#i preferred it when the *bad guys* so to speak were far right white nationalists because Guess What

[variousqueerthings]

I finished the west wing s3, and I feel like it’s in a place that’s quite hard for me to engage with on a fictional level now, moreso than before

pre-s3 (pre-real life 9/11) the show seemed to mostly be engaged with internal politics, and my biggest issue with it was related to something that I was also understanding was at its base structure, that is, because it’s set within the government, it doesn’t often actually... portray people whom their policies affect 

and I think this was something I could live with better to begin with, but as we meet more ostensible activists and people who are working directly with people I notice they’re often portrayed as... a little out of touch, a little naïve about the big churning wheels, or sometimes just plain wrong (josh lyman arguing in defence of sex workers rights vs apparent feminist mary-louise parker being like “no criminalising makes perfect sense” is a strong example)

and then in s3 it got very terrorists and those countries over there doing that, and that worsened that structural issue waaaay more, because now it’s not that the show simply doesn’t depict people affected by things as much (which, again, can live with, even though I think it oughta have slowly done so more -- one gay main wouldn’t have killedya), so much as it is a bunch of people in the white house waxing on and on about american values needed in the middle east (or that british lord talking about not wanting to be in the same room as a sinn féin terrorist, and that’s not even really a plot point, it’s just there, I really dislike that character a lot, begone!)   

I knew this would probably happen going in, so I’m just watching it with my own awareness, but it is harder to engage with the characters doing character things, when I’m also remembering that one or another rant this or that character went on about terrorism and you’re sitting there in 2023 knowing that in real life america just lied and invaded iraq (not during the filming of this or the next season though... would it align with s6?) and that the so-called “american leader of the free world” values that get touted more than once are uh... exaggerated, to be very polite

I kind of wish that since it’s a fantasy-world, they’d let it be one, but I can see how at the time it wanted to respond to the politics du jour. I just think that part of it mostly ages very poorly

I wonder what s4-onwards has to say about george bush by proxy (is he the fantasy republican candidate who’s an asshole who goes off about academic elitists? I’ll just imagine he is)

[theheavymetalmama]

And now, some Unpopular Opinions!

Because at this point, why the hell not?

Iron Man was better than The Dark Knight

I am in no way, shape, or form suggesting that The Dark Knight is a bad movie. Far from it, in fact. It’s a damn good movie with some fantastic performances, a gripping story, and some of the best written characters and dialogue in the history of movie making. So is Iron Man the better movie? For one, it’s not so stuck up its’ own ass about its’ message. The Dark Knight is a lot of things and one of them is pretentious as fuck, come off as less of a love letter to Batman and more of a method of the director Chris Nolan showing how much he has nothing but contempt for superheroes and comic books in general. Iron Man, in contrast, embraces it and has fun with the idea of a guy who builds a mech suit and fights bad guys. There’s also the question of influence, and that right there is no contest. The Dark Knight influenced Batman; Iron Man influenced the entire movie industry.

Final Fantasy XV was a massive disappointment

I kind of feel bad for dunking on this game considering they just cancelled the last of the DLC. Then again the last of the DLC was going to expand on Lady “Show Up and Blow Up” Lunafreya and Aranea “I’m here and now I’m not” Highwind’s stories and now we’re not getting them and I’m still bitter as fuck for the director’s pathetic excuse for why a girl couldn’t attend the coming of age road trip, so all bet’s are off! Okay, the ladies getting shafted aside, there is a lot to like about Final Fantasy XV, but was it worth the tedious development time? No way in hell. The game looks good but like many open world games feels mostly lifeless and empty, and of the four main characters only one of them is likable and isn’t even playable in the game’s vanilla form. The story is a broken mess that requires other forms of media to fully grasp (dick fucking move there, Squeenix) and the summons coming at random times serves as more of an annoyance than anything, especially since they always seem to show up except during times when and where they’d be useful. It also doesn’t say good things about a company’s management when a game can sell millions of copies in record time as well as do gangbusters on downloadable content and then still manage to lose over 30 million dollars.

And for the record, let it be known that Noctis is far and away the whiniest and most emo protagonist in Final Fantasy history, which is saying something considering this is a series where one such protagonist’s entire character is being so jaded and world weary to the point that his name is the sound a crying baby makes, and he doesn’t whine and complain as much as Noctis does.

Just because you’re a cop or a soldier, that doesn’t automatically make you a good person

I’m in favor of police and law enforcement and even though I believe our military budget makes Caligula himself look frugal in comparison I do support our troops. Having said that, being a cop or a trooper doesn’t mean jack shit if the person under the uniform is a complete and utter scumbag, which happens more often than many care to admit. In fact some people, many people, become cops and soldiers not to protect and serve or out of a sense of honor and duty, but simply because they like making others miserable and want to do it for a living. There’s a reason songs about fighting the law and unflattering depictions of authority figures date back as far as authority figures have been a thing. Respect is earned, not given.

‘White Nationalist’ and ‘Nazi’ are the same things

Calling a Nazi a white nationalist is like calling somebody who abuses their spouse a rough lover. Stop beating around the bush and tell it like it is. Also, don’t debate Nazis, punch them. Punch them as hard as you fucking can. If they punch you back, punch them again, and again, and again until they either run away (which most of them do) or stop moving. Trust me, nobody is going to miss them. That goes double for the alt right. Oh, and speaking of which...

Far Cry 5 chickened out

As somebody who grew up in a dead gold mining community that was mostly Catholic, when the first trailer for Far Cry 5 came out I was stoked as hell for the chance to gun down religious fanatics and skinheads in a place in rural America that didn’t look all that different. Then the game came out and it was abundantly clear to anybody that something somewhere in the game was changed at the last minute. Some have argued that it was their intention from the get go, others claimed they didn’t want to alienate their core demographic. It doesn’t say nice things about your core demographic if you’re worried about depictions of white supremacist cultists scaring them away, but okay, fine. Then make a game that takes place during the decline of the Ku Klux Klan, or in a post World War II Europe where you hunt Nazi war criminals, or failing that make something akin to Black Dynamite or a wacky 70′s Kung Fu movie where everything is purposefully over the top and exaggerated, I don’t care! All your other games have you gunning down hordes of brown people, let people like me and my husband kill some skinheads god damn it!

If you still support Donald Trump after all the vile and abhorrent things he’s done, you’re a bad person

There’s no beating around the bush on this one. I don’t blame people who were swooned by this conman thinking he’d genuinely make a good president and have since regretted their decision. I have nothing but sympathy for them. No, I’m talking about the people who STILL trip over themselves to defend this vile, homophobic, delusions, misogynist, narcissistic bigot. Like when he called Nazis “very fine people,” or is still pushing for a stupid wall along our border that will be bested by two extension ladders and a pair of tin snips. The travel ban, the rollback on regulations that kept food insecure people fed, kids dying in his fucking concentration camps, yeah, no. He’s a treasonous scumbag who deserves to be locked in an 8x8 cell until he rots, and if you still support him then you can claim the top bunk.

Climate change is real and coal can fuck off

Coal is dead. Let it lay down and rot. What, coal is your only source of income in the area you live in? Then move somewhere else! You think I would have left my hometown if there were any opportunities other than timber, fishing, and tourist traps? Sorry, but the longer we stay in the past with coal the lesser we can look forward to a future where a planet can sustain human life. If we want our planet to live then coal needs to die.

No, the left isn’t “just as bad” as the right

This is a fucking gas lighting farce that immediately falls apart when put under scrutiny. Are there extremists and crazies on the left? Of course there are, but they’re entirely different beasts as those found on the right. The left is more of a “eat enough kale and you can talk to dolphins” or “sleep with crystals under your bed and you can see the future” kinds of crazy, whereas the right is more of the “kill all the queers and let the brown babies starve” kind of crazy. Oh, and to each and every single person who said “Clinton is just as bad as Trump,” y’all can cover your reproductive organs in honey and stick them in a mason jar filled with live bullet ants and tarantula hawks, you ignorant scare mongering shitheels!

“Captain Marvel doesn’t smile!”

So what? She’s a space Navy Seal, not a boy scout like Captain America or Superman; she’s not supposed to smile.

No, the ‘alt left’ doesn’t exist and Antifa aren’t the same as Nazis

Are Antifa breaking the law? Yes. Should they be held accountable for their actions? Yes. Are people who want to kill Nazis exactly the same as people who want to exterminate the Jews and subjugate anybody who isn’t white while wiping other people’s culture off the face of the Earth under an authoritarian rule? Hell to the no and “Antifa is just as bad as the Nazis” is right up there with “Vaccinations cause autism” and “the Earth is flat” on the scale of “If you believe this, you are STUPID.” If Nazis and white supremacists went unopposed they’d go around raping and murdering Jews and non whites until there were absolutely none of them left. You know Antifa would be doing if there weren’t any Nazis around? Sitting in their crappy apartments smoking weed, sipping craft beer, eating pizza, and laughing their asses off at 20 year old Saturday Night Live skits. Ooooooh, scary! Yes, Antifa are assaulting people and destroying public property and yes they should be held accountable for their actions. But I’m not going to pretend, even hypothetically, that Nazi apologist scumbags like Tucker Carlson having his door banged on or actual Nazis like Richard Spencer getting punched in the face is on the same playing field as babies being put in cages, innocent black people being murdered by cops, or Jews being put into ovens, you fucks!

New She Ra is better than Old She Ra and 80′s cartoons in general

If you don’t like the new She Ra and prefer the old one, fine, you do you, but don’t act like the original is “So much better” because it isn’t at all. The villains were jokes, the animation was beyond cheap, the characters all looked the same, there were stupid talking animal sidekicks, and the story went nowhere really fucking fast outside of “Bad guys are doing bad guy stuff, our heroes must stop them” because they were commercials to sell toys. Nothing more, nothing less. If the new She Ra isn’t your bag then that’s all well and good, but don’t be a stupid asshole about it, talking about how it wasn’t featured at PowerCon like it’s a big fucking deal when only sad dorks like us give a shit about conventions, or whine about how you’re being oppressed and censored because a 16 year old isn’t rocking 44DD’s, or talk about “CalArts style” like that’s a real goddamn thing. Oh yeah, and speaking of which...

“CalArts style” is not a thing

Shut the fuck up, no it isn’t. It’s a stupid, meaningless buzzword hurled at people who never fucking went to CalArts in the first place. If you’re perplexed as to why modern cartoons all look like Steven Universe, the simple fact is that cartoons are made predominantly for children and shows are made to be aesthetically pleasing to them. With shows like Adventure Time, Regular Show, Steven Universe, Star vs the Forces of Evil, and Gravity Falls being soaring success stories while shows like Young Justice, new GI Joe, and 2011 Thundercats ambitious failures, it’s obvious that formal abstractionist non angularity is in while aspirational human physical fitness is out, and a big reason the latter was even a thing in the first place is because they were toy commercials first and there were only so many variations on plastic molds to form the fucking action figures and because it was the 80′s and Arnold was the biggest star at the time.

“Star Wars: the Last Jedi” is a good movie and fanboys can eat bantha poodoo

I’ve heard all the reasons for why The Last Jedi is a bad movie and they’re all either stupid nitpicky bullshit or meaningless fanboy gripes. I could write an entire essay debunking those reasons point for point, like how the reason Holdo didn’t tell Poe a damn thing because no admiral would ever a tell a lowly grunt anything about their plan, especially after being demoted for being a hotheaded little fuckup. Or that Rey being related to Obi Wan or any previous Star Wars character didn’t happen because that would have been stupid and the definition of predictable. Or that the reason Akbar didn’t do the suicide run is because he’s a meme that the general audience doesn’t give a shit about and that there’s no way in Hell that the Mouse would allow a character named “Akbar” to do a suicide run. Or that Kylo Ren not being an intimidating villain is the whole point and that you’re supposed to hate him because he’s a petulant Darth Vader wannabe and a snake to boot. Or that the effectiveness of said suicide run, where Snoke came from, or the state of the Resistance by the end of the movie, or that any other so called ‘plot hole’ doesn’t matter because this is a movie about space wizards for children and paying obsessive attention to meaningless and pedantic details is exactly how we end up with stupid subplots in the Beauty and the Beast remake and Metropolis and Gotham City being across the river from each other! But the biggest one is Luke wasn’t portrayed as some Jedi Clint Eastwood (why fanboys want that eludes me; the EU did that a few times and they were all terrible) and that him exiling himself doesn’t make any sense.

Sorry, but no, Luke running off to a far and unreachable island makes perfect sense. For one, it’s kind of a thing that disgraced Jedi do, and for two, Star Wars is a fairy tale in space. All of the characters draw inspiration from characters and archetypes from fairy tales and fables of old, and the one Luke Skywalker resembles most (largely by design) is King Arthur. Think about it. Common boy who doesn’t know who his real parents are, meets an old wizard, gets a legendary sword, discovers he’s of noble lineage, tags along with a few colorful characters, goes on a quest that’s bigger than him and the life he knew, hits a few bumps down the road, and then eventually he saves the kingdom by overthrowing his father who once was a great man and a hero but gave in to power and corruption and became a dark reflection of his former self.

You will never unsee that. 

Oh yeah, and remember how things turned out for King Arthur in the end? He started a whole new kingdom, he had a few good years, he grew arrogant, things started to fall apart, and suddenly he and everything he worked to build up were undone overnight by a younger, more vindictive relative. Disgraced, Arthur was whisked away to an unreachable island deep rooted in his own legend and mythology where he remained until Britain had fallen to darkness and needed him again. Now of course Britain as we know it has yet to see such a thing (we’ll see how Brexit turns out) but Luke did exactly that. And no, sorry fanboys, but The Last Jedi wasn’t a failure in any sense of the word. It grossed over a billion dollars, received critical praise, the DVDs and BluRays sold like hotcakes, and was adored by kids, teenagers, and young adults, the primary audience that Star Wars is for in the first place. And I don’t give a shit what the audience score on RT says, because for one aggregate sites are a blight on film criticism and we went from this;

“Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad are AMAZING, Rotten Tomatoes is biased and paid off by Disney!”

To this...

“Star Wars: the Last Jedi is TERRIBLE, Rotten Tomatoes says so!”

In just over a year. To say nothing of the fact that what you’re currently saying about The Last Jedi was also said about The Empire Strikes, and like ‘Empire’ twenty years from now people will look back on the fanboy outrage and say “Wow, what a bunch of babies.” And before the inevitable response...

“But Solo bombed because of The Last Jedi!” 

Nooooo, Solo bombed because it came out right between Infinity War and Deadpool 2, was rife with development issues since day one of production, it was aimed overwhelmingly at fanboys obsessed with Star Wars deep lore answering questions that the general audience doesn’t give a shit about, nobody was even interested in the thing until the Lego Movie guys were signed on for a hot second, moviegoers aren’t currently hurting for cocky space cowboys...

...and because of the simple fact that it’s a solo movie about Han Solo...and it’s not 1995 and Harrison Ford isn’t in it. See, fanboys don’t realize that just because nerd and geek bullshit is mainstream now doesn’t mean that everyone is now a fanboy deep rooted in everything from where the characters are from to where they’re going, because when people say “I love Star Wars and Han Solo is my favorite character” what the vast majority of them mean is “Those movies with the space wizards and the laser swords are a lot of fun and Harrison Ford is a great movie star.” That’s it. That’s extent of why people like Han Solo. Sad dorks like us may care about stuff like where and when he got the Falcon, how he met Chewie, where the dice came from and all of that and more, but the general audience just wants to see Harrison Ford do cool shit in space. That’s it. To say nothing of the fact that nobody was even interested in the spinoffs in the first place. When Disney announced that they were making episodes 7,8, and 9 everyone went “Oh Hell yes, sign me up!” Then when they followed up with that they were also making spinoff movies about stuff that happened off screen or between movies the same audience was like “Oh...well that’s neat, I guess.”

And no, that stupid fanboy boycott had nothing to do with. Even the dude who started that petition to strike TLJ from canon admitted that he was in a bad place and that he was being stupid and angry, and I can promise you that all the shrieking dorks on Youtube are the buzzing of flies to Disney. If that crowd had any box office and movie making decision influence whatsoever, the next spinoff we’d see a trailer for would be “My Twi’lek Waifu: a Star Wars Story.”

PewDiePie is the worst thing to happen to video games this side of the gaming crash of 83 and he needs to fuck off

Yes, you read that right, and I don’t say that lightly. All sorts of terrible things have happened in the gaming industry since the gaming crash of 83. The console wars, the Atari Jaguar, the Philips CDi, Jack Thompson, the death of the Dreamcast, WoW, an entire console generation packed to the gills with homogenous gray and brown shooters with protagonists who all looked the fucking same, GamerGate, microtransactions, DLC abuse, the death of Maxis, an increasingly toxic fandom, “women are too hard to animate,” the degradation of E3 from a showcase of the biggest and bestest in gaming to a corporately sponsored circlejerk of self congratulatory backslapping and so much, much more.

I don’t care how much PewDiePie gives to charity, or how many fans he has, or how many people think he’s just the greatest, because he’s not. He’s an embarrassing, stupid asshole who constantly gets busted for making stupid racist jokes and by extension making his fans and everyone who has even the vaguest ties to the word ‘gamer’ look like stupid, racist assholes. He’s a corporate ass sucking apologist who gives exposure to anti Semites and racist wastes of space to his audience of mostly 10 to 15 year old boys, and he’s more terminally obnoxious than an Adderall addicted Pomeranian. 

The day he posted his first video of him overreacting to a jump scare while making loud screeching noises on top of edgy rape jokes was the day the progress of “gaming as an art form” was shot between the eyes, placed in a box that was then filled with concrete, and thrown into the ocean. He’s a dumbass man child that’s making all of us look bad and he needs to take his millions worth of corporate sponsorships and fuck off forever into some dark, lonely corner of the Internet where he’ll never be seen or heard from again until an inevitable meltdown that lands him on an episode of Down the Rabbit Hole.

And that concludes this post. I’ll give my final thoughts tomorrow, and on Saturday I’m closing this account forever.

[thorem]

Trans and Otherkin: debunking popular myths

So yeah, I have decided to do that stuff too. Why? Because there is a lot of misunderstanding regarding transgender issues among the otherkin. For example, hordes and hordes of people think that being otherkin is the same as being transgender and that it is literally a fact, while it is not (I am serious).

Also, this may sound hilarious to some of you, but I am tired of transphobia in some parts of the community. All of you know what part in particular I am talking about, but it really, really hurts, and it will definitely suck if I’ll meet the same thing here over time. Gender is not a kin, but it doesn't imply that you are totally different and can safely participate in cishet hate because of that.

And, yes, I am transgender and otherkin, so I think that I can freely speak over the topic.

So let the magic of snow, ice and light begin!

Myth #1: It is okay to regard transgenderism and otherkinity as the same thing.

Reality: It is NOT okay to regard transgenderism and otherkinity as the same thing and doing so is transphobic.

"Oh, yes, Thory, we know your position here, but aren't the roots of being Otherkin an uninvestigated issue? Maybe otherkinity is a gender or in other way directly related to trangenderism, how do you know and why do you think that stating so is transphobic?"

Well, yes, being otherkin may be the same thing as being transgender. And it may be the same thing as being a president of the United States. It could be anything. However, the belief that all of the US presidents are otherkin and vice versa is not a basis for a lot of hidden transphobia within the otherkin community, while regarding otherkinity and trangenderism as two equivalent things is. A lot of people inside the community think like that:

“I don’t try to persuade everybody to call me a dragon in public, why shall I call you a woman then?” — well, you can call me a dragoness, I will prefer that more, sure.

“I am not open about being a dragon, so you shouldn’t be open about being a trans-woman and make those stinky sodomic prides either!” — totally agree, dragons must have a right to sodomic prides, defending our constitutional rights to safely breath fire, eat princes (I prefer princes over princesses) and not being discriminated against our scale colour at our jobs :(

“I feel OK not being a dragon in real life, why do you damage yourself then in order to become a female?” — because operations to change your species became too costly nowadays, eh? I should’ve voted Labour..

And even…

“God, taking hormones is the same thing as wearing a fursuit!” — sad to hear that. My Don’t Hug a Cacti hormone replacement therapy costed me a lot, my wallet.

Yes, those are the real things I am getting to deal with in my real life. Not mentioning the far right propaganda, “gay agenda”, TERFs and other realities of everyday Russian otherkin community.

In fact, being transgender and being otherkin can have many things in common, however, it is not a thing you will discuss openly, but rather a matter of a serious and long discussion. While species dysphoria is a thing and can really hurt, it can in no way compare to how transgender feels: there are nearly no suicides attributed to the first one. Also take into account that otherkinity is strongly related to spirituality, phantom limbs and all of that stuff, while transgenderism is materialistic, crude and blank. Well, you may say that you are transgender as you saw yourself as that in your dream, but you won’t dive into the utterly discriminated, loathed and hated community by nearly everyone on political compass only on that basis, won’t you?

Myth #2: I am going to go to the pride with my brand new otherkin flag, transgenders will accept me!

Reality: You can also go with the flag of TERF Island or Russia here and will literally have the same outcome.

Otherkin people are not the part of a pride. Not because they are not valid, but because they don’t have any rights to petite for and don’t face discrimination whatsoever. Well, maybe, I can regard dragon curves not being studied on my math curriculum as discrimination, but it in no way compares to systematic state-based hatred and discrimination with my own president loathing people like me, to basically tides and tides of bullying and violence from feminists, nationalists, communists, christian fanatics, even the adolescent fiction writers! Moreover, this will only strengthen discrimination against transgender, because a lot of “normie” people can regard otherkin folk as zoophile perverts and transgenders as their allies.

I am in no way stating now that “normies can think that we are going too far” thing, but your emergence will be dangerous and pointless. Keep it to yourself.

Myth #3: High percentage of transgenders among the otherkin implies otherkin being a spiritual phenomena.

Reality: It can imply a whole plethora of things.

The logic from which this argument follows is that past lives are gender neutral, which is why 50% of otherkin will be in their past life a gender, different to which they have now. Which is why they will be transgender then or will have a higher percentage of them due to other being enby and, therefore, as we see that it is, otherkin is a spiritual phenomena. So what is wrong with that logic?

We don’t know the exact origins of otherkinity, because everybody experiences it differently: some have the phantom limbs, some do not, some have the dream part, some do not. Therefore, there may be different materialistic theories of otherkin, where some are related to transgenderism, some are not. For example, one may experience gender dysphoria concealing as “species dysphoria” due to the combination of inner/outer transphobia and the love for certain species. Or maybe transgenderism is related to species dysphoria in some sophisticated way, who knows? It is just important to say that it doesn’t imply that species dysphoria and gender dysphoria are the same thing which is felt the same way, because affiliation is not the same thing as equivalence (see Myth #1).

Myth #4: Otherkin must have the same gender as their kintype.

Reality: The gender they identify with and the gender of their kintype are different things.

While it can seem at glance that the reality is “The kintype must have the same gender as the otherkin”, because otherkin identify themselves with their kintype fully and blah, blah, blah, but this reasoning exclude the guys who don’t identify themselves with their kintype directly, but instead are describing it as “past life”, “a sentinel” or some other thing. Well, some may say that “past life” is the same thing as identification, but if humans identifying themselves as a sperm inside the egg cell is a thing now, I think that this post can be regarded as outdated.

And, yeah, if we are talking about the “identify-otherkin” guys, then we still are not aligning with the myth, because then “The kintype must have the same gender as the otherkin” as gender is usually much stronger than your kintype (at least, I haven’t seen people committing suicide due to not being able to lay eggs), while Mowgli syndrome is a thing.

Myth #5: Transphobia and enbyphobia can’t hurt the otherkin community.

Reality: Indeed. They destroy it.

Yes, I am a hypocrite. You can’t go to pride, but can’t be transphobic or enbyphobic either, what a terrible, terrible Thory. But life is not about justice and otherkin is in general regarded by society as much, MUCH more bizarre thing, than transgenderism with no scientific evidence, except several poorly written descriptions of confabulations and nightmares. What is even worse is that there is no way otherkin can become normalised without LGBTQIAP+, because there is no normie who will say that being “a dragon” is normal, not saying that being transgender is norman. Except furries, but they are, of course, “the scum, who makes society think bad of us”.

So by being transphobic and enbyphobic you just repel the only ones in this world, who can theoretically care about you. Good luck!

Myth #6: Most of the male otherkin are gays, because they were females when they were their species.

Reality: Most of the male otherkin are gays, because dragon dicks are much more beautiful, tastier and tactile than ugly human sausages.

Being serious, interpretations of Holy Bible vary less, than this whole “science” about homosexual otherkin.

Probably there is less differentiation between male and female species of kinds, other than human (at least, in imagination of otherkin), there are less females in otherkin community as whole (and if there are, they go together due to otherkin community being a misogynistic bullshit (Even I want to go away because of that)), so bisexual and bi-heterosexual otherkin have only one choice left. The theory about hidden transsexuals among the gays is overtly transphobic and if you seriously believe and spread that hypothesis — you are a dickhead.

So, that said, I think that I have investigated all the popular myths about the trans*persons in the community. Of course, there are many more, which are smaller, but I don’t want to turn this post into a lecture. Hope that I will review them in individual posts or my separate big article on #gender.

Have a nice day ^^

White dragoness, Thorem Hal

[scoutshonor56]

KWID DOH NO!

Our Kartoon Prezident

 Well, as year #3 of this torn and frazzled, circle-the-wagons administration comes to a close, it’s time to look back and reflect on the Little King’s record thus far.  After all, “some” say he’s the greatest president since Lincoln, maybe even better!  Well, OK, he does anyway… Oh Little Donny, you are one for the history books, you’re certainly right about that!

 In the short span of three years in office, due to your ego, stupidity, and gullibility, you’ve made our country a punchline and a bad joke to the rest of the free world.  You’ve soured relations with pretty much all the major democratic nations of both hemispheres and it’s become abundantly obvious that you prefer the company of despots and dictators, because they curry your favor and feed your ego while playing you for a sucker and a clueless rube.  You play international diplomacy not like a shrewd card shark, but someone who still gets confused when playing “Go Fish”.

 While your own top advisors, the CIA, and our National Security team strongly suggested you throw in the 4 and the 7 and take two cards, you said, “But I asked them, and they said they got nothing – I’m betting it all on what I have!”

 Did Putin rig the 2016 election?  “I asked him, he said no…”

 Does Kim Jong-un intend to stop his nuclear proliferation? “I asked him, he said yes…”

 Did Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman order the killing, dismemberment and disappearance of Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi?  “I asked him, he said no…”

 It’s just a theory of mine, but I suspect that you find the intricacies of democracy waaay too complicated; too much reading!  Whereas in Russia and N. Korea, it pretty much boils down to “the supreme leader makes the rules, and if you don’t like it, tough shit.” – see?  Simple is good!  

 Fuck it, what do my own hand-picked Intelligence team know anyways?  They didn’t write my best seller, “Art of the Deal”!  They lack my incredible business insight and my sharply honed negotiating skills; my intuitive judgement of character!  

 No argument there Mr. Prezident… well, except for the six former associates, cabinet appointees, and campaign advisors now spending their holiday in prison for a few minor offenses like tax evasion, campaign finance violations, lying to Congress under oath, lying to the FBI, conspiracy against the United States, obstruction of Congress, and witness tampering… oh, and your revolving door of high level appointees and cabinet members who pass through the White House like the line at a drive-thru McDonalds, or a frantic, rookie coach trying to stabilize his list of starting players as they drop one game after another on their way to another losing season.

 As a matter of fact, you’ve had more turnovers during your first three years at the helm than any other previous first term president during their entire four-year term - many of them replaced multiple times!  

 Hey, I get it – shit happens when you’re a “stable genius” big-time finance wizard like yourself, who built a huge casino in New Jersey primarily financed with junk bonds, ran it into the ground, stiffed all the construction contractors and workers out of millions, and turned Atlantic City into a ghost town.  

 Oops, well, and there are those six bankruptcy filings while you were in the private sector… and the bogus Trump “University” scam that you quietly had to settle out of court before taking the oath of office to run the country, paying out $25 million to the students (dupes) who showed up one day only to find the front doors locked and a sign taped to the glass…

 Oh, and the Trump “Charity” organization, which was recently sued by the New York Attorney General and found guilty of misuse of funds, funneling millions toward your election campaign and paying off business debts… oh, and the purchase of a huge $60K vanity portrait to hang in one of your exclusive country clubs. The “Charity” foundation was ordered liquidated and $2 million was dispersed among actual, non-affiliated charities… Whadda guy, am I right!?  A true philanthropist, with a heart as pure and genuine as his hair!

 Well, OK, but that’s all dollars under the bridge, now you’re in the BIG chair, running the whole show – how’s that federal deficit coming, the big hole in our national budget that in your 2016 campaign you promised to fill in eight years? Yikes!  Lotta shoveling still needed there, better roll up the sleeves, put down the golf clubs and get to work; looks like the federal deficit for this past year surged 26% from 2018 to $985 billion, and the Congressional Budget Office projects it will top a record breaking $1 trillion next year, primarily due to your 2017 tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich and mega-rich.  

 Speaking of golf, let’s return again to 2016 and your campaign rhetoric:

 “If I am president I'm not going to play much golf, because there's a lot of work to be done... Obama went golfing every day. 'Little Obama, go play golf every day.' He's played more than most PGA touring professionals play... I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf."

 You leave me speechless. There are whoppers and then there are WHOPPERS!  And we all know your whoppers are triple beef patty and cheese, hold all the green and tomato, extra bacon!  This past weekend, down in Par-a-Lago, you teed up for your 251st game at – of course - one of your own exclusive resorts.  Yup, the president of the United States owns twelve courses across the U.S., three in Europe, and one in the Middle East, with three others still under construction. You even wanted to hold the 2020 G7 Summit at your exclusive resort in Miami until your own party members quietly suggested, ahem, this might not go over too well with the rabble… could be seen as gratuitous and self-promoting.  

 You know, it’s not everyone who can get elected to president of the United States even after tapes are uncovered of him saying ten years prior to running, “Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

 Damb!  J.F.K., Bill Clinton, sit down you amateurs!  You nervous, pimple-faced freshman at your first high school dance trying to cop a sweaty feel!  Donny was putting it to a well-known porn star just a year after his third marriage and just months after the birth of their first child, Barron.  His longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight federal crimes, including making illegal contributions to the Trump campaign on the same day he admitted cutting a $130,000 to said porn star (AKA Stormy Daniels) to buy her silence before the election.

“I did not have sex with that woman.”  Oh, those were such innocent times, the ‘90’s!  A little hanky-panky with an intern, a cum stained blue dress… To date, Trump has 25 allegations of sexual misconduct against him, and those are just the women who came forward.

 I could go on and on… and on, but let’s stay with the big picture, the broad brush strokes for now, and start to bring this sordid summary to a close.  So, you’re the champion of coal and the petrochemical industry, and the chief spokesperson for the nostalgic days of big, gas guzzling cars.  You get a hard-on whenever you see a tank, sparking fantasies of military parades down our streets, you’re a climate change denier, think wind energy is produced by windmills that give you cancer, and are the Darth Vader to renewable energy in any shape or form.  Your target list also includes endangered wildlife and protected federal land and you are quickly closing in on 100 rollbacks (95) of any current environmental regulations.  You’ve essentially turned the EPA into a paper lion with missing teeth, a bunch of token federal workers down the hall who may as well show up whenever they feel like it, take long lunches, spend their days web surfing, and punch out around 3:00 for all the good they can do under your watch.

 Wow, what an impressive resume!  We haven’t even touched on the constant barrage of lies and fanciful fabrications that spill out of your mouth daily like food spray, the daily policy “briefings” conducted by Fox News, the obsessive tweeting, the complete blurring of truth and fact, the drastic rise of nationalistic, racist hate crimes over the last three years, the rambling conspiracy theories, the child-like pettiness and immaturity, the juvenile name calling and belittling, the paranoia, the preening and neediness of a textbook narcissistic sociopath…

 And now, to cement your place in the annals of history you’ve graduated to being only the third sitting U.S. president to face an impeachment hearing - bravo Mr. Prezident, bravo!  You sir are indeed one for the books!  A true piece of work never before seen, or even imagined, in our 224 years of American politics, and I salute you!  

 You let him in the game America; you wanted him, you got him! I can’t wait for the next four seasons of everyone’s favorite reality show, “Little Donny’s Playhouse!”.  And if his mentally blunt and rabid fans have anything to say about it, afterwards it will go into re-run syndication for years and years to come!

  HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!

[theliterateape]

Hostility is NOT Violence — Hurt Feelings Are Not a Broken Jaw

by Don Hall

Being the new kid at school every single year from grades 1 -8 meant I got bullied. A lot. Granted, I was already a bit of a smartass. Maybe I got that way as a defense mechanism. Maybe it just came naturally. Who can tell?

Funny thing is that I can remember most of the bullies from 3rd grade on.

Starsky and Hutch from Mrs. McWilliams third grade class. Based on their nickname you can guess what they looked like (unless you’re too young to have seen the show). In addition to constantly trying to get me in trouble and at least once a week lying to the teacher that I had said something off-color about her, they both took turns calling me names at recess. I was bigger than they were so it rarely got physical but given the fact that my family was poor and they seemed as wealthy as a pint-sized Bezos (probably not but everything looks huge when you’re eight years old) most of the taunts were about my clothes.

In fifth grade it was Anthony Jackson. He was a big black kid the size of an adult (again, youth and hyperbole go together like beer and peanuts) and he used to pound on me almost every day. I never understood why. Other kids would call him racial slurs and he left them alone. I never resorted to that sort of nonsense. I knew better. Mom was a good role model for that sort of thing. Whatever the reason, Anthony would go on a verbal tear, cutting me down until I’d snap. I was funnier than he was and could spin a dig like no one else. Then he’d beat the shit out of me and we’d start again the next day.

In seventh grade it was Victor Rodríguez and his gang of Latino boys. 

In eighth grade, I recall being set up by a few of the kids I’d end up going to high school with and LaDale Walters. By then, I was so used to being the new kid the words would just bounce off of me. I was crazy for LaDale. They knew it. She knew it. She invited me to her house and the four guys jumped me, kicked me, and dragged me across the gravel road with their bicycles.

Even then I understood that the words they used were nothing but sound. I was smarter than every bully I encountered and knew better insults. It was the pounding that hurt. It was the physical pummeling that left me bleeding and bruised. 

By the time I was in eighth grade, though, I had learned to fight back. That was how you stopped them. Hit ‘em back.

Of course, then I got in as much trouble as they did. I was no longer the victim because I hit back. 

I learned a lot of things being bullied consistently for seven years in a row.

I learned how to take a punch.

This seems like a life skill that shouldn’t have to be learned but it is the same lesson as when I was a kid learning to play baseball. I was put in center field because I have almost no athletic ability and possess no grace at all. But I was afraid to catch pop flies. I didn’t want them to hit me in the face like an ordinary human.

The coach came over, threw a ball at me. It hit me in the mouth hard. I cried. He said “That was rough, kid. Probably hurt. But you’re still standing, yeah? You’re OK, right?” I was. “Now you know what it feels like. It’s better to catch the ball than let it hit you in the face but if it does, you’ll survive.” I caught more balls after that.

Anthony Jackson taught me to not fear being punched in the face.

I learned how to take an insult.

When I hear people today cry out “Your beliefs are cancelling my existence” and “hate speech is violence” I can’t help but shrug. What I hear is people unable to handle ideas that are in conflict with their personal agenda.

The argument that words are the same as getting punched in the face could only be made by someone never once punched in the face. 

A sexist joke is only rape if you’ve never been raped. That doesn’t mean it isn’t in poor taste or is acceptable to hear but it’s hardly violence.

A racist epithet hurled at someone is substantially different and far more benign that being physically lynched and hung by a tree. Again, not cool but to categorize both the slur and the murder as anything close to the same is ridiculous.

“After all, people who obsess about being wronged are just plain unpleasant to be around: perpetually ungrateful, short-tempered, self-absorbed, never at peace, never at rest.”

Hmmm. That sounds like an apt description of 90% of Twitter. It sounds like an accurate breakdown of many on the side of the Woke as well as many on the side of the Alt Right. My guess is that it may sound like your significant other, your good friend, someone you work with.

It is, in fact, a description from an article in The Atlantic describing Donald Trump.

I speak from experience because I’ve certainly had my moments of being unable to take a verbal baseball in the chops with any kind of sense of proportion or humor. Sure, I’ve been obsessed with my own sort of vengeance and been angry and filled with spite over some barely educated online bully calling me names and semi-organizing the whole “call-out” and “cancel” culture game.

There is a psychological thing going on, though, that if we believe something is harmful, we are more likely to experience it as harmful. This interactivity between our definitions and our experiences reshape how we experience more of our day-to-day lives. It has been suggested that broadening one’s concept of trauma undermine’s resilience because our brains are all spongey. I think most would agree that being thickening up the skin is preferable to being in self imposed pain over someone misgendering you or asking where you’re from.

Another thing I learned from those bullies in grade school was this:

Anyone who sides with the bullies, either out of fear or agreement, isn’t worth your time.

Here is where my disdain for the mob bullying of everyone from J.K. Rowling (uncancellable) to some guy tricked into the “OK” hand symbol and then fired because the white nationalists decided that the “OK” symbol was now theirs separates from the common handwringing over this Twitter-centric phenomena. 

In 2010 I had a blog entitled “An Angry White Guy in Chicago.” I was a lot less rational and a lot of my online vitriol was focused on George W. Bush. I worked for a public radio station and, one day, after an early kerfluffle regarding reporters with social media accounts popped up, my boss asked me what I was going to do with my blog in the face of more stringent corporate control over online opinions.

“Wrong question.” I answered.

“What’s the right question?”

“What are you going to do about my blog? I’m going to keep writing and if you fire me for it, I wouldn’t want to work for you anyway.”

I don’t like bullies of all stripes. I don’t care much for weak ass histrionics trying to tailor society into what they want everyone to do or how to behave, either. Face masks? Required because we’re in a pandemic spinning out of control. Common good and all that. Controlling which ideas are acceptable? Not a chance. “This isn’t an abridgment of free speech. These are just the consequences of saying the wrong things.”Bullshit, kids. These are the consequences you’ve decided so that you can silence those ideas you don’t like.

You’ve forgotten that those who live by the wholesale cancellation of ideas they abhor, die by the fact that there are a lot more of everyone else getting sick to death of it. As one Vice editor was accidentally caught saying “Woke is fading in influence.”

The companies who kowtow to the demands of children and zealots are worse, though. They are not companies (or colleges, or theaters, or news organizations) worth being involved with.

Bullies, like any other obstacle in life, are there to teach you something. If all you learn from them is to behave exactly like them, you have learned the wrong lesson, bub. Lots of lessons to be learned from obstacles but let’s bully anyone who presents one instead of learning how to thicken up, laugh at yourself and them, and push through adversity or simply bad manners is definitely among the best to absorb.

The mob push for enforcing a moral purification designed to eradicate offense is simply idiocy and the need for a whole bunch of weaker bullies to band together to “cancel” people is pathetic. 

I mean, at least Anthony Jackson didn’t need a bunch of friends to pummel me.

[scrubula]

In 2006, the city of El Paso financed the construction of a 36-foot statue of the infamous Spanish conquistador Don Juan de Oñate riding his horse into battle. For some reason, this bustling city on the US-Mexico border with an 80 percent Mexican-American demographic was intent on erecting a monument to a European who attempted to conquer, Christianize, and loot the Americas. As a 16-year-old, I largely missed the statue's political implications. I was more taken aback by the horses' jarring anatomically correct under-parts. But my mother—the daughter of an exiled Spanish flamenco dancer—was quite outraged when they placed the monument at the entrance of the El Paso International Airport. "Qué asco!" I remember her hissing, "How could anyone dedicate a statue to a monster who cut off people's feet! It's—it's just so fascist!" At the time, my mother was tuned into the loud opposition presented by Acoma Pueblo like Maurus Chino and local Chicanx activists, who were pointing to the gruesome truth of Juan de Oñate's life. In the days that Oñate marched into what is now Northern New Mexico, it would have been hard to consider him anything less than a butcher. He is responsible for the unprecedented massacre of the Acoma Pueblo in 1599, for cutting off the feet of male survivors, and for selling the Acoma Pueblo's remaining women and children into slavery. The guy was so bad, he was even put on trial for excessive cruelty by the Spanish colonial government—an institution with fairly low standards in the 16th Century. Yet El Paso's statue of Don Juan de Oñate is not an isolated problem. The American Southwest is littered with monuments and annual celebrations commemorating key dates and figures in the history of Spanish colonialism. And much like the Confederate monuments in other parts of the United States, these statues and celebrations have been the source of debates and clashes over the legacy of racial violence and white supremacy in the Americas. On September 8, Santa Fe police arrested as many as 12 people associated with indigenous-led protests condemning the annual celebration of the "Fiesta de Santa Fe," otherwise known as "La Entrada"—a historical commemoration of Don Diego de Vargas's armed re-conquest of Northern New Mexico in 1692 following the successful Pueblo Revolt 12 years prior. As a person of both Mexican and Spanish heritage, I wholly condemn these statues and their accessory racist celebrations. But their history and extremely vocal supporters have forced me to grapple with some uglier truths within the Latinx community. Whereas the history of Confederate monuments were weapons of propaganda wielded to reaffirm white supremacy after the South had lost the Civil War, the story behind the monuments to Spanish colonialism is a bit more complicated. These statues were not just erected by white folks who want to preserve their privilege; a host of mainstream Mexican-American and Hispanic American organizations looking to commemorate "Spanish America" helped to bring these structures to life. In fact, this conundrum has baffled activists for years. "The people who were most critical to my face, and with whom I lost relationships with, were Mexican-American people," says Dr. Yolanda Leyva, a public historian and activist who was central to the Indigenous-Chicanx coalition in the 2000s. "There were a lot of Mexican-American people at the [Oñate] statue's dedication who told us that we should not be protesting because it is about time that 'our history' was celebrated in El Paso. They viewed Oñate as a Mexican born in Zacatecas. They didn't see it as European history, they saw it as our history." Indeed, Mexican-American and Hispanic-identified people from the region represented some of the loudest advocates for the statue. One such group was the New Mexico Hispanic Cultural Preservation League, organized to "preserve the heritage, Spanish language, and the history of Hispanic New Mexico." Their website is littered with colonial apologetics, ranging from the ethical defense of Hernàn Cortés to claims that the Spanish conquistadors demonstrated unprecedented concern for "the Indian." There are also references to the Solutrean hypothesis, which argues that the first people to populate the Americas were actually from Europe—a controversial theory with significant popularity among white nationalist groups. Yet despite all the cringe-worthy content on their website, the New Mexico Hispanic Preservation League took a lead role in fundraising and campaigning for the Oñate statue—advocacy that is well documented in PBS's documentary on the controversy. They were joined by another loose cohort that annually commemorates Oñate's expedition through what is now San Elizario, Texas with a staged reenactment of Oñate and his soldiers taking possession of indigenous land. Likewise, the controversial "Fiesta de Santa Fe" is co-organized by a group known as the Caballeros de Vargas. This explicitly Catholic organization is dominated by Latino men with a penchant for dressing up like conquistadors. They run a website that refers to Santa Fe as the "City of Holy Faith," which is a colonial allusion that invokes Santa Fe as a Spanish, Catholic bastion. But for indigenous-led organizations like The Red Nation, a primary organizer of the protests against the "Fiesta de Santa Fe," these events represent the long history of genocide, settler-colonialism, and racial violence in the Southwest. "To be proud of a person who has committed a huge crime, of enforcing genocide on another people," says Cheyanne Antonio, a Diné (Navajo) organizer with The Red Nation, "That's not a history to be proud of. Each of these conquistadors who came committed genocide against our people and these celebrations only uphold colonialism and US imperialism." Some may wonder why some Mexican-Americans—many of whom are of both indigenous and European ancestry—not only choose to commemorate Spanish colonialism, but also to hone in on some of its nastiest figures. Part of the answer leads us into deeper dilemmas of whiteness, colonial self-hate, and race relations in Latin America and among Latinxs in the United States. As a continent that was subject to centuries of Spanish colonial rule and US imperialism, Latin America has not remained immune from the pitfalls of colorism, leading some Latinxs to prefer the celebration of European over their Indigenous, African, and Asian ancestry. Likewise, in a society like the United States that suppresses non-white people, many have chosen to proximate themselves toward European heritage as a political tool of survival. A fine example of this positioning is the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) campaign in the 1930s to register Mexican-Americans as white in the US census and not as Mexicans. In some sense, Mexican-American support for these statues is a tragic continuation of that story. Another complicated element at work is Hispanic or Hispanic-American identity itself. The term was originally popularized in the 1970s when the US Census Bureau added the term "Hispanic" to the census as a means of allowing Latinxs to choose something other than "white." Over the years, more and more Latinxs began defining themselves as Hispanic, drawing on linguistic, and in some cases historical bonds between Spanish-speaking countries. But the term also has its own history in the Southwest, where it is sometimes claimed as an identity by people who trace ancestry to the first Spanish colonists in the region. It is this latter group, which in some cases either rejects or downplays indigenous ancestry, that has been the most vocal in supporting these statues. But as my mother recognized, the arguments Hispanics use to support these statues is eerily close to the language of fascism. My grandfather and his brother fled Spain in the 1930s during Spanish fascism's terrifying rise to power—a historical event that welded together Catholic militancy, imperial nostalgia, and bourgeois conservatism into a regime that lasted into the late 1970s. Yet Spanish fascism was also rooted in a transatlantic appeal to the values of an imagined lost, "greater civilization" among Spanish-speaking peoples—an intellectual direction that led many Spaniards and right-leaning Latin Americans to the celebration of Hispanidad. Hispanidad itself was first introduced by Basque thinker Miguel de Unamuno as an allusion to the multiplicity of Spanish-speaking nations. But nationalist Catholic thinkers eventually contorted Hispanidad into a far-right defense of Spanish Catholicism as a civilizing force in history. For example, in his classic work "Apologí a de la Hispanidad," Isidrio Gomá y Tomás, a Spanish Cardinal and major partisan of the fascist movement, directly equates Hispanidad with Spanish Catholicism and colonialism. His work refers to the Americas as the "classical work of Spain," and depicts colonialism as "an immense creation" of benevolence, justice, and beauty. I can't help but see Hispanic-American support for these statues and commemorations—with appeals to Catholicism, Hispanic heritage, and the blessings of Spanish "civilization"—as strikingly reminiscent of these early intellectual lineages within Spanish fascism. Although people who identify as Hispanic-Americans might see themselves as honoring "our history," appeals to Hispanic greatness can only ring repugnant to the children of Spanish fascism's 20th Century exiles. So for as much as my grandfather loved and missed Spain his entire life, I was taught to question this colonial vision of Hispanidad. I grew up to see the conquistador as a horrific apparition of the inquisition and a mirror image of the circa 1930s hyper-Catholic, fascist paramilitary Guardia Civil, which served as the punitive arm of Spain's nationalist regime. I was taught that if I wanted to connect with my Spanish heritage I could learn flamenco, eat paella, and maybe even read some Garcia Lorca. But I was never to sing praises of Catholic warriors and colonial butchers, and I certainly never wanted to build them fucking statues. But In the end, I think there is a strong chance that these statues have seen their final days. I'm incredibly hopeful that the end of these statues will come from the inspiring indigenous-led organizing being done by groups like The Red Nation, and increasingly strong Chicanx/Latinx critiques of white supremacy, machismo, and colonial violence. Even at the protest against the Entrada in Santa Fe, many Mexican-Americans worked side-by-side with indigenous activists to decry the celebration. Similar coalitions were formed in the 2000s among Acoma Pueblo and local fronterizx chicanxs to protest the erection of the Oñate statue. According to Joshua Heckman, a Chicanx student at the University of New Mexico and a member of MeCHA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) and the Red Nation, it's time that Mexican-Americans look to commemorate the other side of an already rich, anti-colonial history. "For those who say Oñate or Vargas's campaign is part of our history, well that's not a heritage I want to celebrate," says Heckman. "I think think that instead we should celebrate Chicanx and mestizo resistance to colonialism. We should celebrate people like Pablo Montoya and Tomas Romero, two figures who aligned themselves with Chicanx people and Pueblo people to resist invading Anglo-colonizers. That's the history we should celebrate, because that is the history that resists colonialism, not the one that perpetuates it." I pray that his words come true. For me, Spanish colonialism, like Spanish fascism, is not something that we can erase. But it's a history that ought to be mourned, not celebrated. And while I urge everyone to take concrete steps to support indigenous demands for restoration of treaty rights, the return of stolen lands, and an end to systematic violence disproportionately targeting native communities—I also hope we can couple those real-life demands with an end to the violence these statues and celebrations represent. Here's to a world without conquistadors and their shitty monuments. Read more writing by Gabriel on VICE.