children or adults an arbitrary identity, like making some of them team blue and others team red, they will eventually begin to drape themselves in that identity and build real favouritism for their own and resentment for others. We are literally hard wired for it. 

I dream of a day where we have successfully interbred to the point where the human genetic soup becomes some kind of mono race. Then, we can hate each other for entirely novel reasons.

[winterywitch]

anyway heres a summary of my discourse beliefves:

cishet aces/aros do not belong in gay spaces, bi spaces, lesbian spaces or trans spaces

for me my whole life the LGBT community has been more than that. my perspective is not that of some sad brainwashed child, forced into being more ~tolerant~ than i should be. i genuinely believe and have always believed the LGBT community is more than that, and im not just gonna drop that anytime soon, because i dont think the right to only consider the LGBT community as for “SGA and trans” people is liberation.

therefore cishet aces/aros belong in ace/aro spaces, which for me, count as LGBT.

but not gay, bi, lesbian or trans spaces.

there will be overlap because they are LGBT. but no, cishet aces/aros should have no claim to anything specifically for the L, G, B or T of the community.

for me the community is

Lesbians

Gay men

Bisexuals [SGA or not - as an SGA bi person, i get to speak on this.

Pansexuals

Trans people

Nonbinary people [counting agender, genderfluid, genderqueer, etc. non-cis, non-binary identities]

Intersex people (of course should they want to - the point of this list isn't YOU HAVE TO BE LGBT it's You Can Be Included)

Queer people [anyone who isn't cis or isn't het, including aroace people. non sga bi people im a little iffy on re: them 'reclaiming' queer]

Allies [i think this is important for people in the closet, as long as we dont let cishets get too big for their britches]

Aroaces

and hell, here’s a + to include anything i might have forgotten

aroaces are not functionally cishet.

straight privilege is straight privilege. it isnt not-homophobia privilege. to experience straight privilege you must be straight.

they definitely benefit from not experiencing homophobia. they can be absolute dumbasses abt homophobia for that exact reason.

but they dont experience straight privilege, because they’re not straight. that is all straight privilege has ever meant for me in my LGBT community.

cishet aces are cishet, and also aces. this means they benefit from cis privilege and straight privilege, but aphobia weighs down that straight privilege because they dont perform straightness in the Right way. i dont believe this necessarily makes them systemically oppressed the same way we are. but i dont believe aro or ace identities are privileged either.

there is no coherent Ace Community boogieman that is unanimously a bunch of homophobic, transphobic, racist jackasses, and if you believe that, you are a complete dumbass

yeah, the ace community is comprised of white cishets but, im gonna wager even more commonly, its comprised of literally every LGBT identity and race you can imagine. the ace community is not the white cishet community. it’s the community of everyone who IDs as ace or aro. this is not white cishets as a rule, as a majority, or even half the time.

that being said, inclusionists can say some stupid, shortsighted shit sometimes that is completely ignorant of LGBT history/oppression. i dont agree with the implications that i dont stand for every single thing they say and will not be held accountable for every single thing they say.

similarly, unless you wanna be held accountable for every single thing your side says/does before being allowed to call us out, uh, dont expect the same of us. the onus for this is on exclusionists, i have been around long enough to know you guys started this one. it is up to you guys to start being decent on that one, and then we’ll follow suit. those of us who dont are jackasses.

you are never at liberty EVER to explain to an ace person why their abuse or rape took place. that is called gaslighting, and no, you don’t get to throw a fit when someone calls this what it is. when you call a rape/abuse survivor an annoying disgusting freak for daring to talk about why their rape/abuse happened (since they factually know why it happened and you dont) and then proceed to insist that your headcanon of their trauma is the correct interpretation and theirs is not because theyre a filthy cishet ace (which they rarely are), that is quite literally the definition of gaslighting. and hey, don’t do it.

you are never at liberty EVER to explain to an ace person why their parents forced them into Therapy Specifically Designed To Convert Them Away From Asexuality (which may have a more efficient, shorter name). you dont know how that therapy worked or how the therapist worked because you werent there. you dont know that it was only because of homophobia so therefore this person has no right to claim their own trauma.

not everyone you hate is a cishet ace. don’t call people cishet aces unless you know for a fact they are cishet aces. i imagine you wouldnt want to call a trans lesbian a cishet, which exclusionists have done too many times for me to count. your platform should not be “you said something stupid and harmful, youre a cishet ace,” it should be “you said something stupid and harmful, end of statement.”

for some reason this is a controversial point in some discourse circles, but no one owes you sex. your partners don’t owe you sex. relationships do not equal sex. relationships do not even equal romantic love. relationships are a decision between multiple people on closer emotional intimacy.

if romantic and sexual aspects of a relationship are necessary for you, that’s understandable and okay! but you aren’t OWED that. people don’t need to out themselves as aro or ace for you. people dont need to feel pressured to give you anything they dont want to give. and you dont need to stay in relationships that dont make you happy.

allosexual privilege is not real. no one but white cishet men are 100% celebrated and privileged for experiencing sexual attraction. even white cishet women are oppressed for their attraction in many ways, and repressed from early childhood - so you can imagine how absolutely horrific sex-based oppression is for the LGBT community. we are not celebrated for sexual attraction, we are treated like we are dirty, and we are sexual predators.

WITHIN THE COMMUNITY, yeah, sometimes we are definitely, blatantly favored over aces, and people run around saying asexuality is unnatural, and sexual attraction is what makes us human. this is harmful and damaging, and it shouldn’t happen. i dont consider it systemic oppression and it definitely does not make allosexual privilege a thing.

calling people allosexuals is not something i condone. its not comparable to “cis” as a label, because cis people are an actual oppressor class towards trans people - non-ace LGBP folks are not towards ace people.

intracommunity bigotry is real and it is traumatic. people devalue it constantly and pretend it’s just a slap on the wrist, but it is an absolutely traumatic thing to have to face every day of your life. but it isnt the same as OPPRESSION, and we dont have to conflate the two concepts for intracommunity bigotry to be treated with the seriousness it deserves.

similarly, dont call people REGs unless they are not only aphobes but also truscum or TERFs. i also personally dont really believe in equating aphobes with truscum/TERFs but i dont believe in silencing trans people who openly talk about the similarities, either.

dont call people AERFs unless youre a trans woman holy shit

as someone who was directly affected by the truscum discourse when it happened [not debatable, by the way], this is pretty much recycled truscum discourse in my eyes. you dont need to lecture me on how its not.

just because someone on the “other side” called something you did ableist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, racist, etc., does not mean you get to shut your eyes and plug your ears. ESPECIALLY if you are part of a privileged class relevant to that accusation. for example as a white exclusionist you dont get to ignore the concerns of inclusionists of color or lecture them on the racism of the ace community. for example as a cis inclusionist [or honestly, even just a non-trans-woman inclusionist] you dont get to ignore the concerns of trans exclusionist women or lecture them on the similarities between TERFs and exclusionists.

“aspec” is not exclusively for the autistic community and i have NEVER seen claims that it was until ace discourse started. thats transparent as fuck to me and youre not fooling anyone. dont just make shit up lmfao

jokes about how Oh Lol Cringe aces inherently are, arent funny especially considering how many of these Jokes are steeped in anti-autistic ableism

idk when this happened but recently ableist jokes are the new Hot Topic of Comedy and thats like, mind-numbingly bad

i dont care what side youre on, IF YOU ARE USING THINGS LIKE FICTIONAL CP/PEDOPHILIC SHIPS/INCEST/RAPE CONTENT TO COPE WITH YOUR TRAUMA, YOU BETTER BE DOING THAT SHIT IN PRIVATE, ONLY SHARING IT WITH LIKE-MINDED, ADULT SURVIVORS, AND NEVER LETTING THAT CONTENT CIRCULATE OUTSIDE OF THAT GROUP. end of story. no ifs, ands or buts about it. speaking as a survivor who uses stuff like this to cope, being a survivor does not give you a free pass to, inadvertently or not, contribute to the pedophilia and circulation of grooming material on the internet. it is your RESPONSIBILITY as a survivor to not continue that cycle. if you avoid that responsibility, you have no right to play victim or pull the “im a survivor ;-;” card when people call you out on this.

educating kids on asexuality is not pedophilia, grooming or sexual abuse. jesus christ lmfao you dont have to assume people word it in a way thats inappropriate or predatory just because theyre pro-ace. kids NEED label/identity options, they are discovering who they are and without a label that fits for them, theyll likely feel like shit. let them have their labels. knowing about asexuality might greatly improve their life if it fits them!

for this reason, stop being weird about mogai labels/trying to “ban” them from everyone’s vocabulary/trying to turn them into some Cringe Joke that is only about Cishets Trying To Be Special. they didn’t fuck over EVERYONE.

inclusionists, in advising kids and questioning people who ask you for answers, be more open-ended. the insistence of “oh youre not a lesbian you’re a quioromantic demi-homosexual!” without also making it ok to just be a lesbian is what hurt and confused so many people on their journey to discovering their identity and its why they resent the whole mogai thing, fairly so. make it okay to just be a lesbian, or just be gay, or just be bi, or just be trans, while letting people know their other, more specific options.

asexuality is not an NSFW or TMI orientation

ace headcanons arent INHERENTLY homophobic, racist or ableist. they absolutely can be and ive seen that shit with my Own Two Eyes [pure innocent baby ace autistic papyrus headcanons back in the undertale fandom (shudders)], but they are not INHERENTLY so.

headcanons for characters with marginalized identity labels that arent identical to the ones you headcanon that character with are not oppression. and you dont get to police this shit as if its factually wrong

absolutely zero sexual interactions with minors ever, thanks!

trying to Bother The Pure Aceys by talking about sex is unacceptable

posting bullshit in ace positivity tags is unacceptable

stop calling people doing nothing but talking about their experiences “freaks”???

dont engage in the whole Oh There Are Valid Identities And There Are Special Snowflake Identities thing its not a very good look

biphobia is its own thing independent of homophobia

biphobia perpetuated within the community isnt necessarily systemic oppression but its traumatic and wrong and shouldnt be treated like some Lol Cringe Joke

you cant just say UM THAT LITERALLY NEVER HAPPENS???? when someone calls your side out on shit lgfkhghgfh especially when it literally does, all the damn time

ace [IRL person, whether or a celebrity or god forbid a flat out bigot] moodboards arent funny

you shouldnt agree to sex that you as an ace person dont want in a situation that you can control if the sex happens or not, but the pressure to provide sex to a non-ace partner is very real. stop blaming ace ppl for that pressure lol speaking as a victim of coercive sexual abuse, you cannot blame the one who didnt want it, even if they COULD have spoken up.

you’re not a bad person for wanting sex if your ace partner doesn’t. there is nothing immoral about not being ace. you just dont get to have sex anyway and you arent owed it if you are set on this committed, monogamous relationship - if sex is a big deal to you, you need to leave that relationship or work out an open situation.

laughing off peoples’ experiences as The Discourse is completely unacceptable, it encourages people to shut up and never analyze themselves and their identities

its not cute in your ace ship headcanons if the ace character is an asshole that rolls their eyes @ or judges their non-ace partner

similarly its not cute in your ace ship headcanons if the non-ace partner is an asshole that rolls their eyes @ or judges their ace partner

you dont get to tell people “ok you identify as heteroflexible but ACTUALLY you’re [insert identity]” literally ever, i understand the concern with people using “safe” identity labels to avoid facing their LGBT identities but acting on that concern in that way is not concern, its concern-trolling and its not fuckin okay.

legitimizing your own identity by delegitimizing the identities of others is bad

DO NOT, AND I REPEAT, DO NOT, BLANKET-TERM PEOPLE AS QUEER, LITERALLY EVER. DONT DO IT

DONT FUCKIN DO IT!!!!! NOT EVERYONE HAS RECLAIMED THAT SLUR, AND IT IS 100% A SLUR ON TOP OF BEING A CULTURE WITHIN THE COMMUNITY

JESUSS CHRIST DONT FUCKIGN DO IT!!!! WHEN YOU REFERENCE THE QUEER COMMUNITY YOU BETTER ONLY MEAN PPL WHO CALL THEMSELVES QUEER AND HAVE RECLAIMED IT/ARE PART OF THAT SUBCULTURE

we need more nonsexual, non-alcoholic spaces for LGBT folk that are safe for minors, trauma survivors and ace people, but thats not our fault, the prevalence of sexual and alcoholic spaces exists because we were literally not allowed to exist anywhere else until very, VERY recently, and even now it’s a Barely thing

you cant tell someone their experiences didnt happen like my god

we think ace discourse is about more than cishets because exclusionists make it about asexuality as a whole. you guys cant make it about more than cishets and then be like But Ok It’s Just About Cishets You IRrational Crazies?? :/

yes self harm through exposing oneself to the discourse tag is possible, no it’s not funny, no it’s not just ~cishets~doing that, triggers are not exclusive to PTSD survivors, shut the actual fuck up

you dont have any room to comment on the validity of quasiplatonic relationships if you’re not in one, most of the time you guys complaining about them and saying theyre Special Snowflake Things dont actually know what they are. mind your own business lol let people live

if youre not intersex, you dont get to tell people that the intersex community doesnt wanna consider itself LGBT, so they are wrong for saying intersex people are allowed to consider themselves LGBT. youre not being a good ally. sit down, shut up and let intersex people talk amongst themselves.

[to be added to at some point im sure]

asexuals STOLE dragons from CHILDREN to make themselves seem PURE AND INNOCENT, the MONSTERS

[theconservativebrief]

To his neighbors, the alleged Pittsburgh gunman was quiet and unassuming. “There was nothing about him, not even a bumper sticker on his car,” Chris Hall, who lived in his neighborhood, told the New York Times.

But online, the man suspected of killing 11 people and wounding six others in a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, appears to have given ample warning that he might commit violence.

In his postings on Gab, a social network that has become a home for anti-Semitism and racism, he repeatedly posted threatening language about Jewish people and HIAS National Refugee Shabbat, a refugee aid group formerly known as the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society. Perhaps most notably, he posted on the site on Saturday morning, “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

Cesar Sayoc, meanwhile, the man arrested on Friday in connection with bombs mailed to CNN and several critics of President Donald Trump, appears to have threatened Democrats on Twitter and Facebook. “Hug your loved son,Niece,wife family real close everytime U walk out your home,” said one tweet sent to former Vice President Joe Biden, apparently by Sayoc. It included an image of Biden’s home with a target superimposed on it.

Sayoc and the alleged Pittsburgh gunman are far from the first to leave behind a trail of online threats and hate before turning to actual or attempted violence. In 2014, one shooter said in a YouTube video that women would be punished for not being attracted to him, before killing six people and wounding 13 in Isla Vista, California. Another man maintained a blog detailing his anger toward women for months before killing three women at a gym outside Pittsburgh in 2009.

These men share more than their apparent online histories of bigotry. All were part of communities, online or off, that seemed to reinforce their views. That’s why online hatred and harassment is so serious. It’s not just that an individual person’s online posts can be warning signs of future violence. It’s also that hateful posts, even by those who never commit crimes, create an environment where those crimes are encouraged, accepted, and even celebrated.

Posts apparently by Robert Bowers, the alleged Pittsburgh assailant, reveal a history of anti-Semitism, and a web of influences. On Gab, someone by the name of Robert Bowers posted a variety of anti-Semitic slurs and statements, including “jews are the children of satan,” according to the Associated Press. The same user criticized President Trump for being insufficiently anti-Jewish, and bragged about his gun collection, calling it his “glock family” and saying one gun in particular had an “amazing trigger.”

As Vox’s Jane Coaston notes, Gab was started as a “free speech” alternative to Twitter, and allows forms of hate speech that are banned on more mainstream social networks. Because of this, it’s become a gathering place — and recruitment forum — for neo-Nazi groups. One post from a group called Atomwaffen Division features swastikas, racial slurs, and the invitation, “Join your local Nazis.”

The synagogue shooting suspect also acted out of a specific kind of anti-Semitism, as Vox’s Dara Lind points out: “blaming Jews in America for bringing in an invasion of nonwhite immigrants who would slaughter the white race.” This particular kind of bigotry has been fueled by Trump’s claims that his political opponents are at fault for the caravan of migrants approaching the US, and by anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists on Gab and other social networks, who have cast the caravan as a Jewish “invasion.”

Most of the people posting this theory online have never committed anti-Semitic violence, but they helped create the conditions under which something like the Pittsburgh shooting could occur.

Twitter and Facebook accounts connected to Sayoc, meanwhile, contain threats against Biden and former Attorney General Eric Holder, both of whom received pipe bombs. CNN analyst Phil Mudd also received a Twitter threat apparently from Sayoc. Political analyst Rochelle Ritchie reported a threat apparently from Sayoc to Twitter in the days before the shooting, but Twitter did not take action.

Sayoc was apparently a devotee of a variety of conspiracy theories, many of which have spread on Twitter. As Vox’s German Lopez points out, he often posted criticisms of liberal billionaire George Soros, a common target of anti-Semitic fear-mongering on Twitter and elsewhere. Trump has fanned the flames of this fear-mongering, retweeting a claim earlier this year that Soros was a “nazi who turned in his fellow Jews.”

The two men suspected of acts of terrorism in recent days were far from alone in leaving what appear to be online trails pointing to future violent behavior.

“Tomorrow is the day of retribution,” the shooter from Isla Vista, California, said in his last YouTube video, according to the New York Times. “For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires. Girls gave their affection and sex and love to other men but never to me.”

“I do not know why you girls aren’t attracted to me,” he added. “But I will punish you all for it.”

This man also identified as an “incel” (short for “involuntary celibate”) and posted on forums populated by men with similar frustrations. The 22-year-old, who took his own life after killing others, became something of a hero to other “incels,” as Vox’s Zack Beauchamp has noted. A man who killed 10 people by driving a van down a Toronto street in April identified himself on Facebook as part of the “Incel Rebellion.” Also on Facebook, he praised the Isla, Vista shooter, calling him the “Supreme Gentleman,” a nickname the California man had chosen for himself.

The man who shot and killed three women at a Pittsburgh gym, meanwhile, wrote on his personal website in 2008, “I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne – yet 30 million women rejected me – over an 18 or 25-year period.”

“A man needs a woman for confidence,” he added. “He gets a boost on the job, career, with other men, and everywhere else when he knows inside he has someone to spend the night with and who is also a friend. This type of life I see is a closed world with me specifically and totally excluded.”

He also had ties to the pickup artist community, having purchased the book How to Date Young Women: For Men Over 35, and appearing in a video of one of author R. Don Steele’s lectures. Pickup artistry, more in vogue in the early 2000s than it is now, sometimes treated women as less human than men, as “targets” to be coerced or fooled into sex. It’s not murder, of course, but this was the climate of misogyny in which he planned his crime.

Each of these men may have seemed like a loner — but in fact, each was part of a group of people with similarly toxic views directed at Jewish people, women, or people of color. And we need to understand crimes like the Pittsburgh shooting and the pipe bombs mailed to Democrats within their larger context of on- and offline hate.

That means holding platforms accountable for the behavior they allow. In the wake of the pipe bombings, Twitter has apologized for not taking Ritchie’s report more seriously. “We are investigating what happened and will continue to work to improve how we handle concerns raised by anyone on Twitter,” the account @TwitterSafety tweeted last week.

But in response to a request for specifics from The Verge, the company merely pointed to blog posts from earlier in the year. “This is a familiar story from Twitter,” the Verge’s Andrew Liptak writes: “apologizing for reacting after the fact after it becomes clear that someone violated the site’s terms.”

Gab, meanwhile, is being more defiant. “Gab.com is under attack,” read a message posted by the company on Monday. “We have been smeared by the mainstream media for defending free expression and individual liberty for all people and for working with law enforcement to ensure that justice is served for the horrible atrocity committed in Pittsburgh.”

Investigating and prosecuting online threats can be tricky because perpetrators can conceal their identities and locations, and because when someone in one part of the country threatens someone in another, it’s not always clear which law enforcement agency should take the case.

But there’s evidence that law enforcement, even at the federal level, isn’t doing all it can: The Department of Justice prosecutes only a small minority of cases of online threats and stalking, Joshua Eaton reported at ThinkProgress last year. A bill that would provide resources to help the FBI, DOJ, and local authorities fight such crimes, introduced by Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA), has been stuck in committee since last July.

While law enforcement can prosecute threats and stalking, other hate speech isn’t illegal. But that doesn’t mean companies like Twitter have to allow it on their platforms. As journalist Stacy-Marie Ishmael pointed out on Twitter over the weekend, women, and especially black women, who experience disproportionate harassment online, have been warning of the seriousness of this harassment for years. Their warnings have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

Taking online hate seriously would require platforms like Twitter to make fighting threats and bigotry a core part of their mission, not an afterthought. As Kate Klonick wrote at Vox in 2016, “Twitter needs to view fighting abuse as an essential feature.”

It also means law enforcement, government, and ordinary users need to be aware of the ways in which online communities can fuel offline hate. Men like the alleged Pittsburgh shooter and Sayoc have been posting about their violent intentions for years now, and getting support and affirmation for doing so. It’s long past time to start paying attention.

Original Source -> How mass shooters practice their hate online

via The Conservative Brief

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