#discourse

[kuchipatch1]

yall have got to be more normal about Southern people and I'm not kidding. enough of the Sweet Home Alabama incest jokes, enough of the idea that all Southerners are bigots and rednecks, and enough of the idea that the South has bad food. shut up about "trailer trash" and our accents and our hobbies!

do yall know how fucking nauseating it is to hear people only bring up my state to make jokes about people in poverty and incestuous relationships? how much shame I feel that I wasn't born up north like the Good Queers and Good Leftists with all the Civilised Folk with actual houses instead of small cramped trailers that have paper thin walls that I know won't protect me in a bad enough storm?

do yall know how frustrating it is to be trans in a place that wants to kill you and whenever you bring it up to people they say "well just move out" instead of sympathizing with you or offering help?

do yall understand how alienating it is to see huge masterposts of queer and mental health resources but none of them are in your state because theyre all up north? and nobody seems to want to fix this glaring issue because "they're all hicks anyways"

Southern people deserve better. we deserve to be taken seriously and given a voice in the queer community and the mental health space and leftist talks in general.

[carapaced]

I’m putting “mansplaining” on a shelf with the other terms the internet isn’t allowed to have anymore like trigger and gaslight. Mansplaining is a specific phenomenon that happens within certain contexts and I feel it’s just been turned into “any conversation that’s mildly annoying you are having with someone who happens to be a man/masculine.”

[metamodernisms]

genuinely so poetic how most ex dsmp fans have moved on to different fandoms and people and content creators and yet we all still come together to gather like its the last supper whenever dream does some stupid shit. communal white man shaming unites the world like no other

[griffonatrix]

"you don't have to transition to be trans": overdone, dull, runs cover for taking away medical care from those who need it

"you don't have to be trans to transition": exciting, poignant, radical perspective on the right to bodily autonomy

[reachartwork]

We locked a child in a basement for 30 years to read what ideas it came up with ex nihilo & tabula rasa and it only made derivative slop

[roomwithavoid]

FOR THE LAST TIME QUIT TRYING TO SORT PEOPLE INTO BINARIES IT NEVER WORKS IT ALWAYS LEAVES SOME PEOPLE OUT OF THE DISCUSSION AND IT IS ANTITHETICAL TO THE COMPLEXITY OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

[myfandomrealitea]

I am actually begging some people to just let some spaces exist untouched by real-world issues and horrors.

Like I've lost count of the amount of times peaceful game or fandom servers have been ruined by people stampeding in with political rants, bitching about world issues, demanding internal activism, demanding vent channels so they can whine about their shitty parents, ect.

Like. Respectfully. Not every single space has to be inclusive of and welcoming of outside topics. The real world sucks. We don't needed to be reminded of that absolutely everywhere.

[redstonedust]

also im growing to hate the phrase ''hold accountable'' in discourse because its always so.... empty? like you see people saying ''sure this person apologized, but we need to hold them accountable!'' like cool. what does that mean. how can you get any more accountable than a public apology. do you want them to apologize... again? more? get a tattoo explaining their crimes so everyone they meet is informed? do you want accountability or are you repeating buzzwords because you cant find a nice way to say you just want them to disappear.

[codgod-archive]

i have crafted a diagram

[polsocmartikhoras]

there ARE programs for that. The issue is they are not readily accessible as first need to prove consistent need unable to be met elsewhere. and THEN for you to improve yourself off them.

I fully admit they are made to be difficult, paperwork heavy, and unappealling or easy to find or tap into.

Which is why the cry of "lazy welfare queens" drives me up the wall. even where do exist there are four to five of them in a given area of care versus then cascade of bureacracy and bullshit sinecurist costing waaaay more.

And they are "on there" likely because barely functional on own and had to be grandparented in the Ideal Victim Situation which simultaneously watches like a hawk for improvement to CUT YOU OFF!!! Most of even those scammers are STILL living impoverished or with complications and worse.

The bureaucracy and obfuscation even a professional attorney struggle to navigate (that co$$$ts) is highly disproportionate and esoteric and not ready to aid the beneficiary making it so if GET support? will do all can (or not) to STAY on as situations spiral to worse. So a person homeless is soon penniless, in debt, health afflicted, unhirable (locals know to scan against the unemployed and so that becomes UNEMPLOYABLE) while forced, for bus passes, to attended anger management, do hundreds of hours of job searches including answering cattle calls for jobs NOT skilled in, and expect you to start paying out of pocket to reimburse or will only train you in typing and resume posting for jobs people NOT hiring or only pay enough to make you cost money to work and not build capital for housing. etc.

EVERY major step up came from personal charity or family finally giving another chance.

which is what the vast majority of programs would rather have you do. Ignoring how untenable that is for many.

[spittingoutthebloodandscreaming]

The amount of people childish enough to think that if suffering doesn't look like theirs it doesn't count is really something

[apollos-boyfriend]

“it’s a good thing that the minecraft movie isn’t about the intense loneliness of minecraft’s world and finding growth and hope in a post-apocalyptic society because it’s for children” Have You Ever Spoken To A Child

[apollos-boyfriend]

every time some jerk complains about the new minecraft update “not adding any value to the game” i think about that one jschlatt clip where he discovers a lush cave for the first time and is genuinely rendered speechless by its beauty. so much of minecraft’s charm and beauty is exploring and discovering new lands and generation and falling in love with a world that was made for you and to love you

who give a shit if the pale garden doesn’t “add” anything game breaking. it will be worth it for the hundreds of thousands of players who stumble upon it by chance. only a few people will be able to relate to being handed a new op block/mechanism on a platter but everyone remembers the feeling of still being new to minecraft and the wonder of uncovering all its quirks. it’s about the loving the universe for its smallest of features and creatures as the love letters tho humanity that they are not exploiting the universe for all that its worth jackass ‼️‼️‼️

[polsocmartikhoras]

So removing DEI lowered standards?

the prejudice in hiring is so ingrained they overlooked qualified canidates for being different and DEI restored merit?

Hmm. Never saw it like that.

How did the programs seek out and assure the qualified minority canidates were getting hired?

I bet there are instances you can point to of the opposite, bias to qualified minority canidates denying them placement and chance.

So after these programs and initiatives implemented how did they stop the discriminatory acts and why can be adopted or learn from them to apply to avoid perpetuating the discrimination

DEI does not mean lower standards.

You are thinking of white privilege.

[cownival]

EDIT

This has gotten a lot of traction so I’m gonna be rude and say that if anyone here has the means, that my spouse and I need help to not be homeless and hungry, and you can learn more about how to help via my post here;

END EDIT

———

I was discussing the incident mentioned later in this piece with my wife yesterday and I saw another post by someone earlier doing something mentioned in here and I'm finally going to say something about it.

There is a serious problem in leftist spaces, especially online, especially on Tumblr, when it comes to language.

The way people are expected to speak just to even enter these spaces is incredibly complex, to the point of being outright hostile to those who haven’t already spent time in them. And it’s not just newcomers; people who have important things to say, people speaking from lived experiences, people who don’t have English as a first language but still deserve to be heard, are constantly talked down to or even pushed out entirely for not using the "right" words.

This gets even worse when you factor in how often new terms are coined in English, and then people are shamed for not immediately knowing or using them.

I saw someone reblog their own post saying something like, "I know for a fact more than half of y’all didn’t understand a fucking word I said here."

And honestly? That stuck with me, because yeah, I’ve felt that before. Not because I don’t value critical thinking! because I absolutely do! I just made a post on that too! but because so many of these posts are written in a way that makes them Functionally Inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t already have the right background knowledge. And at a certain point, if you actually want your words to have an impact, if you actually want to create meaningful change, then you’re going to have to accept some things:

People will not always use perfect language.

2. People will not always know the exact terminology you personally prefer they use when engaging in discourse.

3. Dismissing or attacking people for how they say something, instead of engaging with what they’re saying, is actively harmful.

And more than that, if you genuinely want people to understand and engage with the things you’re talking about, especially people who don’t speak English as a first language, especially people without access to higher education, especially people who don’t even know where to begin when it comes to self-education (because yes, that is a skill that has to be taught) then you are going to have to be the one to adjust sometimes. You are going to have to let people say things imperfectly. You are going to have to take a step back and engage with the message rather than just the words being used to express it.

One of the experiences that made me realize that I, as a non-native English speaker, was not welcome in Tumblr leftist spaces was when I spoke about real-life oppression I had experienced. I left one word out of my post, a word which honestly, was not even important when talking about an incident that had Happened To Me, not theory, not hypotheticals or any what-ifs of oppression, a story, a story about something that happened to me.

And because of that, people sat in a Discord server, picking apart my words, accusing me of awful things, and then came into my askbox throwing jargon and buzzwords I’d never even heard before, then got mad at me for being frustrated that this was happening.

Think about that. People who are directly impacted by oppression are being pushed out of spaces meant to discuss it because the way they speak doesn’t conform to certain expectations. That is not justice. That is not solidarity. That is not progress.

There is a fundamental disconnect here between theory and praxis. Ironically so many of you do not know what praxis is, because most of you engage with a lot of theory, and not a lot of praxis, you use the word praxis a lot, but, ironically, you have no idea what it means.

{to put my money where my mouth is, it means Doing Something, in the simplest possible terms}

In theory, leftist spaces should be accessible. They should be places where people can speak openly about their experiences, learn from each other, and work toward meaningful change. But in practice? There’s a gatekeeping of language so intense that many people, particularly those who are marginalized in ways beyond just their political beliefs, are outright excluded.

And this is something I need people to sit with: The assumption that the "right" language is easy to learn, or that anyone who doesn’t use it is being willfully ignorant, is an inherently privileged stance. Knowing where to find information, how to process it, and how to integrate new terminology into your vocabulary is a skill that is largely tied to education. Having the time to engage with leftist literature and theory, to stay up-to-date on every new term that gets introduced, is also a privilege. And the fact that so many people refuse to acknowledge this, that they expect perfect articulation from everyone, regardless of background, and punish those who don’t measure up, is a huge problem.

Worse still, the same people who act as gatekeepers of this language often fail to communicate their ideas in a way that is accessible at all.

This doesn’t mean that complex ideas should never be discussed. It doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t strive for accuracy in their language. But it does mean that if your goal is to educate, if your goal is to spread awareness, if your goal is to help people understand and join the movement, if your goal is to engage with fellow oppressed people, then you have a responsibility to meet people where they are. You have a responsibility to make your language understandable.

Because if people can’t even process what you’re saying, then what’s the fucking point?

And before anyone says, "Well, people should put in the effort to learn!" Let me make something very clear: They do.

People who are new to leftist spaces, or who are coming in from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, are often trying their best to engage. They are listening, they are learning, they are processing. But if the response to every mistake, every slightly off phrasing, every unfamiliarity with a new term, is immediate hostility,

or even if it's just 'hey I see you're sharing a personal moment, but can you change your language to make me, personally, more comfortable with you discussing your oppression?' then you’re not teaching.

You’re just making sure only the people who already think and speak exactly like you get to stay in the room.

Your language, your terminology, your theory? none of it means anything if you can’t make it accessible to the people who actually need it. And it means nothing if you use it to Exclude rather than Include.