#i also just struggle with equating rape culture to genocide...

[mermaidsirennikita]

what your thoughts on title cole's hades hangman series?

My immediate thoughts are that Tillie Cole is a racist who should be actually cancelled (not the weak shit we call cancellation), as in any possible publishing career, indie or otherwise, done. Nothing. I'm honestly worried about the pen name shit I imagine she'll pull or has pulled, because I dread people buying books by her without realizing it's her after all this.

But uh.... yeah. I have zero tolerance for Nazi romances, KKK romances, any romances featuring a racist, genocidal protagonist or protagonists. And I do want to be clear--genocide is what the KKK wants in the end. As is the case for most hate groups. They may say they want people "in their proper place" or "over there instead of here" (displacement being a part of genocide) which is all heinous and unacceptable. However, the reality of the nitty gritty is that they want them eradicated, or at least eradicated from the part of the earth the genocide mongerer feels entitled to, which is most of it. The only alternative, if you could call it that, being that the racist wants the "inferior" race enslaved or subjugated for their own gain (the implicit word usually being "again"). And I think that even the "smallest" breadcrumb of racism can easily tip into these mindsets with some degree of radicalization. So yes, zero tolerance.

I often have seen the "devil's advocate" arguments from "liberals" (white feminists who want to read these books) being "but how is this any worse than books where the heroine falls for her rapist".

And here's the thing--there are a couple books I've read wherein the heroine does fall for her rapist, and I like them still. I'll be clear--these are historical old schools (as in, the 80s) which I don't think came from the perspective of say, a contemporary Sam Mariano book. (I haven't read her books, but I know they can contain this content). I have yet to read a recently published contemporary wherein the heroine falls for her rapist that works for me. I have spoken to people for whom certain books have worked, including a couple survivors.

What I think sets these books apart is that a heroine in a dark romance falling for her rapist, however fucked up and unrealistic, is based on a personal relationship between two people. It isn't about anyone the reader represents, and I don't even really think it's often about gender (though it can be, which I think is probably a line--if a hero is a serial rapist because he hates women, I don't think the reception would be the same). And let's be real here--most of the time, this does reflect real life. The vast majority of sexual assaults are the result of intimate partner violence. It is something between two people, and while I would personally never suggest anyone forgive their rapist and reconcile with them, or frankly forgive them in general... That is something where it is about the one individual and her perspective, and in a romance it follows the same mentality. I may not LIKE that book, but I do see that as a book about harm to a PERSON and within a RELATIONSHIP, which is more individualized.

A KKK hero or a Nazi hero or what have you is often paired with a woman who represents a group he hates (though in Tillie's case, the heroine is a white-passing Latina, a "cartel princess", which lol, ALSO RACIST, but I suppose her complexion is meant to create ambiguity). If he isn't, she's the white woman he is allowed to be with anyway. Either way, he hates a collective. He is enacting violence, physical or otherwise, against a collective. Even if the heroine is of the group he hates, SHE cannot validate his redemption arc~ or "forgive" him. However unrealistic the forgiveness or validation of redemption a rapist "hero" may be, that is a situation where I can say "fucked up, but her choice". This is very literally not something a single heroine can give, and even if the author came from the same marginalized group as the heroine in a genocidal hero book... that author can't speak for the collective either. (I say this because I have heard of authors writing about sexual assault and reconciliation in books state that they're survivors, and I really can't speak on how they work through that on an individual level, but I do think it's important to again note the individual.)

While sexual violence is absolutely a worldwide epidemic, it is NOT the same thing as genocide. Doesn't mean it's better or worse... Though I will say, I think the fact that sexual violence is used as a tool by genocide mongerers does speak to the fact that genocide is obviously a more existential threat, here. And I don't really care for the comparisons I've seen made between the two in discussions of this book and its place in dark romance--because they often seem to be coming from my fellow white women, and I feel there is often a "we're all women, we're in this together" mindset. When the reality is... no. First off, women aren't the only targets of sexual violence, and men are not the only people who perpetuate it. Second of all, not all women experience rape culture in the same way. Cishet white women live under the threat of rape culture, absolutely. But white women don't experience racialized predation. Nobody is trying to "convert" cishet (or simply cis) women through sexual violence. Nobody is killing cis women because they feel "tricked" by us. And for that matter, white women, especially cishet white women, can be the oppressors of women of color, queer women, trans women, and so on. They can encourage sexual violence against women with a single vote--and have. How many white women voted for Mr. "Grab 'Em By the Pussy", again?

So yeah, I don't really like the whole "well this is fine for me to read because y'all read your rape books" discussion of these books when we get into discussion, because these just are very different topics. And I don't like conflating them to either EXCUSE the violence of these books, or once again devolve into a "dark romance readers are universally dirty little perverts". Because--while there are ABSOLUTELY dark romance books that go way too far, which I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole... I think there's a point where a book isn't even dark romance, it's just using that as a mask to perpetuate a form of like... artistic violence against an entire group of people.

Because these genocidal hero books are about violence against the collective marginalized group being dismissed, "redeemed" or "forgiven", there's this inherent dismissal of what has happened to potential readers of these books, and I see that as a kind of casual violence. That dismissal happens every day, and it is ESPECIALLY happening right now, when so many western nations (and I'm not denying it's happening elsewhere, I'm just much more aware of the USA, Canada, and Europe) are in the midst of nationalistic far right swings. And hell, let's be real, most people of color are not reading Tillie's books on purpose, I imagine--but frankly, that doesn't matter. Tillie has, I suppose, a legal right to write these books. But I don't view them as any different from the vitriol spewed from a Westboro Baptist Church representative, or the people calling BLM protestors looters.

You just can't slide this shit into a "dark romance is gonna dark" slot, or "why do dark romance readers keep bringing this to us" whine rant. I will bet you anything that a lot of the readers who read this book and rated it a 4 or 5 on GR haven't read a single other dark romance novel in their fucking lives. They enjoyed it because they want to romanticize a guy in the KKK and act like he can be redeemed, because their sick little fantasies about their white prince proud boys are what they're looking for here. This isn't about tiptoeing to the ver edge of dark romance, this is about wanting to bathe in a racist fantasy. It's their Birth of a Nation moment, but with porn.

I mean, what has been really frustrating to me... because obviously outright racists will shamelessly defend Tillie, outright... is just this idea that this somehow has come back to a discussion of dark romance, when really, it should be a discussion of RACIST ROMANCE NOVELS. Which is something that extends faaaaaar beyond dark romance, or any subgenre. I've read a fuckton of racist contemporary romances. Obviously historicals have quite a long journey with racism in books. I've read racism in paranormals, for fuck's sake. I believe one of the big Nazi romances was an inspirational romance. To me, there's just been this dancing around admitting that this is a romance-wide issue, because people want to go "well, it's only an issue with dark romance, MYYYYY favorite romances would never" and it's like. I don't know, girl. People of color are widely underrepresented in the genre (as are queer people and trans people) so maaaaybe just maaaaybe romance isn't your perfect haven where all we need to confront is men being misogynistic. Maybe, just maaaaybe, there are other issues going on here.

[militant-holy-knight]

Using Tragedy For Political Gain For the Nth Time.

I am torn as to whether or not I should have written a personal take on this so soon. When I woke up in Friday morning to see the news about the Christchurch terrorist attack I was alarmed. Yes, I saw the footage and yes, I read his manifesto - it was nothing short of absolutely grotesque and degenerate. Plain and simple. Make no mistake, this was an racist attack whose perpetrator is indeed a terrorist. In fact, I won’t even dignify him by referring to his name - he will simply be called henceforth the NZ terrorist. On Tumblr I shared a few articles and reblogged a few posts calling for moderation. But as I see the events further develop I can’t help but address this situation which I believe will make things worse unless if we talk about them anyway.

We don’t often get the luxury of having a mass murderer explain himself such as the Las Vegas shooter (whose motivations are still a mystery to this day and will never be explained). And while the NZ wrote an extensive manifesto and made it clear what his positions are. I’ve struggled (and I still do) on whether or not saying his manifesto should be read by people so that people can draw their own conclusions, but I’ve questioned how much he is a point he would have when the doc is filled with so much misdirection, shitposting and trolling. I’ve questioned if he really is world-traveled as he claims he is since his manifesto drips with the words of someone who never left his parents’ home and decided to go on a shooting because of death... Until I saw there is evidence he visited at least Pakistan, with video and passport to confirm it.

As far as we know, his manifesto was made to misdirect with only one thing for certain that we can assess: he wants to further cause division between the left and right and escalate the culture war. Unfortunately, many individuals have either mindlessly fallen into his trap and started heaping the blame on the wrong kind of individuals for allegedly “radicalizing” this criminal or even more insidiously, forming some sort of unholy ideological alliance with the terrorist because he knows his crimes will play into a certain course of action that he hopes they will take and they are grateful that someone did actually did it so he could use the tragedy as an convenient excuse.

A good example that comes to mind is the dictator of Turkey, Reccep Tayip Erdogan, (who is name dropped in the manifesto and who the terrorist calls for his death) blamed the attack on the “rise of Islamophobia” and went on to say the Hagia Sophia will never be a church again so long as there are Turkish people. Very typical behavior from him and to say so no surprise, but this time he is surely alarmed because the terrorist dared to paint a target on him. He is in pure hostility mode because that is how he operates. He is overly emotional, engages in divide and conquer tactics like the terrorist and makes no bones about how much he hates not just his political rivals, but also his allies too. He earns to revive the Ottoman caliphate so that he can take over the West and the Arab world. He is an absolute PR nightmare for anyone who wants to show an example of a liberal Muslim government, which Turkey used to be held up as the example the MENA countries should follow, but now is hardly any better. The only time I remembered he tried to present himself as a paragon compared - which is hard to do when you are jailing journalists and critics - except during the Jamal Khashoggi affair. For one, trying to pretend like you are a better human rights example than Saudi Arabia really isn’t that hard to achieve since they are just Islamic North Korea. For another, people have rightfully pointed out that he is full of shit and he was merely using that for personal agenda.

But Erdogan is a dictator so of course he wants his critics silenced and his opinions don’t earn any serious merit in the discussion. What really is concerning is the kind of discourse we will see in the Western world. Journalists have either consciously or not laid the blame at the feet of Donald Trump, Candace Owens, Pewdiepie, Christians, Jews, memelords, guns and others for supposedly radicalizing this individual. It’s ironic he said denounces Trump and conservatism in his manifesto, but since the public will be discouraged from reading it out of fear of radicalizing themselves, it creates an convenient opportunity they can paint a monster that must be put down.

This is dangerous not only because it validates the far-right’s concerns but also helps no one but further alienate those outside of the fight politically. Lets consider who will be marginalized if the far-left engages in a literal crusade to defend Islam by any means necessary. The first ones to get silenced would be the online memelords that post harmless memes simply because the terrorist used a lot of memes like the Remove Kebab song in his massacre footage, which has been deleted from Youtube as we speak.

Then there are historians like Iniciativa Condor, Real Crusades History and myself that are personally fascinated by the Crusades, the Reconquista and the Great Turkish War. Because the terrorist now used several references like the Battle of Tours, the Battle of Vienna, Skanderbeg, the Russo-Turkish War and many others (though ironically not Vlad the Impaler), I imagined we will be ostracized when discussing such subjects in the open out of fear of another Christchurch. In fact, I’ve been warned by personal relatives that I shouldn’t be vocal about it anymore.

And then on a more serious scale... There are critics of Islam as a religion, specially of Muslim background. Regardless if atheistic or religious, these people were already under enough scrutiny in their home countries who do everything to suppress criticism of Islam even secular societies like Indonesia and Turkey, the former in particular exploits its law Article 301 about “insulting Turkishness” which is misused to arrest dissidents. There is a former Muslim Youtuber I am subscribed, the Apostate Prophet who while deeply denouncing the attack, received messages asking if he was happy about Muslims being killed. What kind of fucked up perspective is this where criticism of Islam is equated with sanctioning the death of Muslims?

Now on the worst case of all. Consider that there is an actual epidemic of rape that liberals have turned an blind eye on Europe because it means tackling a very uncomfortable topic which goes contrary to what works in their agenda.

If what happens on Europe is bad, then its infinitely worse what is happening around the world, specially in the Middle-East where Christians are facing an actual genocide by jihadists and fundamentalists which has been going on for years now, but we have only started paying attention now that the Middle-East began to spill into the West. Furthermore, this attack will certainly result in retaliation since they have found less excuse for. Remember the Regensburg lecture by Pope Benedict when he quoted the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Palailogos for criticizing Muhammed and the entire Islamic world went apeshit with Iraq in particular killing Assyrians in retaliation as if they had anything to do with it. Just because of an controversial statement by the Pope.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not leaving the alt-righters celebrating this atrocity in their echo chambers off the hook either. I’ve seen how static /pol/ users were at seeing the footage of him shooting up innocents, advocating for more terrorist attacks to be called out, trolling users who said innocents shouldn’t be targeted or those accusing the terrorist of being a Mossad agent or a Shia Muslim. Its somewhat surprising you see: /pol/ hates Muslims too they think Jewish people are much, much worse (something which the shooter didn’t do). Hell I heard the Saudi Royal Family is in fact Jewish behind close doors. Consider these are the kind of people who are also in love with Bashar al Assad who portrays himself as the secular side of the Syrian Civil War that protects minorities when in fact this is also a ruse.

Similarly, for all their bitching about Western civilization falling, they are unsympathetic to the plight of Christians around the world because they are non-white and follow a “Semitic religion”. Not a single word about Asia Bibi being on death row, the persecution of Copts in Egypt or explosion of churches in  They have trivialized the word of genocide by comparing low birth-rates with actual fucking persecution, exiling, destruction of heritage that minorities suffer in the Middle-East. Also speaking as a Brazilian even one fascinated with Western heritage, they’d still advocate my death because I am non-white (I hate using the term “POC” because its patronizing) and they’d want us to stay in their shitty lane.

Its frustrating enough that the far-left has a monopoly on social media and journalism (this isn’t up for debate, the purge of NPC memes is evidence of that) and the internet is basically owned by them. Now imagine if they push down even harder? Or Erdogan’s comments will end up pushing someone to actually try to assassinate him (unlikely considering Kurds haven’t been pushed hard enough to consider assassinating him despite all the things they have done to their people, a foreigner will likely have even less motivation for doing so), but I don’t think that man will go down peacefully as he expects. The whole point of this massacre was to literally divide the world into left-wing and right-wing, with the shooter expecting that whites begin genociding foreigners regardless of religion (he simply chose a mosque because it was too obvious, he denounces Latinos and Indians who are majority Catholic and Hindu respectively). I’d argue that in addition to being a national socialist and a fascist, I think he is an anarchist too - because for a guy committed to such a cause, he did a lot of harm to it by killing children and filming it. Nobody sane will advocate for this, only the tiny, tiny minority in /pol/ that agree with his actions, and even they don’t have a back bone to follow his footsteps.

Everything the terrorist wanted he is getting because of the emotionally driven responses that people are making as such I call for moderation, quit the dick measuring game that you call a culture war and try to find a common ground before anything else.