#i don't actually have anything against any stated demographic

[archerofunspeakablelove]

dni if you: have a high-maintenance hairstyle, don't have a lamp on your bedside table, only speak one language, have finished a large creative project, prefer writing prose to poetry, don't have a backyard, had ancestors who were involved in the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand, live in a house less than 100 years old, can't/don't turn off water heating (eg you can shower anytime you want because the water is always hot), don't boil tap water before you drink it, have Christmas as your favorite holiday, diss on animation memes, go to sleep before 10pm, can study German in your high school, have mostly first hand clothing, have never heard of the Third Wave Experiment (the one with the fascist highschool)

[qqueenofhades]

I feel like, if Democrats want to win in places that AREN'T deep blue, if they want swing states and rural areas, they NEED to shut up about social issues. Don't talk about abortion or birth control or women's rights. Don't talk about police brutality and racism and immigration, legal or not. Don't talk about transphobia or homophobia. They should talk SOLELY about economic policy and solid legislation and sneak in protections for marginalized groups once elected.

Imma be real with you chief, since you came to my inbox and you presumably want my opinion: that is an absolutely terrible idea. Here's why:

First and most importantly, this is confusing "Democrats/progressives need to learn how to explain their policies in terms that are acceptable to the American mushy middle" with "they shouldn't talk about those policies at all." It's not that we can't pursue left-wing economic or social policies, it's that we should stop f'n calling them "socialist," which does nothing and causes a lot of harm among the people who instantly tune out or turn hostile the instant they hear that word and are unreachable afterward. If we CAN put them in terms that the American public likes, i.e. freedom, justice, opportunity, we should do that.

So... black people don't exist in America? LGBTQ people don't exist in America? Immigrants/racial minorities don't exist in America? Women (HALF THE ENTIRE POPULATION) don't exist in America? Especially when those are all core constituencies of the Democratic Party and vote for it precisely because it has openly expressed support for their issues and protection for their basic personal rights and civil liberties, especially as the right wing gets ever more reactionary, fascist, and crazy? You really think we should just throw up our hands and totally cede the public debate on these issues to the fascists, and act like any pushback or critique is the aberrant position??? Really???

Likewise, we're not gonna go for the "absolutely everyone in a red state/area is an unrepentant bigot who can only be mobilized if we discreetly tuck away our social liberalism." We're gonna talk about gerrymandering. We're going to talk about voter repression laws. We're gonna talk about how Ken Paxton, the Texas AG so wildly, insanely corrupt that he finally managed to get impeached by fellow Texas Republicans, boasted that if he didn't stop Texas counties from mailing out ballots to all registered voters, Biden would have won Texas. We're not going to act like there are Sensible Americans in Deep Blue Areas and everyone else is f'n David Duke of the KKK who needs to be appeased in hopes we can meekly trick them into supporting us. We're just not.

We're not gonna act like abortion or LGBTQ rights are shameful, unpopular, or minoritized views that have to be hidden or treated as secondary, especially when we're pummeling the Republicans, even and especially in deep red areas, precisely because of those things. Ordinary people in Tennessee, Florida, Texas, and all the other usual suspects are coming out to protest against drag bans and bathroom laws, not "superior" blue-area liberals. Republicans are backtracking on the abortion issue as fast as they can because it is so incredibly politically toxic and is costing them local/state/other competitive elections like crazy. 60% of the country supports abortion rights and 70%+ supports LGBTQ rights. The fascists are a minority and that is why they are so loud and so terrible: because they're shit-scared and they see the demographics coming to end them. We are not, again, acting like they're the majority or it's too shameful to speak about anything related to anything that's not the economy, especially since:

It won't work anyway! If people were actually, genuinely motivated by appeals to improved economic circumstances, they would already vote for Democrats! But they don't, because white supremacy and white grievance is too important for them! Even if the Democrats did try to rebrand themselves as solely focused on economic issues (which, for all the reasons stated above, would be insane), the people who don't vote for them now still wouldn't vote for them then! They will still vote for the Republicans, because a) they've been fed for decades on the myth of REPUBLICANS ARE BETTER FOR THE ECONOMY and b) they know that Republicans will punish non-white people, while Democrats won't. If they did try to "sneak in" protections for marginalized groups even once, and since that's, again, what they've built their entire party on, that would be it. It's the racism. It is always the racism.

Basically, this is the exact kind of mega-reductive "the only war is the class war"/"economic oppression is the only oppression" analysis that is so popular among Online Leftists and attempts to just erase racism, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, and all the other complex reasons why people vote, experience oppression, want the government to represent their interests, affiliate with a political party, or prioritize their particular identity/civic participation, because it's inconvenient for something something the purity of their Marxist theory. Besides, this is not even to mention that the Democrats' existing supporters would abandon them in droves, which would gut any remote increase in the number of voters that they could even (wildly unrealistically) hope to gain for doing it. You might as well be the f'n No Labels party, which is trying this exact kind of BS in hopes of peeling off just enough of the ideologically wavering Biden voters to hand the election to Trump. So. Yeah. No.

[comicaurora]

Do you find questions about lroe and logistics annoying? How do you draw the line between 'thinking the story is cool and wanting to know how something works' and 'trying to poke holes in the story to feel better about themselves'?

TLDR: It doesn't annoy me, but I do ignore anything that I don't think would produce an interesting answer. There is no line, but I do have thoughts.

I think a lot of media analysis and criticism centers on an invisible variable that is often overlooked, and that variable is "what standard are we holding this story to?"

Media criticism often described as "bad faith" tends to hold stories to standards like real-world physics, shot continuity or other small-scale and potentially irrelevant metrics that have nothing to do with the story's plot, morals, stated goals or overall themes, and will instead - as you put it - poke holes in the story in an apparent attempt to feel smart or score points. This criticism isn't asking how well the story is succeeding at telling itself, it's finding things to complain about by whatever metric is most convenient for that.

This isn't limited to media criticism. In fact, it's the same underlying structure behind almost all forms of bullying. There is nobody perfect enough to be completely uncriticizable, and there is no story that cannot be picked apart with an uncharitable enough angle. If your goal is to pick something or someone apart, you can always find a reason. And a story that's perfect from one angle can be shredded a hundred different ways from a million other angles.

I'm sure I've talked about this before, but one difficulty people encounter when writing any form of representation, for instance, is the existence of opposing stereotypes. If you write a female lead who's demure and gentle, she's playing to a feminine stereotype - that's a criticism point. If you write one who's brash and strong, oopsies, you're tacitly indicating that she can't be a protagonist without ditching her traditionally feminine qualities, thus indicating those qualities are bad! Criticism point. No matter what kind of character you write, you can be criticized for the stereotypes they fulfill and criticized for the stereotypes they defy. There is no way to write a character who cannot be criticized, and it's especially visible for characters in heavily stereotyped demographics.

And there are forms of representation or allegory that work for one thing but are terrible if interpreted as something else, once again producing angles of attack that you can be criticized for. Suppose you have a character whose arc is fundamentally about learning to accept themselves for who they are rather than changing themselves for the approval of others. This can be read as a positive and self-affirming arc for all sorts of identities, but if you reach, you can also read this as advocating against things like transitioning. And on the flip side, if you tell a story about someone changing themselves to be happy, it can be read as a toxic message for people struggling to accept themselves for who they are.

Because of this, it is impossible to write any sort of story that cannot be criticized, and it is unhelpful to act like a story that can be criticized is automatically in some way deficient or morally bad. If you find the right angle, anything can be criticized or deemed problematic in completely legitimate ways. Not enough of this, too much of that, what we got wasn't what I wanted, etc etc.

"Can I find a reason to criticize this" is an unhelpful and often unpleasant mindset. The answer is always yes, but it has the twofold impact of making the permacritic rather unpleasant to talk to (constant negative reinforcement will do that, see the "bullying" thing above) and making it very difficult for the permacritic to actually engage with media in any sort of helpful way. This school of criticism does not ask "what standard should I be holding this media to?" Without controlling for that variable, the criticism is just a lot of complaining.

When criticizing, I think it's very important to maintain focus on that question of the standard you're holding the story to, and the underlying corollary, "what is the story trying to be - and is it succeeding?"

I've seen media criticism that boils down to "this is not the story I wanted it to be." Valuable information, but not a helpful criticism to level at the story itself. Rather than taking the story at face value and judging it on its own merits, it holds it to the standard of a different story. This is where you get things like fix-it fanfics where people change the story to fit what they wanted to see. While I don't have a personal objection to this - fans can do what they want, and if someone wants to see a specific story I think one of the best things they can do is realize that and make that story - I think I'd personally steer clear of it. One of the joys of consuming media is seeing stories I'd never personally be able to think of, and holding all those stories to the standards of my own limited creativity feels like a good way to guarantee that I never grow and improve as a writer.

But if we hold a story to the standards of itself, there's still plenty of criticism to be had! And this is, I think, where valuable criticism lies. If we can figure out what a story is trying to do, we can determine how well it succeeds or fails. If a character is supposed to be overwhelmed with grief but the performance feels shallow and poor, that gives us a solid point of criticism - the story is failing to convince us of its own point, "this character is sad." If a fight scene is supposed to be frenetic and brutal but the editing is so frantic that we can't make out any of the coherent movement, the cinematography is disrupting our ability to buy that this is a serious, perilous fight scene.

This is why I think authorial intent is a very valuable factor in criticism. It isn't the only factor, but it gives us something very solid to measure against. When we're asking "what is the story trying to do?" and we find a comprehensive, clear answer to that, we can follow up with our subjective judgment "how well did it do that, and how and why?" This is the kind of vivisection that tells us how the story is really put together and lets us learn from it.

Without the question "what is the story trying to do," all our criticism is completely unhelpful from an artistic perspective. Does it matter that a scene doesn't conform to the laws of physics? Only if the scene is supposed to conform to the laws of physics! Does it matter if a background prop moves between takes? Only if the prop is important! What lessons can we learn from scattershot complaining that aims to find something wrong with every single frame of a story? We learn nothing, because even if every single "error" was "fixed", this school of criticism could find the exact same number of problems on a second pass. Any artist could tell you that perfection is unattainable and a work can always be criticized. The only people who think "I found something wrong" is an exceptionally clever observation are generally not artists, and typically don't volunteer helpful feedback for artists.

So to get back to your actual question, I think it's pretty easy to tell when someone is approaching your story from a place of affection or curiosity and when someone's just looking to score points off you or take out their personal frustrations on the closest target. There's no hard line because the difference isn't in the critical process, it's in the underlying approach. A bad-faith criticism can stumble on a solid point once in a while, but the critic still won't gain or give anything valuable from the experience. They're just racking up points.

[frangipani-wanderlust]

Saw this in a Discord server I'm in and it's frankly horrible and deserves a reply. But I also don't feel like starting an argument and so I'm gonna reply to it here.

First paragraph we can dismiss out of hand. "Human rights" as a concept did not begin in the 1500s. This is clearly false. We have laws staking out rights and guarantees given to people going all the way back to the Mosaic Law and the Code of Hammurabi. While the United States certainly made some very clear claims regarding human rights in the Declaration and Constitution and various associated documents, we 100% did not invent the concept. It predates the entire country by several millennia.

On to paragraph the second.

the flip side of human rights is its dark corollary—that if being human is what grants you rights, then things that are nonhuman have no rights.

They've presented their argument in this paragraph upside down. They start with the conclusion and work backwards to this claim, their premise.

And it's wrong.

Specifically, it's wrong because the second part isn't a logical consequence of the first. Being human is what grants you human rights. That statement makes no claims that no other forms of rights exist or that no other kinds of creatures have any. This is a great example of people linking two claims that share a lot of concepts, but don't actually connect directly to each other. In fact, it is precisely because humans have rights that some people (me, for example) make the case that other creatures do have rights and should be treated accordingly. Because those creatures share qualities with humanity, and since we know humans have rights, we can make a reasonable claim that they do also. (I will not be going down this bunny trail further at the moment, though. Maybe later.)

Who is a human? The answer may at first appear simple, but in truth it is not, and its determination is not a rational one. [VARIOUS EXAMPLES OF DEMOGRAPHIC GROUPS THAT ARE BEING, OR HAVE IN THE PAST BEEN, GIVEN UNJUST TREATMENT]

This error is a big one. It assumes that because group X wasn't or isn't viewed or treated as human beings with rights, they weren't human beings with rights in fact. Under that assumption, every single atrocity you can think of was perfectly moral. The people those actions were carried out against weren't being treated as human beings, therefore they weren't. Any case for opposing any harm being done to other humans evaporates right here.

I'm not convinced that's the case this author wanted to be making, but unfortunately, it's the case they actually made.

I'm gonna come back to this part, because this is where their argument truly eats itself.

To what extent is someone a human? What rights have they?

Anything that is a complete organism of the species homo sapiens is a human. They have the right to not be violently attacked (provided they themselves aren't violently attacking anyone else), to own their own things and not have them violently taken away, to make their own decisions provided those decisions don't include attacking anyone else or taking other people's things, and not to be coerced into labor to which they do not consent.

And the key thing to notice about those three things? They all require no effort on the part of anyone but the actor. I can sit on a rock all day long and never attack anybody. Zero effort on my part. It requires no effort from me not to steal things. I can be absolutely lazy and never force someone into slave labor.

All of this rights exist without resting on any coerced labor from anybody else. All of these rights are only violated if an outside actor puts time and effort into doing so.

So, to go back to the place where the argument eats itself? In the second paragraph, the author makes the claim that capitalism isn't made moral by resting on a framework of human rights. But when they list out groups of humans that have been mistreated, their claim is that those people didn't actually have any rights as humans anyway. So, by their own argument, there is no such thing as moral behavior because nobody actually has any rights that can be violated.

Thus, the author can make no moral claims about anything at all whatsoever, and their whole argument eats itself.

This has been your Things That I Wanted To Debunk Rant with Me. Thank you for your time and attention.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

I'm not white

You are not white. No really no one is "white". And I'm sick of this bullshit of people saying, "White" this and "Black" that and "Brown" this. Just stop. Judging people by skin pigment is something that we should not be doing at any point. And yet, the people that are "the most against racism" as it were, are insistent we continue to use these terms and so much so that if you are pale AT ALL you "should be considered white". Meanwhile you actually make it easier for people to be racist when you do this.

And you make the spreading of hate that much easier. "Boo hoo wyte pepo so bad they evil with no soul and something something melanin gives empathy". Shut the ever loving fuck up.

Frankly, it pisses me off more than anything to hear that kind of bullshit. AND YES that is a real thing people have said. We need to get away from labeling people as white, black, brown, etc, etc. Why? Easy, because if we are being honest here, it's kinda ignorant. I'm of French/Irish descent and I was born and raised in the US. Simple. And the same way I can say that. A "Black" man could be of Jamaican descent and also be born and raised in the US. Hell, he could be from Haiti and be a 3rd generation US citizen who's parents did REALLY well for themselves. You don't know. And that's the point.

You CAN'T know. It's just, "Oh this person LOOKS pale. We will just label him white, say he's never suffered oppression or discrimination at ALL and say that he is privileged." It's disgusting.

I've seen someone say that to a friend of mine, who's family barely survived the Holodomor, that he was just a "privileged little white boy". Excuse the fuck out of me but WHAT?! Kindly LTG.

Fact is in the US funny enough, those of Asian descent do better than almost ANY demographic in the US at all. People from India, Japan, China, South Korean, Taiwan, Philippines, etc, etc. Not "White". Which funny enough. Calling someone "White" and then saying, "White people have no culture" is some of the most racist and xenophobic shit I hear in my life. Why? Well let's look shall we. Where are can you find "White" people?

Russia

Brazil

Ukraine

South Africa

Spain

Mexico

Puerto Rico

Chile

Poland

England

Czech Republic

Switzerland

Canada

France

Germany

Ireland

Scotland

Finland

United States

And the list goes on. So you are going to tell me that NONE of the people from these countries have a culture. That they are just one with the "White Conglomerate" as it were? If you think as such then YOU are the racist. And also Xenophobic as well. We need to find a way to stop this "skin tone classification" bullshit. Especially since we seem to be EXPORTING IT to every other country in the world. Which, newsflash, is making things in the world THAT MUCH WORSE. And what's better? It's "well to do liberals" doing it. Congrats. You are making the world a worse place because you can't stop being racist little shits.

Am I blaming all liberals? No. Many? Absolutely.

We need to put a stop to this. And it needed to stop AGES ago.

[stylinsuns]

i hate propaganda films include the kerala story made money for bjp

you know at this point i think we are absolutely incapable of making films about organised crime without simultaneously, and needlessly dragging and targeting our muslim people and communities. it is very clear that these people making all these films about Islamic terrorism be it The Attacks of 26/11 or Kashmir Files or now with The Kerala Story, don't know shit about Islamic teachings or discipline at all. nor do they want to. all these so called 'documentary films' do is create deceitful perceptions and resultant discrimination against Muslims not only in India but everywhere. they're just all trying to slowly achieve this Purist Hindu Nationalist agenda where anything even slightly not in accord with Hinduism is deemed violent and insanitary for the nation's religious health. and any state, which is Kerala in this case, that tries to sustain diversity that in any way involves Islamic identities positively is ostracised and made into a cautionary tale. "do not be like this state. do not let islamism prevail." where actually, kerala has drastically been able to reduce its ISIS recruitments according to this post and is not even among the top five ISIS targets anymore.

this is incorrect and exaggerated portrayal and extremely, extremely dangerous especially when a large part of its demographic is desperate to prove, hungry for blood hindus who will charge at anything without looking left or right. injuring the rights and trampling on the voices of our muslim communities and people by shadowing their entire religion under the cloud of terrorist activities is burning an irreparable hole into the minds of our youth, especially our hindu youth, who may go on to amplify such behaviour.

i've heard my cousin sister telling her friends that her mom doesn't like this part of the town because it's mostly muslim people over here and that she shouldn't make friends with muslim people because they kidnap girls and take them to some place bad. and she is eight years old. i have heard my one of my peers whining about how her train compartment was mostly muslim people and she felt unsafe without her hindu friends there. this is the state of our children and adoloscents right now. they don't know what inflation is but they already have a political aversion towards a certain religious group. and while i can still interrupt and correct these two people for their inane, secondhand remarks, i can not convince the rest 750 crore something people. but the anti-muslim and anti-islam propaganda can and is reaching all of those people thanks to the widespread and accepted medium of film and cinema.

which is fucking terrifying.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Episode 3: Kendi v. Data.

Ibram X. Kendi: I think it’s critically important for us to stand on the anti-racist position that if there’s a racial disparity that’s shown via racial data, then there must be something wrong with policy as opposed to people. So then our job, when the data shows that disparity, is to figure out what policies are causing this disparity.

That statement by Kendi is absurd on its face. The moment you start to think about it, it just starts to fall apart. The vast majority of the people that police arrest, put in jail, and put to prison for violence are male. Does it automatically mean they're sexist against men? The average Asian-American income is higher than the average white American income. Does that mean we're racist against whites and this system is designed in such a way to help Asian Americans? The top educated demographic in the United States are Nigerian immigrants. Does that mean that the United States is geared towards helping Nigerian immigrants? So the whole thing is absurd on its face.

What you have to do when you see a discrepancy in the data is you have to control for the different reasons why that discrepancy might be there. That is, if what you're interested in is actually the truth, which should be what you're interested in if you're actually thinking about solving it. I don't think Kendi or people like that have any interest in solving anything, which is why the truth isn't that important. But if the truth is important to you, then when somebody says, "this particular correlation equals causation," well then we have to start controlling for all the other things that could be if we want to find out what's true and what's not true.

It reminds me very much of the creationist argument for how the world was created. Any time there was no definitive evolutionary answer for why something existed, or even if there was a good answer but it wasn't well known, people say, "Well, therefore, must be God." The God of the Gaps argument. And that's exactly what he's doing here. He's saying, any discrepancy in the data therefore must equal racism. If you're interested in the truth, then you can't accept that answer. It might be racism, absolutely. But the only way to find out if it's racism is to control for the other things that it could be. That's just basic logic and common sense.

Every citizen who's listening to this that has any kind of education at all should know that. And that alone should be enough to tell you that these people aren't sincere.

==

"When I see racial disparities, I see racism." -- Ibram X. Kendi

It's notable that when pressed about this single cause, he retorted:

"Either there is something wrong with our policies, or there is something wrong with black boys (or black people). Either the United States is riddled with racist policies or inferior black boys."

Either you agree with him that the US is irredeemably racist, or you think black people, and black boys in particular, are "inferior." This level of manipulation is the full breadth of his limited thought process. He's not a thinker, and he's not sincere about solving problems.

This "racism of the gaps" is what they refer to as "systemic racism." Take the preferred outcome and divide it by the current outcome. The distance in between, without controlling for anything, is presupposed to be bigotry. (The same method is used to calculate the mythical "pay gap".)

Unexpected results deserve investigation. When people observed light split while passing through a prism, they went "woah," and wanted to find out why. There are people who actually want to do that sort of thing. Not only does Kendi not want to do that, he doesn't want anyone else doing it either. He doesn't want to understand the problem, because he doesn't want it fixed.

We have no more reason to accept "systemic racism" from intellectual frauds like Kendi than we do to accept "systemic divinity" as an explanation for the existence of the universe.

If you accept one but not the other, then you're being inconsistent with how you decide what is true. An argument from ignorance is no more legitimate when it comes from a Kendi than it is coming from a Ken Ham or a Zakir Naik.

[plethoraworldatlas]

Some people have already jumped to "Hillary Clinton lost because people talked about racist things she do so anyone who talks about Biden doing racist things is a faker virtue signaller psyop Idiot Trump loving fascist".

I cannot stress enough that demanding people ignore the most fucked up shit any politician has ever done or else they are "the enemy" is 1) absolutely BS 2) creates a lose lose situation for minorities 3) preserving the racist status quo.

(Also, the "Hillary lost because people didn't want to be called racist for voting for her" is so damn dumb, you sound like a conservative who thinks democrat voters act like cartoon caricatures, and you are dancing around her losing due to her alienating entire demographics of voters out of racism/believing she didn't actually have to work to earn their votes)

IF YOU ACTUALLY WANT CHANGE TO COME FROM THESE POLITICIANS, YOU HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THEY LIKE EVERYONE HAVE DONE RACIST AND MESSED UP THINGS, MORE SO THAN MOST OTHERS DUE TO THEIR POSITIONS OF POWER, AND CRUCIALLY, HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE, HOLD THEM TO THEIR PROMISES TO DO BETTER, AND DEMAND THEY CHANGE FOR THE BETTER.

If an establishment democrat presidential candidate actually owned up for the messed up shit they and the party have done and actually worked to make amends to the communities they harmed and actually committed to standing against racism and bigotry, they'd all but instantly be a more moral president than pretty any other.

Calling anyone who talks about bigoted and messed up things Biden has done a Psyop Virtue Signaller faker idiot racist Trump loving fascist is just they way you have chosen to tell minorities "I don't care about the racism or bigotry you face when it's inconvenient for me"

(This was prompted reading the posts of someone who legit believed that Hillary lost because "virtue signaling" progressives (You know they desperately want to call the SJWs like they want to call people slurs) didn't campaign enough for her for free because "they thought she was racist". Completely ignoring the fact that people DID vote for her and She WON THE POPULAR Vote, losing primarily because she lost major states because she ignored entire voter demographics and alienated them with her racist record and thus lost the Electoral College. This person also reblogged posts calling people who reblog posts about Palestine "Pro Pal Fandom" regardless of context or anything, and generally seems to consider that no one legitimately cares about the genocide, and just considers it all an "AstroTurf virtue signal Russian (or Chinese) PsyOp" designed to "cost Biden Voters" because the world Truly revolves around Biden's polling numbers to them the same way conservatives believe international politics revolve around Hunter Biden's genitals)

[astraltrickster]

So I suspect there are a few things going on with the moderation bias issue.

1. (Educated guess) Whatever system they're using (because it is known that the majority of tumblr's moderation is automated) is self-adjusting, like most pre-2021-ish machine learning systems. Meaning, any post that action is taken on manually - be it by an actual staff member, or a user with the report button - is acknowledged within the system as "this is what a Known/Potentially Flag-Worthy Post Looks Like."

2. (Known fact about the internet) Bigots, knowing that OPENLY harassing people gets them banned (no, seriously, I know it's easy to think they don't because they keep popping up like fucking weeds and SOME of them are pretty good at playing the "I'm-not-touching-you" game, but if you dig around for them crossing The Line of plausible deniability like I do when I have the mental energy you'll often find them talking about having been banned multiple times before, [airplane-survivorship-bias-diagram.jpg]), often instead choose to resort to report-brigading innocuous posts by users of the demographics they're bigoted against. Because most websites over a certain size have a mostly automated moderation system, the number of reports makes the system essentially go "oh, wow, if THIS many people are reporting it it must be REALLY bad!" - and if point 1 is correct...the impact is obvious

3. (Statistical consideration) Tumblr staff is about 200 people. That's way too few to have people constantly on top of making sure appeals are resolved fairly with minimal risk of overwork-induced human error, on a site this size...and, given the state of Politics right now, also too MANY for it to be at ALL likely that there aren't at least a small handful of absolute thundercunts who at best CONSIDER themselves aligned with tumblr's mission as a queer-positive space but whose internal definition of "sexual content" is roughly the same as the Florida government's (it is illegal, in the US, to ask questions about personal politics in a job interview, and...I mean just look at the whole existence of the kink-at-pride discourse and how widespread that bullshit is even in ""mainstream"" LGBT+ circles)

4. A lot of that skeleton crew is currently distracted from making sure the moderation system doesn't eat itself because the decision at the top is to take a gamble on new users being willing to pay more than existing ones and throw their hat into the ring of trying to clone Twitter (someone PLEASE tell upper management that no other social media site at this scale has EVER gotten into the black off user engagement alone either; making a site that people WANT to Crab Day on really IS your best bet my dudes)

5. (Speculation, admittedly maybe overly bitter) Given that the CEO has praised the muskrat FOR the decisions causing the Twitter collapse, I wouldn't be at ALL surprised if he's instituted an internal policy that excessive negativity about the site is a secret extra category of "mature content" 🙃

So...what's the solution here? The strategy I suggest is:

1. If you're a trans woman or other queer user, and your SFW content got flagged, DON'T attach your complaining about it to the same post in case of point 5; appeal, list the things you're NOT doing that appears in PG-13 movies all the time, and MENTION the fact that they've ALREADY had a moderation bias settlement that they're SUPPOSED to be fixing the core of in your ticket

2. If that doesn't work - document it and try again. And again. And again.

3. USE THE FEEDBACK FORM, USE THE FEEDBACK FORM, I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH, USE THE FEEDBACK FORM. Politely but firmly (because if you just curse them out it will get lost in the noise of inevitable "I can't identify anything specific that could be better but I don't like change" that EVERY website gets with EVERY change) stress that fixing this system NEEDS to be a higher priority, for the users' sake AND their own, because FOR FUCK'S SAKE there was ALREADY a settlement over it

4. If THAT doesn't get some shit done it may be time for us as a community to consider turning to a human rights org and lawyering up again, because...while I highly doubt there's some kind of grand queerphobic conspiracy, it's still also likely that we're approaching the point where our best bet is doing the EXACT opposite of what this ridiculous, wasteful overhaul is trying to do (i.e., COST them a ton of money rather than making it), or at least threatening to in a way they can't ignore

[soryualeksi]

ENTIRELY leaving aside a case-by-case discussion about how sensible or not [Insert Measure Implemented XYZ] was or is to combat [Insert Bad Thing Occurring ABC]. I feel like, at least among the select demographic of "Germans I personally see making any statements about it whatsoever", fireworks of all things has become the new thing to be The Most Pious about after we all had to get used to the pandemic.

Last year around this time it was "Well, *I* don't miss social gatherings of any kind or going to the cinema or the zoo or shopping for anything Non-Essential, and *I* don't mourn my glasses not fogging up wherever I go and *I* also never liked smelling anything in the public sphere ever, anyway" as the ultimate "look how Virtuous and Pure I am by not only following [Insert Measure Implemented XYZ] but also LOVING it with every fiber of my being and if you don't, well, you're just not as Pious as me".

Now it's fucking "No, *I* never liked fireworks or sparklers or firecrackers or ANYTHING ever before, and I spent ALL my New Year's Eves since I've been born at home, alone, going to bed at 8 p.m. and WITHOUT ever consuming any alcoholic beverages EVER, because as you know alcohol is Impure duh. New Year's Eve celebrations are Noisy and Dangerous and Bad For The Environment and Bad For The Healthcare System, and also gatherings in general spread germs and should be avoided, and also ANY recreational activity where GROWN ASS ADULTS can POSSIBLY injure themselves IF THEY DON'T MIND BASIC FUCKING SAFETY MEASURES should be prohibited by laws that are then VIGOROUSLY enforces because I just LOVE calling the police on my fucking neighbours.

Oh and also DIE NACHTRUHE IST EINZUHALTEN."

Like, Jesus Fucking Christ. Yes, *you* love it, yes, *you* are the most Pure and Pious and somehow being against [Hedonist Thing DEF That Is Actually Just Humans Humaning Around] is a status marker of perfect moral virtuousness and YES you CAN'T BELIEVE how people could EVER have enjoyed whatever the fuck you think should be banned by law so you can finally call the police on your neighbours again, YES WE GET IT. STFU GODDAMMIT.

God. Some of us LIKED having fun in "unproductive, waste-of-money" ways. You're so much more Enlightened than us NOW SHUT UP AND GO SIT IN YOUR ROOM NOT DRINKING NOT LIGHTING FIREWORKS NOT MEETING PEOPLE NOT CELEBRATING BECAUSE CELEBRATIONS DON'T PRODUCE ANYTHING OF VALUE GOD

I swear, if someone legit approaches my little kids!!!! AGAIN!!!!!!! this year to scold them about "not minding the state of the world and that there's No Normalcy Like Before anymore" because these two little kids ruthlessly, mindlessly and not at all piously threw some of these tiny little Knallerbsen things that are just thumbnail-sized pouches that make a little *pop* when they hit the ground (and that we had equipment to clean up with us), THIS TIME I WILL GO NUCLEAR.

FUCK. OFF.

[papirouge]

Plenty of fundamental evangelicals and new age modern Christians in the US I've noticed will cherry pick the bible and then go on rants against the secular world. Like sir, your entire arm is tattooed and your wife praises guns, the death penalty, and paid politicians and terminally online edgy personalities for their 'hot takes' like they're idols on her twitter feed. Pls stop. Many of women and men too do hate muslims because they were fed the diet of how islam is a terrorist religion so even if a woman is following the guide of modesty by covering her hair and her body whole, plenty of these Christians have voiced how they'd want to tear it off of her in some perverted sense of patriotism. Like I remember the Boston bombing (that tbh felt fake but that's my conspiracy for another day..) and when pics of the wife of one of the bombers were public with her wearing her hijab, one of those commenters mentioned that she didnt care about her husbands actions, she just thinks the wife should be arrested for wearing a scarf that covered her hair. You are to be modest, but not too modest if that's possible. To be Christian after 9/11 was a trip.. God became guns in one hand and the bible in the other, unread of of course. Does Frances secular approach to life feel the same way for you as a Christian? Like sure, you can be modest but too much modesty is too much. But you can be naked too. But only if you have a perfect body that's perfect in today's standards too

"Like sir, your entire arm is tattooed and your wife praises guns, the death penalty, and paid politicians and terminally online edgy personalities for their 'hot takes' like they're idols on her twitter feed. Pls stop."

"God became guns in one hand and the bible in the other, unread of of course."

Queen, you didn't miss a beat. I wish I was as eloquent as you because you told not a single lie. I legit was vibing like Michelle when reading your post lmao

These Evangelicals feeling threatened by women with modesty clothing are sooo weird!! Why would you care about whether a woman covers "too much" skin?? They will justify assaulting Muslims based on their outfits, but in the breath will whine about how "savage" and intolerant brown people are, I-. They will use Islamist terrorism to argue how violent Islam is compared to Christianism, and in the same time use the "sell your cloak and buy a sword" verse to justify violence against non Christians... How any of that makes these zealot Christians different from salafists???

In France the approach to secular life is very different bc unlike the US, since the revolution of 1789, there is a strict separation of the state and the church. It would be UNTHINKABLE to have the President or politics swear on the Bible or say "God" lol (even in court we don't swear over the Bible or anything)

Catholicism is the dominant Christian sect here. But the Catholic demographic is getting super old, and while morally conservative, they are very kin to charity and social welfare (unlike USAmericans who will call communism anything involving social welfare).

French Christians are generally very humble and sweet because unlike USAmericans, they are now a minority (there are stats showing that around 45% of French people don't believe in God, and only 10% of the population is actually Catholic) so you won't see them being entitled for political or cultural power. They humbly live their truth, as God intended for every Christian ; no big pricey "Catholic" convention, no "Catholic" university campus, no political mingling... They will stand their ground (being against gay marriage or surrogacy for example) but you'll never see them saying or doing the crazy things like American evangelicals do on the regular.

NOW, you have this (kinda new) scene of crazy nu crusaders type of Catholic, pleading for new crusades against Muslim invaders in Europe, but they're nothing but boastful brats on the internet. All bark and no bite. There are plentiful of Muslim district in France and they never did nothing ; they'll just rage post about it on the internets lmao

Maybe before threatening to kill the "Saracens", they should be concerned about the rampant de-Christianization of their country. IDK Maybe the reason God is letting Europe being invaded by foreigners is because the Western has become an abomination in the eyes of God and refuses to protect the continent any more? and that He would rather use foreigners to carry His message like He did with the Jews/Gentiles? see how Christianism is booming in Asia, Middle East and Africa? it's all linked. But racist nu Catholics are just too bewildered to realize that. Getting to such conclusion would ask actual spiritual self awareness and they don't have none. They're just zealots with no Spirit.

It's also funny to see White "TradCath" being so petty at Africans invading Europe when you see how many Africans there are in 'their' churchs lmao They loathe Africans, but Black Africans are huge chunk of worldwide Christiandom (there are 650 millions of Christians in Africa). Maybe if they actually went to church and left their online echo chambers of rightoid nu crusaders they'd realize that 💀

[waterlilyfilly]

Introduction

Hi! This Tumblr is called waterlilyfilly, but you can call me Waterlily for short, or Lily for shorter. Any pronouns are alright.

If you're reading this, you have found the Water Lily Filly Blog! A bit deceptively named, I guess, because it has little to do with water lilies, and I am not a filly. In truth, I am fully grown, and also not a horse, and also not particularly female. It's just that I wanted a catchy name, and lily rhymes with filly and one of my other internet aliases also involves water lilies, so here we are.

On this blog, I intend to go through My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode by episode and write my thoughts down. Before I begin, however, I think I have some explaining to do.

My Little Pony and Me

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic shaped my childhood in a weird way. The idea of the brony was baffling to me at first. I feigned outrage because, of course, what else is a person in their early teens supposed to do when they hear about middle-aged men enjoying a show with a target demographic of girls aged four to twelve? But there was something fascinating about it too. In my head I went through a dramatic, vivid character arc, in which I tried to resist the ways of the Pony, yet ultimately failed. Another soul lost in the great battle against the forces of cringe. Retrospectively, I think that I ultimately got into MLP because I wanted to feel special. The idea of breaking societal rules by watching something someone of my demographic wasn't supposed to was very exciting. I enjoyed the show itself to some extent, but I don't think I ever would have watched it at all if it hadn't felt taboo.

This was very silly of me, of course. First off, I was probably 13 or 14 at this time. Sure, I didn't believe myself to be of the appropriate gender, but I don't think it was unusual for someone of that age to watch Friendship is Magic, brony stuff aside. Second, I was watching the show because of the cultural landscape surrounding it, and not the show itself. I was, to put it bluntly, a fake fan. Oh, the horror. I was a child, and was therefore bad at being alive and making decisions, so I am willing to forgive myself. And I don't think that I gained nothing from the experience, even if it really was just a phase. I suspect that the completely insignificant act of perceived defiance that was me watching My Little Pony as a kid may have fueled many more coherent, meaningful thoughts and opinions I have now, such as a dislike of cringe culture, a distrust of gender roles, and the general belief that one should do what makes one happy, regardless of what others think.

All of this leaves me with an odd relationship with the show. The mane six are mythological figures to me, and their personas are permanently inscribed in my mind, but I can barely remember anything that actually happened. I think Twilight went to Ponyville because she was put in charge of a festival by Celestia to test her princessing abilities? I vaguely remember them having to clean up winter?? There were evil bug ponies at some point??? Honestly, the plots of the retrospectively hilarious creepypastas like Rainbow Factory and Cupcakes probably exist in a more coherent state in my brain than those of the actual show do. I also didn't watch even close to the whole show. Looking at episode synopses, I think I watched seasons 1-4 and started season 5. I know I must have started season 5 because I remember the Cutie Map episodes, but my comprehension of the show must have been awful because some of the earlier episode synopses don't even look familiar.

So why come back to it? Well, for one, I have the obvious nostalgic connection to it. My limbic system is all aflutter at the prospect of a rewatch. However fake of a fan I claim to be, I still think fondly of the characters and of the experience of watching the show. But nostalgia is not the only thing bringing me back. I'd like to think of this less as revisiting something old, as much as renovating something old. Rather than reminiscing about how weird I was as a child or ruminating on the golden age of the MLP fandom, I intend to wipe away the past and give myself my definitive viewing of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. In the process, I'll also be creating a repository for all of my pony-related opinions. 30 years from now, when someone inevitably asks me about my thoughts on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Season 5 Episode 12, I'll be able to save a great deal of time by simply pointing them to this blog.

(Jokes aside, I basically just like writing about things and I think this will be a fun thing to write about. If anyone reads it, that's just a bonus!)

Looking Forward

It's sort of funny how we think of some intellectual properties as being dead. Though I am loathe to admit it, I am a member of the Homestuck fandom. This is another piece of media which spiked in popularity in the early 2010s and has since slowly faded away from the mainstream. Within the Homestuck fandom, there is a lot of bitterness about the current state of things. People dwell on controversies and mistakes and the diminishment of the fanbase. I mention this because I see signs of the same thing happening in the MLP fandom and it makes me nervous. Friendship is Magic is over, and generation five is garnering a lot of criticism. I have no idea whether this criticism is justified, but that's not really the point. No matter what is happening with the franchise, nothing will ever be able to kill the magic of the previous installments. With that in mind, I want to make this blog a place of positivity. Not that I'm really expecting anyone to read this blog, but if they do, my goal is to give a refreshing new perspective on what is now a legendary piece of internet history. This doesn't mean I won't criticize things I don't like, but I'm not planning on performing a Cinema-Sins-style dissection of each episode with the express purpose of finding mistakes. It's gonna be more casual than that. At the end of the day, I'm going into this expecting to have fun.

Other than that, I think I'm ready to just jump in. I don't have a specific plan for format, or a timeline, or anything. I'll see what I have to write about S1E1 and let it evolve from there. I'll try to put in pictures once I actually start watching episodes, though, because this ~1200 word wall of text is probably not very fun to look at. Hopefully this post will be the most rambly and long-winded of them all. I just thought it would be a good idea to establish my baseline thoughts on the show before I jump in. I am looking forward to this, and if you are reading this, I hope you are too!

[nsomniacsdream]

"Life isn't easy."

Why do you do everything in your power to let people make it harder? Life is not easy, and its getting harder every year. Politics is functionally dead in the US. Every single session of congress makes life harder and adds more and more laws that no one wants but we aren't allowed to vote on. No one votes FOR a candidate anymore, only against a different one. Your candidate isn't going to do anything for you, but you know the other one is going to make it much worse. The judiciary is gone.

If I live to the statistical average age for my demographic, I have about 35 years left. I dont want it to get worse every year but I honestly have no say in the situation. Everything is going to get more expensive, and everything is going to get harder to get, and there's going to be a mass shooting every day. At a certain point in our foreseeable future, I will probably be arrested for my politics. Like that's the actual trajectory this country is on, even if no one wants to really admit it. And that's assuming I'm not the victim of a mass shooting or a hate crime or political violence or any number of other problems this country has no interest in solving.

Our government let's companies buy up all the fresh water and then sell it to you, or send it somewhere else. They sell the forests and the soil and the air and what is even left? Honestly, what have they left for the rest of us? I can't walk on the beach because it's all privately owned or covered in garbage. I can't have a rain barrel in this county, because the water company owns the water before it even hits the ground.

Realistically, how are we expected to change things? Protesting just leads to further militarization of the police and increased latitude in suppressing us by any means necessary. The courts are only a valid avenue if they're non partisan and unbiased. Armed rebellion will end in the military being used against us as "insurrectionists". Voting is almost completely for show at this point, with several states passing laws to send their own chosen nominees regardless of the outcome of any vote. It's all failing from the top down because we have shackled ourselves to a several hundred year old manifesto from people who wrote a blueprint for keeping the wealthy in power. The fact that they put in a relief valve in the form of amendments is meaningless in the face of the impossible to foresee present.

Life isn't easy. I don't think I want to know how hard it'll have to get for anything to change.

[max1461]

the assumption that "all the things anon listed" are just responses people had to the evil tranny being too mean is not actually as charitable as you or wuggen seem to think it is.

those are all things that trans women on this site experience the constant threat of at any given moment. those are things i've personally experienced on multiple occasions for things as radical as talking about how leftists trying to frame themselves as righteous foil to the purely evil rightwinger is actually not helpful. aside from using tumblr to funnel fake reports of csa to the police literally every trans woman i know has experienced all of that list. only most of the trans women i know on here have experienced the fake csa reports.

and this is all important context to multiple discussions which form the background of the random joke you got angry at and wrote an essay about. by policing trans women even joking about their awful experiences you are intentionally or not supporting the people who perpetuate that bullshit.

its not a chain of reasoning its a direct result of the way you chose to go about things. if i felt like turning your accusations of clout chasing back against you i might say that making your own post about how people need to consider being more kind wouldn't have gotten as much clout as attempting to put an uppity tranny back in her place. i can admit that both my ask and that joke were potentially difficult to understand without context and somewhat abrasive... but you should be able to understand why the immediate assumption that trans women are just randomly evil and aggressive and attacking random people for no reason is shit. and the assumption that people would only harm trans women as a response to trans women provoking it by attacking them first is shit. the assumption that if trans women joke about horrible things they experience then they must definitely and truly hate entire demographics is shit.

and basically... using [making a joke with your friends on tumblr about severe harm that regularly targets people like you] as a metric for treating demographics badly is shit

This is fairly long, so I'm going to quote things and respond bit by bit. Here is the post being discussed, for context.

the assumption that "all the things anon listed" are just responses people had to the evil tranny being too mean is not actually as charitable as you or wuggen seem to think it is.

This is a pretty serious misrepresentation of what I said. I was guessing that the forms of harassment listed by that anon were related to the post itself in some way, because otherwise I could see no reason for people to connect them to my response in any capacity. You make it sound as if I was implying the harassment was justified because of what the OP said, but I don't think this was implied in any way by my post. It's certainly not what I meant.

those are all things that trans women on this site experience the constant threat of at any given moment. those are things i've personally experienced on multiple occasions for things as radical as talking about how leftists trying to frame themselves as righteous foil to the purely evil rightwinger is actually not helpful. aside from using tumblr to funnel fake reports of csa to the police literally every trans woman i know has experienced all of that list. only most of the trans women i know on here have experienced the fake csa reports.

This is a truly awful state of affairs and I am sincerely sorry you have to deal with this. I can imagine that existing in an environment where the threat of potentially life-ruining internet harassment is constant would be terrifying and exhausting. I don't have direct experience with anything like this, but the closest things I can analogize it to in my own life were truly miserable. I think this is a grave injustice, and I'm strongly in favor of both the longterm solutions to this kind of problem (e.g. combating transmisogyny generally) and the more immediate ones (structural changes to websites that mitigate this kind of harassment, fostering discourse norms that make it harder for harassment campaigns to propagate, etc.).

and this is all important context to multiple discussions which form the background of the random joke you got angry at and wrote an essay about. by policing trans women even joking about their awful experiences you are intentionally or not supporting the people who perpetuate that bullshit.

Again, I think your framing here is really pretty disingenuous. Here's what the OP said:

I'm going to be honest, this joke doesn't look to me like reasonable gallows humor in the face of awful circumstances. It looks like barely-hidden contempt for transmen and afab nonbinary people generally, which can only be tenuously connected to said awful circumstances by several paragraphs of justification. I was not "policing trans women joking about their awful experiences"—I, a random internet user with no power over this person and no capacity to meaningfully "police" anything they do, said that this person's expression of prejudice towards transmen was unwarranted and unkind. Because I think that's true.

I admit that I initially didn't parse the post as a joke, and (possibly owing to the fact that I've seen others unironically advocate this same thing) took it as a genuine invective against transmen. As I said in my previous post, the fact that it was only a joke makes the tone I took unwarranted, and for that I apologize. But the joke still rests on what I think is pretty obvious prejudice, and I think that is unambiguously a bad thing. While I do admit that I should have taken a different tone in my response, I stand fully and completely by the content of my response.

It's probably not good to get into a long philosophical discussion here, but I fundamentally do not believe in the common idpol notion that one has carte blanche to be prejudiced against those with more social privilege than oneself. Part of this is because I think ranking groups by privilege is both an ill-defined procedure and a bit of a waste of time. Part of this is because I think privilege, while in many contexts a reasonable heuristic, is a fairly bad model for thinking about most interpersonal interactions. When people have suffered at the hands of society, I think it is eminently understandable and immensely human for them to develop prejudices against certain groups. Maybe those with more power, maybe those with less, maybe those for which the question is not well-defined. I would never judge someone for this, because I try not to judge people for what I consider to be near universal human faults. But the fact that something is psychologically reasonable does not mean that it is good, or productive, or ethically justified. I think broad demographic prejudices are pretty unilaterally a bad thing.

its not a chain of reasoning its a direct result of the way you chose to go about things.

Look, I really don't think it is. I find it, frankly, extremely unlikely that what I said contributed or will contribute in any material way to the harassment of transwomen. I disagreed with a transwoman when she made a prejudiced remark. I did not insult her, I did not challenge her character, I did not reference the fact that she was trans in any way. A transwoman made a prejudiced remark, and I said in very abstract terms "being prejudiced is bad". Insofar as this contributes somehow to the harassment of transwomen, so too does any disagreement with them on any topic. The standard which you seem to want me to uphold is not, I don't think, a reasonable one.

i can admit that both my ask and that joke were potentially difficult to understand without context and somewhat abrasive... but you should be able to understand why the immediate assumption that trans women are just randomly evil and aggressive and attacking random people for no reason is shit. and the assumption that people would only harm trans women as a response to trans women provoking it by attacking them first is shit. the assumption that if trans women joke about horrible things they experience then they must definitely and truly hate entire demographics is shit.

I did not make any of these assumptions, as I think I've pretty clearly articulated above.

and basically... using [making a joke with your friends on tumblr about severe harm that regularly targets people like you] as a metric for treating demographics badly is shit

I agree! But again, this is (1) not what the OP appears to be on any reasonable read, and (2) not what I claimed! I didn't say that the OP treated transmen badly in general, nor am I saying that now. I said, and am saying, that the post expressed a generalized prejudice ("generalized" meaning "directed at a large group", not "generalized" meaning "reflective of OP's actions broadly"). Which it did! And that's bad!

[honeytrappaz]

call out post for @ratsofftoya

TW: GROOMING/PEDOPHILIA AND SUICIDE MENTIONS

recently @i-am-a-fish got suicidal baited off tumblr for the most bullshitted accusation post I've seen so far.

apparently I-am-fish is a pedophile/ potential child groomer, as said by @ratsofftoya

All because he made a joke on twitter about moving to pornhub, and follows artists that draw lolicon/aged-up smut of fictional underaged characters.

but there are some major fallacies in @ratsofftoya 's accusations (as if it wasn't obvious enough).

moral appeal:

ratsofftoya's commentary on goldie's pornhub and sex toy posts were very moralistic despite the posts clearly being a joke.

Humor is subjective so it's okay if you didn't laugh at this post, but that isn't an excuse to take away its humor to demean someone by making hasty generalizations about his fanbase. We can't confirm his fanbase is mostly kids, but because this claim is based on a hasty generalization, it is an inappropriate appeal to emotion. Trying to imply that goldie willingly exposes kids to child porn, classic "but think of the kids!" argument.

• There is no data we have on I-am-fish 's audience age demographic.

• there is no proof that majority of the fanbase are minors. that's just a hasty generalization.

• I-am-a-fish does not claim to be a blog for kids, not including "18+" in your bio does not make you a blog for kids.

I can't believe i have to point this shit out, but tumblr and twitter are not for kids. Nobody on these two platforms should have to put "18+" in their bios because nobody below that should even be on these two platforms. I-am-a-fish is an adult making adult jokes on an adult platform, to imply he could be a child groomer because he makes sex jokes that minors see is unfair because thats beyond his control. Tumblr and Twitter are adult spaces and yet we are not responsible for kids being in a space where they don't belong, that responsibility goes to the parents. All we can do about minors in online adult spaces is REPORT them.

2. cherry picking:

ratsofftoya specifically picked TWO sexually suggestive artworks by japanese Twitter artist Krskii. problem is ratsofftoya uses these two posts to portay this artist as a highly lewd/fetish account, when that isn't the case. In actuality, krskii's twitter page is a fanart page for a duo from IDOL MASTER: cinderella girls starlight stage anzu fubata(the blonde loli) and kirari moroboshi. it's a fanart page for other IMCGSS characters as well. i use to play game, its alot of fun but its japanese exclusive so i couldn't play much due to language barriers. the fanart page is almost all SFW, but ratsofftoya pick TWO out of dozens of sfw pics to solidify her claim.

you can go on Krskii's twitter and see for yourself:

and my personal favorite:

(ooh lawd this is cute i might have it as a PFP with credit!)

anyway, ratsofftoya ignored these possibilities:

• There is no proof goldie liked the two photos, or any engagement at all.

• there is no proof that he had seen it, especially out of dozens sfw art.

• just because he follows this artist does not automatically confim he has a sexual attraction for lolis or kids. especially due to how the page is mostly sfw.

• goldie could just be a fan of IMCGSS.

this isn't a creepy pedo twitter page, just an idol fan page. but what really is illogical is the commentary ratsofftoya has in regards to loli drawings. Now with using two pics racy pics, ratsofftoya came to the conclusion that Goldie is sexually attracted to children. But lolicon isn't real children, it's not real CP and it's not even a realistic depiction of humans children, so what rataofftoya did was simply pass off her opinion of lolis as fact. I'm not trying to debate on whether lolicon is okay or not and im not gonna share my opinion, because the real point isn't the subject of lolicon but the wrongful accusation. the real fact is that lolicon is still legal, but social opinion of lolicon is very mixed, our opinions on such a complicated subject is not enough to convict someone as a pedophile. you're opinions do not hold that kind of power, especially without sufficient evidence. let's actually move on to ratsofftoya's evidenced and how insufficient it is.

3. False attribution of discord chats

the screenshots provided from the discord chats do not add up to ratsofftoya's claims, making the screencaps irrelevant more than anything.

she provided this screenshot of a mod stating their opinion on aged up fanart, and claims that this opinions makes ALL MODS in that discord MAPS and Pedo apologists. problem is that there is no real sympathy for any pedo/maps in both ratsofftoya and nestbian's screenshots. if anything, it's just some bad jokes, and Goldie doesn't even say one himself.

rattsofftoya commits the same fallacy like with the loli argument; the concept of aged up characters is complicated subject, its not illegal but there is alot of debate surrounding it. Ratsofftoya makes her opinion clear that aged up artwork of characters is wrong. she uses small and insufficient screenshots to to help make her OPINION seem like a fact, and accuse the mods of being MAP sympathizers. she's convicted these mods based on a biased opinion, the concept of aged up characters is not legally pedophilic so whether you think the subject is right or wrong, is still not enough to convinct others with opposing opinions as MAP enablers.

Another issue is how she claims minors are talking inappropriately with adults on discord, but there are no such screenshots, the screenshots provided give no evidence of such accusation. With her convictions based on biased opinions, that accusations is not going to be getting any credibility anytime soon. Many of us know how discord works, it's not unusual for adults and minors to be in the same server, it's not a pedophilic thing. But one thing that discord mods do is have NSFW chats specifically for adults, while minors are exluded and stay in the SFW chats. ratsofftoya has no screenshots on minors in a nsfw chat, you'd figure that nestbian would take screenshots of that if it was actually true.

Lastly, ratsofftoya uses these discord screenshots to further solidfy her statement that I-am-a-fish is exposing sexual content to children. But you don't see goldie or any inappropriate/sexual content in the screenshots, just problematic opinions at best.

4. Bad intentions:

from what i've said in this post above, I can conclude ratsofftoya's post overrall was very manipulative and biased. I think the most manipulative part of the post was the last paragraph:

Using the idea of child exploitation and sexual abuse to pull on people's emotions, a huge inappropriate call for emotion. yet, ratsofftoya has not proven or shown any child exploitation or pedophilia at all. we have yet to see any evidence of abuse! How can I believe ratsofftoya has good intentions when I can easily break the accusations apart and see lies?

As a real victim of child grooming, i won't speak for all victims, but as a victim I really don't like my trauma being used to witch hunt innocent people. My trauma is not for woke points, it's not a badge and it's not for your ego to exploit. It's pretty clear that ratsofftoya did NOT make this post for the well being of children and grooming victims, but the post was made for her moralistic ego. If anything, to use sexual child abuse to lie about others, is exploitive.

5. consequenses:

I commented on ratsofftoya's post, mentioning that there are serious consequences to false accusations. Of course the response was immature af so not sure if she'll ever learn, but I'll say it for those who'll hopefully listen to my advice.

Call out post with false accusations can destroy lives, and put you, the poster, in serious legal trouble.

Slander and defamation on its own can get you a lawsuit, you never know who on this platform has money for a lawyer. If this person you publicly slander is to self harm, commit suicide, or lose their job, you can be legally held accountable for it even if it wasn't what you intended to happen, disclaimers cat save you from that. Just because ratofftoya says the suicide baiting is wrong, doesn't mean that she isn't legally responsible for it, I-am-a-fish can legally use it against her. Even with the legal consequences, lying in its own has social consequences and it will be brought to light.

Remember this, you broke ass college students, no amount of woke points is worth the lawsuit. If you GENUINELY see a real predator, report it!

[bigskydreaming]

A good description. For my part, I don't like talking about it because of my own experiences. I can, however, see Batman, a story where nearly every memorable villain and even the protagonist himself is a Svengali, could attract a disproportionate number of rape apologists, though fandom is full of them. (Oh, hey, that's the other thing with Jason. Talia.)

Ugh I’m so sorry to hear you can relate, and I totally understand not wanting to talk about it. I have no idea what your particular situation is, obviously, but I also want to reiterate since its been awhile since I’ve mentioned this part.....I don’t feel any like....basically, my choice to talk about this stuff is simply put, MY choice, made for my own reasons, that aren’t a reflection on any other survivor. There are a million and one reasons NOT to come forward, or to struggle with it or not to be open about what happened to us, and none of them are a reflection on any of us, but rather the position it puts us in.

Again, I don’t know your situation or what gender you might be or anything else, and this isn’t at all because your ask made me feel defensive or anything like that. This is just something I’ve wanted to put into words for awhile now seems relevant today, and here’s as good a place as any to put it down:

For myself, being a male survivor....like, there’s never really been any getting around the existence of that kinda, idk, caveat that not many male survivors come forward. Sure, we all see the posts and tweets reminding “remember, men can be raped too!” But that’s not the same thing as men sharing their stories and experiences the way far more women have come forward. And that’s why I ultimately began talking about my own experiences in order to express how I felt about my own positioning in society and how as a survivor I interact and am interacted with by others. Because frankly, there wasn’t anywhere else I could really look to in order to see others talking or sharing about similar things and see myself reflected in what they were saying or the experiences they were describing. So, if I couldn’t find what I felt I needed or could have benefited from, I figured at least I could put it out there in case anyone else who could relate could benefit from mine.

Except, ultimately I’ve come to feel that I honestly don’t believe its that men just flat out don’t come forward with their stories or experiences, its that even when we do, we’re rarely signal boosted - as you can kinda see from the fact that I can post the most inane shit and get it to a thousand notes, but in the five plus years I’ve been making posts about this subject, I’m lucky if I can get a single post on the topic to double digits as far as notes go.

People just flat out are a combination of uncomfortable with the novelty of actual discussions about and around male survivors as well as being not really sure how to talk about it because we’ve never really developed the tools for it.

And to be 100% clear, this has NOTHING to do with female survivors, as a point of comparison or ANYTHING else. It drives me up a fucking WALL when people try and compare and contrast even just how much men being raped is talked about vs women being raped, no matter WHAT their reasons are, because I promise people, I PROMISE - NO survivor, of any gender, has EVER benefitted from being pitted against other survivors to ANY degree. Its not a zero sum game and it doesn’t help male survivors to pull shit like “well at least female survivors are acknowledged” because a) eww, and b) nobody asked anyone to say that on our behalf, and c) hyper-visibility isn’t a privilege (or whatever the best parallel to that might be, I’m not trying to appropriate an anti-blackness specific term so much as its the closest comparison I have at the moment for something that isn’t even a matter of marginalized identities but rather marginalized experiences) and d) its COMPLETELY beside the point and actually misses the point by a WIDE margin.

Because what I’ve come to realize over the years, from my own experiences and talking and sharing with survivors of all genders and demographics and walks of life, is that first off....nobody really needs the reminder that hey, men can be raped too. We see it happen all throughout entertainment and other aspects of society, its not an experience that’s hidden away from the light, its just not ever really CALLED what it is, or followed up on, and talked about.

Like Dick Grayson isn’t a statistical outlier in media. Take Horrible Bosses, a summer blockbuster comedy a few years back with a cast of fairly big name comedians, and whose running B plot throughout the whole movie was Jennifer Aniston’s character wanting to rape her employee, Charlie Day’s character. Not only was this not objectionable to audiences in any sizable way, not only did this never really get called out as wtf by critics and reviews, the movie was successful enough to warrant a sequel with even BIGGER names in its cast, like Christopher Pine, and the continuation of the Aniston’s character trying to rape Charlie Day’s subplot. With zero awareness. And its not like that’s the only movie. There’s plenty more I could name.

Or then you’ve got television, where like, take Riverdale, a well-promoted, well known CW show....whose first few episodes featured the lead character Archie in a sexual relationship with his much older female teacher. Except not really a relationship, because that’s textbook, no debate, literal statutory rape.....that ended with Archie’s character being condemned for it as though he were on equal footing with the teacher, who ultimately left town, and it never really acknowledged that he was literally a victim of statutory rape, that any teacher who does that is not an equal partner but a predator. I stopped watching the show for a lot of reasons by like the fourth episode, but I see enough gifs on tumblr to know that several seasons later, this left little enough impact that some kind of Archie-goes-to-jail plotline has resulted in more memes and jokes about prison rape than I can count, and zero awareness that people are compounding jokes about a character who is literally already an unacknowledged survivor.

That’s one. Or you can take Once Upon A Time, a popular ABC show of multiple seasons, and the running subplot where Robin Hood’s character is raped by the Wicked Witch literally the same way Dick was by Mirage in the comics. She shapeshifts into Maid Marian, who ends up dead, and has ‘sex’ with Robin Hood (no, she rapes him) and ends up pregnant. Not only is this never really called what it is, later on, other characters LITERALLY CHEW HIM OUT for objecting to this baby being left in the care of her mother, aka his rapist, and for ‘not being willing to give her the benefit of the doubt/let her change’ as though him not wanting to co-parent with his rapist is no different from any of the show’s other dubious redemption storylines....except for the fact that this particular part of her redemption arc isn’t ever really one she actually needs redeeming for, because nobody ever fucking points out that she literally raped him and he was her victim. Fast forward to the end of the series, Robin Hood’s been dead for seasons, the Wicked Witch is happily redeemed and has a loving wholesome relationship with her daughter, named after Robin Hood like they were some kind of loving, happy family instead of a rapist, her victim, and the child that was born of it.

Or you can take Grimm, a fairly successful NBC show of multiple seasons WHICH LITERALLY DID THE EXACT SAME THING. The main character Nick was raped in season two by the antagonist of the time, who shape shifted into his wife and had ‘sex’ with him, with him not realizing the truth until later on, by which point she’s pregnant with his child. Fast forward to the end of the show, not only was this never really called what it was, his wife’s character was killed off seasons earlier and he is now, get this, ‘happily’ in a romantic and sexual longterm relationship with his rapist (who he by now knows exactly what she did do and what happened between them and just.....got over it without ever actually like, reacting to it)....and oh yeah, not only are they raising the child born of it together, they’ve had a second child since then.

Anyone ever hear much outcry about the male rapes in these shows? And again, like Horrible Bosses, tip of the iceberg. There’s a LOT more shows I could name, just like there are movies.

Or take comics. Its not even just Dick Grayson that’s a survivor. Or Bruce. Or Jason as you pointed out, which......I know a lot of people ignore both Morrison AND Winick’s take on Talia in order to not write her as the rapist she is in their stories, which I can totally understand as she was a well-established character of color for long before either of them got their hands on her and its perfectly valid for people not to want to have to write her as being tarnished as a rapist because two different writers wrote her that way....without.....either of them ever really acknowledging that was literally how they were writing her. I myself write her as a character of complicated and often dubious morality, but never a rapist, for that reason and many others, but its definitely there. And even in a fandom that has never lacked for acknowledgment of Dick being a survivor whose rapists were women.....a LOT of people still romanticize Jason’s ‘relationship’ with Talia as being something other than a grown woman taking advantage of a minor in an extremely vulnerable and compromised state.....with a TON of other takes out there about the two of them, in posts and fics alike, where its somehow danced around or outright called something other than “that time Talia raped Jason in the comics.”

But its not just the Batbooks. Its like how I’ve mentioned in the past, Garth Ennis wrote into one of his storylines that Kyle Rayner was raped when he went to Gotham one time.....not to make it a plot point, but to use it as a JOKE. Or take Marvel comics, Bobby Drake, one of my other all-time favorite characters....who is also a rape survivor of multiple occasions, without it ever acknowledged as such. Like, he was briefly in a relationship with Mystique, who turned out to have entered the relationship under false pretenses, shocking, and who used having sex with him to depower him and take him out of the upcoming fight between the X-Men and the Marauders, which...we don’t have time to unpack all that right now. But fast forward about a year later, and Bobby has since gotten back together with his ex-girlfriend Opal Tanaka.....who, it turns out, is actually just Mystique in disguise, having sex with him again without it ever being called rape since he was consenting to sex with Opal, not the woman who slept with him that one time just to make sure he was helpless to stop a whole lot of people from getting killed. But hey, forget about Mystique! How about that time Chuck Austen wrote him ‘having sex’ with an empath who was EXPLICITLY noted in the narrative as using her powers to manipulate his emotions to even WANT to have sex with her in the first place, and when an issue later it comes out she’s married and her husband starts beating up Bobby for ‘sleeping with his wife’ all the other characters present, all of them friends and teammates of his, condemn Bobby for this without it ever being acknowledged that he was literally manipulated into it by a superpower and he was the victim.

Again. Tip. Of. The. Iceberg.

But you see what I mean? Male rape isn’t an outlier and it isn’t an unknown....its everywhere! Its just.....never called that, really, and never really talked about, even by people who normally would, except for the fact that I don’t think we as a society have ever really forced ourselves to FIND a way to talk about it, because of the fact that like.....the very notion of it threatens and undermines the essence of the patriarchal beliefs that are hammered into us all from day one. Even when we know the patriarchy is crap, we still have so much ingrained in us from early childhood that stuff like this, which is a blatant symptom of it even if not one aimed primarily at disadvantaging women.....like, it slips under the radar because its never fully called out or spotlighted in loud enough or widely enough ways to keep us from overlooking how much its impacted our POVs.

Blatantly put, the patriarchy and sexism RELIES on the idea that men are somehow more powerful/stronger/whatthefuckever than women. And male victims - of abuse as well as rape, though definitely rape.....like, even just a widespread awareness of our existence is enough to kinda destabilize that belief that is so foundational to the patriarchy its DEPENDENT on it being upheld as unassailable truth.

Because if forced to acknowledge that men are just as vulnerable to even something like rape as anyone else in the ‘right’ situations or dynamics, it forces confrontation with the reality that no matter what the patriarchy has claimed for as long as its existed.....men aren’t inherently any more powerful, or stronger, or resistant to harm/humiliation/VICTIMIZATION as anyone else.

And the patriarchy flat out can’t afford that confrontation, so it can’t afford to acknowledge male survivors.

Again, just want to be beyond clear - nowhere here am I okay with making this about a compare and contrast between the experiences and interactions society has with male survivors and around male rape, and the same with female survivors and rape. Because I mean, we all should be more than aware that society as a whole sucks at the acknowledgment, addressing and handling of rape in any context, in any of the ways it comes up as a topic, in terms of any survivor who comes forward no matter who or when or how.....like. We suck at this topic, and at any and all discussions about this topic. Period. Flat out. So when I say the patriarchy can’t afford to acknowledge male survivors, I am in no way aiming to diminish the reality that it does just as fucking an abyssmal job at acknowledging and responding to female survivors....the point here is not the poor reception any and all survivors receive to disclosing their experiences in our society, but rather the specific why of this when it comes to male survivors just as the particular subject of focus here.

And again, like, my only credentials here are just like. My life experiences, lol. I’m not trying to claim anything more or other than that, make no mistake. I’m a literal college drop out, this is not the result of comprehensive studies or vetted by the scientific method. This is literally just “like, my opinion, man” and makes no pretenses at being other than that. Its just the conclusions I’ve formed over the years and why, completely anecdotal and not aiming to be any kind of authoritative or expert viewpoint with my personal take here. Largely because I haven’t really found anywhere that I feel the conversation has proceeded enough in earnest that its even at a point that would ALLOW for that yet. So this is all more just.....my feel of things, and why, as just kinda idk, hopefully a starting point for further ACTUAL exploration of all this. My attempts at starting the kind of conversation I feel we need to be having in order to be at all productive instead of just constantly spinning around in circles, which is what it so often feels like.

So when I say I think the patriarchy can’t honestly AFFORD to acknowledge male survivors specifically, I’m not positing some grand conspiracy or active cover-up.

Because nothing like that is even necessary.

Its built into the framework of the system itself. Its not that I believe anyone goes out of their way to “hide” male survivors from anyone, I’m saying there’s no need. Because its been so ingrained into us from such a young age and in so many ways, most of us never even think to question whether anything is even being hidden, or if its just as simple as, well men don’t really come forward, because their pride and self-esteem is so impacted by what happened to them, due to the expectations heaped on men by the patriarchy.

Its kinda stunning, actually. Even while ACKNOWLEDGING that the patriarchy does impact male survivors in ways as well, we’re kinda....led away from the ACTUAL ways and ACTUAL reasons why....because despite literally calling the patriarchy out as the bad guy in this way, it still manages to weasel itself out of this confrontation by virtue of the fact that you can’t ever really effectively address a problem when you’re being misdirected to a tangent that’s not really the REAL problem that needs addressing.

So personally, I’m of the belief that its not that men just don’t ever really come forward. Its that even when some do, like myself, we can scream our heads off for years and it just echoes into the void, because its not being heard in the ways we need to be heard in order to effectively....signalboost our stories and experiences and needs. Much like I just mentioned above, its misdirection......everybody’s too focused on addressing an issue that doesn’t actually NEED solving (ie, reminding everyone/promoting awareness that men too, CAN be raped), and thus at least feeling productive, feeling like they’re contributing to tackling the problem.....that meanwhile, the ACTUAL problem (men CAN be raped too, and are, and here are men talking about it only for the signal to get lost and fizzle out rather than get boosted)....it flies right under the radar.

Because in line with what I said earlier about how it does no good to compare our experiences, both in terms of assault and our lives in the aftermath, with women survivors - its because its apples and oranges.

Rape isn’t a gendered issue, because it can happen to anyone of any gender, at any time....its situational. Dependent on context. Rape culture, however, IS a gendered issue.

Because rape culture, how our society INTERACTS with the very idea of abuse and rape and its victims and perpetrators....spills out entirely from that core foundation of the patriarchy and sexism, and thus much like those things themselves, how it affects women survivors is always going to be totally different from how it affects men who are survivors. Our experiences are not interchangeable - that has nothing to do with being better or worse, more publicized or less, etc, etc. They just....manifest different ways. The cause of our trauma-related problems might be the same thing, but the problems it creates for us are not, and none of us can ever really benefit from it being treated as a one size fits all kinda deal, nor is it to our benefit to treat it like there’s only so much conversation about the topic available to go around.

What I mean here is, like I said, the patriarchy at the foundation of our society can’t afford for it to be widely acknowledged that men can be victimized too.

But it can’t actually stop this from happening, given that its basis for saying it never happens is an inherent uneven-ness that only exists because it made it exist, not because like....we’re innately born uneven.

So....it had to come up with a narrative, a response, for when men DID step forward and say hey, I too was abused. I was raped. Etc.

And it did.

As a result, a lot of women don’t come forward because they fear not being believed, with reason. And this is true for a lot of men as well, just as the following is true for a lot of women too....

Which is that IMO the bigger reason/more immediate reason a lot of men don’t come forward, is that our concern isn’t so much that we won’t be believed....

Its that we will be believed, but rather than this getting us the help we need or the justice we ask for, it only ever really creates more problems for us, due to the patriarchy’s go-to fix-it job for this situation:

Paint the male victim as being not so much a victim as a victimizer-in-training.

See, the lie that men are innately more powerful, stronger, more ‘deserving’ of being in charge can’t afford the admittance than men are also vulnerable, can be victimized, taken advantage of.....

But it CAN afford the idea that men can be abused/raped/etc with this going on to eventually result in us becoming abusers/rapists/victimizers ourselves in the future, as long as THIS is kept the clear focus and emphasis of the narrative.

Because after all, there’s nothing in the idea that we all inevitably take out our pain (whatever it may come from) on others that contradicts the idea that we’re stronger, more powerful, etc.

And its not like the patriarchy and its supporters give a shit if this throws even other men under the bus, because the only thing institutions and systems of power actually care about is POWER.

They’re not our friend, even if in a different life, we could have ended up wielding more of that power than we do in this one. Even if we do in other aspects of our lives gain social and other forms of power more easily/with less obstacles than other people.

They only care what we can do for them, to spread that power, perpetuate it, preserve it....so just like white supremacy will happily screw over poor white people and America doesn’t give a shit about its prison population and the LGBTQ+ community so often ignores the issues of its members of color and so on.....the patriarchy is more than willing to make male survivors from any and all groups and communities take the hit it has no intention of taking by letting it be confirmed its built on sand and bullshit.

So just as much as we’re ingrained from early childhood with the idea that men can’t be victimized the way others can, the linked lesson we’re taught is that men who have been hurt badly or in certain ways will almost certainly end up hurting others.....

With the implicit acknowledgment that there was just an admittance that we can be hurt badly/in certain ways ending up just swiftly glossed over. As the focus is instead kept on the harm done to our hypothetical future victims.

Because the easiest way to keep someone from being sympathetic, is to give people someone else to sympathize with MORE. To give people reason to feel a person doesn’t even deserve your sympathy in the first place.

And so now think about not how often we see men victimized by abuse and rape in media, or how often we see men portrayed as survivors and yes, victims of these things.....

Think instead of how often in media we see men who victimize others, who are the antagonists, the villains, the serial killer/rapist/abuser of the week.......and with it offhandedly being dropped into a scene and then never really focused on again, that these men were almost always said to have been abused or raped or victimized in the past....and this is the REASON for why they all ended up doing what they did.

Suddenly, the numbers go up, don’t they? The second you think about it from THAT angle?

Its just....the reason that angle literally exists to the extent it does in society and the messages we’re fed, the entertainment we’re given.....is because that’s the POINT.

Because its natural for us not to think of any of those men as victims when by the time we find that part out, we’ve already internalized our view of them as victimizers, and solidly put our sympathies with their victims in the present. Because what was done to them in the past doesn’t excuse what they do to others in the present. Being hurt doesn’t give you carte blanche to hurt others. We all know this. Hence....WHY IT WORKS.

Except, this isn’t actually a reflection of reality. The myth of the perpetual cycle of abuse is just that, a myth. Oh, it happens, certainly. With men, with women, quite probably more often with men than women, not much doubt about that....

But its not that it happens, we’re told. That’s not the issue here.

Its that we’re pretty much told it ALWAYS happens. Its always GOING to happen. That there’s no real point in sympathizing with a male victim who is most likely going to end up victimizing someone else in the future and thus he’s not really gonna deserve your sympathy at that point, will he? Which makes him not really worth wasting it on him in the first place. Makes it easy to come up with something to focus on more instead of his story or experiences, something just as deserving of your focus or sympathy, but that you’re less likely to end up regretting in the future like you would if a male survivor you sympathized with now ends up in the news five years down the line for having hurt someone else.

Because over centuries and generations the idea of male survivors at all has been cultivated into having this almost mythic quality, there’s just enough subtle feeling of wrongness around the very idea of it, like, that it just doesn’t quite make sense...that it ends up being almost a relief to give our minds a reason, an explanation for why they don’t have to come up with a way to adjust the paradigm there, to make room for that idea, realign a worldview into one where there’s a specific spot for male survivors much like any other subject that needs focusing on or evaluating for whatever reason.

And this point, this conclusion that no matter how tragic what happened to make a male survivor was, it will only ever ultimately end up in the same spot, with him later on passing along the harm, a warped kind of paying it forward....this is hammered home over and over. We see it everywhere, without even often realizing what it is we’re seeing and internalizing, like with the examples I cited of all the times men are raped in entertainment without it being called that. Its the flip side of that....the times that men are raped in entertainment with it being called that, but swiftly moved past that to introduce the reason not to care that that’s what it was we just saw.

And thus throughout several seasons of Law & Order: SVU we’ve had male survivors, usually teens, who at first seemed eminently sympathetic for what had been done to them.....but who by the end of the episodes, ended up becoming school shooters exacting revenge on their bullies. Or ended up killing the coach who raped them in high school and then went on to rape a dozen others. Or in the last scene of the episode is found kneeling over their abusive father’s corpse with blood on their hands and the detectives standing over them in sadness that now they had to take the boy they thought was the victim away to jail as the victimizer he didn’t have to end up becoming.

Except.....he only becomes that because they make the choice to write him becoming it! Every single time!

Like in 13 Reasons Why, where another male survivor ends up....another school shooter. Or in Criminal Minds, where pretty much every single killer throughout the series ended up with a backstory of abuse and rape and victimization as a child, making it ‘all the more tragic’ and with the protagonists often literally using the phrase “almost like the guy never had a chance.”

Well no, they didn’t. Not when it was written to BE that way.

And then we see the idea root and take hold in audiences. And spread and perpetuated. Validated.

Its why I hate the woobification thing in fandoms, where fans of (white) villain characters fill in their backstory for themselves with all the REASONS they are the way they are, and with the reasons never being that they’re just a sadistic entitled asshole, but because they were hurt. They were abused as a child, they were raped offscreen, the heroes said mean things about them in the burn book once and that’s why they just had to kill the hero’s whole family, see.

And everything comes full circle.....not only is it that all male victims are destined to end up victimizers....its equally true that all male victimizers must have once been male victims. Even if we didn’t see it onscreen or on the page.

Except, and why I loathe that fandom tendency.....

THAT NARRATIVE IS NOT AN INEVITABILITY AND NEVER WAS! The end point and point of origin presented there are NOT innately set in stone!

And all that does is just validate and accept as truth the LIE that patriarchal society puts forth in order to play smoke and mirrors with this one specific facet of human experiences that innately possesses the potential to destabilize the lie at the very rock bottom foundation of everything the patriarchy’s ever built at everyone else’s expense. The reason it offers up for why its not only allowable, its for the best that we look elsewhere from any male victims that actually step forward and say hey, can you all listen to me for a second, I want to tell you what happened to me.

And the fun irony of THIS aspect of things is if you think this woobification fandom thing benefits male survivors as a whole in some way or another, like the tendency of fans to find even villainous victimizers sympathetic means that they can and do sympathize just as much with actual male victims.....I’m fairly certain it doesn’t.

See, because with villains in fandom......this retroactive sympathy for imagined past traumas happens to only the characters that fandom has already decided they liked DESPITE the awful things they’ve done. Its made up to be used as an excuse instead of an explanation....

And like we all know damn well, even if we don’t always admit it or like to acknowledge it....

Explanations are not actually excuses. The harm you do can not be wiped away by the harm done to you.

So, because that’s still inside of us, our awareness of that, even if its ignored on the surface while defending hot white villains or whatever.....it doesn’t actually give anyone reason to ignore the narrative our society constructs around actual male survivors who it encourages people to condemn or ignore on the basis of purely hypothetical FUTURE abuses or wrongdoings.

And after all, you can’t actually decide you can look past the harms a person enacts and still view them as sympathetic if....you don’t actually know yet what those harms are going to end up being and thus whether you can make your peace with them, can you?

You just know that harms WILL be done, so....might as well err on the side of caution and assume they won’t be forgivable when deciding here and now to be thrifty with sympathies and spread any actionable effort taken on behalf of survivors in areas where those sympathies are more likely to be put to better use.

And yeah, all of this plays into why I focus so much on certain aspects of Dick’s narratives, and they usually AREN’T the rapes themselves.

Because for me, for many other male survivors I know......

Acknowledging those happened, examining how he felt when those happened....its not the biggest issue. Just like in our own lives, having it acknowledged or known what was done to us, having to face how it made us feel....that’s not really our primary concern.

Its what happens AFTER that.

How people view us and treat us AFTER their initial sympathies, whatever they are, dry up - which, we’re given reason to believe, they always inevitably will.

Because it isn’t all that different from what I frequently complain of happening with Dick in fandom, and hell, its WHY it bothers me so much, because its literally been a recurrent theme throughout my life:

The most widely acknowledged male survivor in comics, just also happens to coincidentally be....

The character most often spun as having a wicked temper, being almost irrationally angry at times, with his temper being likened to things like an eruption, an earthquake, a NATURAL DISASTER....something to be avoided at all costs, something the other characters fear, with good reason, but also impossible to avoid, because its too intrinsic to his nature. Its an inevitability. Dick Grayson WILL erupt or explode again at some point, and its going to be ugly. Like he’s a time bomb.

Even though....as I frequently go in depth on.....Dick’s never actually been shown as having particularly poor self-control either on just its own merits or specifically in comparison to others. He doesn’t really actually HAVE a track record of taking out his own hurts on others. On giving people REASON to be afraid of his temper even while they continue to take no responsibility for giving him reasons to be angry at all.

Its why I so often emphasize the discrepancy between the fact that whatever someone’s own personal character preferences, the FACT remains that Dick Grayson is the character in this family that most often bears the BRUNT of everyone ELSE’S anger.......just as the fact equally remains that Dick Grayson is still ultimately the character most often singled out in posts and headcanons and fanfics as unleashing his temper on others in unjustifable ways and usually without actual provocation.

None of this is a coincidence to me.

Its how we see over and over again that its okay for Dick Grayson to be angry FOR others, ON others’ behalf....its just when he’s angry FOR HIMSELF, for being taken advantage of, ignored, walked all over or mistreated....that’s when his anger is unjustified. Irrational.

Dangerous.

Or you guys know that one fanon about how Dick forces his hugs on his siblings, and his displays of physical affection are often unwanted, and thus violations?

Yeah, that one hits me right in the Issues too, because again, that’s not remotely supported by anything in canon....there has NEVER been an instance of Dick’s family asking him to cut it our or feeling like......IMPOSED upon because he likes to hug his family.

Its not to say people can’t feel that way about even well-meaning displays of physical affection that aren’t cleared with them first....

Its that this is something that people had to DECIDE to make a thing with Dick and his family. To actually craft the narrative that the many-times victim of unwanted touching was effectively violating his family’s wishes and boundaries every time he hugs them without being asked or invited to.

With that number being however many times a writer wants to write him doing when highlighting it as a violation.

And is this a thing we really see with any other character? Is my question there. How often do you see literally any other character being chewed out or resented for....hugging?

Just the one character most known for giving physical affection freely with his FAMILY and close friends.....

Who just so happens to also be the one character most often the guy who has his bodily autonomy violated.

The canon rape survivor has literally had HUGS weaponzed against him.

With the end result being.....every time he does it, every time this pings on a reader’s radar as Bad and Unwelcome....the linked takeaway is its one more reason for that reader to then ask themselves....well if he doesn’t care whether other people want him touching them, why should I care when he doesn’t want people touching him either?

Which ultimately just winds up another form of: why should I feel bad if bad things happened to someone who isn’t really that great of a person?

See what I mean?

Its all connected. Its not me getting frustrated with a bunch of different random things, its all the same thing at the end of the day, all so often traceable back to the same places.

I couldn’t untangle myself from so much of this and how it impacts me and my view of things even if I wanted to, to such an extent that in the end, want really has very little to do with it.

(And uh, you think those bug the shit out of me, let me tell you about just the very SIGHT of all those fics where Dick the widely acknowledged, perhaps best known male rape victim in comics.....is a rapist himself. Because yeah....even if people like to keep their incest light and fluffy or sweet instead of predatory, to someone who is y’know, personally familiar with all of this, Dick and ANY of his younger brothers is never going to appear as anything BUT predatory. As yet one more time where the linear journey of a male survivor all the way to the final evolution into male predator is born out and treated as so matter-of-fact, so inevitable, it hardly warrants noting as anything especially obscene or gross to write about a character famous for his survivor status. And its not like Dick is actually the only character in the franchise I like, so its not like its any better when its Jason painted as the aggressor in a fic, for instance....and while I will always be hugely critical of how Bruce is written as abusive in canon, that’s a wildly different thing from sexually preying on his sons so again, seeing him as his own sons’ rapists is yet again more upsetting than most people would think without connecting Bruce’s own status as a canon rape survivor, whether we like that story or not.....and plugging it into again, this pre-programmed route traveling from survivor to predator, over and over again. Victim to victimizer. Like clockwork.)

Anyway, my point is not to harp on this but rather to just lay it out there in this way. And how it plays into so much of my own personal approach to dealing with all of this when it comes up.......because the simple fact is I have to, there is no opt-out lol, and it comes up a lot, in large part because its so easy t reframe as being something else that most people who don’t have direct experience being directly impacted by all of this in its various myriad expressions are understandably not going to see it pinging on their radar and getting logged into their awareness the way it always does in mine.

*Shrugs* It is what it is. Its there. Avoiding it has never done me any favors, so.......as I so often demonstrate in a variety of degrees of Hmm Probably Coulda Done That Better, lol, I try and deal with things head-on and adjust as needed.

Easier said than done, not always pulled off, never any guarantee that I’m going about things the right way, just that like.....

There’s problems that need addressing that stem from all of this, and I know where mine lie and put a lot, a LOT of effort into addressing them and keeping an eye on them and not letting them get the better of me.

But the flipside of paying that close attention and that much means I’m also keenly aware of when and where I couldn’t take responsibility even if I wanted to, because the responsibility literally just isn’t mine to take....because yeah, I live in a society but guess what, so does everyone else, and its the same damn society, so  at the end of the day, no matter HOW well or not I go about handling the matter of my rapes and their overall impact and shaping of my life.....that’s just me handling the rape part of things.

The rape culture? And how THAT affects and informs every survivor’s life in whatever way it does going forward?

That’s kinda.....only ever going to be improved upon or not, on like....a cultural scale. That’s a society thing. Not a survivor thing.

Because we are all shaped by our cultures, every aspect of our cultures, and this one is unfortunately no different. But, its shaped by us too.

But to actually shape it INTO something, or more accurately, to shape it into LESS of what it is, blunt some of its edges, lessen some of its ability to do harm to survivors, to compound the harm already done.....

Something like THAT requires intent. Conscious effort.

And intent requires like....first being able to SEE what problems need addressing.

And that’s kiiiiinda the whole point of survivors coming forward when so rarely, so MINUTELY does it EVER result in actionable justice for that individual survivor.

And I don’t for a second believe a single one ever believes or assumes otherwise.

Cuz its super not fun. It never like......I don’t fucking know how it looks to other people, tbh, because I’ve literally been a survivor since before I even really knew that I was being abused or molested, that there was something I was surviving....but trust me, I’ve thought about it, I’ve wondered, and I don’t know if like, people think a survivor ‘telling their story’ is somehow an equivalent of like, getting a book deal or something, there’s the attention it brings after all, and isn’t there that saying that no publicity is bad publicity.....

LOL. Yeah. Umm. Just saying, if you don’t have personal experience as a survivor having come forward or shared openly about your experiences, let me refer you to another saying as counterpoint: Don’t believe everything you hear.

Cuz that’s definitely not one anyone else ever forgets when ‘listening’ to any of us.

Anyway, wrapping this up by bringing it back to like.....my extremely evident mood and irration of this past week.....this is ALL connected, this is ALL part and parcel of every single time this comes up as an issue for me and its never less of one at one time than it is at another, its never a little easier this time because this reason or that....its always the same damn frustration every single time. Stuff like this doesn’t get doled out in manageable portions, its all or nothing. Its either a problem right this current second or its not, and if its not, that’s only until the next time its a problem again, likely sooner rather than later.

And that’s the part that makes me talk about this as much as I do, and get as frustrated as I do when people just do not seem to get.....

I don’t have an off switch on this matter because there IS no off switch for me. The times I get frustrated and vent about this stuff are actually only at MOST a TENTH of how often it rears its head for me to deal with.....the times my reactions or responses boil over into public view, into something you guys see, or ‘have to deal with’ are literally just the times where there is no keeping a lid on it because the pot was already full to start with.

And so it really. Epically. Beyoooooond doesn’t help matters, when despite being the only male survivor I’m aware of being consistently vocal on the matter in the only fandom I know of where a prominant male character is almost universally acknowledged as a survivor....

I usually only ever hear the response:

“Mmmmmm, I’m not really sure what makes you think there’s a problem here and that it has anything to do with us, when see, I don’t agree, and I don’t really see why you think your opinion on the matter of how this particular character is written about and viewed and depicted interacting with others and how fandom interacts with him, is like.....of any kind of real relevance? This is just like....your opinion, man.”

Me: ........have I ever claimed for a second it wasn’t? Didn’t I use those exact words at least once in all of this already?

fahsklhfaklhflakfhalffha

Cuz for the record, ultimately, that’s what this all boils down to. I’ve wanted to post about this stuff for awhile now, but make no mistake:

It literally is all just my opinion? Formed of my own personal experiences and the conclusions I’ve taken away from them. Laid out as fully and extensively as I can manage, specifically SO people can take all of that into context when deciding for themselves how much weight or not to GIVE my opinion......

In which case, y’know, the experiences I have with this matter and how they correlate to these opinions, like, have contextual relevance and seem necessary to include.

Its NOT because I’m trying to use them to browbeat everyone into agreeing with me because I think I’m the only one whose opinion matters here, lol.

No. Just that like....it DOES matter? And its kinda exhausting when people act like all of this is arbitrary and abstract to me, that its some kind of superiority complex or me moralizing from a pulpit or some shit when I’m literally saying none of it is abstract or arbitrary to me, and the louder I say that, the more people THEN say “oh so basically your opinion is the only one that matters here unless we disclose the same kind of experiences or background huh?”

*headdesk*

I just.....it seems my stance is either born of self-righteousness and nothing personal whatsoever....unless I make enough of a fuss about how that’s NOT true, in which case my stance is that apparently I think I’m the only one who is allowed to have an opinion here because I’ve made such a point about it being personal.

But its definitely not that people are just determined to invalidate anything I have to say on this subject one way or another, right?

Anyway.

So all of that’s like...whatever that was. Make of it what you guys will, but I do hope that at least for some people whom it might be a new perspective or new information to, you’ll consider asking why is it that in a fandom that prominently features a canon male survivor whose survivorhood is so frequently denoted as a key and critical part of his character....someone like me, who is frequently cited as a resource on many, many other kinds of meta about Dick Grayson......seems to have more people interested in discouraging me from ever expounding on my own experiences in this matter and any correlations I see between those and Dick’s experiences and narratives, than there are people interested in like......utilizing me as the freaking resource on male survivor experiences and viewpoints that I’ve literally been out here offering to be from day one....specifically BECAUSE of how rarely men are viewed as coming forward and being open about our shit here.

*Shrugs*

Just food for thought.