#but the more i think about it the more the whole antisemitism thing gets under my skin and it sucks

[alagaisia]

Hey if you’re still enjoying and engaging with Harry Potter in any capacity you can unfollow me 😊 please and thank you

Like. I get it. I was super into it as a kid too. I did not have the social context to pick up on the antisemitism or transphobia or sexism or fatphobia or bioessentialism or racism or anything else. I also picked up on surface-level language of Fighting Back Against Evil and ascribed my own values onto what that meant and thought we were all on the same page. I remember when the original kids who grew up with the books started becoming adult fans and picking up on the (blatant!) antisemitism and everybody was still mostly willing to give JKR the benefit of the doubt on it. (“She was writing kids books!” They said. “She didn’t know she was penning a global phenomenon! She picked a common literary trend in European fairy tales (antisemitic caricature) and didn’t examine it closely. It’s a mistake anyone could make,” we said. “She would probably do things differently now. After all, she word-of-god confirmed the vaguest hints she dropped that Dumbledore might be gay,” we said.) There was actually a span of several years where biases inherent in the actual real content of the Harry Potter series were coming to light and even the people pointing them out still seemed mostly to think it was an unfortunate accident.

That time has passed. Years ago! We are long past the first months of “maybe she doesn’t realize this seemingly-feminist tweet she liked was made by a noted TERF” and then “how could she not realize that these many veiled TERF-y things she’s retweeted have implications for the many queer fans of her work” and finally “oh wow okay JKR just dropped an entire transphobic manifesto on twitter. I guess the transphobia was the point.”

Yeah, there were a few months after that where people were still processing and still working through how they felt about Harry Potter and all of its flaws with the context of the now open transphobia of the creator. I was there for that. Remember how I was one of the kids who built it up into something noble and worthwhile based on my own beliefs about what messages it was probably trying to convey? Turns out it wasn’t trying to say any of those things, and when you take the time to examine all of the terrible shit that made its way into the text whether JKR intended it to be there or not, the whole series falls apart. It’s weird to discover that there’s a room in your house that’s rotten to the core, but eventually you figure out you can’t live like that, still going in there and holding your nose and pretending it’s still the same room you thought it was when the termites were only inside of the walls and hadn’t yet started chewing their way through the furniture. Because what’s going to happen is that they are going to infest the rest of your house. If you decide you can ignore transphobia and antisemitism and everything else just because you liked the color of the wallpaper, the rest of your principles are going to crumble too. You get rid of that fucking room. You put those books on a high shelf in the back of your closet behind other outgrown clothes and interests and you move the fuck on.

JKR uses the money made from her transphobic antisemitic children’s books to actively funding hate groups and to lobby for legislation that will and has actually affected the actual lives of trans people in an entire country. We are past the point of grieving something you were wrong about in childhood. Kids are wrong about a lot of stuff. You grow up and you learn new information and you change your behaviors based on it. You have to choose. It is transphobic to pretend there is not transphobia where there is. It is transphobic to support the work of someone who is using those funds to take rights from trans people with every fucking dollar. It is hateful to continue to engage positively with a story that at its very core is rooted in hate and bigotry and prejudice. You can choose to do all of those things but you cannot claim ignorance of them and you cannot choose those things and still pretend that choosing them upholds the values we convinced ourselves that Harry Potter stood for over a decade ago as uninformed children. You cannot choose to do those things and pretend to still support your trans and queer and Jewish neighbors. I do not want you in my neighborhood. Leave.

[supercantaloupe]

i wish i was still into d20 with the level of enthusiasm i had two years ago

[scientia-rex]

I feel like disappointment in Biden is baffling to me because he was always a disappointment. He was the asshole who got to ride to power on the coattails of a better man. He told bizarre and repeated lies (despite getting caught at it and his team telling him not to) about having a Welsh coal miner dad when he did not and he stole that story from actual Welsh people. I read a profile of him years back that pointed this out and told the story of the time he straight up ignored good advice from an expert not to plant a certain kind of tree too close together and flew a bunch of them out to plant, at night because he was just too fucking excited about it, and they all died. He’s not a smart man! He’s charismatic ish and lacks principles and as far as I can tell doesn’t really care about abortion rights or a lot of things we’d consider pretty critical to preserving freedom. I sincerely thought he couldn’t become President because there were so many obviously better candidates in the pool. I underestimated the sexism and antisemitism in American politics, and when he became the candidate in 2020 I gritted my teeth and voted for him because the alternative was a man who is not only an idiot but also profoundly dangerous. Trump is not ha-ha crazy, he’s Mussolini crazy. He is not dangerous because he’s stupid, although that doesn’t help; he’s dangerous because he does not care about anyone except himself under any circumstances and if that means he lets the far right push us straight into forced birth for white women and sterilization for women of color he’s going to do that. If that means conversion therapy for queers and death penalty for homosexual acts he’s going to do that. He has literally no limits. If he gets back into power, a whole lot of people are going to die, again. It’s not a hypothetical because it happened the first time and he’s only going to get worse.

I am not, never have been, and never will be a fan of Biden. To pretend that he and Trump are in any way equivalent is wrong at best and another goddamn Russian psy-op at worst. To pretend that a third party candidacy is viable in the US is to completely ignore every election of your lifetime and your parents’ lifetimes, and to further ignore the lesson of Ross Perot.

You cannot save Palestinians by not voting for Biden in November; the best you can do is chip away at his margin, and the worst you can do is see Trump elected so he can decide to do the worst possible thing in ever circumstance. Biden has Palestinian blood on his hands and watching this when we could have had Bernie or Elizabeth Warren instead is maddening. (I would have preferred Hillary to Trump, but I don’t think she’d be any different than Biden here. They’re both old-school politicians.)

I hate everything about this, and I hate that saying “maybe don’t put the man who literally said he would kill his political enemies in power” is seen as supporting genocide. It’s acknowledging reality. Joe Biden as a person can eat rocks for all I care. I was kind of hoping he’d die sooner in his term so we’d have time to get used to and then vote for President Harris. (Remember when the line was “she’s a cop, don’t vote for her”? Funny how there’s always a reason not to vote for a woman or a person of color or someone you just “don’t like” and can’t put a finger on why except she “seems angry.” Oh does she. How would she not? When Michelle fucking Obama, the picture of grace , STILL got called angry for having the nerve to be a Black woman with an opinion? When Hillary Clinton lost to a man with no political experience to her decades and who openly discussed sexually assaulting women? Would you have voted for President Harris? Or would you let Trump win again because you don’t LIKE her personally and she’s made decisions and statements you disagree with?)

Biden has both less power than his critics give him credit for and more power than his fans give him credit for. He needs to do more to pressure Israel and although it’s a delicate diplomatic situation I’d rather see us fuck up our diplomatic relationship with Israel than watch more Palestinians get murdered for things like “wanting to eat” and “existing.” The line has been crossed, and he doesn’t see it. Because he wasn’t the best person for the job. Because they didn’t get elected, because of sexism/antisemitism/racism. Hell, I have no idea what bootlicker Pete Buttegieg would have done here, but I’d have given him a try. But no. We got Biden and we’re stuck with this reality where you can be as leftist as you want and still have to look at the situation and decide whether you’re comfortable contributing to a Trump victory through inaction. I want socialism—I want every single person on Earth to have clean drinking water, enough safe food, shelter, medical care, and education—and I’m going to vote for Biden, pissy as it makes me, because the only actual alternative is so, so much worse, for me personally as both a woman and a queer, and for everyone in America and the rest of the world who Trump would find reasons to hurt. What do you think the man who openly and repeatedly praises dictators is going to do when those dictators massacre their own people? Yes, we need to care about this genocide now. We also need to care about all of the other people who are at real risk, both at home and abroad. Would a Trump government agree to fund military intervention in Haiti without insisting on it being a colonial exercise in power? Would a Trump government roll back the restrictions on discriminating against transgender patients in healthcare? How would Trump respond if Orban started dragging people into the streets and shooting them en masse? How would Trump respond if China finally went for it and invaded Taiwan? There are more lives at stake here than mine or yours or even those of the Palestinians, who have deserved better for literally decades and are being mass killed in ways that should result in immediate sanctions, a war crimes trial, and the execution of Netanyahu.

The world deserves better from you than complicity in a Trump victory.

[transmascpetewentz]

hey so. can we all agree to stop saying "asperger's syndrome".

the arguments have been made already for why the term is offensive to autistic people as a general whole, so i'm not going to repeat them here. what i want to focus on is the less talked about issue with the fact that we as a community still use this word.

there is literally no excuse for any person, but especially jewish & romani people, to have their medical condition named after a fucking nazi who tried to genocide their ancestors. ZERO.

and before i get a ton of people in the replies trying to make excuses, let me pre-emptively answer the most common replies i know i'm going to get.

"ohhhh no but it's sooooo hard for me to switch my language, it's only been ten years since the dsm five came out!!!!!"

boo hoo, it's hard for you to use a different word after over ten years of the dsm five removing asperger's as a diagnosis. it must be soooo much more difficult to give a single shit about jews and roma than the experiences of jews and roma who went through a genocide and are still facing violence to this day /s

"but i'm an aspie and i get to reclaim that word if i want!!!!!"

yeah, the term asperger's syndrome is offensive both to autistic people who fall under the criteria and to autistic people that don't. but do you know who else that term is offensive to? the people who went through a genocide. unless you are jewish or romani i don't want to hear it.

"but i was diagnosed with asperger's syndrome before the dsm five came out!!!!!"

see the above two points about how not continuing to glorify genocide is more important than keeping the same words we've always used for things. it's fine to say you were diagnosed with asperger's, but you do not have "asperger's", you have autism (or are autistic if that's the language you prefer).

"but i didn't know that asperger was a nazi!!!"

well, now you do.

"but naming a medical condition after someone doesn't necessarily glorify them!!!!"

would you apply this logic to literally any other field of science? if we decided to name an element after a nazi, people would rightfully be angry. people have been calling for years to rename a beetle named after a nazi. if you name a medical condition after someone, that generally means one of two things: the person was a very important and good researcher in the field, or the person was a notable person who had the medical condition. this might be a hot take, but i don't think that a nazi scientist working for the nazis should ever be considered the best and most important early researcher in any field to be deserving of having a discovery named after them.

"but you can't speak for all jews!!! look, you aren't even jewish yet, it says that on your profile!!!!"

no, i cannot speak for all jews. but i am speaking for myself when i say that all of your (general) excuses have stopped working, and that y'all need to put others' needs above your feelings sometimes. during the writing of this post, i spoke to other jews who have made posts about this before, but y'all continue to ignore jewish voices and make excuses for yourselves when it really isn't that hard to just stop saying a word.

"you're being ableist by telling me, an autistic person, how i can and cannot identify!!!!!"

i'm writing this post as someone who is autistic and would have been diagnosed with "asperger's syndrome" had i gotten my diagnosis before the dsm five came out. being autistic is no excuse for being racist, antisemitic, or any other bigotry. autistic non-jews have continuously spoken over autistic jews on many issues, including this one, and guys, it is not that hard to care about jews and roma enough to make this tiny change to your vocabulary.

i hope all of this has been enough to ward off some of the responses that i'm going to get to this post. i'm willing to engage in good faith if you're genuinely ignorant or confused, but if you have read this post, you no longer get to say that you "didn't know" that hans asperger was a nazi and that we shouldn't name any medical condition, but especially one that many jews and roma have, after people who committed genocide.

[weirdmageddon]

i posted this on twitter also but it’s still eating at me. i’m so fucking embarrassed to be jewish rn. i dont want to be associated with this ongoing bullshit from israel. why do we need our own state. theyre just making every jew across the globe look bad in general even though many of us are conflicted about zionism and the legitimacy of israel as a state

people have hated jews throughout history for no fuckin reason but now israel exists but now its like. GIVING people reasons to hate us as a group. note that i DON’T conflate zionism with jewishness, but a lot of people in the world don’t know the difference because theyre uninformed and been dripfed cultural antisemitic tropes their whole life and that’s the scary part is them falsely putting two and two together. like what the fuck israel stop youre just putting fuel on the fire for people around the world to hate an entire group of historically persecuted people if youre being this shitty with your insane colonialism and apartheid like……I Want No Fuckin Part Of This. you’re spelling our own doom. you cant just swoop in and go “mine now” and then oppress the people you took land from under a regime without my blood boiling at the injustice no matter WHO you are. even if my lineage is tied to you. so when news outlets support israel it doesn’t feel like they have the best interest of jews as a people in mind. it’s in the interest of a zionist ethnostate and whatever that christian zionism belief is about the jewish people returning to the holy land as prerequisite for the second coming of jesus. its not like they care about us as a dispersed ethnocultural group, it’s all for that religious narrative that a bunch of people in the US are backing.

saying you want all jews to die is antisemitic. beating someone up because they’re jewish and no other reason without knowing their views is antisemitic. criticizing human rights violations perpetrated by israel and the belief that one group deserves more rights another is not antisemitic. and the fact that israel has the ability to pull that antisemitism card in response to criticisms of the violations they commit because their state is the “jewish homeland” drives me fucking insane. take fucking accountability for your actions. and yes, there do exist full-on anti-jewish groups in the middle east that go beyond hatred of israel’s policies and existence as a state and i’m tired of people pretending there aren’t in fear of appearing to seem like they support the state of israel. on the other side of things many people overestimate this by fearmongering and saying EVERY arab is out to get jews worldwide, telling people like me “they want YOU dead”. this is not the belief every person in the middle east and it really rubs me the wrong way that people group millions of individuals into all-encompassing lumps like this. many people there do understand nuance of this political situation.

even if i have that “right of return” by israeli law or whatever, i don’t feel obliged to it; it does not register as fair. why do i have a “right of return” when i’ve never even been there in the first place while palestinians who have homes there can’t return to them? what’s the basis for that? substituting objective reality with an imaginary reality? i don’t think like that. i can hypothetically come and go whenever i please but palestinians are severely limited in mobility? what makes me more entitled to that land than the people who lived there for centuries? nothing that comes from natural law thats for sure. it’s all artificial and inflated.

but at the same time i also dont want to be the target of antisemitism and caught in the fray just for being ethnically jewish. once people start calling for the genocide of entire groups we’ve got issues (and you better believe this absolutely applies to the palestinian victims in gaza too), because people who dissent to the violence perpetrated by the loudest are caught in there with the people who are perpetrating the violence. lack of nuance. people conflating israel and its zionist apartheid policies with jewish ethnicity and culture worldwide. other people conflating being terrorist anti-jew with muslims worldwide (like that 6-year old palestinian-american boy that was just stabbed to death in chicago). scary times man. but as a jew i can’t just opt out of this if it’s how i was born as. i don’t have control over that. but i can control what i think and what my beliefs are

[edenfenixblogs]

I don’t think most non-Jews understand how disappointed we are in the left right now. How completely abandoned we’ve become. How our contributions to progress for other groups have been erased or disavowed or hidden. How the actual tangible things that Jews have contributed to black rights and civil rights are being ignored. How we’re being told we contribute and have contributed nothing.

How we are being told that the world has been kind to us when it never has. As if my mom didn’t grow up getting called a Kike and getting beat up for being Jewish. How I thought I had friends until I caught them saying “xyz was beautiful until Jews showed up.” How people told me I was pretty “for a Jew.” How I grew up hearing stories about bombs being set off in Israel in buses and markets. How I couldn’t even go two weeks without hearing that and how nobody cared and somehow, every time that happened, the whole world became more hostile to me for some reason.

I just don’t understand. I don’t understand what leftists are doing. Or why. I hate that I have to say—of course, I support a free and self determined Palestine (which I truly do)—in order for you to decide I’m worthy of care and support.

We showed up for you. All of you. And the entire movement is abandoning us at best or targeting us at worst. Celebrating our deaths. Saying we deserved it. How are we supposed to trust you ever again? How are we supposed to feel safe ever again?

A very few select people who are in my life have taken the chance to actually learn about and dismantle their own unconscious antisemitism during this time. And I’m eternally grateful for them. But most people haven’t reached out at all. Most people are still sharing hateful things that could get me hurt and they don’t care. Most people Reblogging my posts are still Jews. Because we are alone. And it sucks. You need to be as loud about antisemitism as you are about Palestine or you’re an antisemite (unless you’re Arab/Muslim/Palestinian—I totally get that these groups are also doing damage control in their own communities just like Jews are).

But we are all in tremendous pain right now.

This moment will pass. And when it does, I will remember how many people let me down. I will remember that when I needed support more than I’ve ever needed it in my life, people fucking vanished. They pretended violence against my people wasn’t happening. They ignored and rewrote the history of Israel to suit their own narratives.

You don’t know what it feels like to be hated this much for opposite things. PoC hate us for being too white. White supremacists hate us for not being white enough. Europeans hate us for being middle eastern. Middle easterners hate us for being western/European. Everyone hates us for being settlers but continually kicks us out of their countries so that we have to settle somewhere else.

I saw a post going around from a Black person who said that the reason he and his fellow black activists go protest for Palestinians instead of fighting antisemitism (as if it’s a binary, which it’s not) is that Jews don’t show up. Muslims and Palestinians do. And honestly? Fuck that guy. Heather Heyer died standing shoulder to shoulder against racism in 2017. [CORRECTION: When I first wrote this post I was under the impression that Heather Heyer was Jewish. I want to correct to avoid spreading misinfo. She was just the first (and incorrect) Jewish civil rights activist I thought of. However there are plenty of other actual Jewish civil rights activists to choose from. If you have reblogged this post from me, please feel free to add a link to the permalink version of this post with my correction to your reblog.]I have devoted substantial time and effort and money that I don’t even get paid a lot of because I don’t get paid a living wage. I have continually reached out to PoC people in my life of all religions to ask how they are doing and what I could be doing to help more—both for them personally and how they would best like me to help their community. I have elevated their voices at every opportunity. And not one person I checked in with has done the same for me or for my community.

And it’s bone chilling. It’s awful. And it’s even worse knowing that when it’s over, people will want to go back to normal. They won’t apologize. They won’t self reflect. They’ll just live their lives, maybe a little more aware of how much they hate us and completely indifferent to the harm they’ve caused us. How disposable they made us feel. And the thing is…it’s not hard for you to know. You just have to ask.

Too many people are cowards. Too many people care about looking good than actually learning something or making the world better. And to those people: you should be ashamed of yourself.

I don’t have any hate in my heart. Truly. Not a drop for any group of people. But I have a tremendous lack of trust that anyone would actually lift a finger to keep me safe.

[etz-ashashiyot]

About Me/FAQs

You can call me Avital. I am a non-binary traditional egalitarian Jew living in the US. Any pronouns except they/them are fine. (!היא/את בעברית, בבקשה. תודה)

I really appreciate human interaction. That being the case, if you follow me and I don't already follow you, please send me a DM with the following:

What you want me to call you (internet name, username, nickname, whatever)

What brought you here and made you want to follow me

Something random about you that you feel comfortable sharing (pet pics are always welcome too <3)

I had a whole lot of other rules on my previous blog to weed out the faint of heart, but I genuinely don't know how well that worked, so instead I will simply put roughly the same information below as resources and recommended reading. Fair warning: I will operate from a baseline assumption that you've done the reading and therefore will not be explaining anything in them.

I also had a listing of my firm opinions and other miscellaneous information. That got long and unwieldy, but a lot of people seemed to appreciate it, so I will post roughly the same list under the cut.

The current username refers to my current symbol of a tree of lanterns in the starlight. This is related to my desire to create self-symbolism, old school style (like I really want to create a family crest, a flag, a seal, and other heraldic nonsense. Why? Because it delights me, of course.)

This page is under construction and subject to change at any time.

B'vracha,

Avital

Recommend Reading

For followers who are Christian, were Christian, are non-Jews who grew up in a Christian culture and/or have only learned about Judaism through Christianity, these links are very helpful in unpacking some of the antisemitism you were taught:

Better Parables (specifically the article about Pharisees, but read the rest of the site too, it's great)

Antisemitic readings of the Temple table-flipping incident in the New Testament

The current Israel-Hamas war and just המצב discourse in general require a lot of background knowledge to discuss intelligently, and not just propaganda. There is a LOT of antisemitism in the public around this topic and it is having serious real-world consequences for Jews all over the world. The mis- and disinformation is causing problems for everyone involved. Islamophobia in the West has increased as well. If you're going to engage in this discussion, I am respectfully but forcefully asking you to read the following sources. They are useful regardless of where you fall on that political scale.

There Is No Magic Peace Fairy

Ways to help: [1], [2], [3]

Muslim organizations advocating for peace, education, positive interfaith relations, and fighting antisemitism

This is perhaps my best summary of my own feelings on the whole thing

Is your pro-Palestine activism hurting innocent people? Here's how to avoid that

Please learn what Kahanism is, because it actually is what people think Zionism is. Zionism is simply a desire for Jewish self-determination in our ancestral homeland of eretz Yisrael. Kahanism is a type of racism that cloaks itself in Zionism but is fundamentally bigoted.

A non-exhaustive list of antisemitic incidents, attacks, and pogroms during [OP's] lifetime

An exceptionally long and thorough explanation of antisemitism and antisemitic violence throughout history

Why The Most Educated People in America Fall for Antisemitic Lies by Dara Horn (tumblr link in case the article link gets broken)

This explanation of the atrocities endured by Soviet Jews and how the legacy of Soviet antisemitism undergirds western "antizionism-not-antisemitism." If you call yourself an anti-Zionist, this is required reading.

An excellent overview of the basics

This is nowhere near complete information, but it's an important start. I will very likely continue to add resources as they become available and would love to create a primer on this topic more generally.

If you don't believe that October 7th happened or wasn't that bad, or really any atrocity denial please read this article from a reporter who was shown the actual footage, as well as this article documenting its effects on him.

If you are still in denial about the pattern of gender based violence, sexualized torture, and widespread rape as a war tactic committed by Hamas on 10/7, you are legally required to read this article.

About the blog:

I’m going to try my best to keep this blog to primarily Judaism, comparative religion and theology, with the occasional side sprinkling of queer & trans stuff, BUT it is absolutely a personal blog at the end of the day.

I talked about Israel and המצב stuff a lot on my previous blog and will likely continue a bit over here too. I welcome a broad swath of opinions, so long as they objectively treat all parties involved as human and deserving of safety, stability, freedom, dignity, and peace. That is apparently a large ask these days, and a not-small part of why I keep talking about this issue. Please be part of the voices that give me hope for the future, okay?

Minors can follow and interact but please keep in mind that I’m probably closer to your parents' age than yours if you do want to interact with me directly.

Interactions:

Rude asks will be deleted. Harassing blogs will be blocked and probably reported.

I consider anything even remotely in the vicinity of trying to proselytize to me to be “harassing,” or at a minimum, rude. Just FYI.

Otherwise, nice interactions are welcomed.

Banter is encouraged; trolling will be ignored

If you are a goy and want to argue with me about Jewish theology, you have to match my perfect score on this popquiz, no cheating by looking things up during the quiz. I learned Judaism as an adult mostly through self-study so you have no excuse. If you're invested enough to argue with me you're invested enough to do the reading homework. (To clarify: I'm happy to explain Jewish stuff to anyone who is sincerely asking or just have a friendly comparative theology discussion or whatever. But I have zero patience for those who want to argue with me about basic shit claiming they know more than me, especially if what they're claiming they "know" is not only wrong but antisemitic and wrong.)

If I don't respond to your interaction, there's a strong chance that I (a) have no idea what to say and am thinking about it, (2) totally meant to respond and just forgot after the notif disappeared, and/or (3) got incredibly busy. It's not personal! Please don't be shy about following up with me if you like. I promise that if we have a problem that is fixable, you'll know. If we have a problem that is not fixable, you'll be blocked.

I am currently learning Ivrit and am delighted to have interactions in Hebrew. Please feel free to message me, reply to posts or reblog, submit asks, etc. in Hebrew and I will do my best to read and respond to it. (Responses will be slower, but not for lack of appreciation of your thoughts!)

Anything else, just ask.

Hard stances:

You're not going to change my mind on these things; I've looked at the evidence, my personal experiences, and thought about them long and hard, and I am not going to be swayed by an internet rando. I can (often, but not always) co-exist just fine with people who I disagree with, but if seeing my posts about this is going to upset you, just do us both a favor and block me now please.

I am deeply distressed at how many people are choosing to live in a "post-factual society" where the truth is based on truthiness vibes and the politics are based on the quippiest of slogans. I don't care who's doing it, misinfo, disinfo, propaganda, atrocity denial, and gaslighting are BAD. There is no nuance here; these are bad things. They are bad if they go against your cause and they are bad if they "support" your cause. No cause is better than the truth.

If we cannot have a discussion where we are operating from the same baseline reality of verifiable facts, we cannot have a productive conversation and I will not engage with you. We can agree or disagree on a lot and that is fine, but facts matter.

If you cannot be reasoned with in accepting verifiable facts as reality, you need help. I'm serious. That is cult behavior. Get off tumblr and get help.

I don't know how to tell you that you should care about other people. If you don't see the inherent worth in other human beings' lives, I can't fix that. Go take that struggle to G-d and heal your soul.

I support the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in our ancestral homeland of Israel, the same way that I support other indigenous groups' right to self-determination in their ancestral homelands. If you don't, I'm going to need you to examine why Jews should be singled out of every other group to be denied this right or denied support in seeking it. That said, I definitely do not agree with many of the decisions made by the Israeli government, especially (but far from exclusively) regarding their treatment of Palestinians. I think both Jews and Palestinians deserve to live in peace, safety, freedom, dignity, and self-determination for both. No one is going anywhere; any real solution must recognize that. I tend to favor this proposal by A Land for All as an ideal (and given the grassroots nature of this idea, I think it could work pragmatically too, if the political will exists on both sides.)

I reject the Zionist/anti-Zionist dichotomy altogether for a number of reasons: 1) It impedes conversation because too many people agree but will never know it because they refuse to talk about what they actually mean by those labels and instead make assumptions about the other group. 2) It inherently puts the validity of an existing state up for debate rather than looking at real solutions for the future. You cannot unmake the state of Israel without widespread atrocities, but you can figure out options for everyone to live together in peace and heal from the collective trauma. 3) It also makes it way too easy to play Good Jew/Bad Jew and "Zionist" has basically become the slur de jour for "Jew." It sucks that people took a Jewish word for an important Jewish concept and made it synonymous with "bloodthirsty racist," but personally I don't think arguing over that at this exact juncture in time is helpful.

Bottom line: I'm a humanitarian and a pragmatist, and I care about all the people who call that part of the world home.

Update: for real, if you have trouble seeing Israelis and Palestinians both as human and deserving of safety, dignity, freedom, and inherent worth as living human beings, I don't want to know you. I don't want to talk to you. Go fix yourself.

🌻 I stand with Ukraine 🇺🇦

Free Iran from the Islamic Republic // Women Life Freedom

Abortion is a human right and should be safe, legal, available on demand, and shameless. It's a necessary medical procedure and it's completely barbaric that we're still talking about it as anything else.

Birth control, abortion, and no-fault divorce are actively positive parts of society and building healthy families.

Transition care is healthcare and also a human right. Allowing people to transition prevents self-harm and suicide, and has an extremely high efficacy rate with an exceptionally low level of risk or regret. We now have well over a century of data on this.

That said, detransitioners who are still supportive of trans people/aren't transphobic are more than welcome here, as any exploratory process deserves the right to say, "Interesting! But nope!"

Transunity, ace/aro positivity, and just inclusionism in general, 100%. Fuck off with anything else.

Queer might be a slur in the mouths of some people, but my identity isn't. Don't reblog my posts if you're going to tag it with "q slur" or "q word" or censored in some way. I'm not Gay as in "I prioritize cis men over the entire rest of the community" but Queer as in "my personal labels are none of your business but my political stance on queer liberation sure as fuck will be."

If you don't vaccinate yourself and your kids for any reason other than medical necessity, and especially if you promote anti-vaxxer views and the associated pseudoscience, you are actively harming the most vulnerable members of society for entirely selfish reasons and that makes you a bad person. I hope your kids bypass you to get vaccinated.

Wear a mask 😷

[jewishvitya]

I just saw this video about how the West projects its own antisemitism on Palestine. And I think it seems like an important look at how things are entangled here, and somewhat a counter to the post I made and apologized for.

I still think Israel wants to own Judaism and Jewish symbolism and Jewish trauma. And I still think it's evil to do and I don't want that to be successful. Part of the goal was to reiterate that Israel shouldn't be seen as speaking for all Jews, and Jews as a whole shouldn't be seen as its agents, which is the image Israel tries to project. I still feel strongly about the importance of separating Israel and Judaism, and not mistreating Jewish culture in diaspora, including to counter Israel's narrative. But I think my way of talking about it on that post was wrong.

Especially for Palestinians, having negative feelings about Judaism and Jewish symbols isn't the same as antisemitic sentiments we see in the West. It's much more similar in nature to the discomfort a lot of Jewish people have sometimes with Christianity, but newer. Any Palestinian who is uncomfortable, I can only blame Israel and the torment they suffered under it. And beyond Palestinians, Israel had a traumatic impact on several countries that border it.

I was thinking of Jewish diaspora who are an oppressed group and keep getting associated with Israeli atrocities, now seeing people from their countries refer to their cultural symbolism as a hate symbol - when I, especially being an Israeli Jew myself, should have prioritized the Palestinians who are being traumatized in my name under this symbol. It wasn't right of me to defend the image of anything used for harm by my people. And I'm sorry I did that.

This was an attempt to explain both my intentions and why I feel my post was problematic. Now I don't know that I'm the best to say more than this. So, in addition to my initial apology, and to this explanation, I'm posting this video. I'll write out the words she's saying, because videos sometimes don't load on tumblr.

Growing up Arab in the US, and I think probably in a lot of the West Arabs can relate to this, you're made to feel naturally antisemitic because of Israel.

But here's the thing. You know, Israel put the Star of David on their flag. Israel puts the Star of David on its fighter jets. The Israeli leadership claims to be committing atrocities and ethnic cleansing and genocide, in the name of Judaism.

And I disagree, I think it's actually incredibly antisemitic that the Israeli government does that, because I think it's the Israeli government smearing Jews and Judaism by doing that.

But it's incredibly unfair to demand that the people who are being subjected to that— in the name, again, they are seeing that their occupiers have a Star of David on everything. In southern Lebanon there's former Israeli torture sites and prison sites, that have the star of David on them. That's what they do to mark their territory.

It is seen in this region - particularly in the places that Israel has bombed or occupied - as a symbol of colonialism and oppression and control and domination. And nothing more, sadly. And that is because of the actions of the Israeli government.

And it's like, to sit there and say that the way that an occupied people feel about their oppressors - who are saying we are doing this to you in the name of Judaism, they're saying that to them - to sit there and call those people antisemites in the tradition of Nazis and of European Christian antisemitism, who are the ones who are actually responsible for the holocaust, is so incredibly offensive. And actually it's just a way to transfer white European guilt for the holocaust onto brown people who didn't even do it. It's like, there are so many layers to how messed up that is.

And I'm not justifying like, you know, people in the Middle East who might have anti-Jewish sentiments. I just think that the explanation or the lens of the holocaust and of European antisemitism does not fit here. This is happening in a very different structure and it's just disgusting that such a horrible European atrocity is used to them demonize the victims.

[marzipanandminutiae]

re: your recent post about the Houthis and how you thought the free Palestine movement was all in agreement and specifically this paragraph -

"kind of makes me concerned that some people who say they're censuring Israel for the right reasons- ... -have something more sinister going on"

sadly, a whole fucking lot of them do not, in fact, care for Palestinians - or at the very least, not at much as they hate jews.

we have been talking and yelling and shouting about the amounts of rancid antisemitism overtaking the entire political spectrum, and it seems very few people listen to us. I'd like to add just a few posts that might make my point clear - took me about 3 minutes to find them

https://www.tumblr.com/spacelazarwolf/738972445267165184/people-call-you-a-zionist-because-you-dont-post

(people using (((Zionist))) to mean jew, and/or as a slur, and/or without knowing even the most basic definition, never mind the very different streams of thought regarding it)

https://www.tumblr.com/pauvrecamille/739139228538208256

("Hitler was a humanitarian" + Palestine flag -- which do you think the user actually believes? could they be trying to mask antisemitism as anti zionism?)

https://www.tumblr.com/rock-reblogs/739264338509053952/no-bc-you-are-so-right-for-this

(people taking a frat-boy-esqe stupid/dangerous act of digging a tunnel under a building and turning it into... that)

https://www.tumblr.com/mariacallous/738956988704292864

(a Palestinian man trying to pave the way for peace getting called a 'slimy collaborator' and a 'zionist' (derogatory), + not in this post, but there's also John Aziz, another Gazan advocating for a peaceful resolution, who got a shitton of death threats for saying hamas' mass rape is bad)

https://www.tumblr.com/noparlpf/738692836513431555/anti-zionism-is-not-antisemitism-and-im-gonna-say

(anti zionism and antisemitism are currently incredibly intertwined)

thank you for seeing that there's something wrong and pointing it out - a lot of people don't care enough to do that.

That is. All deeply horrifying. Pointing out misinformation is what I do, though, albeit usually about history.

And while I shouldn't have to say this in a post that's explicitly about antisemitism and the co-opting of concern for Palestine to promote it:

I do not support the Israeli government's current actions in Palestine. I think they are appalling. I think they're akin to responding to a murderer using a child as a shield by shooting the child point-blank, and that's unacceptable. This must stop. Palestinian people are being killed indiscriminately and the international community must stand up and say "no." The only thing with the word "Zion" in it that I understand well enough to have an opinion on it is Cotton Mather's "Ornaments of the Daughters of Zion" (1692, unrelated to the Levant or Judaism), but I know that killing innocents on this scale is wrong. I also think my own country, the US, should not be supplying Israel with weapons.

Clear? Hopefully so.

I'm not sure I'd agree with every view expressed by every person linked in this post, buyt that's no excuse for some of the treatment they're getting. Most of what I've seen in my orbit has been people expressing support for the Houthis- perhaps without realizing (gods, I hope so) that the Houthis are a violently antisemitic terrorist group with the slogan "a curse upon the Jews," and are currently attacking ships unrelated to Israel. I feel like some bigoted people are taking advantage of the compassion and outrage of others to lead them down really horrible ideological paths. There are some online activist types who are led more by Vibes than research, and that's a problem when a lot of misinformation seems to confirm what they're already feeling.

The Palestinian activist whose words you linked used a phrase that stands out to me: "resistance porn." That seems an apt term for people who want to assign Good Guys and Bad Guys in this conflict wholesale, rather than recognizing it as two pretty horrible leading groups- the Israeli government and Hamas -catching innocent civilians on both sides in the crossfire. This is not a YA dystopia novel. You cannot just hate every single person on or associated with one side here, or laud every single person on the other side as a bold freedom fighter.

It's just. Like. How the hell does this go so awry from the very noble, correct, and necessary goal of Stopping The Slaughter Of Innocent People? How do the monsters using people's compassion to advance hateful agendas sleep at night?

I don't know. I'm just reminded of the folks who care more about The RevolutionTM than making actual positive change right now, but with bonus antisemitism.

[bayfuzzball7050]

SIEMPRE SE PUEDE PEDIR TRADUCCIÓN‼️‼️‼️

INTRODUCTION POST AND RULES 🔥🔥🦾🦾🦾🦈🦈

(Edit— 23/09/2024) I kinda got excited writing this ☠️

There’s like a worrying amount of text. I’m not sure everyone can gut how much I wrote 😭😭

But here are like the basics of my blog:

The name’s Andrés or Diego. Call me whatever ya want, idc

I’m a Trans Guy, he / him and if you don’t know me a they / them it’s ok I don’t mind that much. NO SHE HER IMMA BEAT UR ASS

☆ I got that dawg in me (asd) actually pls be patient im a little slow on some things

☆ Artist — I mostly make jjba fanart (currently insane about it)

☆ Art requests are currently closed!!

(for when I open them: I draw anything but nsfw/kinks and proship stuff)

☆ Writer (no fanfic here tho)

☆ don’t ask for pics you ain’t getting em

☆ if I use emojis, be aware that most of the time it’s ironic

☆ I make a lot of kys/kms jokes, if you’re not ok with this, please don’t follow

☆ i LOVE spammers, spam likes, reblogs, whatever as much as you like :3 (if ya want to like no pressure)

☆ if ya wanna be mutuals just ask I don’t mind I’ll just check yo vibe and that’s it

Art tag: #my art

Post tag/reblogs where I add something: #momazos dieg

BY THE WAY!!

☆ I usually don’t add tw (tho I dont post stuff with heavy themes often if I’m honest like I rarely do it) But if anything, be wary

☆ I also always have my notifications off so please don’t feel bad if I don’t answer a dm or anything of the sort

☆ please excuse me if I reblog/like artists who are proshippers, I don’t tend to check blogs before interacting🧍🏽(I’ve gotten myself blocked many times because of this)

☆ also like if they problematic in general like idk if maybe someone I reblogged has been in a big ahh controversy or summ so uhhh forgive me

☆ more info abt me and my blog under the cut :P ☆

So, I think imma make(try) a dni list but ik it’s ultimately useless cuz like I can’t force ya and im not your dad plus I’m too lazy to look through every blog that reblogs or likes but uh blocklist ig???

It’s just basic dni criteria, but like if ya wanna read ig?

SHIT THAT GETS YA BLOCKED ‼️‼️

(some of these are oddly specific)

☆ zionists, racists, homophobes, ace exclusionists/phobes, antisemits (guess that’s how you say it???), conservatives, mofos who discriminate/hate minorities in general

☆ Proshippers, Comshippers, anti-anti’s and profiction mfs

Why, you may ask? Horrible past experiences with these mofos and *other* bad experiences that ain’t really related to ‘em but remind me of so like if ur a proshipper just block me and move on I don’t want y’all around. Not rlly into the discourse and prolly never gonna post abt it but yeah

no Patrick, im not against the portrayal of fucked up things, im against the portrayal of those things as a type of pornography.

☆ On a similar note, I HATE LOL1C0NS AND SHOTAC0NS KYS…NOWW

☆ ON ANOTHER SIMILAR NOTE! even if I do hate proshippers, autoshippers/selfshippers are cool like hell yeah you go marry your blorbo 🔥🔥🔥

☆ Transphobes / TERFS

I think the whole ‘Im trans’ shit explains it well enough 💀

☆ SWERFS can also go fuck themselves

☆ Misandrists and radfems too like why you here 💀 when I first hear the term i thought it was about the most radical females 🤙 but dude…these girl be saying some bogus about other chicks! Plus your gender essentialism pisses me the hell off

☆ Transmeds/Truscums/anti-MOGAI mfs get the hell out of here I hate you like Imagine gatekeeping gender cuz someone doesn’t fit your idea of what a trans person is thats stupid af 😭😭

☆ Transid, “Transabled”, "transracial" are not welcome. I support trans people, MOGAI in. You support racist, ableist and ageist views and stuff of the sort, kindly fuck off and educate yourself.

☆ Radqueers in general actually

☆ NSFW agere blogs (SFW agere it’s cool I don’t mind)

☆ pedos/MAPS I want you hanging on the STREET

☆ Paraphilics in general

☆ Misgendering kink blogs cuz WHY THE HELL ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME¿ AND IM TRANS WTH¿¿

☆ kink blogs in general actually ☠️

☆ Pro-ANA or Pro-MIA mofos y’all please seek therapy

☆ swifties.

To be honest I don’t check the blogs of most people who reblog or like but- Ricky…Ricky when I catch you Ricky-

(I mostly notice when I get followed but- anyway 😻)

THIN ICE:

☆ Giomis shippers

Why? Cuz not all of them are proshippers but a vast majority is and giomis kinda weirds me out💀ik the age gap small but still it’s kinda….

☆ dsmp fans

As much as I enjoy the Fanart and maybe the roleplay was interesting I have like personal beef with the fanbase and creators

☆ Hannibal Fans

The franchise is fire but I also have beef with Hannibal fans cuz for some reason most of them proshippers

☆ MHA fans for the same reason as Hannibal fans

☆ Same with South Park

☆ Same goes for Homestuck fans

☆ Same goes for Steven Universe fans. It’s mid btw

☆ ONE PIECE fans, y’all didn’t do anything wrong it’s just that I haven’t caught up with the show 😭😭

☆ NSFW blogs (as in porn/smut)

ANYWAY

Languages I speak:

☆ Spanish (mother language)

☆ English

☆ A tiny bit of Italian

FANDOMS IM IN (but I forget sometimes 😿)

☆ JJBA (what I post about mostly (going insane over this))

☆ Yakuza (I haven’t finished 0 yet)

☆ LOST MEDIA. (Believe it or not, im also going insane over this.)

☆ Berserk

☆ Madoka Magica

☆ ikigusare (best virtual girl band ever fr fr)

☆ Gorillaz

☆ Good Omens

☆ Moral Orel

☆ Dorohedoro

☆ My Little Pony

☆ Sonic fandom

☆ Undertale / Deltarune

☆ Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul

☆ El Cuarteto De Nos

☆ Azumanga Dioh!

☆ Vocaloid

☆ Project Sekai

☆ D4DJ

☆ Food Fantasy

☆ FNAF (grrrr I love fnaf,,)

☆ Emo / Scene / Scemo (I just don’t have money for clothes nor the patience to make a blog only for that 😭😭)

☆ actually like another shit ton more but I can’t remember 😔

Socials:

☆ Reddit u/BayFuzzball7050 (old account, permanently banned)

☆ Reddit u/BayFuzzball404 (Current Account)

☆ ofc Tumblr

☆ Wattpad and AO3 but we ain’t talking about that 🤫🧏‍♂️

☆ @bayfuzzball7050-art is my art blog (reblogs from here)

☆ …

☆ also I might or might not have a questionable side art blog (collect my shitposts)

☆ ALSO! recently opened a Pixiv :3

☆ And NOW I HAVE AN ARTFIGHT! (sea foam)

Dis me btw

[moistvonlipwig]

9 10 16 please? :D (cwsg, i’m sorry)

aye aye cap'n 🫡 under the cut for length

9. worst part of canon

I think it has to be Mon-El, who is so very terrible that even now he is stealing my ability to kvetch about other things. ...Luckily, this is my blog, so I can do what I want. So the other worst part of canon was the demonization and eventual murder of Manchester Black at J'onn's hands in the same season that saw James cozying up to the Children of Liberty (WHY) and the Superfriends insisting that killing them (the neo-Nazi analogues), even to prevent them from killing their marginalized alien targets, was Wrong and Bad.

(Crisis on Earth-X was pretty bad, too. Not sure how it didn't occur to any of the higher-ups that putting their heroes in Nazi uniforms in order to make them ~Cool Villains~ was maybe kind of a super fucking antisemitic thing to do.)

10. worst part of fanon

I was sorely tempted to just answer this with "el problema es el racismo," but thinking on it further that is technically the worst part of fandom, whereas fanon is generally understood to mean (a) post-colonial Marxist philosopher Frantz Fanon or (b) fan-constructed canon, i.e. headcanons that have become popular and widely accepted by many people in a fandom (sometimes to the point where people mistakenly believe that these headcanons are canon). I've already talked about my problems with the "Kara is a genius"/"Krypton is Advanced™ and Earth is Primitive™" take, as well as the "Lena never really cared about James" take; other popular fanon ideas I can't stand include "Clark is an asshole" (no >:( I like Clark), "J'onn is Alex and Kara's space dad" (citation needed), and "Eliza Danvers is the best mom ever" (when, lest we forget, Alex's whole Deal is a direct result of her Not being the best mom ever lol). Um...there's probably more but to be honest I'm blanking on what they would be.

16. you can’t understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

Hm, well, I could talk about general fanfic tropes I don't get but I prefer to stay fandom-specific in order to maximize damage from my biting and maiming. So I'll just expand on what I commented on your earlier post: I don't understand the appeal of the trope where Kara shows Lena Disney movies or imparts upon her the True Meaning of Christmas and thus transforms her life from one of forever sadness to one of joyful bliss. I'm not saying I don't like fics where Kara's presence in Lena's life improves her life -- ideally, I would imagine that both of them improve each other's lives. But the specific trope of "OMG, Lena had an abnormally wealthy and abusive childhood and thus has never done [normative thing for American (Christian) children to do that there is no canon evidence she hasn't done and also that is not necessary for healthy childhood psychological development], we must rectify this immediately!!!" baffles me.

[mopeing]

It really frustrates me when I go into threads about JK Rowling, because there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate her, but most of the comments are completely made up reasons? Please don't lie and spread misinformation even about people you dislike, because it'll make your own position look weaker under scrutiny.

If you need to lie to make a point, people will think it's because you don't have one. So don't lie in the first place.

Not reasons to hate JKR:

- there is a star of David on the floor of Gringotts bank. This was in the movies, it was not described in the books. Unless evidence comes out that she asked Chris Columbus or whoever for that detail to be included, it is not evidence of antisemitism (that is not to say that the goblins in general aren't problematic though)

- she didn't say Hermione was black all along, she said casting a black actress as Hermione doesn't contradict her description (although it does)

- all the retconning and "oh actually X character was Y all along" after the series has ended. This isn't "problematic", it's just cringe. Nothing to get mad about

- she did not retcon Dumbledore as being gay after the series ended. I distinctly remember this being a topic of discussion while the 6th book was coming out. She didn't include it explicitly in the books, but it wasn't an after-the-fact change (Although it is a valid criticism that not including it explicitly in the books means it isn't representation)

- Seamus Finnegan being a clumsy Irishman who makes things explode. This was in the movies, not the books. In the books it was often Neville who was used for this comic relief

- she's a bad writer. I'm not saying this is incorrect, just that it's not a reason to hate her. People don't deserve hate for being bad at something, she deserves hate because she is a bad person. Please do not conflate these two; it is possible for bad people to make good art and it's possible for good people to make poor art. A lot of this insistence comes from people who used to be big fans of Harry Potter who now that they don't like her any more are now saying "well the books were shit all along anyway..." It just seems performative tbh.

- a trans character in Hogwarts Legacy being named "Sirona Ryan". Honestly this is the biggest stretch I've ever seen. Look - there's plenty of things to criticise about this game. The fact that one of the early writers was apparently a bit fashy and is responsible for the leaning even further into the goblin antisemitism for example. But this one character? I highly doubt JKR even had to approve of details that small, let alone the fact that the name likely isn't problematic at all. If you're reading this and, like me, you have no clue whatsoever what is apparently wrong with the name - it begins with "Sir" - implying that trans women are actually men, and ends with "Aryan" - implying that trans people are nazis. At this point, people are actively looking for things to get mad about even when they're not there. I'm not even sure the "sir" in "Sirona" is even supposed to be pronounced like the English word. How about getting mad about the actual obvious actually harmful things she does instead???

Actual reasons to hate her:

- her transphobic tweets

- the fatphobia in the books

- her transphobic articles

- the whole "Hermione is dumb for being anti-slavery" subplot

- her transphobic actions

- lack of regard for other cultures, whether it's the naming of foreign characters and places, or the fact that the wizarding Irish government apparently still isn't independent of the UK's

- her defending and associating with people more mask-off transphobic than she is

- she is a billionaire, and there are no good billionaires

Inb4 "how dare you defend this bad person" - correcting misinformation about a bad person is not defending them. Good people should also care about intellectual honesty. It isn't good to lie about someone just because the person you're lying about is bad.

[controversial-blorbo-bracket]

i don't mean to stir up more controversy so feel free to not post this ask, but like. yeah. i don't get it. is harry potter a shitty franchise filled to the brim with subtle bigotry and glorification of various nasty outlooks on humanity? kinda, in my opinion, yeah. is it written by, and profited off of by someone actively using their platform to cause harm to human rights? yeah. would i ever want to engage with the content or fandom? no not really. but does this mean that anyone who even breathes in the direction of Harry Potter content is condoning all this bullshit, or kissing the author's shoes and ideologies, and giving them money to harm the people they want to harm? uh.......... no, not really. what the fuck

like............ yeah. like you said it's a huge franchise. literally a silly little Tumblr poll that will realistically get under 10,000 votes, let alone notes or discussions, is not at all going to compare to the reach she already has. and it feels weird to twist the blame that way— this author is using their writing and manipulation skill to earn lots of money and do awful things with it... and suddenly it's the individual fans' fault that she has that money and reach? and not just the fans, but even people that don't actively go out of their way to excommunicate fans of the media?

sorry to rant in your inbox i just. im pretty sick of all this "inaction against a major celebrity is the same as condoning their abuse of power and influence" stuff that people throw around instead of criticizing why our social power structure is based on popularity and engagement in the first place (which is bound to put the most cultish, manipulative, influential, and charismatic people in power). idk it just feels really skeevy to blame people who enjoy or passively tolerate something that's expertly designed specifically to be appealing by a master manipulator.

you don't have to post this (though i also don't mind if you do) i just wanted to like. bring some of my takes into your inbox cause these anons sounding like they're accusing you of queer blasphemy or some shit over literally just.... letting someone hate their anti-blorbo/love their blorbo that they think everyone else hates.... are just really putting me off. like do they get that this is the "oil companies tell poor people global warming is their fault" argument all over again?

This has been sitting in my askbox for a long time because I wasn’t sure how to address it or whether to even address it or just delete it, as it feels like a topic that’s bigger than I am and I can’t ever properly address all of it. But all I’ll say is, while I agree that not all discussion of Harry Potter or other shitty medias is promotion and we as individuals shouldn’t be held accountable for the actions of a transphobic billionaire, it is still important to approach the subject with nuance and make sure the ways in which we talk about it do not spread harm. I think that’s why so many polls decide to ban it and other medias from their polls, because most of them are designed to find the “best” of something and to insinuate that something from one of those medias can be the best could be harmful. That’s why I’m not gonna post any asks that defend the series as a whole or the franchise as a property, because it’s not right to even humor those who want to downplay transphobia and antisemitism (among others). Aaaanyways all this to say if people discourse about Harry Potter characters in the notes or askbox go for it just remember the real people impacted by the bigotries present in it when considering the way you want to make your discussions

[thedrarrylibrarian]

Several people have been kind enough to let me publish their thoughts on fandom, community, and queerness to celebrate Pride in the Library. Today's piece comes from @lqtraintracks.

I got into fandom a long, long time ago, way back before I found HP in 2012. My early days in another fandom (days meaning years) are not a time I want to revisit, even though it started out really good. I got to explore my sexuality for the very first time there. I met my first gf there. And those things were beautiful, for sure; they were just short-lived. After a couple of years, I met an abuser, and from then on my fandom life was predetermined by them—what I could and couldn’t read, could and couldn’t write, who I could and couldn’t form friendships with, etc. And even in the midst of that, there were those friendships that bolstered me. @elrhiarhodan, I’m looking at you.

But after 13 ½ years of that… I found HP. And I found a wonderful person who would change my life. I met Shelly / @unmistakablyoatmeal. For the first time in a very long time, I saw someone writing queerly and freely, who, far from being limited to one pairing for life, was writing all kinds of pairings (and threesomes), dynamics, and stories! I was so powerfully drawn to that freedom, and to her, and in no small way, she and this fandom are why I survived, and how I escaped and started to change my life and reclaim it as my own. 

I’ve met so many wonderful people here, many of whom have become close friends, my best friends. I’ve been writing all the queer smut my little queer heart has desired for many years now, and it’s been beyond amazing.

But something changed for us a few years ago, and our community hasn’t been the same since. The person who wrote the canon turned on us. She revealed herself to be all kinds of monstrous. 

There were clues, of course—the antisemitism inherent in her Goblins, the fat phobia, the queer baiting without any actual rep, the racism and ignorance shown in naming Cho Chang, etc. We knew but maybe we didn’t want to know. And being white and not Jewish, I lived under an umbrella of privilege that meant I didn’t have to see it until other people began pointing these things out to me.

But then the transphobia started. And kept going. And it became her platform. And it got worse, and worse, and fucking worse

As painful and horrific as that has been, it seems to have done what that sort of vile bigotry has always done though: It’s shown us that we are and will always be stronger, wiser, more loving, and ultimately undefeatable. I’ll speak for myself: I wasn’t writing trans characters before. I was afraid I’d get it wrong. JKR’s evil bullshit is what pushed me to get over myself. 

This fandom is where I have learned the most about the queer community I love. It’s where I’ve truly learned to write. And it’s where I’ve learned about facets of queer life I’d never connected to properly before out of the fear of trying. 

Here’s what I’ve learned: Bloody no one comes together like we do! No one supports one another like we do! We’ve forged a stronger bond because of some terf’s hate, and I feel closer to my fellow queer creators than ever.

This fandom, you beautiful people, have taught me so much, continue to teach me so much. I’m honored to share this space with you. Happy Pride to all you gorgeous people being your trans, nb, fluid, ace, bi, pan, poly, intersex, queer, powerful selves.  Thank you from the bottom of my little queer heart. I love you.

Thank you, LQ, for joining me in the Library. I love your declaration of fandom as ours, and the recognition that we are a stronger community because of what we've overcome. Thank you for celebrating Pride in the Library with me.

If you want more @lqtraintracks be sure to check out their work on AO3! I just finished reading her Phoenix in the Fire and I was hooked the whole time! I couldn't stop until I'd devoured the whole thing. I think you'll be just as hooked as I was. I also want to throw in how much I loved A Strapping Young Man - I loved reading about Harry's desire for Draco, and how Harry's desire is bolstered by Draco's confidence.

🏳️‍🌈 Lots of Love and Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈

[germiyahu]

I don't find the whole "Chickens for KFC!" argument very convincing. Like, it's a pretty good barometer to indicate that the person you're talking to is on the right wing of politics lol. Like, pointing out that Hamas is homophobic will convince exactly zero Western antizionists.

Because they don't have to deal with Hamas' homophobic/transphobic violence. And I shouldn't even have to explain all the ways the average person will insulate themselves from facts or uncomfortable truths. Many insist this is just propaganda or will retort with "how do bombs save queer Palestinians?" or whatabout quite easily into instances of Israelis being homophobic, or Israel not being the world leader in queer rights. Throw out the babies with the bathwater! There is enough distance between the Western "activists" and these hypothetical victims of an anti-gay regime that it won't persuade them. They will not abandon a cause they believe to be righteous and necessary just because "Hamas aren't perfect uwu~" this has been well documented online from innumerable accounts.

It's also just pretty bratty and callous. Like yeah, use those queer Palestinians as nothing more than props against people who are just as removed from their oppression as you are, you're doing so great!

I think a better argument, is to argue against accusations of Pinkwashing. Focus on that. Because let's say the antizionists get their magic wish, and Israel is (forcefully) integrated into a Palestinian ethnostate from river to sea. What happens to the queer people living in former Israel? These people are not hypotheticals, they objectively exist and objectively do have more rights and freedoms than they would under Fatah and especially Hamas?

What happens to them? I see a lot of these people gleefully fantasize about a "substantial" portion of Zionists fleeing, but almost all of them concede that many Israelis would stay and even seem to want this (maybe just for appearances sake).

What is your plan then? This fits into a larger issue of "reincorporating" land given "back" to the "indigenous" population. Israel is (and in their minds will be "was" but whatever) a functioning society with unique laws and customs. What is the plan to respect those? Not just queer people, but women, Druze and other religious minorities, people of African descent. the list is pretty long. Actually for every xwashing they come up with, it's a credible question of how a landmaxxed Palestine would handle that issue?

Because I understand that to most of these people, appealing to Jewishness doesn't work, they believe wholeheartedly that Zionists are the new Nazis, they'll get what's coming to them. They do not care about history, they deny it outright. Antisemitism does not pull at their heartstrings. But what did gay people ever do to them? And this is pertinent because they are also queer people in the West advocating for a one state Palestine, even cheering on Hamas. Where is their solidarity with queer people around the world?

Like why punish gay (former) Israelis? Can you not at least agree that Hamas would not be a good governing body for the queer Israelis (Jewish and Arab) and the queer Palestinians who live in Israel as asylum seekers?

Or is ever facet of Israeli society going on the chopping block? Sorry but that's what you get for being a COLONIZER, hope you enjoyed not being persecuted for things that have nothing to do with being Arab, Jewish, Israeli, or Palestinian! Since we magically erased Israel we can magically deduce that there would be no resistance or sectarian violence coming from millions of people who are having everything about their way of life forcibly cast aside. Or maybe they'll only care after they get what they wish for and they can be the underdogs again. Zionist problem taken care of! Now let's immediately criticize the brand new Palestinian state! Who really knows, all I know is that their top priority is never voting for Democrats lol!

Whatever their ideas or plans, this is purely a fantasy. Not a single one of us can force Israel to fall, or force Hamas to stop being anti-queer fascists. All of this is firmly in the territory of fiction.

[edenfenixblogs]

I don’t put my long posts about antisemitism under a read more because I don’t want it to be easy for y’all to ignore.

It is vital that y’all know we are living under a very real and very constant stochastic threat, not even including the Israeli Jews who are living under both stochastic and non-stochastic threat right now.

The only posts about antisemitism that I ever put under a read more are things that discuss the Holocaust in any level of detail, because it is extremely traumatic for Jews, still. Jews should have the right to avoid that content without having to hide all content about antisemitism in general.

Those posts are hidden under read mores for the benefit of Jews.

I wake up fearing the antisemitism I will experience every day. Yesterday, as I sat down to dinner with my family, I received a direct message from someone who would have very much preferred that I was not alive.

I sat through the whole dinner just thinking “wow. Someone actually wants me, personally, dead.”

Any website I go on. Any time I turn on the news. Any conversation with friends.

It’s inescapable. I’m either actively processing recent antisemitic attacks and rhetoric or on high alert for the next attack likely to occur.

It’s actual psychological torture. It is actually psychologically damaging to be this scared all the time. Especially while everyone outside my community (obviously not including Palestinians and all groups affected by Islamophobia, who I’m sure are also dealing with the exact same thing) is just living in a normal world. And I’m constantly gaslit about it.

I haven’t been able to sleep until 4am for the last several nights. I’m tired physically and emotionally. I’m scared. I want this war to be over. I want Palestinians to have equal rights. I want people to leave us all alone.

I need the hostages released and the bombings in Gaza to stop. Netanyahu’s ruthless response is making Jews all over the world less safe and obviously harming Palestinian civilians. It’s all so big and overwhelming and constant and I don’t get to look away, because people are literally advocating for the elimination of my entire people as a way to prevent the elimination of another culture.

None of this will stop until we are all on the side of achieving peace.

Here’s some ways to help Palestine: https://www.tumblr.com/edenfenixblogs/736824311149707264?source=share

Here’s some more great charities focused on individual groups you may want to help as well as ones devoted to facilitating peace.

Next time you want to spew hate at a Jewish person try donating or volunteering with a cause that will actually help Palestine AND not hurt anyone else.

Remember, we make peace with our enemies not with our friends. If you hate me that much, try even harder to find common ground.

I don’t get to look away.

You don’t either.