#i have this idea that anti is perpetuating a cycle of abuse

[sophiamenet]

Naruto

I had never watched Naruto before this and given how extensive it is I don’t think I’ll ever watch it in its entirety. I did however enjoy the few assigned episodes. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the show in all honesty. I of course knew of it and its popularity, but the popularity of the show and its fanbase made me not really keen on ever trying to watch it. The first episode changed my mind, as it immediately began with complex ideas of Naruto’s social exclusion and prejudice he experiences. He is excluded and ridiculed because of something he cannot control. He is a child ostricized by adults and children alike, a conditioned prejudice within those around him that mimics discrimination in our real world - most comparably racial discrimination and the socialized generational hatred and misunderstanding of minority groups in society. Naruto experiences this because he has the spirit of the Nine-tailed fox sealed within him, which are often depicted as evil and extremely powerful beings. Naruto is then treated differently from the rest, isolated due to the fear of others and the misunderstandings of society. This fear is difficult to uproot and reform. I think it is because of this that rather than radically changing society and their flawed view of him, Naruto grows into a powerful individual to rise above the preconceived notions others have of him. He experiences extreme hardships and difficulty to gain the recognition and respect of others, giving into the inflexible boundaries of the society in which he exists. This to be resembles module two and the anti-utopian argument against emancipation from capitalism, in which freedom from the system feels impossible because a capitalist system is all we know. In Naruto a similar idea in conveyed in which the challenging and disbandment of society’s prejudices feels like an impossible thing, and not something Naruto even considers. He functions properly within the system.

This is countered by Nagato or Pain who because of his own trauma as a result of their society resolves to fight against the system of hatred and violence. As this is all he knows and was raised within, Pain recognizes the pain he has experienced and been caused and then perpetuates this same hatred and violence back onto the system and innocent people. Instead, he continues the cycle of abuse, as he is unable to precieve an alternate way to enact justice and heal outside of continuing the cycle. Naruto breaks this cycle in his opposition to Pain, which I found to be interesting given that his main character arc and his progression from childhood fails to break or even oppose the system/cycle. In relation to himself and the discrimination he experienced no cycle is broken and no significant social change is made.

[deepfriedseagullfeet]

me spending all day in bed thinking of all the ways my version of Jack could be even more fucked up and horrific than anti 

[spite-and-waffles]

I feel like neither the pro-Talia Al Ghul camp or the anti-Talia camp really care to delve deeply into the fact that she has been abused and used by her father her whole life, and is as tragic a character as Jason. Her fixating on a man as emotionally distant and obsessed with his mission as Ra's, knowing full well that he will never choose her or his children over it, is a completely accurate showcasing of the way people perpetuate their own trauma cycles.

And while I hope more people refuse to take anything Grant Morrison wrote about Talia to account, making her a good mother in reaction to it also just does not make sense. Just like Bruce, she's an example of someone who loves her child fiercely but is too traumatized and emotionally stunted to express it in healthy ways. Unlike Bruce she grew up in a literal terrorist cult and raised Damian in it as well. Her being exacting and teaching Damian to be ruthless and trust no one were all incredibly damaging and abusive, but it's also the only fucking way he could have survived the League or Ra's. Yes, she could have sent Damian to his father and keeping him by her side was selfish, but this woman, who had been starved of love and had never been anyone's priority since her mother died, finally had a person to be hers and only hers. It's horribly, tragically human to guard that love jealously and possessively.

The Tiger Mom as a trope is racist, but the emotional effects on women made to prove their worth as humans via motherhood is very much a reality that women of colour can relate to, and one not confined to just Asians. I'm only going to speak for my own people here, but the way Asian mothers make their sons their whole reason for being stems directly from the oppressively patriarchal cultures we grow up in, where a woman's worth is predicated on being a wife and mother and the highest honour she can aspire to is having a son. Ra's is the original patriarch who drilled into his daughters that they could never inherit his legacy no matter how much they proved their love, and that they owed him male heirs. Damian's very existence is tied up with Talia's idea of her own personhood and worth and achievement, which is why she piles on so many contradicting expectations on him - that he's fiercely independent but also stays by her side, become his father's perfect heir but take only her values, never be a pawn like she was, but align with her own wishes.

However you want to negotiate the racism of the way Talia is written is up to you obviously, but I feel that there's no realistic way that Talia can be a good mother (even in Son of the Demon she acted in Bruce's best interests, deceived him and abandoned her child, which actually might have been kinder than attempting to raise him in the LoA). I feel that making her one is an extremely simplistic way of dealing with the racialized misogyny her character is subjected to, and a disservice to real-life children of mothers like her, who love their children fiercely but perpetuate abuse cycles because of that very love.

For me, deconstructing and reaching past the misogyny and racism means humanising her and not making her value and sympathy as a character contingent on how good of a mother she is to Damian and Jason. Trauma and abuse slows or arrests your emotional development and makes it difficult to regulate your emotions and impulses, which is why it's a requirement for traumatized people to cognitively work on themselves in order to be good parents to their own children. Talia cannot. There's absolutely no therapist she can trust, the last time she felt close to someone she was decieved, tortured and brainwashed by her, and not only can't she get away from her father but she received a harsh object lesson from her sister on what happens when you try. This woman is a goddamn victim in every possible way, even more than Jason. It's also one of the reasons I don't buy that she allowed herself to be close to Jason, maternal feelings notwithstanding.

(Also her sleeping with him was pretty gross and unnecessary of Winick, whose writing is far from unproblematic when it comes to WoC, but it makes for a fascinating character deconstruction because afaik it happened right after Nyssa tortured her until she was brainwashed against Ra's and Bruce. So at that point in time she was basically in tatters and locked in the same self-destructive spiral as Jason, and maybe she wanted to nuke her sense of maternal care towards him in a bid to feel less emotionally vulnerable. I love this kind of psychological yarn balls in fiction.)

Absolutely none of this should absolve her choices. None of this means she's a good anything or that she should be seen as a purely sympathetic and wronged character. She's obscenely rich and powerful, ruthless, cunning and manipulative. She's one of the most dangerous people in the world. She's not fit to raise anyone. But if you can't accept all of that and square it with a fiercely loving heart and find a deeply human character then I really can't relate to you.

Let female characters of colour be human, morally grey and complex. Let fictional mothers be traumatized and deeply damaging without demonizing them. And stop moralizing female characters, I am begging you. We're far past Victorian England. Making them be on their best behaviour all the time to be sympathetic is oppressive as hell and not what storytelling is for.

[fatliberation]

I’m Abandoning Body Positivity and Here’s Why

In short: it’s fatphobic.

“A rallying cry for a shift in societal norms has now become the skinny girl’s reassurance that she isn’t really fat. Fatness, through this lens of ‘body positivity’, remains the worst thing a person can be.” (Kayleigh Donaldson)

•  •  •

I have always had a lot of conflicting opinions about the body positivity movement, but it’s much more widely known (and accepted, go figure) than the fat liberation movement, so I often used the two terms interchangeably in conversation about anti-fatness. But the longer I’ve been following the body positivity movement, the more I’ve realized how much it has strayed from its fat lib origins. It has been hijacked; deluded to center thin, able, white, socially acceptable bodies.

Bopo’s origins are undoubtedly grounded in fat liberation. The fat activists of the 1960s paved the way for the shred of size acceptance we see in media today, initially protesting the discrimination and lack of access to equal opportunities for fat people specifically. This early movement highlighted the abuse, mental health struggles, malpractice in the medical field, and called for equal pay, equal access, equal respect, an end to fatphobic structures and ideas. It saddens me that it hasn’t made much progress in those regards. 

Today, the #bopo movement encapsulates more the idea of loving your own body versus ensuring that individuals regardless of their weight and appearance are given equal opportunities in the workplace, schools, fashion and media. Somehow those demands never made it outside of the ‘taboo’ category, and privileged people would much more readily accept the warm and fuzzy, sugar-coated message of “love yourself!” But as @yrfatfriend once said, this idea reduces fat people’s struggles to a problem of mindset, rather than a product of external oppressors that need to be abolished in order for fat people to live freely.

That generalized statement, “love yourself,” is how a movement started by fat people for the rights of fat people was diluted so much, it now serves a thin model on Instagram posting about how she has a tummy roll and cellulite on her thighs - then getting praised for loving her body despite *gasp!* its minor resemblance to a fat body. 

Look. Pretty much everyone has insecurities about their bodies, especially those of us who belong to marginalized groups. If you don’t have body issues, you’re a privileged miracle, but our beauty-obsessed society has conditioned us to want to look a certain way, and if we have any features that the western beauty standard considers as “flaws,” yeah! We feel bad about it! So it’s not surprising that people who feel bad about themselves would want to hop on a movement that says ‘hey, you’re beautiful as you are!’ That’s a message everyone would like to hear. Any person who has once thought of themselves as less than beautiful now feels that this movement is theirs. And everyone has insecurities, so everyone feels entitled to the safe space. And when a space made for a minority includes the majority, the cycle happens again and the majority oppresses the minority. What I’m trying to explain here is that thin people now feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces. 

Regardless of how badly thin people feel about their bodies, they still experience thin privilege. They can sit down in a theater or an airplane without even thinking about it, they can eat in front of others without judgement, they can go the doctor with a problem and actually have it fixed right away, they can find cute clothes in their size with ease, they do not suffer from assumptions of laziness/failure based on stereotype, they see their body type represented everywhere in media, the list goes on and on. They do not face discrimination based off of the size of their body. 

Yet diet culture and fatphobia affects everyone, and of course thin people do still feel bad about the little fat they have on their bodies. But the failure to examine WHY they feel bad about it, is what perpetuates fatphobia within the bopo movement. They’re labeled “brave” for showing a pinch of chub, yet fail to address what makes it so acceptably daring, and how damaging it is to people who are shamed for living in fat bodies. Much like the rest of society, thin body positivity is still driven by the fear of fat, and does nothing to dismantle fatphobia within structures or within themselves.

Evette Dionne sums it up perfectly in her article, “The Fragility of Body Positivity: How a Radical Movement Lost Its Way.”

“The body-positive media economy centers these affirming, empowering, let-me-pinch-a-fat-roll-to-show-how-much-I-love-myself stories while failing to actually challenge institutions to stop discriminating against fat people. More importantly, most of those stories center thin, white, cisgender, heterosexual women who have co-opted the movement to build their brands. Rutter has labeled this erasure ‘Socially Acceptable Body Positivity.’

“On social media, it actually gets worse for fat bodies: We’re not just being erased from body positivity, fat women are being actively vilified. Health has become the stick with which to beat fat people with [sic], and the benchmark for whether body positivity should include someone” (Dionne).

Ah, yes. The medicalization of fat bodies, and the moralization of health. I’ve ranted about this before. Countless comments on posts of big women that say stuff like “I’m all for body positivity, but this is just unhealthy and it shouldn’t be celebrated.” I’ve heard writer/activist Aubrey Gordon once say that body positivity has become something like a shield for anti-fatness. It’s anti-fatness that has been repackaged as empowerment. It’s a striking double-standard. Fat people are told to be comfortable in their bodies (as if that’s what’s going to fix things) but in turn are punished when they’re okay with being fat. Make it make sense.

Since thin people feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces, and they get to hide behind “health” when they are picking and choosing who can and cannot be body positive, they base it off of who looks the most socially acceptable. And I’m sure they aren’t consciously picking and choosing, it comes from implicit bias. But the socially acceptable bodies they center are small to medium fat, with an hourglass shape. They have shaped a new beauty standard specifically FOR FAT PEOPLE. (Have you ever seen a plus sized model with neck fat?? I’m genuinely asking because I have yet to find one!) The bopo movement works to exclude and silence people who are on the largest end of the weight spectrum. 

Speaking of exclusion, let’s talk about fashion for a minute.

For some reason, (COUGH COUGH CAPITALISM) body positivity is largely centered around fashion. And surprise surprise, it’s still not inclusive to fat people. Fashion companies get a pat on the back for expanding their sizing two sizes up from what they previously offered, when they are still leaving out larger fat people completely. In general, clothing companies charge more for clothes with more fabric, so people who need the largest sizes are left high and dry. It’s next to impossible to find affordable clothes that also look nice. Fashion piggybacks on the bopo movement as a marketing tactic, and exploits the very bodies it claims to be serving. (Need I mention the time Urban Outfitters used a "curvy” model to sell a size it doesn’t even carry?)

The movement also works to exclude and silence fat Black activists.

In her article, “The Body Positivity Movement Both Takes From and Erases Fat Black Women” Donyae Coles explains how both white people and thin celebrities such as Jameela Jamil profit from the movement that Black women built.

“Since long before blogging was a thing, fat Black women have been vocal about body acceptance, with women like Sharon Quinn and Marie Denee, or the work of Sonya Renee Taylor with The Body Is Not An Apology. We’ve been out here, and we’re still here, but the overwhelming face of the movement is white and thin because the mainstream still craves it, and white and thin people have no problem with profiting off the work of fat, non-white bodies.”

“There is a persistent belief that when thin and/or white people enter the body positive realm and begin to repeat the messages that Black women have been saying for years in some cases, when they imitate the labor that Black women have already put in that we should be thankful that they are “boosting” our message. This completely ignores the fact that in doing so they are profiting off of that labor. They are gaining the notoriety, the mark of an expert in something they learned from an ignored Black woman” (Coles).

My next essay will go into detail about this and illuminate key figures who paved the way for body acceptance in communities of color. 

The true purpose of this movement has gotten completely lost. So where the fuck do we go from here? 

We break up with it, and run back to the faithful ex our parents disapproved of. We go back to the roots of the fat liberation movement, carved out for us by the fat feminists, the queer fat activists, the fat Black community, and the allies it began with. Everything they have preached since the 1960s and 70s is one hundred percent applicable today. We get educated. We examine diet culture through a capitalist lens. We tackle thin, white-supremacist systems and weight based discrimination, as well as internalized bias. We challenge our healthcare workers to unlearn their bias, treat, and support fat patients accordingly. We make our homes and spaces accessible and welcoming to people of any size, or any (dis)ability. “We must first protect and uplift people in marginalized bodies, only then can we mandate self-love” (Gordon).

Think about it. In the face of discrimination, mistreatment, and emotional abuse, we as a society are telling fat people to love their bodies, when we should be putting our energy toward removing those fatphobic ideas and structures so that fat people can live in a world that doesn’t require them to feel bad about their bodies. It’s like hitting someone with a rock and telling them not to bruise!

While learning to love and care for the body that you’re in is important, I think that body positivity also fails in teaching that because it puts even more emphasis on beauty. Instead of saying, “you don’t have to be ‘beautiful’ to be loved and appreciated,” its main lesson is that “all bodies are beautiful.” We live in a society obsessed with appearance, and it is irresponsible to ignore the hierarchy of beauty standards that exist in every space. Although it should be relative, “beautiful” has been given a meaning. And that meaning is thin, abled, symmetric, and eurocentric. 

Beauty and ugliness are irrelevant, made-up constructs. People will always be drawn to you no matter what, so you deserve to exist in your body without struggling to conform to an impossible and bigoted standard. Love and accept your body for YOURSELF AND NO ONE ELSE, because you do not exist to please the eyes of other people. That’s what I wish we were teaching instead. Radical self acceptance!

As of today, the ultimate message of the body positivity movement is: Love your body “despite its imperfections.” Or people with “perfect and imperfect bodies both deserve love.” As long as we are upholding the notion that there IS a perfect body that looks a certain way, and every body that falls outside of that category is imperfect, we are upholding white supremacy, eugenics, anti-fatness, and ableism.

[mbti-notes]

hey mbti-notes! a question about one of your posts on politics/conservatism. you say that conservatism at its best is needed for society. the way conservatism has existed in my mind thus far is: using religion to justify prejudice, ignoring science (like climate change), racism, etc. i live in the US so maybe part of the media hellscape is why i have these associations, but im curious about how conservatism can actually be good to a society. infj and want to be more open minded/knowledgeable

I appreciate the willingness to learn. The political media in the US is dominated by “talking heads” (as they are commonly called) with hidden/ulterior motives. They’re there to push an agenda, to persuade and push people to emotional extremes, for the sake of making money and/or to support a cause that they’re personally invested in. The most important point is that they’re not really there to educate or help viewers be more learned, so they have no reason to be intellectually honest or care about other viewpoints. They’re certainly not the best sources to learn politics from. 

When you get emotionally captured by talking heads, you’re buying in and essentially joining their agenda, either as a vocal supporter or their vocal “enemy”, and helping them spread their narrow/distorted worldview. It’s no coincidence that the spread of talking heads in the news media has been accompanied by a spread of conspiratorial thinking in society. 

Learning about society and politics through talking heads makes it easy to turn various groups into abstractions. This enables dehumanization and polarization, hence, the endless battle between the “cons” and “libs”, as though everything in the entire world is split along this stark line. Whether you think there’s a fundamental difference between the two “teams” (partisan) or no substantial difference at all (apathetic/cynical), you’re missing the point that the false dichotomy was invented to mislead you and erode your political power. The first step to stopping this problematic trend is to stop it within yourself. When you’re aware of what’s happening, then you have the power to take a different path and encourage others to as well. 

To be an intellectually honest person means being careful about the claims that you are making. When you make a claim: 1) you have to define your terms and use them properly, 2) you have to support the claim properly with factual evidence or logical argument, and 3) you have to prove the legitimacy of your claim by properly answering the relevant rebuttals to your claim. 

Addressing the claims that you’ve made, for example:

Only conservatives are prejudiced? Only religious people are prejudiced? A prejudiced person is going to use any justification available. Someone who uses religion to justify prejudice is perhaps better called prejudiced, bigoted, racist, xenophobic, sexist, intolerant, fundamentalist, hypocritical, self-interested, disingenuous, etc, depending on the situation. 

Only conservatives ignore science? Have you ever met an anti-vaxxer? Most of them aren’t conservative. Someone who ignores/denies/devalues scientific facts is perhaps better called irrational, uneducated, ignorant, willfully ignorant, skeptical, antiscience, denier, a luddite, etc, depending on their particular beliefs and reasons for mistrust. 

Are most/all conservatives religious? There are many atheist conservatives that believe only in economic conservatism. 

Are most/all conservatives bigots? There are many moderate conservatives that support equal rights and civil rights movements. 

Are most/all conservatives antiscience? There are conservatives that love science and are even scientists themselves. 

The point is that your claims are not objective, precise, nuanced, or well-informed. By making careless criticisms, you’re being unfair. And you’re destroying any chance of winning over people that might be sympathetic to your position. The fact of the matter is that the majority of people are relatively moderate, even uncertain or weakly committed, in their political beliefs, though they may lean conservative or progressive based on their upbringing or past experiences. This is a good thing because it allows space for people to learn new ideas, find common ground, and tackle sociopolitical problems in a balanced way. You don’t want most of the population to exist at political extremes because that’s how you get a dysfunctional and even violent society, yet that is where the talking heads lead people. When you’re dealing with an extreme person, you can’t help but become more extreme to make yourself heard, which starts up a vicious cycle that leads to more and more extreme positions. You see this happening between political opponents in the media or social media, until the extreme voices drown out everyone else.

Did you learn these ideas/associations from media talking heads? You sound just like them. You misapply words, make extreme generalizations, use questionable logic, and inject (emotional) bias. You’re using the word “conservative” without really knowing its meaning, though it seems central to your political beliefs. It’s not just you. A lot of people misuse political terminology, e.g., conservatism, liberalism, fascism, communism, socialism, etc. Study political theory or political philosophy and you will start to understand how these words have been abused. 

To live in a democracy, you raise your voice, you engage in debate, and you criticize those you disagree with - quite normal. But if you want to debate well and launch a serious criticism, make your claims verbally precise, identify the right source of the problem, and be factually objective, as opposed to carelessly lumping all the people you dislike into one abstract group to label, demonize, and hate. There is constructive vs destructive criticism - which do you prefer? Constructive criticism is intelligent and boringly focused on getting proper solutions; destructive criticism is gratifying but makes problems worse.

By definition, a conservative is a traditionalist, meaning that they respect tradition and aim to preserve tradition for the good that it contributes to a well-functioning society. Therefore, conservatives, as a group, are as diverse and varied as the many possible human traditions that are out there to be upheld. Are you really going to claim that no tradition is ever good or that all traditions should be abolished? If you make this claim, you will be wiping out some very important structures and institutions that keep society alive and well, and you will be removing some very important mental health supports from individuals. If you call yourself a “progressive”, are you really going to claim that continuous “progress”, growth, expansion, or change doesn’t have any downsides whatsoever? If you make this claim, then you are ignoring legitimate criticism from conservatives about your blindness.

There are always going to be conservative and progressive forces in every society because these forces exist in every human mind. The question is how they relate to each other. It is the job of a good conservative to make sure that society doesn’t erode, doesn’t change too quickly to be destructive, doesn’t descend into chaos - to cherish what is already good in society. Similarly, it is the job of a good progressive to make sure that society doesn’t stagnate, doesn’t perpetuate negative beliefs and values, doesn’t resign itself to entrenched problems - to improve upon society’s flaws and faults. 

Conservatism and progressivism are opposing forces that need each other to be at their best. It is when they act as enemies and retreat into their respective corners that you see the extremes which dominate US politics today. Politics is actually a circle rather than a spectrum, in that the extremes on both ends eventually come together to agree on mutual destruction. If you aren’t able to understand this principle of mutually determined fate, then you are in danger of becoming just as biased or extreme as those “conservatives” you criticize.

[realbeeing]

ancestral trauma & healing

I’ve recently come to understand what it means to honor my ancestors. I had heard mystics and shamans talk about how we can either relate to our ancestors in an unhealthy way— by holding onto their pain and perpetuating it unconsciously— or in a healthy way, by doing our best to work through the dysfunctions they passed on to us, starting to identify the pain as not solely our own but part of a chain of experience from which now another decision can be made. Breaking the cycle, in other words. 

Lately I started to feel a lot about my Jewish heritage, especially because I got a DNA test where it was confirmed I am pretty much of three-quarters Ashkenazi Jewish descent. I already knew my father’s family and maternal grandmother’s family came from that tribe so it was not a huge surprise, but with the company I bought the test from, they reveal not just that you are of Ashkenazi descent but what that particular descent really means: usually being one-half to two-thirds Arab genetics with the other part Southern European genetics, often Italian. In my case, I learned I had about a third Arab and Near-East origins and another third Italian. (My levels were lower because I have one non-Jewish, Irish grandparent).

Going through my results brought to light a new realization for me about the story of my ancestors. The Jewish people had moved around a lot: from the Middle East, to the Roman Empire, to the German kingdom and then further into Eastern Europe. And then many of them left Europe entirely to come to the United States or to Israel, havens for the Jewish population. For some reason I had never really thought about what it took for my ancestors— really just my great grandparents — to come all the way to America  It was not like they just decided one day to to travel to a new continent for a vacation. Nowadays it’s hard to understand the scope of such travel before the time of cheap and abundant flights and a more globalized culture. I can’t imagine what it was like to uproot yourself from your homeland and go to a place where your familiar language wasn’t spoken, where the culture was totally different. No, they must have come here out of necessity. My family has kept scant records though so I can only speculate. 

I have read a lot about anti-semitism recently and the pogroms that occurred in Eastern Europe, where my ancestors were living. The Jews were always on the run, a persecuted people, for whatever reason that is still mysterious to me. Were we victims? Were we perpetuating this cycle ourselves from a victim complex? I wasn’t there to know. 

Jews have learned to make a home in many places. I feel that in myself in my need to travel and the desire I’ve had since being a child of running away, being a nomad, going to an unknown land. Yet what is my enjoyment was their serious task. In my youthful seeking phase I contacted a bunch of different eclectic religious paths, settling into the Hare Krishna way for a couple of years in Peru as well as going into strange rabbit holes about all sorts of new age topics such as aliens and lost civilizations. In this period, I hardly thought about Judaism at all, nor my ancestors. I was convinced the body is just a phantasm, that we are soul first and thus that my true ancestry was first cosmic and that any earthly ties were not a subject for any earnest consideration. Growing up on North American native land, spending time on Andean land, going deep into Vedic religion— I was a mix of many influences and those related to blood seemed like the least relevant. 

In my Krishna commune, we called our group “family” and I think genuinely felt that way about each other. It was not genetics that connected us but a spiritual purpose and a belief we were all headed to the same lofty quarters of heaven. I remember learning one Hebrew song after hearing tons of Vedic chants and seeing a Star of David in my mind’s eye during a sweat lodge, but other than that my ethnic-spiritual past seemed far away.  

Meanwhile it wasn’t until a couple of years after leaving that group when I began to do a lot of deeper healing than that which had been supposedly dealt with in my religion, when I thought all my burdens had been lit on fire by god. In a way it was true: I received a spiritual communion which rooted itself so deeply in my consciousness that I can never go back to who I was before that experience. But still there was quite a deep wound to address, namely a traumatic childhood based on being abused by a parent. A parent who was abused by their own parent. And so on: a chain not of spiritual transmission but of shit. They were not the ancestors how I would have liked to imagine them: old sages or native chiefs whispering wise words in my ear. I did not want to admit the reality of the situation for a long time because of my chronic conditioning to downplay serious events in my life, brushing them aside because I never thought they were important enough—  which was an idea I had been brandished with by my abuser. Also it went against the image I had of myself as this spiritually liberated person. It wasn’t necessarily that this image was a complete illusion, which is a tempting conclusion to make when we receive a humbling from life. It would be easier to dismiss the entire past— but nothing can be so black and white. My ancestors are not all good or all evil. My initial spiritual experimentation did yield some truly healing moments. That was real for the time being. I could find meaning as a “galactic” citizen. But then eventually I did have to come down to earth. Another layer of the spiral had to unfold. A death had to take place. 

At first I resisted it and I saw my life stagnate a lot. Besides the fact that I was forcibly stranded in a rural country not my own due to the worldwide pandemic, I was stuck creatively, mentally and socially. I was isolating myself both physically and in way of ideas. I slowly started to become more interested in conspiracy theories, especially since world events have gotten so crazy which has sparked a whole tidal wave of increased paranoid thinking among everyone. Forget my ancestors being persecuted-- I was being persecuted just for being alive! The essential message of love—which was the lesson of all my valuable spiritual trips— was sometimes forgotten and the adrenaline rush of fear or excitement at some impending catastrophic event became almost a hobby and stood in for giving my time and energy to more creative and nourishing endeavors. It took a location move and I think my Saturn return to really kickstart a new cycle for myself, one where I do want to look at the pain I have been carrying and see how this pain is both mine and is not. The suffering in my genetic line is both something I can transcend out of and something I am inexplicably bound to and responsible for addressing. 

In the recognition of pain comes the power needed to finally confront it head on. I thought I had already sufficiently looked into my past and done the emotional purging work— but it was a whole new step for me to acknowledge the abuse as well as to acknowledge that I had some degree of trauma from what I went through. What followed from taking this step was not only more self-love and psychological balance but also a razing of my mental inventory: I was not exactly who I thought I was. This clearing made space for new inspiration and motivation, for the courage to create beauty where I could. To make jewelry, paint, dance, run, sing. Things I had forgotten and filled instead with trivial information. That was okay then, and I am okay now too. It is not some before/after scenario: that paradigm of healing is over. Like I said, healing is a spiral which unfurls at its own pace. I am exactly where I need to be. And from this vantage point, I can better hear what my ancestors are speaking to me, and I listen— while also telling them, I’m going to do things a bit differently now. We are going to do things different. 

[ardenttheories]

Homestuck's always been antagonistic and insensitive, but I don't recall seeing any of you try to dox Hussie? But please, continue to rationalise how cyberbullying lgbt people for not being nice enough and having opinions about a fictional character you disagree with puts you in the right. A story doesn't go the way you'd like and this is how you respond? You COULD have just not bothered reading it instead of CHOOSING to make your online life about something you hate like a toxic weirdo.

Hi, Kate. I’m so glad you could find my blog. (Edit: that was a joke. Apparently, some anons find it impossible to tell that I don’t actually think you’re Kate). It’s clear to me that you didn’t take the time to read through any of the content that’s actually on here, since you’re throwing around rather wild accusations, so let me take this down step by step.

Homestuck has only rarely been antagonistic and insensitive. Things like the Alpha Trolls - which were clear criticisms of fandom culture - were relatively few and far between, and when we complained about them, they actually stopped. Remind me, for instance, how relevant the Alpha Trolls were to the plot? How long they stayed as mockeries towards the fandom? Yeah, not long. I actually have talked about this before on the blog - alongside other things I thought were negative towards the fandom from the original comic - but the difference here is that... in the entirety of Homestuck, these things were outliers and inconsistencies. They stuck out because they were in stark contrast to the otherwise wonderfully handled content Homestuck went over.

For instance, Homesuck is critical of abuse - especially in terms of relationships. We see through a critical lense the shit normalisation of parental abuse can do to a child - with actual talk of triggers and of the mental and emotional scarring left behind, and the complexities of the child’s feelings towards the parent’s death through Dave - and we see how self destructive relationships can be, how harmful they are, and how hard it can be to leave them - such as Terezi’s very toxic blackrom with Gamzee, which was always portrayed as something negative and harmful especially with how worried Karkat was for her and how withdrawn she became during its run, and Dirk’s relationship with Jake, which goes very much over how communication can cause a deterioration in romantic relationships especially when the two participants have conflicting mental illnesses. 

It also goes over how men, though they can be mired in toxic masculinity, can choose to be good. How sometimes we’re not born as good people, but we can become good people through the love we have for the people around us, through frequent attempts to check what we’re doing, through the sheer willpower to be good. Dirk’s entire arc, knowing that he could very easily become Bro but deciding he doesn’t want to be, that it’s something he wants to work on, is so important and incredibly powerful. Mental illness in men is often just given as an excuse to make them violent with no attempts at betterment - so Dirk actually existed as proof that you don’t have to be that stereotype. 

In contrast, Homestuck^2 completely uncritically gave Jade, who was cis, a dog dick, made her, a bisexual woman, a sex maniac and the yaoi “woman who gets in the way of the gays” trope, made her a cheater and someone who forced her partner into the relationship to begin with, and made her a neglectful mother after having cheated with her best lesbian friend in something that has incredible recall to just about every futanari video ever - and they tried to claim that this was good representation of trans women, actually, and that the only reason we didn’t like it is that Jade is “a woman” who “has sex”.

Likewise completely uncritically, they made Gamzee, an anti-black stereotype, enter a relationship with Jane, a fascist, and then made the entire thing into a cuck joke wherein Jake being frequently drunk and sexually assaulted was funny because he wasn’t “man enough”. They then forced him to go back to his abuser after he left her in a scene that read very much like, “ridiculous man thinks woman is abusing him, go back and do your manly job”. 

This, of course, doesn’t even go into the travesty that is any form of trans representation in the comic. Roxy, a trans man, is barely even focused on as trans; they make no attempt to enforce in the fandom that he’s a trans man the way they do that June is a trans woman, and even then, they seem to think that just saying someone is a trans woman is actually good representation. Not, like, bringing it into the comic - just saying that it’s a thing. And of course, that’s not even going into the completely uncritical lense they have of Vriska, wherein her being a trans woman completely frees her of any and all blame for the past abuses she has comitted, and once again she becomes an amazing character to save the day without a single flaw - which in turn inherently associates trans women with abuse apologism, abusers, and the ideology that just because we’re trans we can get away with anything scott free. 

I honestly cannot think of one instance of good and genuine representation in Homesuck^2, nor can I think of any scene where negative content was actually treated as the negative thing it actually is. There’s no critical lense at all, not like we have in Homestuck; there’s just no fucking comparison. And this isn’t a one-off situation, either. Whereas Homestuck does do fuck ups - isn’t perfect - in between the otherwise brilliant content, Homestuck^2 is just founded upon these horrific takes. There’s almost no good content in between, and what is left is a slog to get through when surrounded by the thick slurry of shit that compromises futa Jade, abuse apologism Vriska, and victim blaming Jake. 

Of course, we didn’t “doxx” Hussie. Hussie actually listened to our complaints, for the most part, and worked with us to create something that worked well. The way Homestuck^2 was touted to work. You know, since it was meant to be written with the fandom in mind, influenced by the things we suggest and react to. We went into Homestuck^2 with the explicit idea that we were going to be listened to and taken into consideration when it was being written - the way we were with old Homestuck. I’m very sorry to say that, when you make these expectations, people are going to be a titchy bit upset when you then commandeer the entire thing and exclude the fandom from any of the process that you said they were going to be part of.

Additionally, it’s rather funny, isn’t it, that what you call doxxing is actually just people upset with how triggering content is being handled, and going to the people who actually wrote the content in order to voice their complaints? It’s almost as if social media exists to allow this communication between reader and author, which is a fundamental thing you’ll learn in any creative writing course, such as the one I’m on currently, wherein you’re actually taught how to respond to social media and to build up your image with your fans. 

Homestuck^2 is an ongoing piece of media. We’re well aware that we have a potential to change these uncritical takes and the horrific way they’re being handled if the writers will just listen to genuine criticism. This is, frankly, no different to the people who go to J. K. Rowling’s Twitter to tell her how harmful her transphobic comments are; because if she believes these things, they will work their way into her texts and will perpetuate harmful ideologies. 

The literal same thing is happening in Homestuck^2 - again, such as futa Jade, which normalises the point of view that bisexuals are cheaters and completely trivialises what it means to be trans, or Gamzee, which perpetuates just about every anti-black stereotype possible. Media does have a very powerful impact on what people see in the real world. This is why, for instance, positive black characters are so important in media; if they’re always portrayed as villains, then people will see real world black people as villains as the ideology is perpetuated to the point of fact. This is especially true if the people already believe in the ideology.

Fiction is one of the best ways that we can counteract this cycle. If you make a character that they like, and they happen to be positive representation, and then they watch more media that is likewise positive representation, it’s more likely to stick that these positive representations are the actual experiences of minority groups. Also? It’s important TO those minority groups. A black person, especially right now, doesn’t want to see an anti-black stereotype fuck a fascist, engage in sexual assult, and then enact pedophilia - only to die at the hands of a hero and be laughed at for the death. Surprisingly, shit like this is why we need to tell the writers that what they’re doing is harmful, that they’re perpetuating phobic ideologies, and that we need better representation - especially in a comic that is this widely read, and also has a very large minor fanbase. 

I shouldn’t need to explain why exposing minors to anti-black stereotypes, transphobic, homophobic, biphobic, abuse apologism, victim blaming, and the trivialisation of rape and sexual assault (especially towards men), might be a federal fucking issue. 

So, no, we’re not actually cyberbullying LGBT+ people. We’re trying to hold shitty writers accountable for the incredibly toxic and harmful ideologies they’re forcing into a text that has always been written with critical thought in mind. 

I should also point out how funny it is that you’re focusing on how some of the writers are LGBT+ - as if we’re not? I’m trans, I’m gay, and I’m ace. Yes, I can actually be these things and absolutely furious that a trans women is writing some of the most transphobic shit I’ve seen in a while into characters she then claims to be completely free of blame. We can be furious that people within our own community are enforcing negative stereotypes.

Being LGBT+ does not make them free from blame. We cannot give them a free pass to be racist, to be transphobic, to be homophobic, biphobic, to be abuse apologists, just because they’re LGBT+. Not only because that’s just a terrible fucking idea to begin with, but because it also reflects so, so badly on the community as a whole. As if being part of the community instantly means that you can do no wrong? As if there can be no toxicity within our own community, despite the fact that there very much is and it is still an issue to this day?

That is such an issue, one of the biggest issues even shown just in Vriska and the way Kate handles her as a whole - and, once again, is WHY we need to get them looking at this shit more critically. This view that LGBT+ people can do no wrong and cannot be criticised is shoved into Homestuck^2 and, once again, perpetuates the ideology. This isn’t something to be proud of. This isn’t something that’s actually okay.

Also, your point that the writers aren’t nice enough and that we disagree on fictional characters - well, I’ve already been over the second part. But for the first part, I would like to remind you that they aren’t just random LGBT+ people on the internet that we’re going to because we think their takes are a little shitty. They’re actual writers working on a piece of media. They are official content creators. 

Again, one of the first things you learn on any creative writing course is that when you become a writer, you gain a significant amount of responsibility for your interactions with the fandom. This is something that you genuinely have to expect, and if you don’t, then, unfortunately you just don’t know what it means to write something that thousands of people have a potential to read. As a writer, it is your responsibility to portray your image online; it is your responsibility to engage with the fans in a meaningful way; it is your responsibility to not cause drama and to listen when criticism is brought up, to have genuine discussion and not to perpetuate hatred - especially towards your own fanbase.

Consider, for instance, the way I’m talking to you right now. This is the sort of tone that someone should take when talking to a fan about genuine criticism. When things are brought up, you go over them step by step, you listen, you write back - you don’t go on a flurry of “fuck yous” to a minor who asked you why your team didn’t post anything about the BLM movement on the official Twitter, and you definitely don’t respond to every comment with genuine criticism with the word “pigshit”. You almost definitely don’t tell your trans masculine and masculine-aligned nonbinary fans that their opinions don’t matter.

As a writer, Kate and the rest of the team have a responsibility with their interactions with their fans. They aren’t just normal fandom voices anymore; they’re official fandom voices, voices that have more weight behind them than anyone else. They’re who people are going to turn to when it comes to anything regarding Homestuck^2. Their words now reflect literally everything about Homestuck^2, the future of Homestuck as an expanded universe, and the opinions of the group as a whole. They have to be careful with what they say. They have to be held to the same standards as industry voices because that’s essentially what they are - especially now that Homestuck is something you pay for. 

Also, this isn’t a point of the story not going the way I want. This is a point of many of people in the fandom being upset with how content is being handled, upset that their voices are being shut down, upset that triggering content is being laughed at or used flippantly and without care or respect. This is people being upset that trigger warnings were removed specifically to make the comic unsafe for them as a punishment for daring to say that something was wrong. This is people being upset that a piece of media that used to be so fucking good at portraying sensitive content in a critical light, that used to be so good at normalising LGBT+ identities and healthy representations of those identities, has suddenly turned to this. 

The story can go whatever way it wants - and frankly, that’s fine be my. What isn’t fine is that content is being used specifically to hurt and to incite.

And, of course, that final piece; nothing will improve if we don’t say that it’s wrong to begin with. Someone needs to voice the complaints of the fanbase, othrewise these toxic ideologies are going to go unchecked. One of the biggest things I’ve come to understand while making these posts is that a significant portion of the fandom feels isolated in their hurt; they don’t think other people feel the same way they do, and several people have mentioned feeling like they were going crazy because they were upset with things that the text and writers are normalising. It’s so important to make sure that these people know they’re not alone. It’s so important to make sure that our voices are heard. It’s so important to try and create critical discussion and debate over something that so many people still fucking love. 

The thing is, I don’t hate Homestuck^2. I actually really, desperately wish I could enjoy it. I wish I could read through it and theorise, could go in depth about how amazing the characters are, could write long and extensive posts on how creative and engaging it is - could even just go on about how interesting the Meat-Candy divide is, and all the points they’re trying to make about canonicity. But I genuinely fucking can’t. There is just so, so much wrong in the text that is completely unrelated to plot and to the overarching Point that makes it impossible for me to read, to want to read, to try to encourage other people to read. They’re things that literally don’t need to be in there, either; stereotypes and toxic ideologies and uncritical or badly handled sensitive topics that could be rectified so, so easily. 

Homestuck^2 could be amazing for a lot of the fandom. It could be something that we all rally around the same way we did for the original comic. For for a lot of people, it has ruined their fandom experience, has ruined their desire to want to read anything more to do with Homestuck, and has caused a significant portion of the fandom to just drop out entirely. That in and of itself should be a sign that this isn’t just a little fandom drama. That this is something much bigger and much more serious that, just maybe, needs to be looked into, talked about, understood - and, potentially, changed. 

[cervidaedalus]

It bugs me how close people are to actually addressing the core cause of mass shootings in the US but hardly any actually address it. I always see "we need better mental healthcare." What's more is that oversimplifying it like that is, to put it simply, ableist by putting the blame on mental illness as a whole. It perpetuates the shamefulness of being mentally ill, and often times the mental illnesses I see blamed for these things are ASDs or mood disorders like Bipolar which... aren't even illnesses characteristic of anti-social behaviour. Even *then* not everyone who has a Cluster B personality disorder with ASPD traits ever thinks about violently lashing out on innocent people. Firearms are not cheap, even if they're obtained illegally. We've also been in a major ammunition shortage since before the pandemic. It really depends on what's being used to carry out these shootings but presently, in many cases therapy is *cheaper* than the weapons and ammo used to carry out these shootings. There's also programs to reduce or even eliminate the cost of therapy depending on your financial situation (I'm on one). It's not an issue where mental healthcare isn't accessible to these people, its that they aren't seeking it out. Why aren't they seeking it out though? Because men have spent a majority of their formative years being told things like "stop being a pussy", "grow some balls", and "men don't cry". Male victims of sexual assault and domestic violence are not just doubted, but often mocked and ostracized, compounding the trauma and self-hatred. The term "daddy issues" has been used to shame women for certain lifestyles or behaviours but I have met plenty of AMAB whose emotional immaturity cycles back to how their primary male role model treated them. Alcoholism and other substance abuse isn't exclusively a dad-issue, but it tends to be more prevalent with dads than moms. This is also because those dads suffer from the same short-comings, and it creates a chain of emotionally stunted AMAB people. It isn't *just* the characteristically abusive AMAB who are a product of this, too, like I've known and dated plenty of guys who were never taught how to or given the proper resources for proper emotional management, which leads them to never actually addressing issues, and engaging in behaviours that are wildly inappropriate and completely devoid of empathy or rationality. This results in a lot of guys feeling ashamed of ever seeking proper help and one of the quickest ways to have an absolute meltdown is to be at a low point have little to no proper support network. Couple that with these guys being raised on the idea that righteous indignation and macho brovado are healthy, masculine character traits. Add a sprinkle of gun culture, which has always been a facet of USA's "culture". This ends up creating a toxic mindset in which they can completely justify and rationalize disastrously violent meltdowns that result in violently lashing out against a person or group of people they blame for whatever they're feeling. It's not just about safety checks, it's not just about mental healthcare, it's a massive cultural problem in the USA revolving around how AMAB people are conditioned and treated by their peers, and deeply rooted firearms are in American history and subsequently the modern culture.

[cblgblog]

I have just…so many problems with Irondad, some of which I’ve seen expressed already, some not, and I need to say this at least once.

I don’t believe the common anti-Irondad thing that says Tony never cared about Peter. He did, in his very Tony, very problematic way. He loves Peter, I think, very much the way Howard loved him. We only got glimpses of Howard as a dad, mostly from Tony’s perspective, but we can make assumptions here. Howard probably thought Tony was the greatest thing in the world, and a blast to hang out with. Whenever Howard wanted to be a dad. He would’ve loved teaching Tony things, showing him off, having fun with him. But when Howard didn’t want to hang out? When Howard was working on something important? No, sorry, dad mode off, go away, Maria come get him. We see that with Peter and Tony. All Peter wants is acceptance, another mission with Tony. He wants validation. But he can’t even reach Tony because Tony’s put Happy in charge of him, and Happy doesn’t want to deal with some stupid kid in Queens, at least during Homecoming. It’s a very Howard move, parenting/mentoring when it’s convenient.

Which, you know what? Not in and of itself horrible. Tony would learn what he lived, and follow it. It makes sense, generational patterns and all that. It could’ve led to an interesting story, about Peter or someone else in Tony’s life pointing out the parallels, and then Tony has a moment of realization and tries to correct. I wouldn’t have loved that story, because Peter’s storyline being so connected with Tony’s at the expense of his own has always bothered me, but it could’ve been done decently.

What do we get instead? We get Tony paying lip service in Homecoming to wanting to break the cycle, and then totally failing at that 5 minutes later. He was mad, he was scared, that’s legit. People say unfair things when they’re reacting out of fear. But he tears Peter down for what happened on the ferry, and makes him feel like shit. Why? Because Tony had the FBI involved, Peter was meant to stay away, and he didn’t. Well how the hell was Peter supposed to know that? He can’t talk to Tony at all. Happy’s been ghosting him for months. The last time he thought Tony was there for him, it was one of the suits, Tony was still off in Tony’s world. How would Peter ever think that Tony had heard him this time, and was taking action? Tony didn’t tell him as much. Happy didn’t. All either of them would need to do is send a text saying hey, I hear you, I’m on this, I have people on this. But Tony is Tony, he can’t tie his shoes without Pepper, and he has either a hyperfixated attention span, or none at all, depending on the day. He either forgot to tell Peter, or worse, didn’t think it necessary. And if he was a proper mentor, if he knew Peter at all, he would know that Peter’s sense of responsibility was going to kick in there, unless he had reason to believe things were going to be okay without him.

Tony doesn’t know Peter. He puts an instant kill function on a 15-year-old kid’s suit because he thinks it’s a cool feature, and he enjoys building cool things. If he knew Peter at all, Tony would know that Peter’s a no kill hero. You can argue that those advanced features weren’t meant to be hacked into, so it’s not Tony’s fault. Except it is. Tony admits in CW that he hacked the Pentagon in high school on a dare. He knows that genius boys do stupid things. He knows teenagers don’t follow rules. He knows that if you tell a kid not to do a thing, you’re just guaranteeing he’ll want to do it more now. Tony may not know exactly how smart Peter is (I’m sure he doesn’t), but he has enough of an idea that safety measures, actual measures, should’ve been in place. Instead of a hackable training wheels protocol? Just keep those features off his first suit, save them for the next model, when the kid’s ready. We know Tony doesn’t mind building new models of suits. But Tony doesn’t do that, because Tony.

Yeah, the instant kill came in handy in Endgame against Thanos’s army. Still doesn’t make it okay.

Again, it reeks of Howard style parenting. You didn’t use this awesome thing I gave you right? Here then, I’m taking it away. No talks, no explanations or compromise or Tony training Peter to avoid the mistakes he so wants Peter to avoid, just, we’re done. Which is exactly how Howard probably would’ve handled it. I let you in my lab once and you broke something you didn’t know how to use? Okay, well, never doing that again.

To be clear, I don’t blame Tony for yanking the suit, exactly. It was a very human, kneejerk reaction. And more importantly, it allowed Peter to show that he did not need Tony’s toys to be a hero. The problem is that Tony, as usual, never gets to realize his mistakes. Peter yells at him a little right before the suit gets taken about not being listened to, but Tony doesn’t retain any of it. It doesn’t matter. He never has a moment of, what I did here was not okay and this is why. What do we get instead? Him telling Peter at the end of Homecoming how Peter screwed up, but hey, you fixed it. You were dumb, but you fixed it. No acknowledgement that Tony screwed up anything. Because, of course not. The lesson for Tony isn’t hey, I went too fast with this kid, he wasn’t ready, I didn’t prepare him. There is no lesson. Tony, as in basically every appearance since Iron Man 3, learns nothing.

Oh, and the Homecoming ending. Yeah. Tony sees no problem with having a 15-year-old move into the mansion and go full-time Avenger. His aunt, his guardian? Nah, why would she mind that, it’s fine.

I’ve talked elsewhere about my problems with Infinity War Irondad, but basically, most of Tony’s interaction with Peter there involves telling him to shut up, the grownups are talking, you’re not supposed to be here, you’re too young and dumb. Even when Peter absolutely helps the team. Also, too young and dumb? He wasn’t 5 minutes ago, when you were going to make him an Avenger, and he was the one smart enough to realize this was a bad idea. Tony’s so mad Peter didn’t listen to him and go home. If he’d truly listened, he’d have been an Avenger at the start of the film, so he’d be there anyway.

The dusting scene with him and Peter? It hurt. It was brutal and beautiful. That’s because Tom Holland, and yes, RDJ, can act, not because it was earned by the narrative of the last three movies.

As for Endgame. That photo Tony has of him and Peter goofing off. So cute, right? Probably taken at some point before May knew the truth, as a hey, we need a cover story for your aunt, but, you know,  it’s fine. I don’t doubt Tony loved Peter. That he grieved Peter and felt his loss for 5 years, and maybe that’s part of why he’s such a good dad to Morgan. But he didn’t love Peter the right way. He did it selectively. He missed him when he was gone, but didn’t pay enough attention when he was alive. The hug near the end was beautiful, but unearned.

And then there’s May and Ben. May does not deserve to be villainized, killed off, or flat-out ignored the way she is in so many fanon interpretations just so Irondad can be a thing. May helped Peter prepare for his homecoming dance last minute. She got him dressed, taught him how to tie a tie, taught him to dance. All while Tony was back to ignoring him. But assume for a second that this had happened earlier, when Peter was still technically in Tony’s good books. Assume for a second that he’d been able to reach Tony and ask for advice, because he’s scared and excited and needs help. Tony would’ve made a few jokes about spiked punch, a few more crude, sexist jokes about Peter’s date, and signed off. May dropped everything and spent hours helping this kid, reassuring him. May is so unappreciated and flat-out abused by some of the fanbase, and it’s gross.

And Ben. Who’s Ben? Have we even heard his name in any of the movies Peter’s appeared in yet? Oh, we got his initials on a suitcase in FFH, not even a verbal acknowledgement. Great. I am not advocating an origin story. We’ve seen it, we know the basics, it’s fine. But Ben has been shown, for almost 60 years, to be the most influential person in Peter’s life. Losing Ben the way he did shaped Peter’s whole life afterward. And we have yet to see a photo? An old video? A 30 second flashback scene? We don’t know any of the MCU’s version of how Ben was killed. At all. Are they for some reason going with a rewrite where Peter had nothing to do with it? Don’t know, because it’s been 5 movies so far and they’ve given us nothing. Ben’s death regularly tops lists of the most influential deaths in comics, and we have nothing. Instead we get scene after scene of Tony perpetuating a dysfunctional relationship with Peter, and never facing consequences, or even realizing it.

By the way? Ben, if he’s anything like any canon version ever, would hate Tony. Ben is consistently shown before his death to be a very hands-on parent. He doesn’t understand most of Peter’s science stuff, but he encourages it, and stays involved as much as he can. He, barring a truly monumental canon rewrite that we know nothing about if it happened, taught Peter that great power means great responsibility. Contrast this with Tony, who as stated, pays more attention to building Peter cool suits than he does Peter. Who, on being confronted by a mother about the death of her son, caused by him, does what? Immediately wants to shift all responsibility to the government, so that the next time he screws up, he can say he was just following the law. Who was confronted by a grieving mother, and then 5 minutes later came into May Parker’s home and lied to her face. Something he continued to do, and would’ve continued, if May hadn’t found the truth on her own. He lies to her, takes her underage son (yes I’m saying son because she and Ben raised that boy, not Tony) out of the country without her knowledge. He threatened to reveal Peter’s identity to get him there. He does not tell Peter that the Accords would’ve done that anyway. He doesn’t tell Peter much of anything about why he’s there or what he’s fighting for. Either because he knows that telling the truth means not having Peter on his side, or because he simply doesn’t care to. Either way is gross, manipulative, disgusting, and would have Ben Parker rolling in his grave.

Yeah, it was fun having Peter in CW. Some of his scenes with Tony are genuinely fun. The above points though? Still stand.

So yeah, Irondad. in theory, okay. It makes sense that Peter would want guidance, a mentor after Ben died. It makes sense he’d look up to Tony. They could have addressed Howard’s shitty parenting via Tony’s shitty parenting, and maybe told an interesting story with it by contrasting Tony’s parenting style to Ben’s. Irondad in actual canon? There’s no parenting. There’s child endangerment, verbal abuse, and no payoff to any of it. The most we get is Happy admitting in FFH that Tony was a mess, but not for all the right reasons. He gets called out for other things, if you can even say he’s called out. Not for his awful treatment of an impressionable minor who’d lost his real father (Ben, assuming they stick with comics and have Peter lose his parents at a very young age).

I will never stop saying that Peter deserved better. I hope he gets it now that Tony’s gone.

[mustlovelance]

so, hah, if you want to know why i still screencapped this even though you censored lot/ura, it’s because, every goddamn time i didn’t censor l/otor’s name in a post that could be remotely construed as negative, his stans got right in my face to yell at me for being mean to him. even that one time i was joking about how lance, canonically, does not like lot/or in any installment of the franchise, i got yelled at. this hasn’t happened to me with any other character that i’ve ever been not-entirely-positive about. just l/otor. it’s fucking exhausting. 

i’m just being soooo mean to their imperialist baby who murdered who knows how many people, right? (being upset that vl/d went in the direction of perpetuating the cycle of violence/abuse does not justify defending lo/tor’s actions as is, nor does it justify the rampant misogynistic anti-romelle bs.) 

AHEM. ANYWAY.

yeah, so many other shippers are gleefully dunking on a/l now. it’s so disheartening and frustrating. like i’ve said before, i really had thought we could all unite and set our ship preferences aside, like this: 

i had falsely believed that these people at least sincerely loved allura and would be truly outraged by her senseless death, but they were more interested in “winning" the ship war. this is why i can’t even participate in most of the blogs seeking justice for allura--it’s just wrapped in too much ship hate, and that makes it come across as thoroughly insincere. 

l/otor was not allura’s perfect match. he fucking murdered her people, he lied to her about it, and he manipulated her feelings to gain power. going back to him after that wouldn’t be remotely feminist, particularly since she’d be standing against romelle, whose entire fucking family was murdered by allura’s so-called true love. there’s absolutely nothing empowering about “overlooking” or “setting aside” a genoci/de attempt, however well-intentioned it was, for the sake of riding off into the sunset with a hot prince. 

meanwhile, lance has supported and inspired and respected allura for a solid 64% of the series, during which she continuously sought him out and had fun with him and enjoyed his company and was excited at the idea of having a future with him. that remaining 36%? lance acted like an immature teenage boy. oh, the horror. clearly, his behavior is even remotely comparable to lot/or’s. clearly, lance is the one who ~didn’t respect allura’s autonomy uwu. yeah, quick question--which is a greater violation of autonomy? worrying about someone’s safety, or trying to commit genoc/ide? saying bad pickup lines, or lying to someone and using romance to manipulate them into providing power? another quick question--which is greater support of autonomy? asking someone for permission before using their computer, even though they were only being this polite in order to gain allura’s trust so that he could manipulate her for his own ends later, or being terrified that allura might die on oriande and giving initial protests but eventually respecting allura’s decision? 

some l/otor stans sincerely fucking believe that lance’s immaturity is worse than l/otor’s deception and cruelty and mass-murder. it’s incredible. all because they think he’s a hotter fictional character. 

the real feminist empowerment fantasy is finding someone who supports you and adores you and inspires you, not finding someone who lies to you and uses you, even if he truly ~loves you deep down, just because he’s the “hotter” option.

ahem. anyway.

[rwdestuffs]

It feels less that Adam was a character, but more of a living plot device like Cinder. Sad thing is, Adam had a better start than Cinder.

This is going to get a bit long.

Personally?- I think that since Adam somehow had less screentime and lines than Weiss did in Volume 4 leading up to his reveal caused people to think he was a character. A lot of them came up with the headcanon that Adam was a freedom fighter that took things too far or an extremist that had good intentions. 

Because of his limited screentime, there was no indication that Adam was or wasn’t abusive. People seem to be under the impression that the “old Adam” existed when he really didn’t. “Old Adam” was a well-intoned extremist. “Old Adam” would never abuse a fellow faunus. And since this headcanon persisted with very little (if even that much) input from the crew or canon that it could at all be contradicted, people got mad that their headcanon wasn’t canon.

Adam had a better start because he was a blank canvas at the time. While Cinder was set up as a “Criminal Mastermind” from the start. They had to force a connection between Adam and Cinder somehow, and the Volume 3 flashback indicated that Cinder threatened him.

And Adam has no interest in sacrificing faunus for any cause that isn’t his own. People seem to inflate that idea of his “nobility” to mean that he wouldn’t sacrifice faunus at all. But Volume 2 contradicts that entirely.

Overall, this is similar to how I felt regarding Taiyang. I thought that he would be a super kind, if a bit of a bumbling or eccentric father. I thought that he would go out and find a therapist or read up on how to treat PTSD. And when I was met with disappointment, I got angry. I got angry at the character. I headcanoned a Taiyang that didn’t exist, and since there wasn’t anything contradicting that headcanon, I was disappointed with the result.

I feel that the same can be applied to Adam. A lot of people thought of him as being this cool, edgy, anti-hero that would eventually double-cross Cinder and forge his own path.

But then it turned out that he was just perpetuating the cycle of abuse and people didn’t like that. They wanted Blake to fix Adam and for him to have a redemption arc. They wanted Adam to be a person who felt remorse for what he did. Adam had no remorse for the innocent people on the train in the Black trailer. He had no remorse for all the faunus that lost their lives in the Breach. He felt no remorse for having to fight Blake.

People wanted fanon!Adam. They didn’t want canon!Adam.

[tlbodine]

Ableism, Mental Illness, and the Horror Genre

Horror has a problematic history with the mentally ill, and I think there’s a lot to unpack there in terms of ableism and deconstructing harmful tropes. 

* For purposes of this discussion, I’ll be using some potentially-triggering terms like “insane” and “crazy” and “lunatic” and “psycho” and I kindly ask that you don’t take that as any sort of endorsement or reflection of my values -- just as a bundle of terms familiar in the genre. Tread forward carefully. 

Loosely speaking, I think mental illness has three flavors in the horror genre: 

Stories where people with schizophrenia/DID/whatever are the villains 

Stories set in or using mental hospitals/asylums as scary plot devices

Stories about people going insane/losing their grip on reality (or thinking they’re going insane because of the supernatural shenanigans happening in the story) 

I don’t think that these three tropes are necessarily closely related, and I don’t think that any of them are inherently ableist if dealt with under certain circumstances -- but let’s go back to the beginning and try to break it down a bit.

What is Ableism? Why is it Harmful? 

Before we get started, let’s talk about why we should care about this at all. So what actually is ableism? 

Ableism --  The practices and dominant attitudes in society that devalue and limit the potential of persons with disabilities. A set of practices and beliefs that assign inferior value (worth) to people who have developmental, emotional, physical or psychiatric disabilities.

(Source: http://www.stopableism.org/p/what-is-ableism.html) 

Ableism against the mentally ill stigmatizes people who have mental illnesses. It dehumanizes and “others” them. In horror media in particular, it promotes the concept that “crazy people” are dangerous, which can lead to acts of violence against them or an overall lack of compassion. 

I’m a firm believer that there are no bad tropes, and that people are always free to write the stories that speak to them - but I’m also a firm believer that you need to take responsibility for your creations and be aware of the effects your words may have on the world. So we’ll look at how mental illness is portrayed in horror media, why it can be problematic, and some ways to subvert it. 

Mental Illness, as a Concept, is Relatively New (and a lot newer than the horror genre)  

The concept of ableism is even newer. Many, many tropes are rooted in times when social concepts were different. Human behavior hasn’t changed much, but the way we talk about that behavior has -- and stories have a way of sticking around after the cultures that created them are gone. So we have a whole stack of tropes and narratives and ideas that are tied to older ways of thinking. 

So for example: At various points in history and across various cultures, mental illness as we know it today may have been viewed as demonic possession, fae magic, witchcraft, etc. In other words - a lot of the tropes we already associate with horror may in part have been used as an explanation for mental illness symptoms (and the mentally ill may have endured terrible punishments for it throughout history as well). 

Then, as more modern medicine started to be practiced, and psychology began to be developed, the concept of mental illness started to develop...and sometimes that, too, was horrifying. 

Here are some supplemental reading links on the topic you might find interesting: 

http://nobaproject.com/modules/history-of-mental-illness

https://www.healthyplace.com/other-info/mental-illness-overview/the-history-of-mental-illness

http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1673/the-history-of-mental-illness-from-skull-drills-to-happy-pills

Even in modern times, we still don’t fully understand how the brain works and what causes mental illness and the accompanying behaviors -- and the unknown continues to be scary. All of our fears live inside unanswered questions. And that is why these narratives continue to hold sway. 

Why Insanity is Frightening 

Let’s go back to my earlier assertion that there are three flavors of mental illness in horror, because I think at their core that each version preys upon entirely different types of fears: 

#1 The Psycho Killer Trope: 

As seen in: Psycho, Halloween, The Silence of the Lambs

Falls under the TVTrope “Insane Equals Violent” https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsaneEqualsViolent 

Many urban legends also deal with “escaped lunatic” or “dangerous madman” character tropes. The gist of it is that a mentally unstable person is violent, commits atrocious acts, does not feel remorse (or much of anything else), and may somehow possess superhuman strength. 

This scenario is frightening because: 

A crazy person has no motive and cannot be reasoned with 

Crazy people behave erratically and unpredictably 

An insane mind is harder to understand, effectively dehumanizing the villain 

People with hallucinations or delusions can experience a twisted view of reality, leading to abnormal behavior (and cool cinematic effects)

Essentially, if you want to turn a human into a monster, making them “crazy” is an easy (lazy) way to do it. 

Now, here’s the thing. Sometimes, the mentally ill really are dangerous, such as people who attack their families while experiencing delusions. And if you consider sociopaths to be mentally ill, then a good number of serial killers and other violent people count as mentally ill: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/wicked-deeds/201409/the-sociopath-serial-killer-connection

All the same, there are many ways that this trope can become ableist and damaging: 

The overwhelming majority of mentally ill people are non-violent and are actually much more likely to be victims of violence themselves in real life. There are a lot of reasons for that. For one, many severely mentally ill people end up homeless (or homelessness exacerbates existing mental illness), and the homeless are a common target of violence. For another, people’s fear of insanity can lead to them perpetuating violence against the mentally ill. Nasty cycle, right? 

The other big problem with this trope is that it’s not portrayed realistically 99% of the time. Real-world psychopaths are generally not known for their cackling insanity and childish violence. Schizophrenics and people with DID/multiple personalities are statistically very rarely violent, and their violent tendencies are really overblown in media. And that is probably the biggest thing: If the only time we ever see a schizophrenic character in a story is when they’re a crazy killer, then we the audience are going to start thinking that all schizophrenic people are crazy killers. Because most people don’t know anyone with schizophrenia, and they’re not used to ever seeing positive or compassionate portrayals of those people in media. 

#2 The Haunted Asylum Trope: 

As seen in: The Ward, Session 9, American Horror Story: Asylum, and more video games than I can possibly count

Falls under the TVTrope: Bedlam House https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BedlamHouse

There are two flavors to the haunted asylum trope, and they can overlap or happen distinctly. The first is where the action takes place in a now-abandoned building that was once a mental institution and is now haunted as shit. The second is where a person is committed to a mental institution that may or may not be haunted and endures all manner of terrifying things up to and including: abusive staff, ghosts, violent patients, and torturous “treatments.” 

There are more examples of this trope than I can possibly list out, and its roots dig back real deep into our not-so-distant past. Stories like Poe’s short story “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” is an early treatment of the premise (compare and contrast with the film Stonehearst Asylum, which is basically a re-telling); Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, while not precisely horror, is a trope codifier for a lot of things that show up in these stories. 

There’s a lot to fear in this setting: 

“Treatments” that were dangerous and brutal, like lobotomies and electro-shocks, being essentially forms of torture 

The idea of being locked up against your will (a justified fear in certain points of history, when locking up your inconvenient relatives was a viable option)

Being locked up somewhere occupied by those same murderous-madmen from the previous trope 

Ghosts and vengeful spirits who are really pissed about all of the above 

In some ways, the haunted asylum trope is actually anti-ableist, or at least inverts the ableism of the psycho-killer trope, in that the “madmen” are often sympathetic characters rather than the villains. However, it then creates its own set of problems. 

One of the worst issues with the “haunted asylum” trope is it is anachronistic. Modern mental health care isn’t perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than it was 100 years ago -- but people don’t have a lot of cultural touchstones for what a modern inpatient care facility looks like. Painting psychiatrists and other mental healthcare staff as sadistic torture-lovers isn’t exactly doing the profession any favors. 

If the public associates getting mental health care with the kind of things they see in media...well, they won’t be very supportive of that care, right? And that’s a big problem. 

And, of course, if your haunted asylum is also home to crazy psycho-killers, you have a two-for-one ableism problem. 

#3 The Am-I-Losing-My-Mind Trope: 

As seen in: The Shining, 1408, The Babadook

Falls under the TV Trope Through the Eyes of Madness: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThroughTheEyesOfMadness

The diverse sub-genre of “psychological horror” quite frequently utilizes some form or another of this concept -- “Are these things actually happening, or am I losing my mind?” I’m the first to admit that I’m a sucker for this trope. It’s probably my favorite thing about the horror genre. But that doesn’t mean it’s wholly unproblematic. 

There are a few sub-types of this trope: 

Gaslighting, where someone purposely manipulates a character to make them feel like they can’t trust their own perceptions of reality 

The “I think I’m going crazy but wait actually it’s a supernatural event” trope 

The “something happened and it made me go crazy (and possibly violent)” trope

Of these, the third one has the greatest risk of becoming ableist. It’s sometimes used to give a backstory to the psycho-killers in #1, and it has some troubling implications. For one, the idea that trauma can make you go crazy is...overly simplistic at best. We don’t fully understand mental illnesses, but we do know that they are often linked to genetics, brain injury, neurological disorders, childhood experiences, etc. etc. etc. In other words, it’s pretty fucking insensitive and reductionist to suggest that a single traumatic event can “drive someone crazy.” 

The other issue is that, in these cases, being crazy (or being viewed as crazy) is the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen to somebody, right? Like how often do we see the harmful trope of someone experiencing something, then being locked away in one of those mental institutions from #2, and then their life is effectively over? That has to feel pretty awful for the people who do suffer from mental illnesses in the real world. 

So, Okay, How Do We Fix It? 

All right. If you’re still with me after this long exploration, you’re probably wondering: OK, TL, I get it, but what am I -- a horror writer -- supposed to do about this? How do I tell scary stories without falling back on harmful tropes? 

Gee, I’m so glad you asked! 

Not every story is the same, and there is no single “do this and never be accused of ableism” formula, but there are some tips I think can make a lot of difference: 

Ask yourself: Why am I writing this story? What is it about the premise that intrigues and frightens you? Drill down to the core of your motives and mine the untapped potential of fresh ideas rather than regurgitating more well-worn tropes. If you want to write a story about being locked in a place with violent people, can I set it somewhere other than an asylum? If I want to write a story about a murderer, can I make him frightening without him being insane? 

Do your research and portray things realistically. Research here means original, real-life cases and events. If you want to write about a mental hospital, look at real mental hospitals and draw your inspiration from them rather than drawing from the stock tropes in other stories. If you have a psychiatrist character, learn about real psychiatric treatments in the time period you’re writing about. If you have a schizophrenic character, research the actual symptoms and behaviors associated with schizophrenia. 

Question what your thematic choices are actually saying. Consider the implications of a plot point or character, and decide whether you’re comfortable with them. Be self-aware about what you choose to include. 

Practice good representation. A lot of the harm from ableist narratives comes from the mentally ill character being the only representation of that illness - not just in their story, but in every story. Consider including sympathetic, non-villainous characters with (realistically portrayed) mental illnesses. If you have several such characters, it’s not so bad if one of them is indeed a villain. 

Get a sensitivity reader. Find somebody who is familiar with what you’re writing about, and get them to read it and tell you if you’re being an asshole. Ideally, get more than one. Someone who has first-hand experience with the topics you’re writing about can tell you whether or not you’ve missed the mark (within reason). 

Invert and avoid stereotypes: This goes hand-in-hand with doing your research. Study the tropes that are common in the type of story you’re telling, and think of ways to challenge or invert the most common stereotypes. Not only will you avoid falling in the same traps, you’ll also give your story a fresh and refreshing twist that the reader will enjoy. 

I hope this was helpful. If you have more thoughts, feel free to add them below! 

Enjoy what I’m doing here? Show your support by buying me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/A57355UN

[rorykillmore]

i still think poor cordelia got so much less than she deserved in terms of like -- i mean in general part of the price of being the supreme is that you’re always going to be kind of short lived, but not dying in your mid-thirties short-lived, although i guess i buy the “the evolution of the anti-christ forced the cycle to speed up a lot” explanation

but that being said, there is some storytelling value in comparing how she deals with that to how fiona dealt with it. at one point delia admits to myrtle that she is scared, and she doesn’t want to die, and she’s afraid that that makes her like fiona. except that cordelia got dealt such a shorter hand than fiona and she resents it so much less. the contrast between them is that much more vivid not only in how willing she still is to sacrifice herself for the coven, but also i think in that maternal affection she has for mallory. especially when you remember how much the fact that she couldn’t have kids tore her up in early season 3, the idea that cordelia’s version of motherhood is so much more selfless than fiona’s and that she accepts that the closest thing she has to a daughter is the person who’s inadvertently killing her so much more... lovingly does say a lot about breaking shitty cycles

no character who perpetuates abuse because of the abuse dealt to them gets a free pass because cordelia goode exists

[cmart009]

The bad crowd of tumblr that tumblr itself is defending repeatedly, without thinking.

Spoken from a good friend of mine.

“I used to be strongly into the ‘Social Justice’ crowd. Looking back, that whole thing operates a lot like a cult. It lures in vulnerable people, especially young people. People who’re going through puberty and trying to figure out their sexuality. People who might be dealing with disability or mental illness, or whose family is breaking up. It sucks them in by spoon-feeding the idea that they are special and worthy. It guilts them if they don’t treat everybody else as special and worthy too. It starts forcing you to see everybody as being in a hierarchy. 

Then it gets you to alienate yourself from your friends. Your friend sometimes makes racist/sexist jokes? Cut them out of your life. Got any conservative friends? Cut them out of your life. Got any friends who are white straight men? Cut them out of your life, they’re the oppressors. Constantly berate people if they slip up, because everybody else must be held to the same standards that you are and no other ways to thinking are ‘right’. 

Then it tells you to start criticizing and trying to change your family. It tells you to ‘call out’ any little thing they do ‘wrong’. It warps your perception until you are a victim and constantly on the defense. It breaks you off from everybody and makes you feel awful for things you cannot control - and then, if you disagree or start questioning, it cuts you off from the only support you have left, and you are attacked and viciously berated. Maybe if you grovel enough they’ll let you be redeemed and come back, but you will never be allowed to forget the one mistake you made.

Eventually I found anti-SJ blogs, where people were actively critiquing these concepts and the SJ culture. Originally I felt nothing but hatred for them - but then the words started to sink in. I started questioning whether this really was ‘right’. I saw how so many people leading the crowd were hugely hypocritical, I realized that I had been causing the problems in my life, no ‘oppression’. I apologized to my family for how I’d been acting and I’m lucky that they were still supportive of me. I’d lost a lot of friends, including some people I was very close to. It’s taken me a long time rebuild those relationships. I It was a very bad period of my life, and one that took a lot of effort to drag myself away from. 

The ‘social justice’ crowd is completely toxic, and I feel very sorry for everybody who’s sucked into it. It is nothing but hatred and guilt, and I have no respect for the people who perpetuate it.”

This is basically the cycle of abuse, but it’s being reinforced collectively. 

Find someone vulnerable, jump on them - pull them in by giving them something they want or need. Use this as leverage to assert further control. Then, once you’ve assumed total control (Or possibly even direct control), they will begin to withhold what they originally offered you until you obey. Often, this behavior will escalate out of control, where in minor offenses are met with outrageous punishments.

I want you all to learn how to recognize this pattern, because there are plenty of people who will attempt to use it on you, possibly without thinking. This shit destroys lives, and if you’ve never seen it before, you probably don’t think anything is wrong. 

[rapeculturerealities]

The momentum of #MeToo shows the media’s power to help shift society’s views on sexual violence. Yet, in a society steeped in patriarchal values, the media often perpetuates rape culture. A 2015 study by Australia’s National Research Organization for Women’s Safety found that the media often shifts the responsibility for sexual violence from the perpetrators to the victims, and uses sensationalized language to better capitalize on these stories. Even in the post-Weinstein apocalypse, news media is still publishing op-eds about dressing modestly to “avoid” sexual harassment, and editors continue choosing headlines like “The Witch Hunt of Senator Al Franken.” If we have any hope of creating a safe world for marginalized communities that’s free of sexual violence, the media must change the way it covers sexual violence. Shedding light on the pervasiveness of sexual violence is integral in the fight to end it, along with better understanding the social context behind it. As a survivor, I share my experiences publicly in an effort to highlight and critique the many ways our society and institutions perpetuate further violence against survivors. As part of my anti-rape advocacy, I became a freelance writer and have had to face mainstream media’s notoriously frustrating editorial process. I’m often told by journalists with far more experience in the industry than me that “it’s just the way it is,” but let’s face it—“the way it is” no longer cuts it. I had my first negative editorial experience in April when I pitched Teen Vogue a personal essay on the stealthing study that ran in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law. The study touched on how hesitant victims of stealthing are to identify their experience as sexual assault, which sparked a very passionate and visceral reaction for me. While I wasn’t “stealthed,” condom use is an important emotional and physical boundary that my rapist knowingly violated when he sexually assaulted me. I knew I had to write about it, and I hoped that sharing my story would give people the language they needed to process their own sexual assault. Teen Vogue’s “Not Your Fault” vertical seemed like the perfect platform, so I anxiously pitched my idea on April 23. Within 12 hours, an editor accepted it and asked me to submit a draft on May 1. On April 26, my editor asked if I could turn it in that day, so I pushed myself to write and file the story by April 27. Although I submitted the draft early and checked in with her a couple of times over the next week, she never responded. After the editor stopped responding to my emails yet again, I decided to pull the story on June 1 and published it with Wear Your Voice on June 6. It’s emotionally taxing to write about my assault, so initially giving myself a week to write the story afforded me the space to mitigate its impact on my mental health. I pushed that personal boundary per this editor’s request, and stringing me along for six weeks was a blatant disregard for the emotional labor that I put into writing about my trauma. Editors must be mindful of the toll it takes on survivors to write about their assault, and must be transparent about the editorial process. If people want to align themselves against the culture that allowed Weinstein to abuse women for so long, publications need to build trust with survivors so that their stories can be told. To start, editors and journalists must change the way they work with sexual assault stories and survivors. Shortly after the Weinstein expose, FLARE Magazine commissioned me for an essay on how I was dealing with being bombarded by sexual assault stories on social media. When I submitted my first draft, the editor’s feedback was that it needed a more “catchy” title, and suggested “I Was Raped and Here’s How I’m Navigating the Weinstein News Cycle.” Not only was it poorly written, but that particular headline operates on the assumption that readers only engage with stories about trauma that focus on the violence. Clickbait titles aren’t a new concept in digital publishing, but on the heels of #MeToo, it reads as exploitative. Of course publications need to generate advertising revenue, and interesting headlines are part of that, but focusing on the violent details of our assault misrepresents our experiences and leverages violence to increase their bottom line. Media coverage should foster empathy for survivors by acknowledging the violation of our very humanity instead of defining us by the violence we experience. Unfortunately, it’s not only editors who mistreat survivors—journalists are part of the problem too. A freelancer working for The Walrus Magazine recently interviewed me for a story on the importance of sexual consent, and a few weeks later, told me that they’d be contacting my rapist for comment on the story. They said that it wasn’t a question about my credibility, but they were interested in seeing if he had any remorse for what he’d done.. I expressed that I was concerned for my safety and that I didn’t want my rapist contacted because he’s actively leveraged rape myths and outright lied to avoid accepting responsibility for violating me. He knows where I live, and he’s mentioned wanting retaliation against me—I wouldn’t have put it past him to act on that desire.

[aikainkauna]

How about instead of purity culture, we re-associate sex with empathy and romance instead?

Oh, you're not so-and-so -sexual anymore, you're so-and-so -~romantic~ now, Tumblr?

Can you please actually fucking look at what you're implying there? And exactly how fucked up it is when you break it down to its roots? No?

Well fucking done for further perpetuating the status quo of sexuality being the douchebag abusive male idea of sexuality, then--where sex doesn't include romance and love natively, where sex doesn't mean you should care about your partner or your health (AIDS epidemic, anyone?), where sex is just base and lower than your high and lofty and pure fleshless love, and where sexuality and bodily pleasure automatically translates into victimhood: being groped, abused, used.

Well done for further driving in the poisonous wedge Judaeo-Christian dualism has fucked the world over with in separating love (high, holy, virginal, saintly) and the flesh (sinful, a waste, demonic).

Well done for digging yourself deeper into a gender trench (because this, as usual, doesn't pass the 'do websites full of guys follow this trend?' test) where men are stupid dumb animals who just think with their cocks and women and theys are morally superior, higher beings who are ~above~ all that nasty fucking--because they have never experienced or even imagined, let alone gone forth to actualise the concept of bodies with vaginas having love *and* physical pleasure at the same time.

Honestly, fucking *stop* it with the self-victimisation masquerading as some kind of pride and radical assertion of identity, when it (like so many of Tumblr's sexuality and gender trends) is yet another manifestation of a mindset wherein abuse is *accepted* as the default fate for female bodies. Just like boobless webcomics don't help normalise boobs and lift them out of their fate as objects that will get you judged and groped and abused.

For fuck's sake, another severing of romance, emotions, psychology (i.e. the main aspects of biological human females' sexuality) from physical sex, falsely valorising mental love, asexuality and purity culture is *not* going to help make sex less rife with abuse.

It's another manifestation of the kind of prudery which makes the dumb young guys even more abusive, makes them hit back even harder with rape jokes and abuse porn because they feel like that's soon going to be the only way they can ever even *have* a sexuality, the only way they'll ever get laid--because they, too, have swallowed the same crap about sex being abuse, and adopt the brash, swaggering identities of rape culture in *direct fucking reaction* to the prudery. And then the girls get more wounded and become too PTSDd to ever dig themselves out of this mess--and look what a lovely, lovely vicious cycle of misery we've got!

When we, the intelligent apes--who have the capacity for *both* high morality, sociality and complex psychology *and* bodies that can have sex more than almost any other species on the planet--should be kissing and hugging and fucking and coming and having happy piles of snuggles instead. We were doing that perfectly well before we came down from the trees, and were *the* species whose sexuality transcended mere procreation into complex social interaction, love, social cohesion and who generally fucked so pleasurably and lovingly we stuck together like glue.

Until all this socio-religious bullshit and other excuses we invented severed Real Morality from the genitals, and everything went downhill from there--and it's getting worse and worse every day on the Internet.

Severing sex from romance, severing love from the physical acts of love, doesn't make you purer. It does *exactly* what religious dualism and toxic masculinity have done--it makes you into a victim. It does not help create a world in which love, romance, sex and respect and pleasure for bodies of all shapes and sizes and sexes and genders and orientations--*our birthright*--are the default setting.

Seriously, think. Does that identity of yours stem from victimhood? From dualisms? From abuse? From gender roles you haven't actually dug to the bottom of? Because hey, you're so un-normative and so so queer you cannot *possibly* have any godawfully sexist, dualist, anti-pleasure-and-love baggage fucking with your cognition this very moment? (Just because there's a fancy stripey flag for it, it doesn't mean it's necessarily progressive or a way out--it may very well be digging yourself in *deeper.*)

I honestly don't give a fuck if you have the physical libido of a small village or a gnat, or what your personal happymaking amounts of mental or physical love are (45% physical gay humping, 150% mental furry fantasy?), but watch that terminology. That terminology and rhetoric affects the world around you and how people see themselves and each other, so examine what you are actually implying. Watch the paradigms that have gone into that--the "sex is mindless humping/abuse and I can vouch for this" being one of the worst and hardest to dig yourself out of, especially if you've been the one victimised.

But it's up to you whether you want to perpetuate the fucking monstrous idea that sexuality is base and animal and that it doesn't include love and romance, perpetuate the very culture that's hurt you and made you feel awkward about your body and your pleasure and your feelings in the first place. Do you seriously accept the idea that sex and romance are mutually exclusive and that one is nobler than the other, just because that's been the idiotic idea the world around you has been operating through? Or are you going to put your foot down and say no to the dualism that's done nothing but harm ever since it began, and speak and kiss and fantasise and hug and wank and cuddle and fuck for something more wholistic and *human* instead?