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crionic-soc · 3 years

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I've spent the last year and a half kicking myself for choosing terror management theory as a framework to analyze popular diet culture, not because it doesn't work (I think it does), but because it applies so well to our current political situation that I can't sleep at night.

It's hard to stay narrowly focused on nutrition and related stuff when larger themes of neoreactionary thought and autocracy and the dismantling of democratic institutions keep intruding, over and over. It's hard to ignore the obvious immortality project staring me in the face.

[...]

I first made the connection between social hierarchy, health, and the fear of death many years ago, as a teenager, but it became really explicit to me in online arguments about body weight and health just a few years back. It was so obvious that people constructed hierarchies of "better" and "worse" people (along lines of body weight, presumed lifestyle choices, and other health indices) as a way of convincing themselves that they wouldn't ever do something as gauche as GET SICK AND DIE. A lot of this came from various alt-right types and corners.

I remember one of my twitter friends responding in the most perfect way ever to these attempts at bullying with "That's right, in this land of immortal highlanders only the weak die," or something like that. It cracked me the hell up, but it also pointed to something crucial which is a theme running through alt-right and neoreactionary ideas, a sort of ubermensch or superhuman ideal, but in the updated format of transhumanism or the technological singularity. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's okay, I kind of wish I didn't.)

[...]

I didn't make the connection between what I was studying/experiencing (people using body size and health to form social hierarchies that allow them to suppress the fear of death) and the weird stuff I'd run into online by accident (neoreactionary philosophy, alt right) until 2016

I had understood that there was some serious social Darwinist thinking at work underlying all forms of hierarchy and oppression, and that this was the alt right's "we hate everybody (except cishet white men) equally" stock-in-trade, but that was about all I had pieced together.

It didn't fully click until 2016, as I was taking notes on Ernest Becker's writings, watching the US election unfold, that neoreactionary, anti-democratic thought as a whole is a massive immortality project, and THIS is what it has in common w/ my topics (fat stigma,diet culture)

[...]

Whenever I say "immortality project" everyone's eyes glaze over, so let me explain a little - you could say immortality projects are humans' attempts to "leave a legacy" that endures when they are gone, or belief systems that offer the possibility of an afterlife in some form.

Becker, I guess, states that all cultural production and norms and technologies and institutions are immortality projects, because they are objects, or even ways of doing things, that get passed down from one generation to the next, that endure beyond a single human's lifespan.

The immortality projects that fascinate me, however, are the ones that create systems of inequality, and use the strategic oppression and marginalization of a group of people as the foundation upon which those who think of themselves as superior can stand and reach for eternity.

[...]

[T]his morning after I woke up from a night of twilight sleep where my brain kept gnawing on neoreactionary thought/Moldbug/Land/Thiel/Bannon/Dugin like a cud, I sat down in my thinking chair and noticed the index card sitting next to me on my bookshelf.

It says, "The gauge of a truly free society would be the extent to which it admitted its own central fear of death and questioned its system of heroic transcendence--and this is precisely what democracy is doing much of the time... The free flow of criticism, satire, art, and science is a continuous attack on the culture fiction--which is why totalitarians from Plato to Mao have to control these things, as has long been known." (Becker, Escape from Evil, p. 167)

It grabbed me is because I woke up troubled by one question: Why, in a supposedly egalitarian democratic society that is quite hierarchical and unequal, would those resting near the very top of the hierarchy (largely white, male technophiles) be the ones clamoring for more?

Why are the Thiels of the world, for one e.g., obsessed with upending the (barely functioning) democratic institutions that extend to the rest of us a tiny, imperfect modicum of liberty in favour of an explicitly autocratic vision that would have us be serfs and slaves?

Like WHY do the people who have EVERYTHING in the current system, WHY must their shitty futuristic fantasy influence an election, when there are tons of people who have more ethically defensible visions of a future with expanded rights and equality for all people?

Why do the people who have it all, who live on the bleeding edge of technological advancement, contribute in massively influential ways to our culture, who are massively financially rewarded, NEED EVEN MORE? To the point of doing away w/ enlightenment ideals and democracy itself?

It seemed impossible to understand, and then my index card reminded me: because when you can't navigate your fear of death, can't even SEE it, nothing is ever enough. You can reach the top of the existing hierarchy and at the end of it, you're still human, still going to die.

Thiel is terrified of dying, openly invests in technologies that offer immortality. The neoreactionary platform has several literal immortality mechanisms baked in: futuristic AI, the technological singularity, transhumanism. It's The Highlander all over again. Nerds.

But the current system doesn't offer as direct a path as they would like to this glorious, immortal future--even though it's the one the rest of us need (and need to fight tooth and nail to expand, given how un-egalitarian it actually is) in order to have any rights at all.

They've climbed to the top of the shitty hierarchy we currently have, that is at least democratic in name, and now demand an even less democratic, more hierarchical system. Because even though they have every systemic advantage a human can have, they're still not quite immortal.

The antidote to this is MORE democracy and egalitarianism, not less, and the hierarchical structure of our current system is what enabled these people to climb to the top and ram through their vision of an even less equal future, while others fought and died to have basic rights.

If you give people a ladder to climb to be nearer the gods, they will climb up it, realize the gods are still not near enough, then set the thing on fire until it consumes them like a pyre. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, except usually the ladder is made of other people.

I don't believe in immortality, and I don't consent to being a burnt offering. That's all.

- a transcribed Twitter thread by Michelle Allison (@fatnutritionist)

#terror management theory #peter thiel #transhumanism #neoreactionary #ideology #fascism #hierarchy #social darwinism #singularity #immortality #authoritarianism #autocracy #totalitarianism #neoreactionaryism #neofeudalism #democracy

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2ndblogg · 4 years

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Hey! Just read your hot take on novel!wangxian and I absolutely agree. I'm gonna have to say here that I believe it boils down to the fetishization of homosexual men in a lot of the fandom culture that surrounds mlm shipping, as you said it's a space for a lot of women to experiment with their desires and whatnot, but I think therein lies the breaking points between reading novel!wangxian as a good, healthy relationship vs. reading it as a very flawed and toxic one. As an LGBT person, reading the way the author dealt with their relationship made me extremely uncomfortable, it just really feels like something that is written by someone who is more invested in using her queer characters for satisfying her and her reader's own pleasure than a well-built, strong relationship between two characters. Not to take away from the novel in some other aspects, I believe that novel!wwx is a much better, much more nuanced character than what he is in cql, but when it comes to wangxian, I think the intentions are very different for each of them. To each their own, I guess, but I do find it very troubling that some people in the fandom have a really hard time admitting that novel wangxian is not even remotely healthy.

Absolutely.

And can I just say how glad it makes me to see that not everyone is praising this book for it’s lgbt representation...

But I guess that’s also why I just occasionally feel the need to scream my frustrations into the void or try to make sense of the novel.

And why I try to be understanding and accepting of people’s opinion of the novel and not take it ‘personally’ (in the sense of sitting there thinking “holy shit this is how they view ME, this is what they think of ME” etc).

I was in fandoms back when they were really a place dominated by straight (homophobic) women and realism or lgbt representation wasn’t on anyone’s mind (and the occasional dude butting in to say that’s not how sex works or bottoming is experienced was ignored or told to get out). I experienced this change to fandoms being more of a lgbt space, of people becoming aware that media can shape your views of groups of people, of people becoming aware of their fetishizing of fictional gays vs. their prejudice against real life lgbt people etc.

And tbh MXTX just writes like one of those, she writes wangxian like everyone wrote their gay relationships around 2005 and earlier; clear power imbalance, clear roles and attributes that are divided into ‘manly’ and ‘feminine’, certain physical attributes (like the female self insert character aka the bottom being pretty and slight and weaker and shorter), men/the penetrating partner can’t really be raped so anything the woman/bottom tries isn’t really ‘bad’, the male love interest is forceful and self centered but ONLY because he’s so in love and since he’s emotionally stunted he has to express that through sex, men/tops NEED sex and it’s rude/mean to deny them that, the girl/bottom isn’t THAT horny or in charge of their own sexuality but wants to please their partner and what they really get out of it is the emotional aspect, decisions need to be made for them because the dude/top just knows better, the girl/bottom is childish and flirty and the guy/top suffers through it until he finally snaps and shows the girl/bottom who'sboss etc etc. (honestly homophobia and misogyny is so tightly knit in this kind of fiction, if it wasn’t so frustrating it would be very interesting).

Tbh I disagree with novel!wwx being more nuanced (despite a lot of ppl whose opinions I really respect also feeling this way), because I simply cannot seperate him from the wangxian relationship. All I see are tropes and stereotypes applied to make him ‘work’ in the context of the wangxian relationship instead of an actual personality...

To me, in CQL WWX is clearly the main character and you love his interactions with LWJ and want more of them and value them, wheras in the novel most of the time WWX plays second fiddle even when a scene should technically be about him and LWJ’s presence is incredibly suffocating, because he’s always being controlling or at the very least influencing WWX.

I also don’t feel like WWX has much of a character arc/growth. We’re essentially told he had one but the only thing that really actually changes is him hating himself a bit more and letting LWJ smash..., and I guess: he’s less independent than ever, he’s more isolated that ever...

I’ve called novel!wangxian a relationship between an abuser and his victim, because you can find evidence of that in the text. Not because I think the author wanted to portray an unhealthy gay relationship. Like you said, she was fetishizing and wrote for a similar crowd. But to me that ‘realization’ helped...I still don’t see how people can call it a masterpiece but I can at least understand hyping something you like up...

And like, badly written gay relationship or not; gay/straight,man/women, I see how people can find it hot. Exploring your sexuality through fictional characters isn’t necessarily a strictly straight girl phenomena. I probably have read fic that was exactly like this, I can’t judge anyone for it. But no one prints out the last PWP they read and goes, “this is ideal lgbt representation and nothing will ever be this good, the fact that it includes rape makes it so realistic” like????

(Is that part or an effect of the woke and purety culture? you can’t say ‘i like this book but it has flaws’ or ‘i’ve enjoyed this but it’s not up the feminism or lgbt acceptance that i preach/live’ so you have to pretend it’s flawless?)

And like, I do think novel!wangxian is a nightmare when it comes to lgbt representation and I do believe this is largely due to a cishet woman writing about gay men and fetishizing them (the fact that a lot of peoples arguments why novel!wangxian ‘is better’ boils down to ‘there’s kissing and sex’ is also pretty telling). And I am frightend and worried by some peoples response to it.

But is it really fair to see it as just that? It’s a problem sure, but that same thing happens in straight media (which I am admittedly not well versed in). Stephanie Meyer didn’t set out to write Edward Cullen to be a creep and non of the teenage girls that went crazy over him viewed it as such...Reylo fans (aside from some of them proclaiming Finn to be the real villain and saying it’s racist and misogynistic to not find Kylo Ren hot) found a way to view him threatening her as romantic and sexy, Loki fans that didn’t ship him with Thor usually fell into the camp of “he would be a perfect boyfriend” or “what if this OFC was his slave and he raped her everyday <3″... like ignoring/glorifying/romanticizing behaviours or exploring what kinks you might have through the safety of fictional characters and fictional settings isn’t JUST happening when it comes to ‘the gays’...

And not just specifically in fandom spaces either, a lot of ‘romantic’ movies include inappropriate touching, the boy/guy knowing better than the girl what she wants etc. And I absolutely do believe that that’s something that normalized these things for a lot of young girls and guys (I don’t want to get into this too much, I’ve really seen a change in the past few years, but before that it was pretty common for young boys to believe they need to keep pursuing and pressuring a girl that has said no, girls truly thought boys could die of blue balls, girls thought it was their duty as good girlfriends to let their boyfriends fuck them even when they weren’t in the mood, that they couldn’t talk about what they want in bed or what they don’t find enjoyable because ‘sex is for boys and girls get a relationship in exchange’ etc.).

And in much the same way movies have only relatively recently begun being called out for that, it’s also still pretty recently that they’re being called out for having their one queer coded character be a pedophile and a murder or whatever...Like, society as a whole becoming aware of these issues.

But do authors that publish their work with a specific target audience in mind have a responsibility to think about the effect it might have on them? (And I can already hear loud screams of ‘no way, it’s not your fault if your audience isn’t smart enough to understand that this bad thing is bad’, but I actually do believe in a way they do. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t write whatever you want, just maybe take a look at HOW you bring your point across. (We do KNOW people are influenced by what propaganda they’re consistantly fed. I mean, you wouldn’t write a pro-drugs childrens book...) )

What if the author isn’t aware of their bias and prejudices? Or their target audience isn’t their actual audience?

And do we, society and media, judge female and male authors differently when it comes to romance and sex in fiction? (The answer is yes btw) But also, where do we draw the line at calling something ‘badly written’ and calling it toxic? Can it be both? As I’ve said before, a lot of people claim that only the physical intimacy scenes of novel!wangxian are bad, because they’re badly written and OOC, some say the book as amazingly written and only the wangxian relationship is bad because the author doesn’t know how to write gay men. In my ‘hot take’ I essentially said that’s not necessarily bad writing so much as it’s simply an (okay, unintentional) toxic relationship. And would this relationship still come across as toxic (or badly written, whichever you want) if we didn’t know the author to be a cishet woman? Or if a gay man had written it? (my personal, eloquent answer for this is: yes, but differently.)

Which was really all just a rambly way to get to my point of: it’s not just fetishizing of gay men, it’s also the homophobia and self-inserting in a safe situation.

You can literally replace WWX in the novel with a female character and it wouldn’t change a thing. The author takes such an effort into building up this power imbalance in every aspect of their life that if WWX were a heroine nothing would change in this (sexist/ancient society) setting.

(And clearly this is something that appeals to people if you look at the amount of female!WWX fics...)

Not even the sex scenes. There are maybe two allusions in all of them combined that WWX might also have a dick but like, you can’t be sure and it sure as hell doesn’t need stimulation.

(and again, that could be written as a kink...but it’s just not.)

CQL is a gay love story. MDZS at it’s core is none of that.

But I also very much agree with your ‘to each their own’, like here I am criticizing and trying to find explanations and whatever, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why someone might like (or write) a book like this, I vastly prefer CQL!wangxian but people have their own reasons for not doing so.

The ‘problem’ really only lies in, as you said, people not being able to accept that it’s not a healthy relationship. Or claiming it to be perfect lgbt rep.

And because my brain can’t shut up today:

I also can’t stop thinking that the way some people ‘glorify’ the book as due to their age and ‘inexperience’.

When I was a pretty young kid and got into fanfiction, there was nothing but completely OOC!whump to be found in the first two fandoms I was in. And I loved it. It was YEARS later that I thought I might like to read something with the characters being...in character. What I’m trying to say, in different stages and phases of your life you might enjoy different things, for different reasons...and obviously, in that moment, you won’t think about ‘what appeals to me here/should this appeal to me/etc’.

I don’t mean inexperience as ‘sexual inexperience’ here, though of course that could be part of it, but also like, inexperience with this genre (is this the first book like this you read, or did you just read 50 in a row that all had the same unhealthy vibes?), with lgbt people and issues (do you know any lgbt people or is your only image of them either the cute boy you can’t have and don’t want to see with another girl or grown men in full kink gear in front of children during CSD? and also: do you think ‘i like this’ and that’s the end of it or do you notice how many people idolize this objectively unhealthy relationship and won’t allow critique on it...)

I...just wanted to say thanks really.

I just can’t stop rambling apparently and I know I mostly just repeated what you said or what I already said but in longer... I just really do feel very strongly about novel!wangxian and the perception of them and have actually at times felt very personally...worried/affected, by people’s acceptance and love of them and I just... have to try and make sense of it...

#i'll be honest rambling like this is very therapeutic and I'm glad some of you read the last one and send asks and agreed #and it's why i'll (try to) put this in the tags too...i like discussions but seeing ppl NOT going 'it's true love/perfect rep' love that #mdzs #mdzs meta #mxtx critical #i guess

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mr-kamiyama · 4 years

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A Word for Zoomers Who're Told They're "Making Up" Genders and Orientations.

I'm an Xer.

Well, actually I'm in that b.1977-85 throe where no two people can agree what I am. I'm Post Dankai Junior in the old country, but I was too old to be a kid for Pokémon, Harry Potter, I caught Digimon 02 during its premiere US run a rare Saturday the firm I worked at, that normally had Saturday hours, was closed. I met Windows Millennium Edition because a housemate, as back then, I'd realised I wanted to live with company, wanted to upgrade our computer to the newest version of Windows (and I promptly made AMVs using GIFs and lost them to the sands of time all before YouTube even existed) So that gives you an idea of my age.

I came out for the first time in high school. I came out as bi.

In Japan, transness, like here had different words we no longer use, but unlike here, wasn't a secret.

If I'd stayed in Japan just one more year, in '95 politician Kamikawa Aya began advocating on NHK for trans rights.

Maybe I'd've learned that transition *to* male and actual medical treatment like HRT to make that possible existed a whole lot sooner.

But I didn't. And so, I didn't realise it was actually something I could *do* and I wasn't doomed to be stuck until about 2010.

I claimed "bi" in the '90s, and mistook "you're a really cool person and really nice to me when few people are and so I really like you in a platonic sense" +aesthetic attraction for crushes of a romantic and sexual nature.

The SAM model was developed by bi people in the '70s, but where and when I was, there weren't exactly highly visible LGBT centres where I could learn this. So I thought any orientation had to be "x-sexual"

And I only knew about straight, gay/lesbian, and bi.

Which, the term "laaaaaaaabelllls" was coined by biphobic people my age. See, we weren't like people today, who literally can't live because of unfettered crony capitalism. You could get a nice studio on the nice side of town for eight days' work at minimum wage (of course, being POC, you had to find the right realtor), which back then was under four dollars an hour. You could get a 2br/1.5ba rowhouse for about two weeks' worth, which is half a month, but these days, that much work will get you a barely-studio in shoot-you-in-the-face-in-broad-daylight territory.

But we were still plenty suspicious of marketing. So queerphobic Xers went "don't make me acknowledge your filthy non-mono sexuality! What if I told you naming what you are is dehumanising, like labelling a jar of mayo, and you're the product!"

Which is no different that queerphobic Millennials claiming "Queer is a slur uwu call it gay because cisgay and cishet are the only valid IDs uwu Gay has never ever been used as a pejorative uwu"

Which is also bunk because back in the '90s, if one young man did ANYTHING another didn't like, the other one could call it and him "gaaayyy" and that would be a homophobic attack via toxic masculinity on the first young man. Heck, I don't listen to much grunge, though I did at the time, but it's used this way in some Nirvana song. I just can't remember which one.

Anyway, so I claimed bi and spent the next 23 or so years fighting for it even against physical violence to make me claim something in the false straight/gay binary

All along, I thought "the mushy stuff squicks me because I'm a guy (insert ways I justified things before I realised that yes, I actually am male for prior to 2010)" which, yeah, I'm still sorting through the myriad manifestations of toxic masculinity and learning to spot them. What that actually is is romance repulsion.

I'm actually aroace.

To go further, I actually have very strong platonic affection feelings, and "idemromantic" is not necessarily my actual identity, but that, and at least some idea, if even wrong, that the other party was interested, was how I sorted whether I should approach the other person as "friend" or "potential partner" subconsciously.

Plus to further complicate things, I'm sex-favourable ace/cupiosexual, which meant that just hearing limited definitions of things like sex repulsion in aces didn't clue me in. It wasn't until discussing what sexual attraction was with a newly-realised gay first wave Xer last year that I realised I had no idea what that was and had never felt it, and was therefore asexual. Which after the discussion with that guy, I dove into readings by you all on Tumbler first.

And I only realised I'm aromantic last month, though I've been questioning for actually a year this month.

Now, I'd say my aesthetic attraction is definitely bi, and yes, I accept the redefinition made with the info we have now of two or more genders including your own" which *I read* as "but not necessarily all genders, and perceived gender is a factor" whereas pan seems to me like "perceived gender is not a factor in attraction" ??

Now, I still actually don't have an idea about my potential aesthetic feelings towards people who present NB. The men and women I feel it towards tend to have this or that decidedly masculine or feminine traits, and I may never, because people my age are less likely to come out.

Whether orientation or gender, people my age are products of a very binary 20th century. We were really all sorts of shape pegs, but many of us were and still are dodecahedrons and whatnot with choices of only square, circle, and mayyybe triangle holes.

Naturally, the dodecahedrons and the hexagons all tried to jam themselves in circle and square holes, whichever ones it looked like we could maybe wedge into.

This means plenty of us are going around thinking things like "I guess I don't like sex because I'm a woman" or "I guess I don't like the mushy stuff because I'm a man" or "I don't feel female so I guess I'm a man because I'm AMAB and that's all I got" etc.

Those most likely to come out are those with very strong NB/aro/ace feelings WHO BECOME INFORMED. And some may still not, or those with feelings they can't sort, because they've lived so long the previous way, they may at least feel they have too much to lose.

There's also people like me that need a lot of info to realise they were misreading their own feelings due to decades of amatonormative/heteronormative/binarist/toxic masculine brainwashing.

(I still don't like the term "toxic masculine" because I really want a term where we have more room to redefine "masculine" as decidedly masculine but wholly without the toxic stuff that's so married to "manliness," room to reject that stuff and revision manliness, but whatever)

THE REASON OLDER GENERATIONS DON'T HAVE THIS STUFF IS NOT BECAUSE YOU'RE INVENTING IT. IT IS BECAUSE OUR TIME DIDN'T ACKNOWLEDGE IT.

Yes, I think it's funny imaging how lost you'd be trying to use an 8-track player, or a library card catalogue actually made of index cards.

And had I not miscarried in December 2003 and had a sixteen year old, I'd have had them set up the internet TV device I got instead of three hours barely restraining myself from breaking it into pieces just like I was the only one who was able to figure out how to set the VCR clock and VCR+ timers when we got one when I was young. Which my difficulty with this stuff is more like a Boomer than an Xer. Most of my peers are pretty savvy. Sometimes my friends can tele-help me.

And I think new music,which I define as post-Y2K, stinks.

So I'm not hip and new. Plenty about me is just like your parents.

But no, you aren't making this up. And you're informing a lot of us. You're waking us up to how truly diverse humanity is. You're waking some of us up to who we really are.

And as for those of you who have crummy and even Karen parents, two things:

A. The Latino kids took me and the other Asian in in high school. There aren't many Asians in FL. (The "Another Chinese Family" bit on Fresh Off The Boat is so real) There are definitely some crummy Xers out there, and that's been true all along. There was even a right-wing youth org called "young republicans." There were Regean-loving racist queerphobes all along. They made my life miserable in high school, too.

B. There are also others like me that believe in you. That actually need you. You're bringing *back* a diversity that was smothered by colonial Europe. Historical precedent is actually on your side.

Thank you. I mean it. You're doing good, you're legit, and there are a lot of us who believe in you, too.

#nonbinary #gen z #aromanticism #asexuality #queer #gen x #xennial #the name for people in that weird throe the Boomer/X debated throe is Gen Jones they both have names #intergenerational stuff #diversity #long post #i said a word but more like a thesis www

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uniformbravo · 4 years

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a bunch of winter 2020 anime first impressions from Me

Koisuru Asteroid / Asteroid In Love

ok ive already professed my love for this one so i wont get too much into it but basically it’s Extremely cute & im way invested in the two (HOPEFULLY romantic) leads bc their relationship is so sweet so far aaaaaaa

like do u SEE this shit im actually tearing up hgnfhrognfghdjfnjg

this show is Pretty and Cute and Space-Themed and Probably Gay what more do u Need. i love it 10/10

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!

so fucken good, this is the one i was most excited for based purely on the art style/animation and god did it deliver, everything is such a treat to look at i fuckin LOVE a setting w/ just as much personality as the characters

and My Goodness the Characters, 3 distinct girls w/ strong designs & personalities that aren’t like super moe/catered to cishet dudes heLLO

we Love a gremlin protag & her chaotic neutral best friend & the “fuck you dad i want to make anime” dreamer they meet........

also HELL YEAH it’s about making anime and they don’t even use that as a gimmicky set piece, the art is a huge part of the story and the detail with which it’s explored in the first ep gives me high hopes for the rest of the show aaaaa so excited to see where this one goes after that BANGER of a first episode

Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun

switching gears to a less great one lol..... so the thing is this show’s visual aesthetic absolutely fucking slaps in a way that’s so rare to see in a sea of samey anime art styles, like the character designs are unique and everything is so damn colorful, the backgrounds alone blow me away w/ how fuckin Pretty they are??? LOOK at this shit

and just. this show has a lot of stylistic flourishes that make it like 100/100 Certified Good-To-Look-At Anime

which makes every other aspect of the show that much more disappointing lmaoooo like ok i can deal w/ a mediocre story if the visuals slap, which they Do, but also these characters look 10 & we’re doing the whole sexualizing minors thing which fucking BLOWS it’s so uncomfortable to watch........... i feel like it’s one of those things where they’re trying to justify it by being like “o well hanako’s like a thousand year old spirit or whatever so he’s not REALLY underage” but fuckin. fuck off he looks and sounds like a Young Boy yall know what ur doing ugh

it’s not a thing that happens Constantly throughout the episode, really just a few moments here and there, but it is in the op pretty prominently so i feel like it’s gonna be a Thing that keeps happening so idk if i’ll stick w/ this one in particular which is a Damn Shame bc it really is such a gorgeous looking show im mad

number24

ok ngl just from the character designs alone i rly didn’t think this one was gonna make as good a first impression as it did??? i guess the huge ensemble cast of pretty boys reminded me of last season’s actors: songs connection, which uh. was Not great,

so i went into it totally expecting it to be all shitty but it rly surprised me, i found it so intriguing? the characters are actually really endearing so far...... i love how it doesn’t try to shove the entire cast in our faces in the v first ep but instead starts out w/ a small handful and lets us spend a lil time w/ them while only giving assorted Hints and passing impressions of the others, that was nice

also love how very not “generic sports anime” it is right off the bat by dropping us right into the middle of these characters’ story instead of doing the whole “bright-eyed first year joins the team and fights his way to the top” sorta deal- which you’d think would be a confusing and awkwardly paced approach but in this case is handled surprisingly well, especially because it seems like it’s gonna have a lot more elements of a character drama than a straight up classic sports anime (which i am Super here for)

(there is a lot of rugby in the op though so we’ll see how things go, it’s only been 1 ep after all)

the air drop into the characters’ established lives makes introductions a lot more organic as well; since the characters are already familiar with each other we don’t have to sit around watching everyone introduce themselves to the protag, we get to infer their relationships and general opinions of each other through their various interactions & it’s a thousand times more engaging imo!!

i mean we do have this other first year joining as a manager and our protag did deliberately say he learned everyone’s names/info after deciding to become a manager so im sure we’ll be getting those character introductions anyway, but well. we’ll cross that bridge if/when we come to it

also i believe this takes place in college rather than high school?? i couldn’t pay attention to every detail but i definitely got that kind of vibe in which case Hell Yeah another welcome deviation from the norm babeeyyyy (i just checked and it Is college yeehaw)

basically what im saying is im tired of tropes & number24 just no clipped past the first 25 chapters of the sports anime formula and also it’s set in university AND it seems to be character-driven & im living thanks thank u

Pet

ok ill be honest i completely forgot that i watched this one lmaooo (which should give u a hint as to what i thought of it *thinking emoji*)

the art style’s whatever and the animation’s whatever, nothing special there. the show is like, dark?? more stupid than dark idk it feels a little bit “welcome to my twisted mind” but the twist is homophobia w/ a mild side of ableism, and also an entire episode of suspense wondering if im gonna have to watch this black side character die (he doesn’t, so there’s that at least)

honestly i cant even remember what drew me to this show enough to put it in my plan to watch, i guess the premise sounded interesting enough (something about controlling minds and erasing memories?), but mature psychological shows usually aren’t really my scene, especially when they’re executed.... Like That. i did kind of enjoy the twist at the end, mildly, though i feel like it was pretty obvious in hindsight and the only reason i didn’t see it coming is bc i can be astoundingly shortsighted when it comes to things like that (aka im DUMB)

since it took until the very end of the episode to Really introduce our dynamic duo tho, i feel like this ep was more of a prologue than anything and the Real show is gonna begin in ep 2, which is great n all but uh. idk if i care enough to give that a watch tbhhhh. i might just to see what the show has to offer but really truly honestly cant see myself sticking this one thru to the end lmao rip

hate to end on a bummer note like that but hey that’s all i got for this post ! i have more shit to watch so i’ll probably end up making like a part 2 w/ more impressions but this is getting long enough that it’s becoming kind of a pain to keep adding more so thats it for now boiyoeiyeoii

#i kept wanting to talk abt my thoughts & figured this format would be more efficient than making a bunch of scattered text posts #also this way i get to include pictures to help identify each show #which is a lot more fun and probably way easier to understand wtf im talking about #so thats my gift to u ur welcome #retag later #ani blogging

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famous-aces · 5 years

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Alfredo Guttero

Who: Alfredo Guttero

What: Artist and Art Promoter

Where: Argentinian (active in Argentina and throughout Western Europe)

When: May 26, 1882 - December 1, 1932

(Image Description: Retrato del pintor, Victorica, 1929 [a self portrait]. It shows Guttero in his apartment. Outside is a very geometric skyline of smokestacks, steep roofs, and a brown sky. His room is slate colored and he sits in a chair in the foreground. He has a jacket thrown over the back of his chair. His pose is casual and he looks as if we [the viewer] have just distracted him from painting. He sits with his legs to one side, turned almost unnaturally toward the viewer. One leg is lifted slightly and one hand is on the chair's seat as if he is in the middle of turning completely to the viewer. He is a man with a receding hairline and a high forehead. He has a dark mustache and dark hair and low eyebrows. He is wearing a white shirt and bowtie and has his sleeves rolled up to the elbow and his collar is ruffled and loosened. The whole thing hangs very loose but you can still see some of his body's lines of musculature. His tie undone and hanging around his neck. His pants are ordinary and green/brown. His expression is calm but confident and he looks directly at the viewer. The colors are bold but not really bright. The style blends geometry and flatness and realism in a way I am explaining very poorly. End ID)

Guttero is not terribly well remembered today, which is too bad. Looking through his oeuvre I quite like his work. Maybe it is because he lacked the bombastic personality of many modernist artists, maybe it is due to his diversity of styles without one that seems to define his work, or maybe it is because he was one of so many talented artists of his generation. He was well renown in his era, however, and used his popularity and skill to foster the next generation of Argentinian artists.

Guttero's life began mundanely enough. He always loved art, appreciating it and creating it, but pursued a legal career instead. But he was unhappy with his life as a lawyer, so Guttero left it to become a painter. He pursued his dream and passion, inspired and pushed by other Argentine artists. In 1904 his reputation was good enough that the Argentinian government sponsored his move to Paris, then the epicenter of the truly exciting and revolutionary art world, its influence expanding outward. He studied there for a few years under Maurice Denis before appearing in the Salon.

He remained in Paris until 1916 when he began to travel extensively across Western Europe for more than a decade, first to Spain, then Germany, Austria, and beyond. He traveled to nearly every country in the area between the years of 1916 and 1927. His work was shown in various exhibitions around the continent from being featured in the Salon in Paris to a major solo exhibition in Genoa.

After that he returned to Argentina for the first time since his initial departure in 1904. Guttero remained active in his native country including creating free art classes called, aptly enough, Cursos Libres de Arte Plástico, with other Argentine artists. During this time he focused on his work as an art promotor, perhaps even more than his own art. During this time he introduced and showed new Argentinian artists to a wider audience. Indeed he created an organization for this purpose: the Hall of Modern Painters. He was dedicated to promoting and preserving modern art in the face of a world growing increasingly dark and reactionary. He died young and without much warning.

His art is undeniably modernist but trickier to pin to a specific movement. He has many different styles he utilizes with different degrees of naturalism and curves vs geometry. His scenes are by and large mundane and human, he uses bright colors, often huge central subjects, kinetic poses and positions, modern settings, and by and large human or urban subjects. He often painted on plaster using a "cooked plaster" technique of his own devising.

(Image Description: Martigues for Charles Jacques [1909], a brightly colored painting showing a scene in a Martigues canal. It is not completely realistic nor completely geometric and abstract. He favors color over outlines. In the background is a bright blue sky interrupted by yellow buildings with tile roofs, maybe houses, lit by the unseen sun. One of the building's lower doors is open. There is a small tree to the far right. In the foreground in the sparkling water of the canal are several small work boats, probably fishing boats judging by the silvery nets lying over the hulls. On the right a boat is coming in, there is a pale skinned, dark haired man working on one of the nets. His sail is red and white. On the left is a pale man in an orange hat and yellow shirt. He is stooped and just by his pose appears older, both of the men are too far away for many identifying details. End ID)

Possible Orientation: Mspec ace, gay ace, or aroace with an aesthetic attraction to multiple genders. (I am so unsure I have changed "probable" to "possible.")

I admit this one is a stretch on my part.

I am classifying Guttero based largely on absence, i.e. the absence of a remembered/recorded spouse, sexual/romantic partner, or liasian. I have no quotes or historical documents to prove my point. I have none of his personal philosophy or writings to draw from. Just the fact that he dedicated his life to art more than human relationshipa. That this is something I have seen before: Cause and its role in the life of many aros/aces/aroaces (outlined in Weil's entry the other day) and the fact that he had no recorded romantic/sexual partners that I can find in hours of research.

This illustrates why it is so, so difficult to find aspecs in history. We are not, as aphobes believe, impossible to locate, there is externally visible evidence, but it is less obvious than most other orientations. And cishets would rather we didn't exist so we are often buried under excuses. The easiest ways to find them are 1) if they were notably "married to their job" in their lifetimes (e.g. Jeanette Rankin and Carter Woodson), they talked/wrote about it in some capacity (e.g. T.E. Lawrence or Frédéric Chopin), they were distrusted because of it (John Ruskin and James Barrie), they made it part of their persona (Nikola Tesla and Florence Nightingale), aside from that I really need to search deep into their personal lives. Information not always available.

And often even when people essentially say "I am aromantic and/or asexual" the general population will not accept that. After all Newton is often remembered as allo and gay, despite never expressing interest in men. Chopin is often listed as allo and bi. Rankin is often considered cishet but too deeply concerned with her work. Barrie gets called a pedophile despite showing no interest in children. For eccentric aspecs like Weil/Tesla/etc. their being aspec becomes part of their oddness. If they weren't Like That they would be allo. Their being aspec becomes a symptom of their weirdness and would be unacceptable in a "normal" person.

History with a capital H does not want to acknowledge aspecs and, as with other queer identities, will go to insane measures to erase them. But even other queer historians will do this to aspecs. I am shocked how many people do exactly to Newton/Lewis/and the like what cishet historians do to Alexander the Great. In the case of Alexander the cishets ignore the obvious accounts that he loved Hephestian in nearly every way possible and queer historians and history buffs call them out, then often the non-aspec ones look at Newton and Lewis who had no interest in men and say they must have been gay. And it isn't really just history, Tim Gunn is by his own admission both gay and ace and the second part of that statement is either erased or, even crazier, I have seen aphobes say that he is mistaken about his own identity.

Anyway the root cause of this lack of nuance in the discussion of sexual orientation is a long sidebar that this is not the place to explore. I have left Guttero behind paragraphs ago. I have written a lot about how aces and aros end up getting erased from history and this isn't about that.

This is about Guttero and the difficulty of finding aros and aces. The presence of something is so much easier to find than the alternative, obviously, like if Historical Figure X exclusively slept with/courted men and was a man we can say he was (most likely) gay. But if Historical Figure Y didn't sleep with anyone/court anyone it is harder to prove. This is obviously severely simplifying identity but for the purposes of this example I beg your apology.

Long Story Short: the absence of evidence of something is not proof of the absence of something. A lot of aphobes will point this out and utterly ignore the fact that sometimes it is.

So, Guttero. The only thing I can say conclusively is that he never married and he was romantically or sexually tied to anyone as far as I can find. He was, in his time, very active in the art world. If he had been involved someone would probably have taken note. Especially considering his art is often very appreciative of the human form, especially the male one, it would not be hard to believe he was allo and gay or mspec.

I am going to take his art another way putting some dusty analysis/critique/art history skills to good use. Here's the thing, those who follow me on my personal blog or even here know I find the Death of the Author extremely important but it is also extremely complicated (it was actually the topic of my senior thesis). I don't want to use an artist's work to talk about their personal lives because art is often not reflective of life, but there is always some cross contamination in one way or another. I am going to explain what I mean on a superficial level, using myself as an example so I can say this is 100% accurate. I love the found family trope, and I think those relationships are the best in the world. So whenever I write something you can be damned sure if I can get some found family goodness in there I will. What I am saying is, I don't love or even approve of everything I write about, but I do write about some things because I love them and want to explore them and experience them on some level. The same may be true for Guttero and the subjects he painted.

Guttero often pays a lot of attention to human form. Look at his work The Market (I couldn't find a large enough image to put it in this post) and you will see his appreciation for amab musculature and on the other side of the male spectrum...

(image description: Retrato de Lucien Cavarry [1911] It shows a thin, lanky, and well dressed young man reclining on a green floral patterned couch and a black pillow. He is pale with neat, dark hair. He has a shadow of 5 o'clock shadow on his super hero jaw. His suit is white, his slightly rumpled tie is black, as are his socks and polished shoes. One arm is across the back of the couch and a red and gold pillow the other is dangling. This style is very different from the other portraits I showed/referenced. Still a modern but more realistic style, more flowing, less geometric. The man is drop dead gorgeous by Western beauty standards. End ID)

As for women...he seems to find them colder, more distant, but there is still a physical appreciation there. (Linking Mujeres Indolentes so I don't get flagged for "female presenting nipples" or whatever Tumblr's BS is. [The name alone tells you a lot]). Or the somewhat judgemental gaze of the woman below:

(Image Description: Georgelina. It shows a portrait of a pretty young woman sitting in front of a field. She is pale and long and beautiful. She has red hair, sharp eyes, a long flowing white dress with a gold sash around her waist, and a white hat with a black bow that is blowing in the wind. She takes up most of the frame and her expression is challenging and she holds eye contact with the viewer. The colors are bright and she is almost porciline in color. The background is mostly flat planes of color. In style it is somewhere between the self portrait and the portrait of Cavarry. End ID.)

Not all of his portraits of women have them so sour/distant but they all have a sort of challenging look. Beauty tinged with something dangerous, while the men always seem more innocent.

So here is why I say aspec rather than allo using his work alone, none of his work is particularly sexually inviting even with the sexiness/physical European attractiveness. The men are bashful or unaware of the viewer, the women are certainly not interested.

And back to the self portrait at the top: Guttero is in a fairly sexy pose, but it is sexy without being sexual. He is rumpled but the thing he was doing was painting, there is a sexless explanation. He is looking at the viewer, but you are distracting him from working. At first glance I thought his legs were spread, but they are simply in motion so he can face his guest more comfortably. This all could mean nothing, but I found it striking that this is how he chose to depict himself, at first he appears to be inviting the viewer in for a more physical interaction, but then it seems he is doing exactly the opposite, his passionate energy has been instead put into painting.

And in reality toward the end of his life that was what he did. He dedicated himself to his own art and the art of others.

So again, this could mean nothing. But...it could mean he is aspec.

And that is how the person I am least sure about got the longest entry.

(image description: Elevadores [1928]. A painting showing a factory complex. There is a raised platform running around it and several buildings in bright colors. There is a tree to the right side and a green hill. The building in the near-center [lightly left] is red. The sky is yellow and blue, perhaps the unseen sun is rising up behind the right-hand buildings. In style it is mostly geometric and flat color. End ID.)

#queer #lgbtq #asexual #ace #history #aromantic #aro #gay #mspec #20th century #artists #south america #Argentina #Argentinian #Alfredo Guttero

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fuckthegovfucklove · 5 years

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The Love Ideology: What is love?

Trying to define love is a bloody tiring mission encumbered by vagueness, contradictions and inconsistencies. So I’m not going to attempt to define the word but rather look at some of the different shapes love comes in within interpersonal relationships.

I want to look at the different types of love, the function of each, the power dynamics that exist and their relevance as a basis to share my speculative thoughts on the wider implications of love in later posts.

Loving is touted as a necessity, a source of joy and an objectively good thing for humanity. I’m not so sure I agree and I think a counter-argument against love is useful in redirecting our focus to more urgent issues and developing critical thought, or at the very least being more conscious of the way you love (if you must).

I briefly look at self love, romantic love, platonic love and familial love from a mainstream (western) perspective since that’s what's most prevalent and all I know anyway. Love is not confined to interpersonal relationships and critique of it can be extended to sentiments like unwaveringly love for homeland (patriotism), love for a public figure (idolatry), love for an ideology (cultism).

You’ll find that in every case where love is referred to, it could easily be replaced by a more revealing synonym.

Self love

I know your familiar with this one, we rave on about it all the time. It’s being content with who you are, knowing your “worth” (you see the capitalist undertones too right?). Some call it a radical self-acceptance and according to John Kim the ‘life coach’, self love looks like this:

“When you get to a place where you like yourself, the action of loving yourself will come more naturally. You’ll have non-negotiables. You won’t tolerate certain behaviour from others. You’ll seek less approval. Your friendships will be less lopsided. You won’t have as many holes to fill within you. You’ll be more gentle with yourself, more forgiving. You’ll believe you deserve more, better, different. You’ll finally stop breaking the promises you’ve made with you. And the relationship you have with yourself will improve. “

Ah so, curing all the problems caused by love (and capitalism) with more.. love? Think about why you do what you do. You compromise because you love, tolerate because you love, seek approval because you want love, your love is quantifiable and isn’t always reciprocated, love told you you need it feel whole, to love you must forgive, you deserve love.

Is loving yourself enough in a capitalist world that measures your social worth on how full your cup of love is? (think about the [profitable] factors that determine this too). Will the inferiority complex completely dissipate? If you walk out on the expectations of this here capitalist world perhaps, but abandoning the pursuit of love might be a quicker route.

“You can’t love somebody else until you love yourself“ is a widely known cliché typically used in a romantic context. Some critique the adage saying self-love isn’t actually a precondition for loving others, clinical psychologist Leon F. Seltzer proposes a better alternative: “To deepen your love and acceptance of another, first develop love and acceptance for yourself.” Interesting. I still think theres a semblance of truth in the former that could easily be extrapolated to other types of love.

See loving the Other can only be done by identifying parts of yourself within them and seeing qualities in them that you like. It’s impossible to imagine what loving something entirely disconnected from us looks like because everything is in some way connected to self. We extend ourselves to the object of our love so that by loving the Other we are also loving ourselves. Kierkegaard calls this ‘self-love’. Loving your partner is loving self, loving your friend is loving self, loving your family is loving self, loving your nation is loving self, loving the environment is loving self, loving an ideology is loving self; no matter how selfless or sacrificial the nature. Thus, I have made the cheeky decision to sub them all under this title.

Romantic love

The most sought after, most regulated, most distracting and arguably the most delusional of loves. Romance is where we can write our own fiction and relies on our own imagination to create a world where it can function. Driven by our libidinal desires, we seek to conquer the heart of another. Our romantic interests becoming personified virtues who make us feel like we’ve never felt before (until they don’t).

It is here we are forced to learn a gender and organise our desires around them. Our bizarre sex-sentimentality makes romantic love a safe space to be completely uninhibited. Eroticism is confined to the couple as is building a life project (cohabitation, economic merging, child-rearing).

We have a set criteria of what we look for in a partner (our fantasy), too busy setting up our Tinder to question why our list is identical to the next persons and what is informing these ~ preferences ~. The success of romantic interactions are contingent upon the degree to which projective identification is continually effective, that is when a person projects their fantasy onto another so that they feel inclined or pressured to fall in line with the projective fantasy. In romance, this is typically one of amour passion where by confessing your feelings the other now hopefully joins you in this romantic fantasy.

We must then commit to this person, overcommit then merge. The merging process frequently comes with the dissolution of autonomy and boundaries because complete trust in the other is a requirement. We simultaneously create rules and install dependencies to solidify this union because subconsciously we know that love is not enough to keep two together.

Unpaid labour is an intrinsic part of romantic love and it’s usually gendered - maintaining a healthy relationship requires work (cishet women and those taking the role of woman/femme/more domesticised doing most of the labour). So is it that we enjoy working 9-5 + unpaid overtime or do the promised benefits of coupledom outweigh the cons?

Those who opt for singledom and see no sense in romantic love are considered immature or are diagnosed with the infamous disorder the therapists call ‘fear of intimacy’. Those who are single by circumstances are told that “the one“ will soon come and/or are often pitied. The social worth of an individual increases when they are in a couple as the partner is pretty much considered personal property.

Unions formed on the basis of romantic love are the only ones that are eligible to sign a contract with the state (think about why) and in exchange are afforded a multitude of benefits from adoption rights and tax deductions to immigration and residency for partners from other countries. These unions, called marriage, are usually accompanied by an expensive celebration party where friends and family are expected to attend and bring gifts.

So what is the purpose of romantic love and why do we desire it? Lynn Paramore sums it up.

“Romantic love is not based on companionship, but on the feeling of being desired. This kind of love appears to give us the opportunity, just as money does, to constantly remake ourselves, to project new version of our lives. It’s about longing, fleeting highs, the same stimulation we feel in buying a new car, a new wardrobe. As the married couple’s romantic attraction wanes, the need for stimulation is transferred to the next big purchase, the washing machine, the wide-screen TV. Capitalism goes humming along.”

Platonic love

Where there’s romance, love is expected to consume you. Friendships aren’t similarly expected to be as emotionally weighty and intoxicating; we expect support in good times and bad, someone to laugh, gossip and cry with and a companion to embark on new adventures with. We hope for our friendships to last long but don’t spend as much time deliberating about our future, we truly live in the present with those we consider friends.

These relationships are usually built off of shared values and interests, and an appreciation of the stark realities of the individual characters. They aren’t typically sought after but are formed by being in the right place at the right time. Friendships usually have no issue respecting autonomy, there’s something more rational and ethical about the bond. The voluntarist nature of the entanglements allow this and in comparison to romantic love, platonic love expects little.

The performative actions designed to win affection that are part and parcel of romance are left at the door. Platonic love isn’t devoid of affection but arbitrary limits are put in place e.g sexual intercourse. According popular culture sex ruins a friendship (loooool). Friends do typically seek a level of validation and affirmation from their peers, considerably higher (from my observations) for those socialised as men.

While platonic love doesn’t demand the cognitive bending that romantic love does, it’s similar in the sense that it’s love through favouritism. We give preferential treatment to those who favour us even in situations where logically we would do otherwise. It is expected of us. Platonic love however does not hold the same social value as romantic love and friendships are often “demoted“ once a new romantic interest takes the stage. Andrew Sullivan voiced his disapproval on this common practice:

“The great modern enemy of friendship has turned out to be love. By love, I don't mean the principle of giving and mutual regard that lies at the heart of friendship [but] love in the banal, ubiquitous, compelling, and resilient modern meaning of love: the romantic love that obliterates all other goods, the love to which every life must apparently lead, the love that is consummated in sex and celebrated in every particle of our popular culture, the love that is institutionalized in marriage and instilled as a primary and ultimate good in every Western child...We live in a world, in fact, in which respect and support for eros (romantic love) has acquired the hallmarks of a cult. “

Familial love

Familial love presents in a lot of arrangements. Between two individuals it can be a progression from platonic love or romantic love (though they can coexist). It’s a fondness born out of familiarity, dependency, mutual protection and non-judgmental support. Family can also describe a group of people you share similar experiences and rituals with, such as a church family or work family.

The primal familial love, the “blood is thicker than water“ love that is somewhat universal refers to the instinctual affection and protection we show to those with blood (shared genetics/common ancestors) and perhaps legal bonds (legally bound through adoption/guardianship). The love of a parent towards offspring and vice versa. Or extended blood family. With familial love theres an inherent hierarchy: offspring, spouse, parents-siblings, extended blood family and then other forms of family if chosen. I will refer to familial love as what exists between parent and offspring henceforth as it customarily obliterates the rest.

This familial love conventionally implies unconditional, ultra-protective, “I’d die for you“ love towards child. It’s not given according to their personal qualities (although once they’re no longer a minor it often weakens) and if a child should stray on the wrong path the parent will most likely do everything in their power to save them. The family is the nuclear of civilisation and the most basic unit of society. The education of almost all starts in the family, particularly character and moral education.

The familial love of a parent is one of duty and protection, and for the child it’s one of dependance and trust. As parents are the legal guardians of children, they position themselves as the authority and the child recognises them as such. Parents have a wider understanding of society and often try balance preserving a child’s innocence (I often wonder why) whilst making them aware of the “real world”. In order to ensure a child obeys them and trusts that they know what's best for them they often remind the child that there’s bad people out there that do bad things i.e “don’t talk to strangers, they could kidnap you“. Children are then obliged to submit to the parental safety that the home provides, whilst also being dependent on their parent for sustenance.

Familial love is assumed to be natural and present in all. It’s blasphemy to confess you do not love your parents or you do not love your child. In situations of conflict, familial love is supposed water down any malice, and forgiveness/reconciliation should follow. The family is expected to have your best interest at heart at all time and familial love is thought of as permanent, parents often say things along the lines of: “Your family remains even when everyone leaves“. Loyalty and favouritism is therefore expected and should also trump that of friends and romantic partners.

Many choose to reproduce. They get to experience the reverse of child-parent familial love where they are the ones in authority and build a life project from that. Why do people choose to have children? Some of the reasons people give range from: looking to find a sense of purpose, familism, pressure from peers and family, belief that it is your duty to continue your biological lineage etc. A growing number of people are choosing not to reproduce usually because they aren’t interested in parenting or bringing more people into the world (voluntary childlessness/anti-natalism).

Humanaesfera suggests a political explanation for the desire to create a family:

“Since the emergence of capitalism (ie, the industrial capital, the proletariat and the modern state, simultaneously, eighteenth century), the familism is the central fetish by which the proletarians (ie, those deprived of the property of any means of life) accept willingly to engage in maintaining and improving the enterprise and the government, creating and accumulating with dedication the very hostile power that systematically subjugates them, wears out them, recycles them, discards them and abandons them - the capital. This is because they place their libido (cathexis), their desires, in the family, pseudo capitalist property in which they fantasize are accumulating their own capital on a par with the capitalists. This leads them to support the ruling class and the police, that is, the state as guarantor of this fictitious property.”

#blog post #aromantic #anti-romance #against love #liberatory relating

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garrettsiwicki · 5 years

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The Gandrew Conundrum

Or better named, the post where I talk out of my ass. Okay, so let me preface this by saying I am in no way claiming any of this is true. This is just a point of view my brain has created from what we’ve seen or headcanon’d about Garrett and Andrew. I don’t truly know anything about Garrett, Andrew, or anyone relating to them. This is just my opinion of where I personally see them right now. If you wanna take it seriously, okay. If you wanna take it as a headcanon and have fun with it, okay. It’s all in good fun and not meant to be taken as gospel. If anything just run with it for fanfics or something. :)    So anyway, here is my analysis/headcanon/conspiracy/whatever about Gandrew. It’s not all fluff and cuteness, so keep that in mind. I tried to write it as down to earth as possible. Enjoy. ❤️

Garrett. I think his feelings/situation is a bit more straight forward than Andrew’s. Garrett has openly said “if I was a girl, i’d put a ring on it [Andrew]” and has joked about being in love with one of his straight friends before (the friend who made him that bike). So it’s pretty likely he harbors some kind of feelings for his “dear close sweet handsome friend” Andrew, whom he appears to be closer and spend more time with. I think Garrett does have feelings for Andrew, and I think he knows he has feelings for Andrew, but of course Andrew (at least to Garrett’s knowledge) is his “straight guy” friend and obviously you can’t just announce that you, a gay person, have feelings for your “not-gay” friend. Hell, it’s difficult to announce you have feelings for your best friend when you’re in a straight relationship. Adding conflicting sexualities to that makes a whole new layer of confusion. Because of this possibility/fear I think Garrett has resigned himself to accepting that it’ll always be something fantasy, that he shouldn’t allow himself to entertain the thought because it’ll “never happen” and he’s just the “silly” gay friend who fell in love with his straight friend.  (I’m not calling Garrett silly, it’s not silly at all, but he may think that) I think if Andrew showed interest toward a relationship, if it was totally Andrew’s decision to open up about it and pursue something, then Garrett would have no problem pursuing some kind of relationship. But of course, like I said, Garrett is not ready to start this conversation himself. (Note: When I say Garrett doesn’t fully acknowledge it, i’m not saying Garrett can’t brag on or compliment Andrew. He does those things all the times and we all see how smitten he is, i’m just saying he won’t go to Andrew and verbally tell him “I LIKE YOU ROMANTICALLY” lol)   Now for Andrew.   Andrew’s feelings are a bit harder for me to pin point, largely due to the fact i’m not 100% sure how to explain what I mean, and also my opinion is known to jump back and forth, but nevertheless i’ll try to make this sensible.   (A lot of this explaining has to do with discovering yourself/being closeted/etc so keep that in mind.) I think Andrew identifies as straight, and therefor is assumed straight by those around him, but I also feel like he’s never been dead-set on it. And what I mean by that is, the average straight guy will tell you they have no intentions of ever dating a guy. They’re straight and it’s not their thing. But with Andrew I feel he’s never been super defensive of his heterosexuality. Andrew has never shown signs of hyper-masculinity or really caring about what people perceived him as. Yes, that could purely be due to the fact he’s just a decent and accepting guy, but I feel like there’s a bit more to it. I feel like he doesn’t feel the need to establish his heterosexuality because while he has only dated women, and overall assumes himself as straight, I feel like he’s one of those people who has acknowledged to themselves that they wouldn’t be closed to the idea of dating a guy if one day they had feelings for one. (Note, hypothetically being open to dating someone of the same sex is vastly different than actually dating an entire real person) Now, that being said, many people in the queer community started off with a similar woke mindset of “i’m straight, but if I liked someone of the same sex I wouldn’t be opposed to it” before realizing they were actually queer. Just like many of us were big LGBT+ Ally’s and related to/liked a lot of queer media before realizing we were queer ourselves. It’s sometimes a stepping stone to realizing you’re queer, I guess you could say.  This is where I think Andrew falls.   Andrew is obviously comfortable with the LGBT community, his current friend group appears to be very diverse and heavily queer, and he seems to not be afraid of liking things that may be perceived as feminine or “gay” by the average cishet person. Andrew is at a stage a lot of queer people have been at before, which is being a Super Cool Straight Ally until one day “Oh wait... maybe i’m not just an Ally.”. This is something that can happen when a queer person finds themselves around more queer people and more queer media than before. No, I don’t mean he’s being “turned” gay or some dumb shit like that, what I mean is if a queer person is in a more open and diverse environment (the squad, youtube, etc) that they maybe weren’t in before, that person can start to realize things about themselves they’ve never been able to really acknowledge, label, or be open about before.  (This is why I smirk at the comments saying “Andrew is getting gayer” because yeah, lol. For lack of a better term, he is. He’s not being made gay, but he is getting more comfortable in himself.) Andrew is at the stage where he knows something is different. He knows he puts Garrett in a different category than his other male friends, he knows he doesn’t /like/ seeing Garrett flirt with other guys. When Garrett hangs out with Jeffree, Andrew has to post about some other friend he’s hanged out with. If Jeffree makes a joke about sleeping with Garrett, Andrew has to mention he slept over with a friend too. He knows what he’s feeling is jealousy and he’s trying to put this new feeling in it’s place, but he’s still not ready to let himself fully admit that he’s gone and fallen for his best friend. See, Andrew has always struck me as having a shy, maybe a bit nervous, personality. I think it’s definitely possible he overthinks different situations in this life, and falling for your best friend is definitely something someone might overthink. I think it’s also very possible he’s slightly self conscious and tends to doubt himself a lot in stressful or confusing situations. So it’s not that he’s against what he’s feeling, he’s not grossed out by it or negative toward it, but it’s that he won’t let himself *believe* it’s happening. If that makes sense. I think he panics and tries to rationalize it into something else because “I don’t have feelings for Garrett… do I? No, we’re best friends. That’s all it is.”  “Garrett couldn’t possibly have feelings for me… there’s no way”   “I’m just being dramatic, Garrett doesn’t like me… ” etc.   Most everyone, including myself, has had the #gay panic when realizing they’re queer. He’s never experienced this before with a guy, definitely not with someone so close to him, and I think he’s a bit shell shocked by it. So he self doubts. He overthinks. He tries to rationalize it because there *must* be another explanation for it... there’s no WAY he’s fallen for his best friend, that only happens in movies, right? And when I say Andrew can’t admit it or is confused by his feelings, I don’t mean it in a homophobic or demeaning way. I mean coming to terms with yourself, even if it’s just the newness of everything, can be a lot to take in at first. It’s an experience with a lot of feelings and thoughts. Even if someone is open to it, it actually happening can take a minute to get used to. Hypotheticals and real life are two entirely different ball games.   Now for another big question…. do they realize each other has the same feelings, and do people around them realize it?   Like I said earlier, I think Garrett doesn’t allow himself to believe it’s there. He thinks Andrew is straight and it’s all just his silly feelings, so while he might notice hints here and there he doesn’t let himself believe it’s anything. He won’t assume anything until Andrew tells him directly to his face. (Poor Andrew, lol)   For Andrew I think he notices more than Garrett. He can see Garrett likes him a lot and it’s not that he doesn’t want that, but like with his own feelings I think he tries to rationalize it and overthink it. When Garrett compliments him and brags on him, he tries to tell himself that it’s JUST because Garrett is a nice guy. It’s JUST because Garrett is funny and extra. Garrett compliments EVERYONE, I’M not special (he is). Like with his own feelings, in the back of his head he knows what it is and he does hope for it, but it’s gonna take a bit of time for him to let himself believe fully it’s there.  (may it be due to the #gay panic or just his own self doubt) As for their friends… obviously they notice. Garrett tweeted about wanting a boyfriend once and Matt replied with a tag to Andrew, so obviously anyone could tell they’re the couple in their friend group who everyone teases about getting together. Do I think their friends realize it’s THIS serious yet? Maybe not. Teasing and genuine belief are two different things. I think their friends definitely think they’re good together, and wouldn’t be surprised if it happened, and tease them about it, but like with everything else Andrew’s alleged straightness still adds a tiny bit of hesitation to everyone’s belief. So I think they know, but maybe they don’t notice it’s quite this serious yet.   As for the actual squad (Shane, Ryland, and Morgan)… I don’t know. I’ve never been able to exactly pin point my thoughts on their POV. I think they believe more than Garrett and Andrew’s other friends, simply for the fact Shane and Ryland are both queer and could see things from a different POV than Garrett and Andrew’s other straight friends. Not to get too fanfic-y, but I think Shane would definitely be one of the first people to realize “oh shit, this is for real. It’s not just teasing anyone.” (if he hasn’t realized already).  Shane struggled a lot with his bisexuality and has been through this before, he would definitely be someone to notice the tell tale signs somebody else might not. - Anyway, there ya go. As of right now, this is my view of everything Gandrew. May it drastically change one day? Yes. Does it change a little bit everyday depending on the circumstance and new content? Yes. So again, take from this what you will. It may ring some truth, it may be entirely bs. But hopefully you all at least enjoyed reading it. :)

#gandrew #I'm only putting this in the Gandrew tag bc i'm paranoid of Andrew or Garrett seeing it #I mean they could search for Gandrew and see it but it's a bit less forward than putting it in their name tags #my analysis #personal

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libertasforte · 5 years

Text

Homestuck epilogue impressions: Part Meat: Take 2: The Dirkcoursening

My first readthrough of meat didn’t go that well because it’s an exhausting read. I ran out of emotional energy. (candy gives you energy; meat takes it away.) So I’m trying again.

Dirk, you are so right about everything.

I’d rather say that in real life, everyone is rigging reality all the time. It may be subconscious, but I think it’s necessary for being a happy, well-adjusted human being. Which Dirk is not, probably.

Yes, I know I’m a sucker for sympathetic villains. Next.

I hate to say this, but I agree with Dirk here. It probably has to do with my low opinion of politicians in general.

GLaDOS!

- Boss of Wheels, CaNWC

hm this reminds me of

but perhaps moreso it reminds me more of Vriska’s sense of

fuck Jade is so cool

the reason why she has to be incapacitated a lot of the time must be because Hussie simply cannot channel enough of the energy to write for such a cool character

mhmmm

Hussieeeee

You’re not so innocent either. I’ve caught you leering at some pretty personal moments. Are you having fun being a voyeur? Just violating the shit out of everyone’s privacy?

No you’re the one putting it on the internet fucking exhibitionist

You are the generalized, impotent witness to all this. You are essentially as beholden to me as those whose lives I describe.

So I’m at once both a violator, and a hapless ragdoll powerless against your whims? You can’t have it both ways.

Well no, actually you can, that’s the beauty of it. It's the essense of media consumption - the absolute dominance of the author, and the absolute freedom of the reader. Without the spirit of voyeurism, reading becomes unconditional submission to the whims of the author. Simultaneously, the inability to take real, meaningful action lifts all culpability, setting the stage and inviting the guest of voyeurism so to speak.

In actual video games, the gamemaker induces culpability by letting the player take action within the game. Homestuck simulates this with the command system. Clicking to the next page is the issuance of a command by you, the reader, the player of Homestuck, played out as a ritual. (This was “more real” while they were actual reader-submitted commands, with Hussie acting as the GM for the fans. Within the text, this ritual is demonstrated first by the Exiles, and then Caliborn.) And yet, it is only the ritual simulation of agency, and everyone knows it is not real. Even in a video game, the only meaningful actions you can take are those allowed by the programming - those that have been accounted for by the maker. You only have as much fake agency as the writer creates for you, and in the best of cases, the writer can do wonderful things with it. But really, you are still outside. The Homestuck characters aim to escape canon, and yet, you were already there.

mighty Serket

mighty Serket. mighty Serket? mighty Serket. mighty Serket. mighty Serket. (mighty Serket, mighty Serket.)

Dirk proceeds to take out his ire on the you-reader by bullying the reader stand-in, John. (The problem with this strategy is that anyone with half a brain noticed that John is nothing more than the blank slate protagonist and divested themselves of emotional investment in him long ago.)

Jade’s got this disarming combo of head-in-the-clouds flightiness and the kind of legit, down-to-earth cred that can only be earned by having done something like cutting open your own grandfather and stuffing him full of polyurethane foam.

fuck Jade is so cool

pumpkin matcha. pumpkin matcha. pumpkin matcha.

Jade is such a great foil to Dirk. Here, let me try one of those chad virgin things:

Virgin Dirk

disrespects pronouns

ships Davekat by trying to puppet them

got his “heart broken” by some guy and stops engaging in meaningful relationships

we literally have to listen to him expound on his own social incompetency

killed himself

Chad Jade

immediately feels bad and apologizes for not recognizing pronouns

inserts herself into her favorite ship like a confident person

loves everyone

has the good grace to get incapacitated so that we don’t have to slog through her social incompetency

would never kill herself despite being alone and lonely

...this is not funny :/

I’m ecstatic for this personal development they’ve embraced, for the people they are, the lack of gender they identify with, and the pronouns they prefer. I’ve got no problem with it whatsoever, and frankly, it’s fucking insulting anyone would ever imagine otherwise.

Dirk baby you don’t say that if you’re cool with it and have no problems

ugh that is the best way of putting it

Jade looks at where her hands are folded in her lap. Bites her lip. She has her own concerns about this, her own thoughts. Reasonable thoughts, I’d say. But I’ll refrain from any further comment.

ahahahahahahaha

my gender is F for Fucked

I mean there are definitely alternate selves I feel adjacent to, like being a lesbian, or a bi transman, but I am not. And factoring into that it cannot be understated how incredibly easy it is to be a cishet girl, particularly for my situation, and my gender is not my priority in life, "gnc" but no one ever wanted to be a conformist, sure “nb” but what even is the binary, I think I heard the joke somewhere that gender was made up by bathroom companies to sell more bathrooms, sorry I realized I am effectively what Dirk would call a “pompous alien virgin” and I will stop monologuing on the subject.

there was a lot of porn too and no one was consulted

pffffffft

If your perception expands beyond the meat sack of your body, then are you really an individual anymore? Why shouldn’t we become gods? Why shouldn’t we become one God.

Become one god? That came out of nowhere. I think at that point you become Sollux or something and that is an objectively terrible fate to befall anyone. Anyway it’s probably an Evangelion reference or something

All the power to you.

“Sorry, she is occupied” is the creepiest fucking joke and I know this is intentional because Hussie is the creepiest motherfucker

Okay, let’s analyze this. heat death = sex, solitary nature = desire for intimacy, this is creepy QED.

Yes, I admit. I’m just fucking with her at this point. But can you blame me, when she’s making it so easy?

stop fucking Rose you daughterfucker

leitmotif: clever boy

My reaction to every single Homestuck opinion I have ever seen, including my own

I kin this lmao

this is perfect

oh my god Dirk stop control playing your daughter

There is no free will and therefore I am not responsible for all the awful Homestuck fanfiction yaoi that have entered my eyes

She’s beautiful, actually—diaphanous and disheveled and filled with the limitless light of metaspiritual curiosity.

Sophia!

She uncouples herself from the creaking, buckling partitions of her physical mind, and her consciousness dissolves into a space more vast, a domain given structure and order by my words and conviction. She’s permitted the barriers between us to fall, to allow us to know each other more perfectly. As she was saying before, to resist this, to question it in any way, would be to succumb to dysfunction, to pathological insularity, to sociological sin.

Acktually, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

And yet, ironically, renouncing our humanity is exactly what we have arguably just done. Good riddance, I say.

Humanity is all about boundaries that should never be crossed and if crossed, only very carefully! Otherwise you will lose yourself! Boundaries exist for very good reasons. Every boundary crossed without due respect is a violation, and it will change you.

The truth belongs to me.

Narcissist.

Believe me, I’m sympathetic to the temptation. It’s always just there, isn’t it? A limitless reservoir of emptiness, perfectly available to you, patient, omnipresent, and dead ahead.

Preface to say I’m fortunate to have never truly understood suicidal ideation...

This “manning the other end of a suicide hotline, transmitted through pure thought in a metatextual format” reads to me as incredibly trolly...

er, yes, as a "trollish form of self abuse", excuse the racism (eyes Karkat and Vriska). It’s not really that Jade isn’t the kind of girl who would kill herself, but she isn’t killing herself. Dirk did tho. (not that suicidal!Jade isn’t a valid headcanon, there’s definitely things that can point that way, mostly talking about that personally in my hc I would never kill myself and I see that in her, I mean that I headcanon myself as not suicidal yes)

I mean, what can I say, knowing that anything I have to say or think on the matter would probably come across as incredibly insensitive. Sure, I ficced it, but it was never real. I played at it as a form of gratuitous self-harm. You know, the edge. I played at it because it was never real. And in a way that’s probably even more insulting to the people who have to go through that.

Sure, like, I can try to make metaphors, like living is not consensual, you cannot safeword out of living, and that if you are coerced to live then it is also your birthright to control who you are, and that if you can’t find a degree of freedom that serves your needs then you can always create your own, and that you would always be promised the potential to overturn and reform all the systems that govern and provide legibility to you and everyone else,

but perhaps that’s also just self-serving, and if you are stuck in a way of being with no hope for change in a game theoretic sense what good is there a system without the potential for the ultimate vote of no confidence,

like sure my desire and all our desires to see each other live is entirely selfish,

like, how do I say this.

The thing is, I’m pretty secure in my expression of nonsuicidality, and...

I’m sorry I ficced the life of a character who wanted to kill herself. You know. I want. I want to understand what it is to be suicidal. I want to transgress, I want to understand that which most people cannot understand, what it means to live the whole human experience, all of it. But to know that you can personally actually entertain the idea and go through with it in real life? And to live with that? I don’t know what it means to not have that safety. I want to understand, I tried but I can’t and honestly? I think you’d agree that it’s probably for my own good that I don’t try.

soooo uhhh idk Dirk gets sentenced to an eternity manning suicide hotlines AU

Anyway, enter Calliope.

So maybe we could stand to dial down the melodrama, just a bit?

Like maybe somebody needs to get over herself?

These are gold because they’re subtly a self-own, but also, owning me, because, as I have demonstrated above, I am exactly that kind of person.

You’re fucking boring, your narrative voice is a total fucking drag, and someday I’m going to make you pay for this.

:o Dirk wants to take part in the time-honored Homestuck tradition of: Make her pay! Excuse me but you do not have the pussy pass for that sir.

And then, Johnrezi. Two universes destroyed, logic of canonicity forever made obsolete, gay singularity created and exploded, Donald Trump, and despite everything, it’s still popular girl fucks heterosexual male protag fanservice.

And as such, Calliope loses the cherubic sexual battle of penis fencing.

Ah, Meat 34. The “what do you mean this isn’t porn” chapter. I appreciate the numerological significance of 34. I saw on twitter that one of the female authors apparently wrote almost the whole thing and I am...relieved...?

Dirk is weird about Roxy. Not weird weird but weird in the sense that it’s different. From earlier:

In the spirit of full disclosure, Roxy’s the only one left I haven’t been able to crack. Her mind remains a total enigma to me, just like it always has. If I had to guess, it’s her Void powers that make her invisible, even to increasingly omniscient parties such as myself. For all intents and purposes, it’s like her thoughts don’t exist. She’s the same person, as far as I can tell. She still wears her heart on her sleeve. But the bottom line remains: Roxy Lalonde is still utterly fucking inscrutable.

Roxy is the other person he idolizes, other than Dave.

Dirk and Vriska. Hussie riffs them against each other, in a way which feels totally unfair to either of their characters. But they are similar. Idolizing. Something about having to stay true to themselves. But like, seriously? You are comparing Dirk to Vriska? But seriously? Are you comparing Dirk to Vriska? (The observant might notice that Dirk's name reads as a combination of vRIsKa's and eRIDan's (or aRaDIa's). Which is to say, in terms of memetic inheritance in the Hussiespace of ideas, Dirk was already fucked.)

Anyway, I feel like Dirk has trouble with *her* gender specifically because Roxy is *her* in that they are distinct from *him* and it is *his* separation from *her* that unambiguously makes *him* *him* and *his* separation from *her* reinforces *his* humanity, since separation is what reinforces humanity. But that’s just a theory. (Theory: all theory about gender and sociology and even the manosphere stuff, okay especially the manosphere stuff can be imporved by adding at the end: But that's just a theory. A game theory.)

It’s convincing, actually. Reasonably authentic, and quite masculine. He’s off to a great start exhibiting the mannerisms associated with his chosen gender. I’m genuinely proud of him.

This is distressing. I mean good that Roxy is passing, good for him, obviously, but you, Dirk? What is this, gatekeeping, grooming men into becoming men, I mean, not that it is a bad thing, “Son, I’m so proud of you.” But Dirk being proud of Roxy always rubbed me the wrong way. It never made me feel good about it. All it really makes me want to say is, the truth belongs to you, Dirk, I guess.

I feel depressed all the time. But I can’t remember ever having the luxury of feeling peaceful about it. Why should it be different for anyone else?

I know that you’ve always felt out of step here on Earth C. I know that you could easily put on a brilliant act that would fool everyone. You could potentially do that for the rest of your life. But it will eat into you, hollow you out like a parasite, because you’ll always refuse to allow yourself to be understood.

This. This shit right here. This is Dirk’s true villain monologue.

Dirk’s problem is that his consciousness of his ultimate self and realization of Heart powers are making him able to puppet his friends, and making him unable to see them at their full granularity as people, right? So it didn't make sense to me why Calliope can't save him from his power. Why can’t he just live like a normal person inside the confines of the agnostic and vaguely benevolent narration by Calliope?

Why isn’t he able to, as Calliope awkwardly puts here,

He gives us his answer here: because he will be alone. Because he cannot break out of himself. Because, if he were to live constrained by Calliope, he would not be able to live anywhere that is not inside of himself, and that is somewhere he cannot be.

Oh, come on. Can we keep our minds out of the gutter for more than two fucking seconds?

The actual question here, Dirk, is can you. Actually, you’re so nice to have explained it to us already:

I’ve only taken a moment to answer a few questions. Not ones I heard you ask—because again, you are nonspecific and therefore do not matter—but ones I imagined you asking. And by imagining these questions, they became less fake, and as such, demanded similarly non-fake answers.

It just means I carry a greater responsibility to take care of those more fragile.

You know, I always h8ed this particular aspect of masculinity. (H8, as distinct from hate, refers to a kind of hatred that serves to perpetuate the phenomenon being hated.)

It was always an illusion. You put your face in your hands and sob. The catharsis is relieving, bittersweet. Years of suppressed insecurities melt away. You’re finally free of this. Alone, yes, but free.

Surrender is Freedom. Lose the stakes, and nothing matters. It is a freedom that derives from apathy.

But there ought to and should exist a different kind of freedom, a freedom which presupposes agency and investment in reality, (*title drop*) STRONG freedom.

Look. Even you can manage to top this guy.

Just, the idea of Dirk saying this to Dave is, incredibly funny to me. Like, even you can be a man. Just do it, bro.

Karkat’s probably quite modest and feminine alien penis

ahahahahaha oh god

Okay, okay. Let me try to analyze why this is so funny to me.

Because it is...homophobic? Homophobia as implied by toxic masculine misogyny? Like, misogyny, but in the particular way it manifests in toxic masculinity in which male femininity somehow devalues men? In condemning the feminine in men, toxic masculinity is supposed to reinforce the male dominance over the feminine or something. And then it spills over into homophobia within this misogynistic-toxic-masculinity worldview where the mechanism of being penetrated is considered feminine (“feminine gay”) and the mechanism of penetrating is to feminize some other man (“predatory gay”) and those two specific ideas are then conflated together in the context of misogyny into generalized homophobia. “No homo, dude.” Idk, man, gay is just gay.

So perhaps since it has already been established that Dirk is somewhat misogynistic, invocation of the feminine carries the weight of prejudice. But it’s possible I’m reading too much into this, so let's take the generous approach and assume that feminization is not meant to devalue. But then why? Perhaps Dirk is implying that Dave actually prefers the feminine to the masculine? Is Dirk trying to help Dave get over his internalized homophobia by saying “this is totally straight if you want to be”? Is it Dirk with his internalized homophobia thinking it would be more convincing if it was het, that het is more valid? And then all this reminds me of the incel idea of fucking men because women are less available, which is emphatically not a factor here because, as Dirk offputtingly keeps repeating, superior genes.

But it is not Karkat being feminized, but his penis. What is a feminine penis? (And not the case of transwomen who have feminine penises.) Neutralizing the symbol of masculinity? As a cishet girl I feel like penises have negative connotations because of, I dunno, how men keeping sending unwanted pictures of them to women on the internet. I feel like culture in general has a case of penisphobia. Idk. Penis ouija. (I mean if I had that kind of thing on my body I would be afraid of it too, but like. It’s ok! Send your local internet girl dick pics and I will tell you that your penis is beautiful. It is very pretty and needs no vagina to validate it. Body positivity! Damn.)

But it doesn’t have to have anything to do with the social context! There also exists the specific sexual kink of turning something masculine into feminine. That is a thing. Sexuality, how does it work? I don’t know! I am effectively a virgin alien girl. Some time ago I just threw up all my hands in the air because none of this makes sense, I understand fuckall about gender and sexuality, and I am probably unwittingly being homophobic!

Maybe all I can say is it just reminds me of a bad AO3 yaoi fanfic. What if...oh shit. What if pornhub and all the other usual sources of visual porn all went down or stopped working due to file format obsolescence or the Condesce’s anti-reproduction measures and all that was left of online human sexuality was AO3, a lone server somewhere valiantly broadcasting all that’s left? What if growing up the only porn Dirk had access to was on AO3? Ok this cannot be canon because he definitely had access to all the media from the 2000s, he was probably into the furry fandom. But it would still be damn funny. Even just the generic idea of AO3 becoming all that’s left of the internet from this era, and future internet-archeologists having to reverse engineer what society was like from the online wreckage of horny teenage+ girls. I mean, extrapolating from how shitty all the other websites are in this era, it is not implausible.

All of this is wrong, none of it is valid, and I diagnose society (and therefore, myself) with generalized penetration obsession. It's all over the place and all I’m saying is that all this combination of the weird ideas I’m having about this topic is just -

Something happened between Dirk and Jake. Dirk won’t say.

There is dynamic range for things that could have happened, and what you think happened probably says more about you than what it says about Homestuck. It would be the perfect setup for endless Dirkcourse, but Dirk isn’t a sexy woman, so not really.

If you want a hint from Homestuck (if you do care what Homestuck would say about it, which, frankly, sounds like a bad idea), though, I think the most revealing thing he said about what could have happened was, augggh fuck Meat 34

Or at least, that’s what you like to believe. That people can’t resist you. That you have no responsibility for their feelings. That everyone uses you. That you’re the victim. Yes, it’s so unfair that anyone in this universe or the last has ever had a single expectation of Jake English. Why should anyone respect your personal autonomy when you’re practically begging to be taken advantage of?

So tell me, Jake: which one of us is really the bad guy here?

He makes it out like he’s talking about Jane, but he’s talking about himself. (He made it out like he was talking about Terezi, but he was talking about himself. He made it out like he was talking about Jade, but he was talking about himself.)

If I try and succeed, I’m a hero, right? And if I try and fail, at least I made things interesting on my way to the grave. There would be a tragic nobility in that. And the way I see it, settling for anything less from my arc would be, frankly, pathetic.

I hear you Rose

So yeah, of course I know I “have to be stopped.” It’s part of the contract.

I love your unilateral contract

What you sign up for when you assume the burdens of this sort of power.

Take up the burden.

Where there is that which must be subdued and suborned for the greater good, there is that which will instinctively resist.

The symbols hold all the power, but abstractions are leaky and will fail and hurt people.

That which intuits that whatever’s going on here is “wrong.”

“Wrong, but valid.”

Otherwise, intervention wouldn’t even be necessary, would it?

Right, intervention, the Princely vector of influence in reality.

If reality and those within it were already so intrinsically pliable, so amenable to deviating from their own nature, the sins of men and faults of God would have no rigidity or resilience.

People need systems to work in. People need reality to be stable. It needs to behave consistently, and make sense. People believe they have the right to an understandable reality. Do they? Parents ought to provide, but does wider reality have any sort of obligation? Is there power to be found in pretending to provide? It’s scary for people, to be threatened with the idea that reality might not exist.

There’d be no challenge in forcing their correction. No reward in ramming salvation down their throats.

Subdue and suborn for the greater good. People don’t know what’s good for themselves - be the patriarch you want to see in the world.

I know this isn’t coming cheap, what I’m trying to do. The cost of it is knowing I need to be stopped. I accept it consciously, and when the time comes—if it comes—I’ll offer myself up gladly.

I’m sorry, this is all Basic Arguments Against Colonialism. Colonialism wasn’t so bad? Nazis are people, just like me.

I’m remembering why I wrote that fic about that suicidal girl. Right, I wanted to rescue her from that architecture. I think that’s okay.

So when I say I know I need to be stopped, I guess it’s more than just accepting my end of a diabolical bargain. I know I need to be stopped, because I’m sure deep down, somewhere inside my infinitely recursive sense of self, I know what’s going on here is all just a little bit sick.

Diabolical bargains are unilateral contracts, made with the self by the self.

To be honest, I’d consider killing myself and sparing reality all the trauma from the jump—I mean, a legit suicide, not one of those melodramatic faux-suicidal plays for attention, sympathy, or Jake’s dick. But to really do it for keeps? For a truly selfless purpose? Nah. Too cowardly for that. Too afraid to stop existing for good. Wouldn’t you be if you were me?

Dirk, why are you me? Stop being me, this is creepy. Don’t tell me I was subconsciously reflecting you. Homestuck is fucked.

Yeah I’m gonna write that fic where you’re manning some suicide hotline forever and you’re gonna be trapped

I guess therein lies the problem. If I weren’t me, obviously I’d consider myself much less indispensable. Only worthless people permit themselves the great luxury of a valorous sacrifice. When the deed is done, what was really lost? It’s like the guy in the mail room quitting in a self-righteous huff. Who the fuck were you again? No, when the sense of self is so substantial, when the fate of everything turns on every vain whim of an ego this sprawling, this entrenched in the very medium that contains all else, there’s a certain existential sunk cost that goes with the whole deal. A persona that vast doesn’t just self-terminate. It won’t allow itself to.

Okay, no, never mind. It is not that I am too cowardly to die; I simply do not want to die. I love living. But someone who actually wants to die, and is too cowardly to do it? Someone who, if his own sense of cosmic importance was taken away, would have nothing left? You are you, and not me, and all of society tells us to help suicidal people, but I would never understand how, and that is the boundary that separates my self from the other, and that is okay.

That’s why when someone finally comes knocking for the price I owe, I’ll fully welcome it. By then it’ll have been a long time coming, and I’ll probably have done more than my share to make sure, somewhere along the way, it all got put into motion. What good is a villain who doesn’t have a satisfying dramatic comeuppance in store for him? So yeah, the next time I die, let’s pencil it in as a Just Death. And let’s also have it on good authority that the next time Dave cuts off my head, it’ll be for good.

Alright, Meat 42. This better be the answer sheet.

Therapy...

Wait, I got it. Candy has no answer. There is no Candy 42. That is so cute, Hussie, you absolute madman.

Kanaya stares into the distance. The best fucking question anybody ever asked is: why am I so fucking awesome? I believe I’ve recently provided more than enough material to supply an answer to that question. But Kanaya may have just asked the second-best fucking question anybody ever asked. What WAS she thinking? What are any of us thinking, really? Who’s doing the thinking, and who’s having the thoughts?

The more you study the question, the more it seems all concrete forms of accountability go up in smoke. Her original thoughts were never that important, and the significance of the idea that she was the one authoring them was always a bit overrated. My mission is to someday clear this all up for everyone. Remove the ambiguity, suck the mud out of the water. It’ll be a lot better that way, trust me.

Really though, whose thoughts are being had? When you get right down to it, all I’m doing is projecting. Subdue and suborn for the greater good, and divide the earth into ideas. Ideas provide legibility and form the seat and the core of the being. It's what anyone needs for structural integrity vs. other people's ideas - the unalienable right to be sovereign. It is Lore.

She’s really pissed. Yikes. Couldn’t pay me to be in that room right now. Not for all the agency in the world.

Ah, nice. Engineering situations in want to deny your own agency and free will. Excellent taste in extreme sports, I must say, if a mere shadow of the ultimate one: creating a 7-year 8000-page shitpost epic webcomic for the sole purpose of killing a version of yourself. We all stand under that shadow.

I’m not a gambling girl, but if I was, I'd bet Kanaya’s gonna get to Dirk before Dave does. Dirk cucked Kanaya, after all.

Kind of a catch-22, right, Kanaya? The one who’s “protecting” you all from my influence is also blocking you from getting any answers. Not that you’d even know what to do with them.

I feel like there’s supposed to be something deep to be said here but I’m not getting it. Idk, knowledge is fall from Eden, something.

She picks up the heart monitor and throws it out the hospital window. Holy shit?

Is this...is this supposed to be symbolic? The observation of the Heart is ending, and being thrown out the window, which in Homestuck is symbolic of breaking through fourth walls, abstraction barriers.

she picks up the heart monitor, and throws it out the hospital window.

ha. Calliope repeats the line.

Oh, yeah. I guess I don’t need to fucking do this anymore. Don’t worry, I’ll bow out. Seems like you got this from here. Go nuts, skull girl.

Kanaya picks up the device that was observing the Heart, and defenestrates it, symbolizing the self’s escape and liberation from this particular plane of reality. Holy mother.

roxy is looking out the broken window with an apologetic demeanor, a hand to his mouth.

“Excuse me.”

kanaya drops to the floor and begins weeping again. she feels the sorrow anew from her wife’s departure, with a sense of rage and pain unshrouded by the veil of the prince.

The raw, visceral emotion that can only be felt when you’ve broken out of yourself.

kanaya drops to the floor and begins weeping again. she feels the sorrow anew from her wife’s departure, with a sense of rage and pain unshrouded by the veil of the prince. neither she nor her friends will have to worry about him anymore, so long as they remain on this planet and under my protection.

But a bunch of them won’t remain, will they? They won’t be able to help themselves. You know that.

So: will they or won't they? Will Homestuck or won't Homestuck? I enjoy playing at Homestuck theory, but theory without falsifiable predictions is indistinguishable from psychosis. So my prediction is this: there is no continuation. This is the end of Homestuck proper. The Homestuck epilogues had a thesis, and demonstrated it to the best of its ability. Something to the likes of the fact that providing symbolism and legibility (meat) is at odds with true freedom and pursuit of happiness (candy). And yet, selfhood is found somewhere in between, breaking out of both states. Eternally so.

Or you can keep on chasing Dirk, forever and ever. You still don’t get it yet. I’m already gone.

And if my prediction turns out to be wrong, then I will get angry at Hussie again. Then we will wage war on him again, together.

his influence over canon has come to an end, as has this particular story. his ultimate sacrifice was made to put the missing keystone in place and avert the supreme dissipation of all that shall be considered to hold truth, relevance, and essentiality.

Valid Lore.

the rest of my presence can simply be reduced to a string of words. a recorded stream of ideation with a particular texture and cadence, but aside from that, there is nothing that should be considered remarkable about its source. one speaker can easily be swapped for another, and then another, under the right circumstances. speakers can duel, predominate, overassert, or fall back, as one does into the comforting blanket of space.

i leave all who inhabit this reality with a recorded stream that is colorless, sourceless, and quietly divested of accountability. for if i were to insist upon anything else, could i really be considered worthy of protecting the very cosmos i describe?

Yep, I'm pretty sure Candy doesn't have a narrator! The narration just conforms to the thoughts of whoever it is descri8ing at the moment.

Is your specificity not working for you? Then a8andon the specific and 8ecome a trafficker of sym8ols.

She’s stopping us from 8eing su8orned and su8dued, sym8olized “for the greater good.”

So, the mystery girl was Vriska all along? I’m just a character, idiot. Colonize yourself, or 8e colonized. Have your Lore or 8e powerless against Princes like him. That’s what I would say ::::)

#homestuck epilogue #dirkcourse #homestuck #dirk strider #homestuck reaction #homestuck analysis #homestuck theory #meatverse #cw: suicidal ideation #cw: incest joke #cw: cursed

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sofoulandfairaday · 3 years

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On modern feminism

Honestly, the reason feminism has such a hard time and is so mocked is half because of sexist men (and, in some case, women that enable the patriarchy) and half because of extremists in the movement themselves, both on the radical and the liberal side, that just end up looking like clowns.

If all your feminism is about is hating men, then you're just a mysandrist. Feminism should be focused on women and helping women, and that much is clear and important, but if you truly believe it should shun men entirely then I don't know what to say - sure, dreaming about a women-only society is wonderful (for you at least), but that will never actually happen. So why don't we start cooperating for once.

"Oh but it's not our job to educate men!" - isn't it? And whose should it be? Mothers teach their sons, female teachers and professors teach male students, female figures in the media shape the idea young men have of us. If we don't do it, someone else will: porn sites, asshole fathers/uncles/coaches... the list goes on.

In the same way we have a duty to teach young girls, we owe something to young boys.

"But grown ass men surely can manage on their own". Yeah, they could and should. But wouldn't it be better for feminism to be inclusive? If a man calls himself a feminist and is then mocked and attacked by feminists themselves how can you expect him to go on fighting for your rights?

Also, ignorance and biases are not someone's own fault unless they refuse to become educated - for example, I'm white and cishet and while I consider myself an ally to both the black and LGBT+ comunities I still have a lot to learn. I wouldn't be able to without the help of brilliant people inside those spaces that do their best to make this world a better place and take the time to explain stuff that isn't apparent to me.

For men, especially cishet/priviledged ones, it's even harder because renouncing your own privilege and self reflecting on how much they take for granted is hard and unsettling for someone who has always been "on top". That doesn't mean that we should make up excuses for their faults or lacks, but I don't see how someone would expect compassion from men and then not return it.

"Oh but they are ones that hate us, therefore they should all disappear". This might be true, no, you know what, maybe it is true - how is that useful? I mean parctically. 'Cause they're not all going to disappear collectively tomorrow, so... That's what I thought.

And what can I say about liberal feminism?

The issue that most stands out to me is the insistance that "Sex work is work! Why do you want us not to be empowered?!" - feeling sexy and wanted is empowering, yes (even though we should ask ourselves WHY it is - are you truly free if approval still comes from an external gaze, wheter it be male or that of your fellow sisters? Are you free from societal standards mainly set by men??) and I agree that some forms of sex work are legitimate work - HOWEVER how you cannot truly advocate for it to be a widespread practice, especially in the intellectually dishonest way you usually do.

Yes, maybe a high-end prostitute or stripper has a legitimate and safe business, but aside from the sexist historical implications of prostitution, the overwhelming majority of sex work is NOT safe, NOT empowering, and relies on desperate people sold into what is essentially modern slavery and human trafficking.

And don't even get me started on the "But Amazon workers sell their bodies too! And for much less, so why not do it for more money? I enjoy sex!"

Sure, low income workers in manual jobs effectively sell their bodies. That's true. So why aren't we all fighting for better pay and working conditions, since we all agree that it is not a good thing at all? Why do we want to go ahead and do the same just for more money??

Also, if a middle/upper class woman from a stable, financially well-off household, who is 18+, leads a normal life and has other options decides to make an onlyfans account and sell photos of her feet or something, it is NOT the same as legalizing the "work" of a poor, underage, maybe poc girl who was abducted/forced into this sort of work, and makes 10$ an hour to be completely at the mercy of violent men, at the risk of her own life. How can you not see the difference??

(There are other issues here, but I think I have written enough)

#feminism

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thelittleredheadedmusician · 7 years

Text

Photo Album

Batfam Week Day 1 is Family. The supremely talented @sam-and-crystal collaborated with me to create the picture I describe in the Wayne Family photo album. I can’t believe that she took the description and turned it into a beautiful reality! You can also read the fic here on my ao3. Rating: PG (Jason has a bit of a mouth and I stand behind Kate’s burn but some may not) Words: 2,095 Gen (only familial relationships though it’s heavily implied that the batkids end up with kids of their own. Insert personal headcannon’s there (including adopting kiddos of their own).)

The little girl roamed the manor in awe, her expression showcasing the pure definition of wonderstruck just as it always did when she came to visit “Grandpa Bruce”. She came across a section of the library that she couldn’t remember visiting before. The shelves here held books that were thicker, their spines almost resembling the three-ring binders she used in school. Ever so carefully the girl removed the books and placed them in a growing stack at her feet.

Bruce found her seated there on the floor, miniature towers surrounding her, an hour later. She was smiling as she cautiously turned the page of the volume she had nestled in her lap. Bruce maneuvered between the piles and carefully sat himself next to her. All the while his joints creaked and ached, his body’s belated revenge for years spent brutalized in the name of crime fighting. Peering over her shoulder Bruce felt the corners of his lips flick upward. “I see you’ve found the family albums,” he whispered.

“Is that what these are?” she asked with her wide eyes sparkling.

Bruce bobbed his head once and gently tugged the album from her lap to his own. Flipping the page, he smiled as something in his chest warmed. Staring up at him was his family in all their rambunctious, candid glee.

Tim sat directly in the middle of the frame, wedged on the couch between Steph and Cass. The two girls were successfully tickling Tim and you could just make out the hint of a motion blur around the edges of their forms as they squirmed and laughed. Damian sat on the arm of the couch with his back leaning against Stephanie. His arms were crossed as he petulantly stuck his tongue out at Dick, for once looking like the child he had truly been. For his part, Dick was sticking his own tongue out at Damian. Face scrunched up, hands on his hips, his butt jutting out as he leaned forward. The stance reminded Bruce suddenly of Peter Pan. Jason stood behind the couch with his arm slung around Duke’s shoulders. His head was thrown back in a laugh so you could just make out his shut eyes and open mouth between the jutting chin and flop of hair. Duke was smirking at whatever joke the two had made, likely at Dick’s expense, with his arms crossed over his chest. On Jason’s other side stood Babs, her palm pressed into his shoulder mid-shove. Her lips had scrunched up to the side of her face, wrinkling her nose in the process. However, behind her glasses her eyes sparkled with silent laughter. Behind Barbara and just barely in frame stood Alfred, a wide smile on his face as he watched the chaos his charges created.

“I took this picture,” he told her, tapping lightly on the page.

“How?” she asked. The knit of her brow told Bruce that she had sat through enough family dinners to know how hard it was to get them all joking with each other, even after so many years.

“Luck,” he said with a smirk.

The day the picture was taken was one of Gotham’s many dreary ones. His various children had found refuge from the drizzle and damp in various wings of the manor. Even now he couldn’t think of what might have drove them all there on a perfectly average Saturday besides the weather. The day before he had promised Tim to help with some WE things but had gotten significantly sidetracked, ending up in the living room arguing with his cousin over the phone when the teen walked in.

“Kate, I don’t think you understand exactly how redundant that is,” he half sighed into the phone. Pinching the bridge of his nose to try and ward off a Kate induced headache.

“And I don’t think you understand exactly how redundant you are! Come talk to me when you stop being an exorbitantly wealthy, cishet white male of a nonspecific faith,” she screeched back.

Bruce loved his cousin, she was often right, he just didn’t appreciate her ire being targeted at him. He turned to Tim sitting on the couch, who gave a little wave and mouthed “I’ll wait” with a smile. Bruce could tell he had heard Kate’s outburst and was now significantly more eager to hear his response than talk business.

“You need to understand that you have every reason to be mad and what you said is true, however directing your anger at me for those reasons isn’t helping right now since they are not only unrelated but also as I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Yet,” she immediately shot back.

Bruce sighed. “Yet. Now please, can we get back on topic?” He paced as she laid out the full extent of her anger. Now and again Bruce would interject with a question that she would then elaborate on but otherwise he just listened. His concentration narrowed to the problem she was dictating to him and when they both hung up about twenty minutes later, on good terms, he was surprised to find the living room filled.

Over the course of the conversation his other children must have filtered in. They now sat before him, talking and laughing. Tim was wildly turning his phone this way and that, obviously playing a racing game of some sort. Steph cheered and poked him in the side, causing Tim to flinch and jerk his phone.

“Steph!” he whined, “I was winning!”

“Just a game,” Cass poked him in the other side. She wore a sly grin and her eyes had a mischievous glint to them. Bruce had to admit he was glad that her mischief wasn’t being directed at him.

Stephanie snickered and the two girls shared a knowing look before they pounced. Tim didn’t stand a chance as his phone dropped to the floor.

Damian had perched on the arm of the couch, half leaning on Stephanie once she sat back slightly. Dick stood in front of him, waggling a finger in Damian’s face. “Just because you deny it doesn’t mean it’s not true!” he crowed.

“-tt- Only a true idiot such as yourself would believe in such an outrageous thing.” Damian rolled his eyes spectacularly.

“Oh really? Then why do your ears turn red whenever I say anything about it?” Dick asked.

Damian narrowed his eyes and Bruce could see him formulating a response.

Bruce decided to turn his attention away from his eldest and youngest son, full-well knowing that he would be made aware of the fallout of their current conversation as it happened. His eyes landed on Jason who was leaning with his forearms on the back of the couch. He was semi-aggressively ruffling Tim’s hair as the girls continued their tickling.

Duke was tapping on Jason’s shoulder, obviously trying to direct Jason’s attention to Dick and Damian’s increasingly dramatic not-actually-a-fight-fight. Babs was attempting to braid a few stray pieces of Cass’s short hair as she moved. Jason’s sudden focus on a brother that wasn’t Tim drew Barbara’s attention as well.

Bruce heard Jay snort as he quickly opened the camera app on his phone. He raised it as he heard Jason mutter something, snapping the picture just as his son let out a raucous laugh. Bruce lowered his phone without looking at the screen, instead standing there and smiling at his kids.

“B? Uh, everything ok?” Tim asked. Stephanie and Cass had dropped their hands to their laps. All of them had their own unique dumbstruck faces. Bruce blinked at them.

Alfred cleared his throat and stepped away from the back wall where he had been standing. “I believe Master Bruce is, ah, taking it all in.” He smiled kindly at Bruce before turning his attention to the kids.

He could see them all squirm a little, a few smiles and chuckles. Bruce was used to it though, he wasn’t one to openly show affection and no one was exactly comfortable acknowledging when he did. At least not when he was standing right there.

“I know I promised that we would talk business Tim, but I can’t pass up on a day such as this.” With that he swooped towards the couch, scooping up Cass and easily and gently throwing his daughter over his shoulder. She squealed and lightly pounded her fists on his back.

Bruce chuckled as she laughed, he was waiting for the rest of his family to lay chase.

“Hey! That’s my protegee!” Babs yelled as she ran after them.

“And my best friend! Kidnapping is a crime!” Steph called out.

Bruce glanced back in time to see Jason’s long strides overtaking the two girls. “Yeah well that’s my little sister so I get first dibs on ass whooping!”

Bruce laid on the speed as Cass’s peals of laughter filled the manor. Bruce could just hear Dick’s shout of “Get in line Jay!”

Rounding a corner, he was forced to skid to a stop, resulting in a soft “oof” from Cass. He murmured a quick apology and felt her sign “It’s alright” into his back. Bruce turned his attention back to the obstacle that caused him to stop. Before him stood Tim, Damian, and Duke. All three wore matching mischief making grins and Bruce had some sudden serious concern as to when they had all started spending enough time together to do that. The last Bruce could recall Damian and Tim still hated each other and Duke was still not quite comfortable around the other two.

“Now boys, let’s discuss this civilly,” he tried. Cass tapped his right shoulder and Bruce began edging that way. He could hear the others getting closer. They all stood there tensed, waiting to see who would make the first move.

“Now!” Cass yelled and Bruce took off running again. A smile on his face as he sprinted down the halls. “Kitchen!” Bruce veered left and slid to a stop in front of Alfred, who already had two bowls of ice cream readied. Setting Cass on her feet, Bruce turned to look at his daughter questioningly. She just held her phone up at him and smirked. Bruce gave Cass a high five as they grabbed the ice cream and went to barricade themselves in the cave.

After about ten minutes, and hastily finishing their ice cream, the two of them were dragged from the cave into the large movie room that the manor was home to. Dick had pulled a movie from the shelf and flipped on the DVD player. “What’d you pick?” Barbara asked.

“Man from U.N.C.L.E. Something we can all actually agreed on,” Dick said. His gaze met Bruce’s and he smiled as his eyes twinkled. Bruce flicked up his lips in a smile of his own. His eldest knew how to keep the peace, even if it didn’t last long.

The rest of the night passed relatively without incident. Tim lost his popcorn when Damian aggressively fist pumped, upending the bowl. Steph was told to shut up after the third time she said how much she loved a particular dress. Jason was shushed for bemoaning that his action sequences couldn’t be viewed from such good angles. In all, it had been a good day. A real win for the Wayne family and company.

“Hello? Anyone in here? Alfred said you were here and I will not take kindly to being startled,” Dick’s voice carried through the library. He rounded the corner of the shelves and smiled down at them. “There you are munchkin! Hey B! I’m surprised to see you on the floor. You think you can get up?”

Bruce scoffed. “I’m not that old Dick. I’m guessing you were sent to collect us?” Dick gave a sharp nod and a grin. Bruce handed the photo album back and slowly pushed himself to his feet.

He began following after Dick when he paused and looked back. The photo albums were still stacked around her and she hadn’t even made a move to get up. “You coming sport?”

Her head jerked up. “Huh? Oh. Sorry. These are just so cool.” A small smile danced across her lips as she kept staring at the page.

“You know, why don’t we bring some of these along? I think everyone else might like looking at them too.”

Her face lit up. “Really?” When Bruce nodded she scrambled to her feet and scooped up as many albums as she could. Bruce helped her and between the two of them they managed about half of the piles.

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blueboathome · 7 years

Text

The inherent worth and dignity

Or, why listening to Trump voters isn’t the spiritual imperative that cishet white dude ministers keep telling you it is*.

Note: I wrote this over many days, in varying states of rage. I don’t know if it’s coherent at all, and I will probably go back and edit for readability, but today, when the House voted to strip my beautiful little boy of guaranteed healthcare, I needed to post…. Something.

Onward.

Look, a lot of very brilliant folks have laid out why this whole, sad undeducated duped “average American” with economic anxiety thing is a load of shit. It was racism all along, and greed. I won’t rehash it. If you need receipts, the internet is full of them. This is about why, specifically, it’s not a spiritual duty for UUs to make peace with Trump voters, but in fact the opposite.

I heard a guest minister this week preach about Universalism, and why we shouldn’t make the spiritual, political. The first part was great! The second was a message I’ve heard before, and I don’t buy it. At all. We cannot help but politicize spirituality, if a core tenet of our faith is recognizing the interest work and dignity of every human being. Today, when whether or not trans folks can participate in public life, is a matter of politics. When whether or not the people of Flint, or Navajo, can have clean water to drink and bathe in, is a matter of politics. When whether or not young Black men can walk down the street without being summarily executed by police who face no consequences, is a matter of politics– the UU faith must by needs be political, in social justice ministry and from the pulpit.

It is not just our 6th principle that must move us. It is the principle of “Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.” It is “respect for the interdependent web of all existence"– when science is political, when climate change denial is political, so by nature is our faith.

It’s an absurd act of privilege to say that we must separate the personal from the political. Only those whose existence is not always politicized– the oppressors, not the oppressed. As a queer woman, my personal is already political. As the mother of a child with a pre-existing condition, my personal is political. My son’s very life is political– and he’s white.

It’s an absurd act of privilege to say that this election is not the end of the country, or the world. Historians and Holocaust survivors point out the terrifying similarities between the administration and authoritarian regimes. Climate scientists warn us that we may be past the point of no return. Historians are gauging how soon it will be before the President stages a coup, while he tweets about nuclear annihilation. It may well be the end of the country, or the world, and even if it isn’t, people will die. People experiencing homelessness, trans folks, PoC, Indigenous people.

The only way that reality is not panic-inducing is if those people are all “they” and Trump voters are all “like me.”

And this is the core of what I want to get at, the immediate need for a fundamental shift in who UUs we see as “us” and who we see as “them.”

White UUs have often, in recent non-turbulent times, secluded ourselves from the religious right, taking refuge with those who have shared ideas, and patting ourselves on the back that we’re not “that kind” of white person, all while white knighting in poor Brown neighborhoods. Deeds not Creeds, we say. We serve God by serving our fellow man, we say. In concept, this is why I came back to the church as an adult. I feel called by God to use my privilege to dismantle systems of oppression.

But when the rubber met the road this November, we didn’t even try to stay neutral. We didn’t stand firm with the people at imminent risk of death or deportation**. The knee jerk reaction was to stand with, make excuses for, coddle, and protect the oppressors. That’s what I, a white queer woman, hear when I hear a cishet white male preacher tell me to listen. Tell me to reach out. Tell me not to throw out my relationships over a difference of opinion. I’m stealing a line from a number of brilliant Black feminists when I say, a difference of opinion is whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza, not whether or not I am human. I can’t even imagine what Indigenous people and people of color hear in those sermons. When the rubber met the road, we said to them, we care more about our racist white auntie than our so called deeply held spiritual convictions.

White people need other white people to bring them down the garden path to not being child murdering “deep state” fearing bigoted assholes. As white people who are trying not to be a part of the kyriarchy, this is our responsibility to take on. 10000%. I’m not sure I agree that we need to GENTLY lead them– I think social ostracism has proven to work very well against bigotry, and we should do more of it.

We have to start thinking of ourselves, not as leaders of the revolution, not as outside aid, not as sympathetic supporters, but as comrades. We must form a protective circle around our brothers and sisters and say, we will use our privilege, for you are our family, and we renounce anyone who would hurt you

I know, it’s not very Uniting and Universalist of me, you are thinking. I want to cut out part of the world family, not give them a chance to change, to reconcile. Here is what is true. They already have cut us off. They want nothing to do with us. But by continuing to try to reconcile with them, we spit in the face of everyone they seek to harm, everyone we smugly purport to honor and seek justice for.

I truly do not believe that the core of Unitarian Universalism AS A FAITH, is made up of rotten, status-quo-upholding, don’t-punch-Nazis, servile obsequiousness to politeness and false unity over true justice and equality. I just. don’t. believe. that that’s what our actual set of beliefs is telling us. I think it’s a bunch of white dudes telling you to stay calm and don’t rock the boat, and using their spiritual authority to do so. We’re UUs. We don’t, historically, stay calm. We do, historically, rock the effing boat. (Cue links to stories of UUs in history standing against their traditionalist neighbors about things like, oh, abolition)

We are like, the Apex of people who like to sit around and talk about how we stood up at key moments in history and said what was right instead of what was popular. This is that moment. We are right in the damned middle of it. We need to be standing up, or shutting up forever about our commitment to social justice. We do not need to be building bridges with people who want trans kids to die, think Mexicans are rapists, and want to burn Muslims. We need to be building bridges with trans kids, and Mexicans, and Muslims. We CANNOT DO THAT, fundamentally cannot, by giving space and respect to people who want them dead.

*I know a lot of y'all go to MUCH more progressive churches than we have here. I’ve been to them, in Tucson, in ABQ. I know there are (mostly women) ministers preaching about things like the humane necessity of abortion and human rights violations by the border patrol. I’ve sat in those sermons. That is the kind of UU I want to see all over the country, and I know I’m not tilting at windmills because I’ve seen it in action.

**Many churches did trainings on what to do to help those in danger of deportation, became sanctuaries, etc. Woot! I heard this same message in some of them, and I think the message from the pulpit needs to match the social justice action.

Basically all of these footnotes are “not all UUs! Maybe only the churches I’m going to have this happening! Maybe it’s a freak coincidence!”

#unitarian universalist #progressive faith #god #or whatever #always punch nazis

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