#liberationists

[vaspider]

An important definition of terms:

As far as I'm concerned, an assimilationist is someone who believes that queer people must assimilate in order to advance the cause of queer rights. An assimilationist creates a dress code for marches like the Mattachine Society did, fights against queer self-expression at Pride because "it holds back the movement," and believes that the only way for us to move forward is for all queers to live as cishet people do, but with little rainbow flags taped on.

An assimilationist is not "someone who wants the functions and institutions of cishet society to be available to queer people." It's someone who believes the only way to live is assimilated into cishet society, and anything else "holds us back." It's someone who wants Sylvia and Marsha to march at the back, and who prizes cishet aesthetic over practical liberation.

A liberationist is someone who believes that queer liberation is not contingent upon public performance of identity.

Let me repeat that, so we're absolutely clear: a liberationist believes that queer liberation is not contingent upon public performance of identity. ANY IDENTITY.

That means a sufficiently cishet identity and a sufficiently "respectable" identity, but it also means a sufficiently radical identity. If you actually believe in queer liberation, you don't just believe in liberation for people who look, act, and believe like you. You believe in liberation for people who genuinely want to get married, have babies by IVF and live in the suburbs as well as for people who want to live childfree on an anarchist trans commune/Llama farm.

I hear people use the term "Assimilationist" and "Assimilationist Victories" to dismiss as meaningless those victories that are insufficiently radical for their tastes, and that to me is only proof that those people are not actually liberationists in any meaningful way. In liberation, there must be room for people who actually do just want to get married and live quiet, content lives going to their kid's baseball games.

The difference between Assimilationist thought and Liberationist thought cannot be simply replacing "we need to blend in" with "we need to stick out." It cannot simply replace "we must be integrated into cishet society" with "we cannot ever integrate into cishet society and anything which permits us to do that if we so choose is insufficiently liberationist." That's the organizational equivalent of yelling YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD, and I'm fucking over it, y'all.

My liberation doesn't have to be your liberation. Your liberation doesn't have to look like mine. What matters is that we are helping each other up the mountain and making long-term plans to get to where we can, and that we recognize that every choice we make is going to leave someone behind, and we account for that and plan for that so we don't leave them behind forever.

We cannot regard gay marriage or gays in the military or instituting a nationwide right to transition or any of our future goals as an endpoint. They are only goals part of the way up the mountain.

We don't get to the top until we are all free to live as we choose without government or societal interference or sanction, and without having to perform an identity for those rights and respect. The freedom to be ourselves must include the right to "blue hair and pronouns" but it also must include the right to "your kid's school plays and a duplex in a suburb." The latter is not an assimilationist lifestyle unless you try to enforce it on everyone.

I'm so, so tired of people acting like they're radical thinkers for poo-pooing the civil rights advances that the community has achieved through literally decades of work as "assimilationist victories." That's not clever, cute, or correct. Every. Single. One. Of those victories is written in tears and sweat and blood. Every single one is wrapped in the funeral shrouds of people who died fighting for it. Every single one was achieved not by assimilationists alone, but neither by people who think the only true victories are the ones sufficiently pure in their leftist credentials.

It is extremely possible and indeed likely that if you judge queers by their aesthetic, you will miss partnering with some of the most radical people and shackle your movement to people who cloak regressive politics in radical language. I've heard some truly noxious words come out of mouths framed by snakebites, and I've known extremely radical thinkers who look like your grandma. And I gotta tell you, in those local elections which keep school boards free from Moms For Liberty? The latter are useful people for liberationists to know and have in our camp, those people who think like liberationists but look like your grandma or your auntie.

Enforcement of aesthetic as a condition of liberation is assimilationist thought. It doesn't matter if the assimilation is to pink hair and tattoos or polo shirts and khakis - enforcement of aesthetic and philosophy as a condition of liberation is assimilationist thought. It's just replacing one kind of demanded conformity with another, and when we say "none of us are free until all of us are free," that also means free to be fucking boring if we want to, full stop.

We talk a lot about how much work goes into being disabled, how much work we have to put into making appointments, and fighting bureaucracy, but this is also true of queer life. Freedom comes with ease, with being easily able to update paperwork, with being easily able to find employment and housing, with being easily able to create the family structures we want to live in. When all of us can wake up in the morning assured of security in our beds, food in our bellies, meds in our med trays as needed, and a day ahead of us filled with chosen purpose and chosen meaning, which ends with us back in the bed of our choice at the end of the day, fulfilled in purpose and secure in our homes and chosen families, then we are free, and not before.

You may notice a seeming contradiction in this, in that my liberationist philosophy has room in it for the very people who are currently annoying the fuck out of me by demanding allegiance to a leftist aesthetic over practical liberation (that is, a movement based in harm reduction and long-term strategy over adherence to leftist purity of thought).

This is not a contradiction.

It is not a bug. It is a feature. My liberationist ideals mean that people have to have the right to be wrong without their liberty hinging on being right, that's all. :)

[fatliberation]

Hey do you have any recs for fat activist men that have blogs? I feel like I know of a lot of good ones, but they seem to be primarily women-focused. Ideally ones that tackle the pressure to look jacked at any cost. Would really appreciate this!

you're so right, we rarely see men doing this work publicly but it's extremely important for men too! a few cisgender men off of the top of my head are @thejaysalazar_ and @williamhornby. there's @bodypositivityforguys, which is an inactive blog but nice to scroll through! also, some trans/nb folks to follow: @decolonizing_fitness, @thefatdoctor, @dashaunlh, @jordallenhall, @blackqueerioh, @thefatsextherapist, @dr_chairbreaker.

you can also search the term "bigorexia," which is what men online are calling the pressure to gain muscle. there's a lot of conversation happening on social media!

[hussyknee]

If anyone has a problem with saying "rest in power" to the white man that self-immolated himself and yelled "Free Palestine" till he burned to death then I want you to block me right the fuck now. You are so morally bankrupt and brainwashed by western neoliberal identity politics that you aren't worth spitting on. There's nobody resting in more power than that kid.

[the-dye-stained-socialite]

top secret notes from the next calendar council meeting: the regent is easily swayed by kink and sex praise

[thedeafprophet]

Decided to work on setting up the csp model for Josie's office lol

[boreal-sea]

And on that note, "masculinity" itself is not a privileged form of gender expression if it isn't matched to the "proper" ASAB. Masculine AFAB people in general do not gain "masculinity privilege", because that isn't a thing that exists on its own.

This plays into gender and sex conformity and how you only gain the full privilege of being cis if you confirm to the expectations of your ASAB.

Femme men? Do not have full cis privilege.

Masculine women? Do not have full cis privilege.

And as far as society is concerned, that's all trans people are: gross weirdos who aren't conforming to their assigned sex the way they should.

In this way, being masculine is part of what causes the marginalization butches, GNC women, and trans men face.

(and let's be honest here: all AFAB people get the short end of the stick no matter what we do: if we present as masculine, we're treated like shit, but if we perform femininity and are viewed as cis women, well congrats, cis women are marginalized too. It's a lose-lose situation).

[hometownrockstar]

i think people on tumblr have good intentions but it does irk me sometimes when they say stuff abt fatness that perpetuates incorrect ideas, even if they mean it in a good way this time... just thinking abt the tags on a certain post that's going around lately, the tags sometimes conflating exercise with weight loss, and like exercise builds muscle, lots of athletes are bulky and fat also, same like how diets dont cause permanent weight loss, either. But both misconceptions are ingrained into society as "basic scientific facts" so i get why people repeat them, despite there being evidence that diets cause weight to regain 95% of the time within 5 years... the point im making here is that weight is complicated and not easy to change, much less change permanently. It's affected by genetics and different kinds of disabilities sometimes and perpetuating the idea that it can be changed with lifestyle changes (not even considering the implications of changing lifestyle for poor people) goes directly into feeding fatphobic mindsets of "they should have just worked harder and ate less to change their bodies, so they can't call out fatphobia bc being fat is a choice"

[mercifullymad]

i finally got around to watching "in the flesh" after years of knowing i would love the show if i watched it & i was RIGHT! it revolves around my favorite trope of all time ("person who wants to die cannot die") except makes it better ("person who wanted to die + succeeded in dying is brought back to life against their will").... so many good implications to play with: when kieren is angry that he specifically asked to be cremated but was buried & thus revived due to his wishes not being followed; also when he's called an optimist & he responds "i'm not an optimist, i killed myself"! everything about the show is soooo good. obviously the undead-ness is a metaphor for queerness but as ppl have pointed out it doesn't really work on account of they did in fact kill people....undeadness as a metaphor for madness works much better, what with the poor/harmful/hurtful decisions you can make due to being mad; also the discussions that configure "treatment" and the "treatment center" as a threat; the understanding that the medical system is a threat to see + sees you as inhuman + will justify its torture of you as "in your best interest" + kieren's family's willingness to trust the entire medical system over the testimony of their son even though it makes them uneasy bc of their unwavering belief in the benevolence of "treatment" & the "expertise" of medical professionals + simon's scenes of him being tortured in a medical facility, initially giving his consent but it not being respected when he revokes it + his torture scenes literally including electroshock therapy + the endless threats of being labelled "non-complaint," which would get you sent back to the treatment center.....if i was watching this show when it aired in 2013 i would have killed with my mad liberationist takes

[lettucedloophole]

??? gender ideology is literally not compatible with radical feminism

you don't know what radical feminism is 😭 if you were really against gender, you'd understand cis women identifying as women is also based in gender & the concept of sex as an immutable fact which dictates behaviour is gender as well lol. the category of womanhood is inseparable from misogynistic oppression and to dissolve the patriarchy, the category of opressors (men) and the oppressed (women) must also dissolve! good luck with those brainworms, genuinely hope you get better.

also, are we ever going to talk about how the term "gender ideology" is not only used by a bunch of right wingers today, but originated from catholics afraid that feminist theory would undermine the nuclear family and lead to the legitimization of abortion...?

no? okay :')

[fanonical]

anon was saying you have to acknowledge sex to acknowledge transmisogyny, but stay cute

we know its you anon. we can tell by how you still are misusing the exact same concepts in the exact same way. don’t pretend to be somebody else to make it look like people agree with you nobody’s that stupid LOL

[violant-apologia]

i hope the city in silver content still allows for a healthy amount of headcanons about our TLCs.

the announcement came right as i was starting to lore Lily Pinnacle, so I've had to put that on hold out of fear it'll be invalidated

[hussyknee]

Zionists leave Black trauma alone for five minutes challenge. "Telling Jews that river to the sea doesn't mean what we think it does is like explaining what the N-word means to African Americans"— the amount of cringe here would kill a normal person dead. But no, if it isn't this it's BLM or George Floyd or MLK or or or while doxxing and expelling Black students for participating in protests and firing Black journalists and giving US cops training on how to kill Black people better. Fathomless levels of disgust.

Non-Black people in general need to leave Black suffering alone and focus on protecting the Black activists already at the forefront of pro-Palestinian protests. They're among the most vulnerable to violence by the white establishment right now.

[czolgosz]

it's kind of annoying how all three of the fl revolutionary factions are bad

[thedeafprophet]

When you get down to it, i think you can really understand why Josephine "I will upend the entire fabric of reality in order to make things change" Ashwood and Jamie "nothing can ever change so why bother even trying" Awnings friendship fell apart into their adulthood

[boreal-sea]

Note: when I say radfem, I am including all subsets of radical feminism, including terfs and gender criticals, because with the rare exception, on this website, they are all the same thing.

Radfems think most forms of permanent body modification should be illegal - there are exceptions I'll get to later. Many are 100% against elective plastic surgery, against tanning, against little girls getting earrings. Some of them don't like temporary body modifications either, including makeup and shaving, but it depends on how much of a tradfem they are; tradfems like those last two things.

Now here's a fact: beauty industries absolutely are pushing traditional patriarchal beauty standards onto women. There are absolutely valid criticism to make about these industries and the harm they cause and the vulnerabilities they capitalize on.

However, many radfems who are against body mods take it one step further. They believe that any female who gets a body modification is only doing it because of misogyny. This leads to the belief that the only way to escape misogyny, the patriarchy, and sexism, is to exist in your body completely "naturally" with absolutely no modifications whatsoever.

And I get it. I get where they're coming from. I was raised female too, I've been seeing ads aimed at me to remove my pores since I was 10 years old. The urge to lay completely naked in a field with no fashion, no makeup, no pressure to conform, is huge.

So yes, feminism of all kinds IS concerned with body modifications that try to force a woman to be conventionally attractive according to the patriarchy - pale but just tan enough to look "healthy", nails that are manicured but not too long, skinny but with the "right" curves, long blonde hair, blue-eyed, perfect makeup that looks like you don't have on makeup - a beauty that is at once highly cultivated but appears effortless and "natural". Encouraging women to conform to a patriarchal idea of beauty is a problem, and the beauty industry takes advantage of a demand put there by the patriarchy.

But not all body mods make a woman "conventionally attractive". Dyed hair in crazy colors, piercings, tattoos, subdermal implants, tongue splitting, these are all things that I think most people are able to recognize do not conform to the patriarchy's ideal of a pale blonde woman with perfect breasts and hips.

And I think most radfems are able to distinguish between these two kinds of body mod: they can recognize that "oh yes of course tattoos and piercings and purple hair is ok, you're fighting the patriarchy when you do that".

So why do they lose this perspective when it comes to GNC and trans people?

Like top surgery - how is removing breasts conforming to the patriarchy? It's inherently not - so much so that doctors performing breast reductions on cis women routinely violate their patient's consent and don't remove as much tissue as they're told to remove.

What about the effects of testosterone? Facial hair, a higher hairline and a deep voice are not feminine ideals according to the patriarchy, but radfems have a problem with it anyway.

It's funny, honestly. They cry about how women shouldn't be pressured to do body mods that force them into ideal femininity... but then get disgusted when people get body mods that remove them from ideal femininity.

Radfems express not just concern but disgust when it comes to the changes female trans and GNC people undergo. They cry about how it "ruins" a "beautiful young girl" and "destroys her fertility" etc... which are the exact ideals they claim to be fighting against. But when the person is GNC or trans, suddenly traditional femininity is a good thing.

And of course their hypocrisy extends to trans women, too - suddenly, the idealized female form is absolutely "inherent" and no "male" could possibly achieve such delicate femininity.

It's just a little bit funny.

[hometownrockstar]

i think its harder to find irl references for drawing fat bodies and features than some people make it out to be... like if you try and search or google ANYTHING related to fatness or a feature of fatness like double chins or anything, SO MANY of the results will be weight loss ads and before/after surgery pics on how to get rid of those features, which is not a healthy thing to expose yourself to repeatedly while trying to find references... and then most of the main ref sites people recommend for fat poses are nice, but in my experience a lot of them have a limited cast of models, which i think isn't diverse enough to portray a large selection of fat body and feature variance. Morpho fat and skin folds anatomy for artists is still great tho