#like a terf is a very specific kind of bigot with a very specific target

[lady-lessobian]

.

[rorschachisgay]

i wish there was some nuance between "everyone has to love the word queer" and "if you don't like it you are a terf automatically". because the reality is i don't identify with the word queer and i never have. as a kid i was aware of it as a slur and as a teenager i started to understand it in an academic concept first (as in Queer Theory) but i didn't identify with it because in my mind it was like, a clinical, academic word. and then later as i got older it became an increasingly prevalent point of conflict around me.

im not arguing that terfs dont dislike queer as a group term, though speaking from a british perspective the majority of them here are very focused on removing the T from LGBT over arguing about queer as a term at all, so it doesnt really feel like a particularly important form of conflict over what is a very targeted erasure of trans identity Specifically.

and thats kind of partially why i struggle to identify with the term Queer. it is not specific. it does not describe or capture my identity. lately i have found much more identity in words like fag, faggot, transexual, which do relate directly to my specific identities and have a very long history in the community. and additionally, won't get fuckin sold back to me by coke.

like that's really all Queer feels like to me now, something that has now been packaged up as an easily marketable buzzword to be printed on t-shirts at Primark or used meaninglessly by Disney to pretend they care. it does not refer to the aspects of my identity that matter to me, it's not something that i ever claimed for myself, and now i am continually getting told that if i don't identify with it im bigoted against myself and my siblings.

"queer was reclaimed by everyone, it was reclaimed in the 80s". i actually don't feel like someone else gets to decide this for me? im not going to lie and pretend it was never used as part of the campaign for equality for decades and decades, it obviously has a crucial place in history, but now in popular culture it has become like. ubiquitous.

like ive said before i think words like fag and dyke can be used in a way that reflects our communal family and is a sign of camaraderie and that's also true of queer, but with those words it's extremely understandable when someone isn't comfortable with them and when someone doesn't want to identify with queer it's treated as a sign they're in the wrong.

idk this is so far from being a crucial issue it's barely worth talking about but i just really struggle with being told that i am in the wrong because i have my own complicated feelings about a word with a complicated history. in the grand scheme of things it's NOT that important but it does grate on my nerves to be told that theres zero room for any kind of debate or alternate opinion in this. like i just wish we didn't have to be so black and white as if the issue has no grey area or room for personal expression at all.

[boreal-sea]

"There are no terfs" - so no woman on planet earth is a transphobic radical feminist?

"There are no Karens" - white women can't be racist?

I actually want to talk about this! I want to talk about the semantic drift of TERF and Karen - and I want to talk about how why slut, whore, bitch, and "mean girl" are not in the same category.

If she'd said "the label terf has been inappropriately expanded past its original description of transphobic radfems, and is now applied to transphobes who are not radical feminists, and is even sometimes applied to any person - including trans people - who talk about feminism", I'd agree with her. I've been called a terf, and I'm a whole ass tranny.

If she'd said "Karen has been inappropriately expanded past its original meaning, which was to call out white women utilizing institutionally racist systems to terrorize black people, and is now applied to any woman who complains about anything", I would agree with her.

The expansion of these terms past their original meanings is actually really important to discuss. They came into the vernacular for really important reasons: to call out women who were expressing bigotry. Being called a TERF or a Karen was, at one point, a serious accusation; it meant that person was a transphobic bigot, or a racist bigot.

However, people have definitely blurred the lines on what those terms mean.

Nowadays, "TERF" is flung at one of two kinds of people: general transphobes, OR, anyone discussing sexism and how it's based on sex assigned at birth - even if that person is trans.

At best, TERF is usually flung at all kinds of transphobic people, who aren't always radical feminists. Sometimes they're cis men, which is extra funny because there aren't many cis men radfems since radfems in general do not accept that cis men can be feminists in the first place. But like I said, trans people also get called "terfs" or "terfy" if we discuss birth sex or sexism. It's happened to me a few times. It has in some cases drifted into actually being sexist/misogynistic, when it is used specifically to shut up someone who is a woman, or afab, who is speaking up against sexism or misogyny.

The reason it works is because the original meaning of "TERF" meaning "transphobic radfem" is still lingering there in the background, which is why calling someone a TERF is still an effective way to try to silence them, and an effective way to try to get people to hate the target. "Oh no, they're a transphobe!? Unfollowed!". So folks are still utilizing the original anger that term summons in order to apply that term to a larger group of people.

And "Karen", a term invented by the Black community, also had a very specific meaning: calling out white entitled women who were so steeped in privilege that they felt comfortable using the racist institution of the police to threaten black people, including children. The meaning of that term has also, unfortunately, migrated. It now gets applied to any woman who is being assertive, or complaining about anything at all, even if it has nothing to do with race. It has actually migrated far enough that it's now equivalent to "bitch" in the sense that it is now sometimes used as a sexist/misogynistic slur against women who are just standing up for themselves.

Again though, the reason "Karen" still works as a way to silence women is because the people misusing it are capitalizing on the original meaning of the term as "racist entitled white woman".

The migrated meanings of both of these terms would not have power if the original meanings of those terms didn't have power.

Calling a woman a transphobe isn't sexism or misogyny if she is actively being transphobic. Calling a woman racist is not sexism or misogyny if she is actively being racist. It is ok to call out bigoted women for being bigots!

The claim that anyone using "TERF" or "Karen" is being sexist or misogynistic is blatantly untrue.

I can only speak on TERF with regards to this semantic drift. As a trans person, it is incredibly frustrating that people have stretched the meaning of TERF so far, and it is frustrating that some people are using it in a misogynistic and sexist way, because that weakens it as a tool to call out women who are actually being transphobic.

Now when a trans person says "this person is a TERF", people like OP call us sexists and misogynists, claiming we are using a "slur specifically design to target and silence women".

And speaking of sexism and misogyny, slut and bitch and all the rest are not in the same category as TERF or Karen, as they are not terms originally created to call out bigoted women. These terms are slurs and derogatory phrases meant to criticize a woman's sexuality or her behavior when that behavior is outside what is expected of her by the patriarchy. This is a completely different can of worms: it is in fact actually sexism and misogyny.

And conflating these terms is harmful and very fucking frustrating as someone who, you know, has been damaged by TERFs.

[laundryandtaxes]

hi julia! i'm a longtime follower and i understand your frustrations (like that article you linked about that pee-related protest? nasty!) but i think your flippant dismissal of how many terfs interact with your stuff is so so disappointing. i've looked up to you for years and you have always been so nuanced and kind wrt gender nonconformity, trans identity, and how these things enmesh & are often materially the same. i know you aren't conservative but terfs tend to be extremely bigoted!!

I have never had and do not currently have any problem with drawing attention to intentionally cruel behavior, such as individually targeting and harassing transgender people, actively going out of one's way to use intentionally hurtful language in a place that you hope they will see it, denigrating the appearance of transgender people in public and hoping that they see that denigration, etc. I have also never followed someone that I saw regularly engaging in horrific behavior toward transgender people. That ask had absolutely nothing to do with bigotry- that user didn't point out that x person I follow or talk to in a clearly friendly manner had recently said or done y horrible thing wrt transgender people- the purpose was to call into question my commitment to my values by asserting that anyone with the values generally espoused by the left could not possibly be in favor of the right of women to assemble, or to have accommodations made for the fact that women's safety and ability to participate in a society permeated by male violence hinges in many societies on the existence of places and organizations specifically for the female half of the population. It was an ad hominem attack, not a call to arms against cruel behavior.

In over a decade of my use of this website, I've accumulated a block list that comprises of several annoying anon messengers and fewer than ten individual users. I have never had much interest in ensuring that only people whose politics I consider good, or even only people who I personally consider to be decent human beings, have access to my blog because it is a public portion of the internet. I am not at all unfamiliar with the existence of women who use the ideological cover of radical feminism to excuse genuinely horrifically cruel behavior, and have more than once (including fairly recently) remarked on that phenomenon- most of these women strongly oppose either the phenomenon of female masculinity or the naming of it, which are positions I oppose, many of them think that any interaction between a person's sexual desires and their general behavior or presentation is outright inappropriate when I of course do not, and many of them do in fact believe that all instances of notable male gender nonconformity are offensive on their face, which runs contrary to what I think is my clearly established politics of being in favor of the right of people to be extrmely gender nonconforming no matter their sex. But I am also not at all unfamiliar with the culture of fear that has so impacted women's ability just to talk to each other about these issues or even to think then over in good faith privately, and I refuse to engage in that culture because I consider it to be a bullying campaign directed generally at women. I have been very publicly clear about all of this for some time. Whether some people are capable of engaging in good faith with my position or not does not change my position itself.

[villainessbian]

Hello. Sorry if this question will be too controversial for you, I understand.

You seem like a well studied person, so I wanted to ask if you could help me research something I don't know where to start with.

Recently I've seen a growing discourse on twitter about... Whether trans women or trans men are more oppressed. And in my opinion, measuring the degree of oppression is very easy! But no-one in this discourse is doing that. You can do so by looking at the rate of poverty among different genders of trans people, and which group experiences more crime directed at them, and which group is more happy.

But I'm not sure how to find the research for that. I'm not an academic. Do you think you could help me?

Thank you 💗

Measuring the degree of oppression is not easy, I don't think these stats exist at all (because who would pay for them? no one with that kind of money wants us alive), and oppression is not the olympics.

Discourse-y things under the cut.

In my experience transfems seem to be "more oppressed" in the sense that the pressure to oppress transfems is stronger. Everyone agrees transfems are the ones that the overwhelming majority of discourse targets, even the people who disagree with the conclusion and say that this is proof of invisibility of non-transfem trans people. Find a random act of transphobic hate, and the likelihood that the person who did it even knows transmasc people exist to be a target isn't very high. Look at the "accidental ally" posts and 99.9% of them is bigots trying to be transmisogynistic at transmascs because they're used to transmisogyny.

And the final point - transmisogyny exists as a separate thing. Transphobia targeted at transfems, transphobia targeted at transmascs, generic transphobia targeted at everyone are three different expressions of the same thing. Transmisogyny is a separate thing on the side, and the attemps to mirror it with "transmisandry" or "transandrophobia" all just point to the aforementioned "transphobia targeted at transmascs" and nothing different, nothing specific. Transmisogyny stands "on its own" in a way, though it is specifically the interplay of transphobia and misogyny into creating something new. The way trans women (and transfems in general) are simultaneously not believable victims, easy victims, and "no, actually perpetrators" of interpersonal violence, especially sexual violence. It coexists *all at the same time* in people's minds that trans women are not women, and that desires that target women can and do target trans women. That trans women hold less power than other women to stop you doing whatever, but also that they hold more power than you on what you do so they're responsible for what you do to them. That trans women are dangerous, and that they're the easiest demographic to focus on for an attack. The theory that they're part of a secret cabal to control the world ("cabal" used on purpose - this theory HEAVILY overlaps with anti-semitism) coexists with the knowledge you can call cops on trans women and endanger their lives instantly even if you were aggressing them. When KJK/posie parker had her rally and Nazis showed up sieg heiling with a "destroy pedo freaks" poster, "pedo freaks" was aimed at trans women specifically. Hell, the terf rhetoric that does target transmascs specifically (all the lost lesbian/brainwashed autist/permanent damage to sweet kids/etc bullshit) assumes more often than not - if not always - that transmascs are passive victims of the horribleterrible "trans ideology" spearheaded by public enemy number one, the predatory "man in women's clothes/womanface."

In the purest senses of "who has the most kinds of oppression" and "who is targeted the most directly by oppression," transfems are "more oppressed" than transmascs, but just saying that accomplishes nothing and serves little purpose. You can't predict how easy someone's life is because of that. Is it also shit for transmascs dealing with all this? Definitely. And transmascs dealing with transphobia also have to deal with misogyny - this time not as an interplay, but as something that inevitably happens as a second step. When transphobia is aimed at transmascs, a huge part of it leads back to some "you should have been a woman and become an objectified baby oven" horror scenario.

The social pressure to hate transfems is stronger, there is a special social construct/social dynamic that materialised specifically out of trying to destroy transfems, but that's like comparing losing two fingers to losing a hand - we want no one to lose anything, not discourse about which one is worse. Recognising that transmisogyny exists doesn't serve the purpose of being a gotcha to transmascs, it serves the purpose of fighting transmisogyny. Fighting transmisogyny doesn't happen without fighting all transphobia. (It is possible to fight transphobia without going the "extra mile" to fight transmisogyny, which kinda leaves transfems behind to deal with their issues, but for all the internet discourse I've seen I've literally never met someone who did that. I've heard of bad people doing that because they don't care, but I haven't even heard of them on my continent).

Plus, everyone's situation is different. You can lose two fingers and die to gangrene, you can lose the entire arm and heal well. I don't see how stats would be able to accurately reflect the diversity of factors. You'd need to check for so many things. Weigh against time. There is no unbiased sample that doesn't figure in the millions at the very least with such a diverse group.

[anarkittyuwuuniverse]

I think there's honestly something really telling about this whole discourse about how "transmysogynists only ever see trans women as women, any reference to maleness is just a cover-up for their misogyny", like it says a lot about how people online think about social theory, and about identity politics at large. It's honestly kind of absurd to me that people seriously think transphobes NEVER EVER see trans people as their assigned gender, just looking at the Terf movement for example. Obviously negative attitudes about femininity plays into it but why this insistence that bigotry has to be really concise, consistent, logical and always target very specific identities? And then the assertion that it's even transphobic to SUGGEST that transphobes might sometimes see trans women as men. The reason I think this is telling is because it shows how social theory in these spaces isn't solely used to understand bigotry at a theoretical level, it's used to validate the identity of the oppressed. These people take such great offense to the suggestion that bigots might not be validating their gender identity when they're being bigoted towards them because they've made the bigotry itself such a big part of their identity. They want to be oppressed as women, as trans women. And idk I think there's something kind of sad about that. Transphobia is an inherently invalidating experience, it's a traumatic experience, yet identity politics is encouraging people to look towards this oppression for their validation. There might be a larger point to be made here about making suffering the defining point of your identity but idk. I think it's just sad.

[comrade-meow]

The male-centered progressive left has successfully made woman-hating trendy.

Today, yet another “Karen” video went viral online. This time, it seems a woman flipped off a male driver, one Karlos Dillard, who then followed her home and filmed her as she melted down into hysterics, posting the video online, which included her home address and license plate. Over eight million views later (sure to be more by the time you read this), and Dillard is selling t-shirts based on the incident.

It seems this is a hobby for Dillard, who has posted other similarly antagonistic videos, accusing women of “racism” (despite no evidence of racism) in an attempt turn Karen virality into profit. Other t-shirts for sale on his Instagram profile include one with the words, “Karen… Are you OK?” and another reading, “Keep that same energy, Karen.”

The Karen meme has been misogynist from the getgo, originating from an anonymous male Reddit user, Fuck_You_Karen, who was angry at his ex-wife, named Karen, for taking custody of his children. In 2017, his misogynist rants became a subreddit, r/FuckYouKaren.

Recently, the meaning of “Karen” was said to refer specifically to middle class, middle aged white women who are so entitled they ask to speak to the manager when perturbed, but has since morphed into a specifically racist white woman, who “weaponizes” white, female fragility against largely black men. This connects to sexist tropes that claim women use their emotions, vulnerability, and tears to manipulate men.

What began as a joke has become more than that, and has moved into explicitly misogynist (and, in my opinion, dangerous) territory.

“Becky,” which originated as a means to refer to basic white women — the Uggs-wearing, Starbucks-buying, pumpkin spice-loving kind — probably young, probably blonde, probably not working class. Like “Karen,” I never found this to be particularly offensive, as I had little desire to defend boring people who love Starbucks, but what was once a joke has become something much more egregious.Following someone to their home, doxxing, filming, and harassing them because they gave you the finger is unhinged. People are going to act like assholes in this world, and you need to learn to deal with that. Moreover, these viral videos, like the Amy Cooper/Christian Cooper bird watching/dog-off-the-leash incident, are always decontextualized. No one really knows what happened preceding the video, nor do they know why either party reacted as they did. We all know social media leaves little room for nuance, and far too many people enjoy a rage reaction over asking questions or considering they may not know the full story. The truth is that, today, people’s lives can be destroyed in an instant, via a viral post. And our culture is wielding that power with very little care.

While those participating in the mobs targeting the subjects of these currently popular Karen videos claim some form of racial justice, this is not an accurate representation.

This has little to do with race, and everything to do with a progressive left that has adopted woman-hating as political virtue signalling.

Last week, journalist and editor Jonathan Kay tweeted a “Wanted” poster he’d come across in Toronto, depicting a young, blonde, white woman. The text below her face mocked her as a “Basic Bitch” — privileged, entitled, and unwoke. The image and text presents “Becky” as dangerous — the new enemy. The A.C.A.B. (All Cops Are Bastards) logo on the poster implies it likely was produced and distributed by young anarchist men. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were white men, considering the face of groups (or non-groups, depending on who you ask) like Antifa.

The trend of presenting women as a threat extends beyond Becky and Karen. In recent years, Antifa, anarchists, trans activists, and leftists have targeted feminists who question the impact of gender identity ideology on women’s rights as dangerous — even more so than male predators. Rhetoric that claims “TERFs kill” intentionally erases the fact that it is men who are overwhelmingly responsible for violence against both women and men (including trans-identified males). As a result, reversing this claim to say “Kill TERFs” or to show up at events discussing gender identity with cardboard guillotines with the words “TERFs and SWERFs step right up” written on them has become an acceptable form of “activism.”

This has all happened within a left that has consistently ignored and even defended the misogyny, racism, and violence of prostitution and pornography, painting women who fight the sex trade as “whorephobic” and as causing harm to “sex workers.” Everyone knows who is responsible for the abuse that happens to women in porn and prostitution. We can see it on PornHub or we can read about it in the news. Yet the left consistently fails to hold those men accountable for the harm they cause. No, no. The real problem is women. Terms like “TERF” (which means “trans exclusionary radical feminist,” but, in practice, is used to smear anyone who questions gender identity legislation or ideology) and “SWERF” (which means “sex worker exclusionary radical feminist,” but is used to smear women — even women who have worked in the sex trade — who wish to stop the universal violence and exploitation inherent to prostitution) exist to misrepresent, vilify, and end conversation. One cannot defend a “TERF” or “SWERF” any more than one can defend a “Karen” or “Becky,” unless they would like to be pilloried as unwoke and bigoted themselves.

A few years ago, trans activists and their progressive allies adopted the term “cis” to refer to those whose “gender identity matches their sex.” Putting aside the fact that no one’s “gender identity” matches their sex, as whether or not a person is male or female has nothing to do with whether or not they identify with a list of sexist gender stereotypes, the term “cis” is said to denote “privilege.” This means that a woman who understands she is female is, as per trans ideology, “privileged” over a man who desires to be viewed as a woman or who does not feel connected to masculine stereotypes. This is ridiculous, of course, as women are impacted by sexism on account of being born female, and are vulnerable to male violence regardless of how they identify. Understanding one is female does not make a woman “privileged,” it makes her a sane human being. In other words, “cis” or “cisprivilege” completely erases the reality of sexism and male violence against women. Suddenly, we are to believe women pose a threat to males who identify as transgender. Just as we are now to believe “Becky” and “Karen” are so dangerous they deserve to be hated, harassed, and destroyed. Maybe punched. Maybe worse.

This is, I’m afraid, woman-hating. And it is dangerous. The popularity of the Karen meme has led people to seek out and invent Karens in order to gain followers and profit, as evidenced by Dillard’s racket. And rhetoric that positions feminists as dangerous, harmful “TERFs” has led to the acceptance of open violent threats against women, simply for speaking out in defence of women’s rights and spaces. Karen, Becky, SWERF, and TERF are nothing more than excuses to hate women. And I am tired of people participating and defending this misogyny simply because it is on trend, and because it results in applause from the male centred left.

Yes, women can be assholes. Yes, women can be racist. No, women are not all innocent victims. But this has become about much more than calling out annoying, racist, or entitled behaviour. And, in fact, I think it was always about more than that. Let’s stop this before someone gets (literally) hurt.

[comicteaparty]

April 8th-April 14th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from April 8th, 2020 to April 14th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

Has gatekeeping ever affected which comics you read?  If so, how so?  If not, do you think it could in the future?

DanitheCarutor

You know, I usually don't care about the person behind the work, although there is an exception. During the Twitter Pride Month event if a webcomic creator I'm following says asexuals/pansexuals/non-binary people aren't allowed/can't follow them either due to not being oppressed enough, or not being real LGBT+ people, I will stop reading their work. Afterall, it wouldn't be right since I'm not queer enough to read their work. -coughsarcasmcough- There are instances where I'll still read their comic, but with a feeling of mischievous excitement for doing something "against the rules". Although there will always be this understanding of that person hates me, coupled with a slight feeling of 'yikes' whenever I see their work. Lol It's about the same with any other type of gatekeeping, although admittedly I'm more lax about unfollowing someone if I'm not being targeted since I'm narcissistic like that.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Thats ridiculous to think an author would try to control which demographics can read their work. Artists shoudn't discriminate against certain groups in who can access their art.

RebelVampire

It does happen a lot though as all my gatekeeping experiences are about that as well, creators kind of directly shunning a specific demographic (granted not exactly @DanitheCarutor 's experience)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@DanitheCarutor Man I've never seen anything like that. I thought this post was about "only true gamers will understand" comics and such. I guess I'm lucky I've never stumbled into that side of the internet. If someone holds such views and expouses them so loudly i probably wouldn't like what they write, anyways.

RebelVampire

To answer the question more thoroughly, there have been plenty of incidents of gatekeeping that have affected how and if I read certain webcomics. However, generally speaking, they come in two specific flavors. Flavor 1: Creators basically pushing for their target audience too aggressively to the point they're either: A) insulting anyone who is not in that target audience or B) dismissing anyone not in that target audience and treating them as someone who isn't a "true" fan. which usually means their opinions are basically treated as auto invalid and not worth anything. B is more the experience I see for this flavor on my end, though honestly I don't think a lot of the creators I see do it on purpose. This particular flavor usually just effects my engagement because I generally just don't want to engage with the work at all if my opinion is going to be auto invalidated anyway. Flavor 2: Creators basically saying "Don't read my comic if you don't 100% agree with my political view(s)." This is a nope for me. A guarantee I will never read that comic again and will immediately mute said creator on my social media - even if I do 100% agree with their specific view. I cannot stand it when people literally cannot tolerate the fact that people who may think the opposite of them (or even have nuanced opinions that aren't full agreement) can still enjoy their work. Out of principle, I will not support this, and out of practicality, the audience that stays after that will probably be equally closed minded and probably not people I want to hang out with on a regular basis anyway.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I don't get the "don't even read this if you [x]" thing. I can understand if they just don't want to hear disagreements, but even silently reading?

RebelVampire

What I don't get is half the time said political view has absolutely nothing to do with the work whatsoever. So it's not like people would be going into the comic commenting disagreements anyway?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Who knows, maybe they've actually had weirdos making political comments in their comment sections and they finally had enough one day.

I do know at least one person whose (very non-political) comic has attracted a lot of politically vocal readers, and it has been a source of headache for them for a long time.

RebelVampire

Yeah I mean I don't doubt there's some comics. Usually in the little research I've done it wasn't really the comic that was getting view. THey just saw something on social media that made them angry thus had to comment on it.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

In the case I'm thinking of, it wasn't that the fans got angry at the creator's views. The fans were just openly talking about that stuff? They didn't seem to understand, nor care, that the creator didn't share their views. It's..... weird is all I can say.

My only guess is the comic got shared in a politically oriented space (forum, a FB group, whatever) and attracted some vocal readers from that space. Maybe.

RebelVampire

Possibly, although in my experience it's pretty easy for comment sections to devolve into some random political discussion. People tend to be very passionate about their viewpoints, so it really only takes one person being mad

and then relevant xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/386/ happens XD(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It might not be relevant in this case because the readers weren't arguing with each other XD just vocally agreeing with each other in someone else's space

Though yeah, I have seen it happen too, political wars in some completely non-political comic's comment section

There was a semi-infamous case

The Tiny Hippo comic in which the hippo knifes a raven that stole its toy got littered with Koreans arguing with others about the Korean-Japanese political tension. The comic... has absolutely NOTHING to do with Korea, Japan, or even Asia.

RebelVampire

omg now thats extreme

DanitheCarutor

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) Yeah, be prepared if you ever dive into the LGBT+ artist/comic side of Twitter during the Pride Month events. There are far more nice, inclusive people, but the exclusive ones are very loud and make long rant threads. Also you may get someone responding to your promos with nasty shit if you use the hashtag. This has never happened to me personally, but has happened to webcomic creators and illustration artists I follow who are very open about being asexual/non-binary/pansexual.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

To be honest, I am usually the one LGBT+ creators keep from reading their work in those scenarios. It has happened before where a creator has said something similar about ace people or hetero people not being allowed to read because "they wouldn't get it." Or sometimes even more offensive. Even if I wasn't both of those things, hearing someone be so exclusive of any group just makes me not want to support them. So yes, haha, I have definitely been affected by gatekeeping.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Theoretically, I can see where gatekeeping can be done in good faith, and possibly even respectfully. Like, there's a reason why support groups for a specific thing only allows people who are directly affected by that specific thing. Trying to educate other people on that issue, and including the allies, those things are extremely important, but a gated safe space is also incredibly valuable. You can do BOTH of those things (just not in the same place at the same time). It can definitely go wrong, though. It really can.

like "we need a safe space for lesbians to talk about their struggles" is not the same thing as "if you're not a lesbian, you don't count as lgbt" (which would be... no???)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

yeah.. I've also seen lesbian only spaces turn terf-y

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I think there is definitely a difference between gatekeeping against bigotry and blanketsweep gatekeeping against a specific group of people that you've stereotyped as bigots

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I mean, it's not always about keeping the bigots out

sometimes you need a safe space specifically for that group, and not the supporters of that group. That serves very specific purposes.

DanitheCarutor

@Cronaj (Whispers of the Past) Oh gosh, there is this one artist who's words I remember to this day. During Pride Month they made this looooong thread about how they didn't want ace people following them, how they are not allowed to use the hashtag or even be part of the LGBT+ community, then went on about how they were all just heterosexuals. The they talked about how non-binary people are damaging the trans community with their "fake gender". Very ignorant, very weird, I totally unfollowed them after that even though I really liked their art.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

But yeah, Twitter is probably the wrong place to do that.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

God

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

@DanitheCarutor wtf ._.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

That's part of the reason I don't participate in Pride stuff

Because I know I would get skinned alive

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

lol, I already got skinned alive for that reason even though I wasn't advertising my comic as lgbt. That's getting off topic for reader_favorites though.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

In regards to comics, I haven't seen other readers gatekeeping a story before

But oddly more creators

Which completely boggles my mind

DanitheCarutor

Fffff yeeeah. I still try to participate in Pride stuff when I remember, but I never specify anything. I just say I'm a queer person and everyone is fine with it. Lol

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Because you'd think they want more readers, not less

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Mmm, not everyone wants more readers (or at least, it's not a priority for them)

RebelVampire

I'm kind of glad about that too. Readers gatekeeping is even worse sometimes in mainstream. So to a degree it makes me glad that the only people hurting a creators work is the creator themself, if that makes sense.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yeah, definitely

When fans of a specific TV series try to gatekeep against specific groups, it makes me so angry

It's usually for entirely stupid reasons too

"If you're not (insert race), you're not allowed to watch this show. It was not made for you."

Haven't really seen this yet for comics, but if I ever do..... YIKES

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I mean I can get "It was not made for you." But that's.... not really a reason to actually disallow anyone from enjoying it.

DanitheCarutor

Oh god I'm getting SU and Rick and Morty fan base flashbacks.

RebelVampire

I think when it hits webcomics (cause I won't pretend it won't someday), I think it's gonna be in the same regard where I see it more. In that readers will be saying "If you don't agree this webcomic/ship/something is the best, you're not really a true participant in the webcomic community!"

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Honestly, I think educating people outside of these marginalized groups is just as important as validating the groups

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

like I do it all the time, I check out stuff whose target audience does not include me. I just don't openly criticize it for failing to cater to me.

@Cronaj (Whispers of the Past) It's absolutely important. But one can support both education and gated safe spaces! Like I can totally imagine the same people moderating a gated safe space, and holding educational seminars where everyone is welcome. Those two things serve different functions.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yeah, I was talking about media tho, haha

Not gated safe spaces(edited)

DanitheCarutor

I imagine if it happens with webcomic it will be an extremely popular comic that will have the readerbase size of something mainstream. I've stumbled across a couple small instances where webcomic fans have been gatekeepy about fanart and such, but not real big, crazy instances.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

That would likely be one of the biggest curses about having a webcomic that's popular.

RebelVampire

Actually when I think about it more, I've seen readers start to get gatekeepy about ships on super popular comics

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Actually, yes

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Oh man, shipping wars X'D

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Ship-gatekeepers are kind of scary

Especially popular romance comics that include love triangles(edited)

DanitheCarutor

Yeah, a couple of the popular Webtoon webcomics I've followed like Gourmet Hound have had big ship wars in the comments. Actually if you want to see a good example of ship gatekeeping, you can look at any popular romance comic on Weboons, the comment section will probably be insane.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yep

True Beauty is just FULL of gatekeepers arguing about the male leads

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I like to think a lot of the seemingly vehement shipping war comments are made in jest. But even if like, 80% of them are just having fun... you know there's 19% that are actually serious... and the dreaded 1% who will actually commit a crime IRL for their ship

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Ewww... Yep

DanitheCarutor

No, Keii, you're wrong. Most of the readers on Webtoons are horny children, they are going to be very serious about their ships.

RebelVampire

Yeah that is like the problem with a lot of things on the internet. It's hard to tell who is the 80% not being serious, and who is the other 20% who is super serious and thinks the 80% are completely serious about it too(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Omg, don't call the readers out like that

DanitheCarutor

Someone's gotta tell it how it is!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@RebelVampire Yeah, that's definitely the hardest part. Trying to tiptoe around the fact that a specific commenter very well COULD be serious.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

yeeeeah

DanitheCarutor

@RebelVampire That's definitely the crappiest part about being on the internet. You can never tell just from reading words, especially if they type in a super anal way like myself most of the time. Personally if I have no idea if a reader is serious I default to responding with a dad joke or a meme... which has caused a few upset responses.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I have definitely been attacked for what I thought was an innocent comment

RebelVampire

I've learned if I don't know if the person is serious or not to just ask. Sometimes make them grumpy and you get "well obviously i was joking/being serious", but at least saves the headaches of assumptions.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

oh jeez @DanitheCarutor that sounds horrible gatekeeping

DanitheCarutor

Opinions, MMMM gotta love'em.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

A comic creator I really respected, someone I thought was super supportive of the community at large, made a blanket statement forbidding cishets from joining their big new webcomic server. The server wasn't meant for LGBTQ+ webcomics only - all comics were allowed to be discussed - so it wasn't incredibly stringent on its content, just its membership. I know it's small beans compared to other bits of gatekeeping, but it definitely made some people feel left out, and it made me feel really sad. Made me feel like... even if I somehow became friends with the creator someday, I would always be considered an other/outsider, so... why bother, you know? I haven't really felt like keeping up with their work since. It doesn't quite feel the same. I don't know if had the 'right' reaction, but the experience definitely took off my rose-tinted glasses.

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Honestly I think it’s really counterintuitive to gatekeep?(edited)

Like you want people to read your work don’t you? So can you really be so selective of people with such standards?

And if you’re a reader, gatekeeping is just going to harm the creator and make you look bad

[korrasera]

Hi Korrasera! Sorry for dumping this on you but I need to get it out of my system and you always phrase things very well and point out ways of thinking I can't imagine. I wondered: do you think the "anti-fujo" crowd realizes how much they're harming queer representation in (indie) media and queer creators?

I’m not certain, but I would imagine they know and don’t care, because they don’t actually believe they’re doing any harm.

I know that they know how much harm they’re doing because people have told them. Repeatedly. I haven’t even gotten in on that fight very much myself, I’ve just watched it unfold on other blogs like @freedom-of-fanfic or @antis-delete-your-blogs-pls-thx

At the same time, it’s also been pointed out to that crowd how often fandom police and TERFs find themselves allied in attacking queer women and trans folk, so on top of the specific points about the harm caused by the anti-fujoshi abuse they engage in, there’s no way they can miss that they’re associating with out and out bigots too.

But they don’t care. Because they don’t see what they’re doing as harmful.

To them, they start out every discussion assuming that they are as right as right can be, and the only people who disagree with them are some sort of harmful predator that needs to be attacked. They’ll rationalize away any kind of harm they cause because, to them, it’s acceptable to attack people to achieve their goals.

Even if one of them did acknowledge that their actions caused harm, I believe they’d excuse it as being acceptable as long as it harms the victims that fandom police and TERFs target.

They always believe that hurting their victims is worthy any price, because it’s more important that they be allowed to attack, abuse, and ostracize people than it is to keep anyone safe.

After all, they’re motivated by fear and the need to establish control in order to feel safe. What does the safety of queer people mean in the face of that? To an anti or a TERF? Basically nothing. At most, queer people are acceptable collateral damage. At worst? They’re collaborators with the enemy.

[mtfautoandrophile]

hey listen i might just be going off because i have ptsd about indoctrination but something i want more people to consider is terf minors. i hate seeing my posts reblogged by people who hate me too but you know what i really notice when i check terf urls reblogging my popular posts? a really high percentage of them are like, 15. you know what that means? a really large portion of the terfs seeing your ‘terfs deserve to be punched in the face’ posts or blog abouts are like, 15 year old girls, and they’re often currently being fed a weird conspiracy theory style of viewing the world where you or people you love are the villain and many of them might not outgrow that and might remain within those toxic communities, many might, and they won’t really be helped by reading your ‘terfs should be knifed’ vent post. they really won’t be helped by your ‘terfs should be shot’ ally post. those are going to make it harder for them to climb out of that toxic ideology and might delay them years. that’s damaging.

and i KNOW it’s not fair to ask other trans women to be a model minority for minors who hate them but i need for people to understand that terfs are a specific, predatory, indoctrinating community that teaches vulnerable girls a very specific narrative. they are not the same thing as the general class of transphobes. yes, their specific toxic ideology has caused immense damage to the trans woman community. yes, they tend to be racist, colonialist, and otherwise bigoted beyond that area. and yes, they show other girls and women your personal vent posts to ‘prove’ that you’re evil and violent. it’s not fair. it’s disgusting. but i really need for you to consider these young girls. of course when you say all terfs are violent and deserve retribution in kind you don’t mean, like, teenage girls. (and yes, all of them are inherently engaging in a degree of violence just by openly espousing and identifying with violent beliefs) but do you really think a teenager is going to like... assume that? do you remember being 17? 16? 15? 14? did you feel like you ‘weren’t mature enough’ or ‘weren’t adult enough’ to be targeted by that kind of thing? i envy you if you had that clarity.

i just... need for more people on this website to visibly give a shit about indoctrinated youth. i really need this.

[kemeticcalloutsfromthepublic]

To Light A Magic Fart

We have been made aware that our latest commentary has elicited a rant.

https://web.archive.org/save/https://smarmykemeticpagan.wordpress.com/2019/02/12/liminality-divine-intervention-and-other-heresies/

We would like begin by saying the first half of this rant is not only a misdirect but a lot of personal stuff that is outside our targeted topics of commentary so we shall be skipping that.

“As I type all this, I feel a strange sense of bewilderment. I’ve read very little on liminal spaces, magical theory, mythic time, or Dionysus; and yet I’m sitting here, trying to tell my own story and no one else’s, and finding myself describing something that I somehow, recognize as being intimately connected to all of these things at once. “

We must inform you this is very doubtful.  As someone who has crusaded against actual knowledge and those who teach it, study it, and understand it, you suddenly valuing any knowledge you are adamant against giving any sense of importance, this is a contradiction.  We would like to remind you, you have spent years demonizing those who are academically minded, who would possess the best supply of these topics of information.  We need to remind you, you have chased, and guided newcomers away from these very informed and academic individuals with a very glib and dismissive expressions that they are somehow morally and emotionally defective.

We need to remind you, you have spent more posts declaring how unimportant and meaningless academic resources, information, and knowledgeable people who covet such information, that it boggles the mind how you can sit here now and suddenly have an appreciation for information and knowledge.  We must say that is highly convenient, almost like you are a bag of contradictions and hyperbole.

“ I don’t know. Maybe I can’t know. Maybe knowing how and why this is happening isn’t the point. “

We would like to mention that in every occurrence that knowledge is passed on from a deity it is made obvious that it is given by them.  We would like to remind you, this would be conferred as a minor miracle and the god that granted it would not do so with a cloak and dagger delivery.

“Maybe no matter how strange and fantastic my real life is...“

We can not believe you, as you complain constantly about how you are incredibly oppressed and put-upon by the evil capitalist misogynistic patriarchy, holding you in a death grip of poverty...strange and fantastic is not the picture you spent years painting.  If you’d like to recant those lies and give a more accurate depiction of your life, feel free, no need to keep up the pretense.

“... there will always be some way that I and everyone else can convince ourselves that there must be a perfectly mundane, scientific explanation for everything, that nothing truly magical could ever possibly happen in our actual, physical lives. “

We would like to say this is a gross generalization that disturbs us greatly.  We would like to mention that, something can be scientific and still be magical.  Magical events do not have to be beyond scientific involvement or divorced from the world in a separate sphere.  They are part of the same world, they occupy the same space.  Magic is everywhere, and science just helps us understand how that natural magic works.  We understand the gist of what you are attempting to say but it’s so mushmouth muddled with it loses cohesion.  We would like to simplify, you’re wrong.  --Memphis

Not familiar with the idea that magic is only science we don’t understand yet, are you?  The world is as magical as you make it. --Cairo

“In fact, if I had done what nigh on every single Hellenic polytheist told me, 3 years ago, that I absolutely must do before I was allowed to even talk to any of the Theoi; i.e., devote far more time, money, and energy than I even had... “

You’d have a functional well structured and meaningful religious practice that you can easily make a habit to exercise, in order to have an actual religious practice and not just invent it on a whim while screeching “muh poverty lack of resources”, in a religious practice that has its ancient methodologies of worship and practice well outlined with a knowledgeable community that could inform you of them and help you?  We can see how dreadful that would have been!  Better you avoided any of that ACTUAL respecting the gods with their own religious practices which are time tested and just dump a can of wine on the ground, belch and in tone “amen, bro”.--Memphis

If every single practitioner of a religion is telling you that you do something, perhaps that’s how the religion is actually practiced?  Just saying.--Cairo

”I would still be refusing to accept the very possibility that the Theoi are real, and trying to communicate with me, and weren’t just trying to kick the shit out of me because I ‘m not “humble” enough to be allowed to even casually worship them, or even think about wanting to worship them. That is the extent to which I have been gaslighted by an ableist, sexist, queerphobic world...”

We must inform you this is not gaslighting, and none of this is true.  You’re so buried helplessly in the twisted murky interior of your own ideology that you have bought into all the lies and fables it has generated.  Snap out of it!

“It’s because polytheists are, for the most part, every bit as closed-minded and self-righteous as the Southern Baptists who told me I was an abomination and a Devil worshipper and a degenerate for being a queer witch who talked back to pastors and smoked weed.“

We must inform you, you are confused.  These are your actions which you committed upon every community you attempted to infect like herpes.  Anyone who didn’t bow down to every word of your vapid ideology was to be summarily purged.  You created an entire callout blog (which we parody), to bully, harrass and purge people you deem morally corrupt and a heretic to your divinely sanctioned and holy edicts of social justice that must be obeyed to the letter.  You terrorized this community for years with it, dividing it, polarizing it and demonizing our gods, twisting them into these token puppets you can make spit out any words you want to give yourself the squishy feels. 

The only ones who act like southern Baptists or medieval catholic inquisitors, are you and your friends.  Don’t try to backpedal that YOU are the victim here, you are the bully, the aggressor, the one causing harm. 

Some sects of polytheism have actual ancient records detailing proper practices to how their religion is followed.  While following them in personal practice is largely voluntary, they are the methods espoused to have been prescribed by the gods of their own religion.  It’s just respectful to those gods to follow such practices.

”Because of all this, polytheists are perfectly willing to bully, threaten, gaslight, and otherwise abuse young, vulnerable people in their midst who even for one minute threaten their perceived “respectability” in the eyes of the mainstream and of their favorite Big Name Pagans. They are perfectly willing to ignore the real problems in our community -bullying, toxic groupthink, overwhelming authoritarianism, rape culture and misogyny, TERFS and other assorted trans/homophobes, bigots of every kind, ableism to the point that the first thing anyone says to discredit me is that I’m “obviously hallucinating” when I talk about astral stuff or magic (that’s not how hallucinations fucking work you fucking morons! Read a book every now and then, for chrissake), and goddamn actual Nazis- in favor of whining about how Pop Culture Pagans or “fluffy” people or “loudmouthed brats” are OMG THE REASON NO ONE TAKES US SERIOUSLY!1!!11!!! They do all of these things, and simultaneously fancy themselves particularly enlightened, superior to followers of “”Abrahamic religions””, by virtue of simply “following the old gods” and “being connected to nature”, or whatever.”

We are touched, this is clear vagueblogging about us.  What was it you said...

Seriously though, you left this on our post as if you don’t care, and then wrote this thesis of how much it bothers you and you do care.  You’re pathetic.

“Because of this shallow, petty, and toxic paradigm that permeates basically every single official pagan and polytheist space, it is almost impossible for most of us to really, meaningfully connect and communicate with our gods. “

We must inform you, this is fundamentally untrue.  You’re reaching again.--Memphis

Citation needed.  This mod has actually heard more complaints that name you, Devo, and your friends specifically as making it difficult to practice, than heard such complaints about other online spaces.--Cairo

“Because of this shallow, petty, and toxic paradigm that permeates basically every single official pagan and polytheist space, it is almost impossible for most of us to really, meaningfully connect and communicate with our gods. Human beings are intimately social creatures; we are constantly, consciously and subconsciously, affected by the social environment that we are in, whether we like it or not and whether we know it or not. It’s basically impossible not to be drawn in by the assumptions everyone around you makes and operates on, even if we’re ignoring thoughtforms and energies and other woo stuff. Polytheists have convinced ourselves that anything we experience that’s in any way out of the ordinary; in any way not exactly what the historical record we currently have portrays…in other words, anything that might realistically be a part of interacting with actual deities and doing actual magic, absolutely will be called a delusion, an attention-seeking stunt, an idiotic act of hubris, an attempt to “start a cult” or gain coercive power over others, an evil and sacrilegious act, or all of the above, by anyone and everyone in our community who wants to discredit whatever it is we’re saying. No wonder even people who have fantastic experiences doubt themselves, or refuse to go public with it; I’m not a particularly sensitive person by a long shot, and I often have to steel myself to be honest online because of the (attempted) bullying and public shaming that I know for a fact will result from it.“

More about us.  You must love us dearly.  We must inform you, again you are entirely wrong.  You literally told Set in that interview post, you would start a cult.  You adhere to a collectivist ideology that operates on the concept of original sin and so everyone of that group must atone for the sins of the group for every instance in history.  You follow an ideology that abhors individual worth and thought over the group opinion and the group’s collective thought, in which any dissent and the individual will be sacrificed to ensure purity of the group.  You operate like a wanna-be cult leader who wants a cult.

You have done alot of evil in this community and you called it righteous because your ideology decrees it must be.  Your every action is dictated by it, your every thought is shaped by it to the point you declared that a god who historically always supported a theocratic monarchy...suddenly fell in love with socialism/communism...an inherently destructive and genocidal form of government and philosophy.  One that has claimed over 100 million lives, and more?!  That is alot ot buy, smarmy, a LOT to buy.  We didn’t even mention how he just outright confirms all your political points, thoughts, beliefs, and heralds them as divinely sanctioned?!  We don’t have to know how the stove top makes the coil red hot to understand touching it will burn.--Memphis  

Others have said it, and this mod will say it again:  It is not that you are sharing your personal experiences that is the problem; it is that you are stating them as being as factually true as peer reviewed historical sources.  You can believe what you want, but it is absolutely dishonest and disgusting to expect and insist that the rest of the community treat it as fucking holy scripture.--Cairo 

“I’m not a particularly sensitive person by a long shot...”

We would like to say, considering you felt the need to write this dissertation of drivel, you most certainly are sensitive.

“If you say you worship Set, but then spit in the face of his ideals in almost every mundane action you take -from the way you treat people traditionally associated with him to the way you think and talk about mundane, real-world chaos, riots, criminals, and political violence- are you actually worshipping Set, or are you just worshipping your own assumptions about Set?“

We are amazed at how unironic you write this and yet, it’s like you wrote this looking in a mirror.

“And if the very fact that someone online who you don’t like has posted UPG about Set condemning your actions and behavior…causes you to post frantic, histrionic paragraphs about how the person in question is an evil, power-hungry, lunatic aspiring cult leader who is “evidently” crazy and lying and trying to manipulate the entire kemetic community and also is in league with the Sn/ake that wants to destroy existence itself, are you really prioritizing your devotion to Set? Or are you prioritizing your own ego, because you refuse to even entertain the possibility that you could be wrong and ought to change your behavior in some way in order to better honor him? “

Wow again, you gazed in the mirror.  None of our commentaries, nor those of any of your critics, are frantic, nor histrionic, but it is apparent that you are and you do.  They are not the ones fueled by such deep seething hatred and rage for anything outside your own myopic and narrow minded views.  They aren’t the ones demanding slavish devotion to an ideology that history has proven is murderous and dangerous.  They aren’t the ones who profess to be ‘on the side of the angels’ and in the same breath long for violent rebellious war to shred the country and slaughter millions.  You are a hateful person devoid of compassion and an enemy of anything resembling freedom. 

We see you have again mistaken UPG for something provable.  If you had written that interview and stated that you wrote Set’s dialogue intuitively, or you interpreted them, rather then composed the transcript verbatim...we’d have been more lenient with our criticisms.  We point out, every word of his dialogue was verbatim your own, that you have ranted about for the years.  Every bit, from his diction, to his syntax, from tone to word choices was entirely from your own and not from an external source.  The fact it entirely vindicates every word of your political tripe, your beliefs and ideology, to the decimal place, is evidence that it’s not from any external source, or external spiritual entity but from you.  This was a complete fiction.

To state that “anyone who disagrees with smarmy, Set and his people gunna git’ya”, is such a colossal over reach that it strains believably.  We are certain that any god who loves their devotee would say they will defend them against attack, but this.  We must inform you this is something else entirely.

We are quite certain we don’t need to change our behavior to profess your ideals as our own and bow down to accept communism and socialism or even anarchism as the true path forwards.  We don’t need to throw away any sense of actual morality to support systems that have led to more destruction and death then any others in history and recorded memory. 

We are also not above admitting if we are wrong, but when it comes to you and how you abuse the name of the gods for your own twisted ends, we aren’t.

We are however, certain you are.  You are so in love with your own ideological puppetry that you not only profess that a god has endorsed you 100%, promised to smite all who oppose you, promise you power and prestige as his precious prophet of his ideals (which you forced into him).  So deeply entrenched in this ideology and stances of no matter what the cost, no matter how ridiculous, you can never admit to being wrong when facing any dissenting voices or else it instantly negates all of your teachings, beliefs, and words (which it only does because you made them so absolute), that you cannot admit you are wrong and can only dig deeper down this endless trench of foolishness and madness. 

We have no doubts the S/na/ke influences you, it praises you, it agrees with you, it gives you whatever you want, the sense of righteousness that you’re never wrong and always on the side of purity, everyone else is evil, everyone else is impure, everyone else is wrong, everyone else is at fault...That is the danger of isfet and the parasitic spirits that serve it, and you let them in.

“ I believe that gods are huge, ancient, and multi-faceted, so sure, it’s possible that there’s a version of Set out there that likes racist bootlickers and encourages them to follow the law no matter the human cost“

This is among the most offensive things you’ve ever said.  Historical record cannot be dismissed and hand-waved away of how these gods have acted in the past and expect they did a full 180.  We would like to mention, that once again, like any good cult leader, you degrade anyone who dissents.  We would like to state you are completely off the mark, you have no understanding of this god if you honestly think he loves communism and loves nazism and loves racism because ‘there MUST be an aspect of him that likes it’.  We need to remind you, that would make him evil.  This is a complete insult to a god you claim to love and worship.  This is a damning and horrible thing to say about a god you claim to respect.  This shows us you have nothing but sheer contempt for the gods, so you invent a twisted and corrupted idea of them.  We need to remind you, it’s bullshit like this that makes us say your a delusional child aspiring cult leader who is aligned with the sn/a/ke, if you honestly think this about Set.  We are disgusted, you do this noble god, so much dishonor.  --Memphis

How dare you.  How dare you insult a god you claim to be even an outlaw priest of with such a foul misunderstanding of his character?!  Even for hyperbolic rhetoric?!  Can you not have even the barest smidgen of respect for the god you claim to serve or worship?  Or are the words that describe the most basic relationship of priesthood too uncomfortable for you?--Cairo

“ ... to “keep it real” by regurgitating tired and ignorant bigoted stereotypes and acting as though the fact the stereotype exists at all is somehow evidence that you’re right to be a bigot; and believe that “illegals” seeking asylum so that they and their families won’t fucking die are inherently dangerous enough to justify putting them in motherfucking concentration camps. But just because it’s possible doesn’t necessarily mean it’s very likely, now does it? “

We would ask if you ever get tired of making sweeping incorrect generalizations that make you look stupid but we already know the answer.  If you’d like to discuss what we believe regarding various political situations, we at KCFTP would be happy to chat, but do stop shoving words and beliefs into our and everyone mouths that do not apply.--Memphis

Who the fuck is Smarmy even talking about here?--Cairo

“No wonder people react to anyone showing historically common, textbook behaviors of a person being called to spirit work or reacting to being in a liminal space or state of mind, with derision and scorn and bullying. Genuine liminality, one of the main historical requirements for communicating with gods or using magic, is almost universally despised and cursed by modern-day polytheists as heresy.“

We would like to say this literally never happens.  This is a bold faced lie.  We knew you could not help it!--Memphis

That is really fucking weird, every discussion I’ve had with other polytheists and pagans has touched on how to communicate with gods, spirits, and other entities, magic, or other things that require having a foot in multiple worlds.  Everyone usually seems pretty eager to talk about such things.  Unusual for something “universally despised and cursed.”--Cairo  

“LGBT+ people are stereotyped as “special snowflakes” and yelled at about “assigning modern labels to gods” when we say that deities who canonically act as multiple genders or sleep with same-gendered-beings, are queer like us. “

We would like to clarify, no smarmy, that’s just you and your ilk...and it’s by other LBGT+ people...Stop trying to be some martyr, you aren’t.  Go outside, get off the internet.

“ Young people are bullied and publicly shamed on a regular basis if they run afoul of the wrong “Big Name Pagan”, and people smugly tell themselves and each other that it is, somehow, for the kid’s own good because they have to be “taught a lesson in humility” and “being the bigger person” or some other fucking nonsense that sounds like it fell directly from the mouths of actual child abusers and predators. “

So anyone who disagrees with you are child abusers and predators now too!?  We would like to say that is astounding, almost like it’s entirely fiction.  We’d also like to mention, the only BIG Name Pagans around here are you and Devo, and you guys are constantly a problem.  Maybe its you who needs to “be taught a lesson in humility” because you are no where near humble and you are among the most abusive individuals in this community.--Memphis

Said it before, will say it again.  We have seen you and your crew bully and publicly shame far more people in this particular community than any of us.  We’re not the ones who started the Kemetic Callout war, only the ones who have arguably been more successful at it.  And your callout blog only has the people who talked back and wouldn’t bend, it doesn’t count the many who bowed and broke before your bullying or those who left here altogether.--Cairo  

“Until sharing UPG that goes against the more popular narratives no longer makes one a social pariah among their polytheist peers, nobody should be surprised that it’s almost exclusively the heretical, disrespectful punks who are constantly being publicly snubbed and dismissed by their peers, who ever seem to talk about seeing any results or evidence that anything out-of-the-ordinary is actually going on. “

Translation: “Until I can share my UPG and it is believed as absolute fact without any question, and be heralded as the divine truth, the community is a shitshow!”--Memphis

As long as your UPG agrees 100% with your own personal and political beliefs, it will and should be questioned.  Whatever your stance, the gods have a wider experience and knowledge base than we do and will always have a different perspective.  Any spirit that tells you everything you want to hear and flatters you shamelessly is no god and has no good intentions towards you in the end.--Cairo

“Until we all accept that it doesn’t matter if Christians and mainstream secular people think we’re weird and so we don’t need to constantly jump through hoops to seem Academic™ and Serious™ and Normal™, nobody should be surprised that the only public discussions that don’t devolve into nasty name-calling matches are ones facilitated by a handful of holier-than-thou assholes who treat having a PhD in Philosophy as though it’s a permission slip from the gods themselves to be a self-righteous, know-it-all douche, and never really allow any disagreement with them on anything important.“

Translation: “We need to continue being edgy punk teens who disrespect gods and culture and snub actual belief systems by turning them into comical satires of themselves, until the people smarter then us give up and let us have all the power, while we use our UPG to try and seem way more divinely important then we actually are by assigning ourselves flashy titles and divine endorsements!!! Cause if the gods support US, then we can’t be wrong!”

We would like to remind you that history is fraught with oppressive regimes who used this tactic, one example is the Spanish Inquisition.  Did you agree with them torturing and killing people to force them into conversion?  Another example we would like to mention is the North Korean regimes.  The ones who still have ACTUAL concentration camps. 

We would like to mention, China now has concentration camps where they hold and torment innocent Muslim citizens, and Chechnya who still have death camps where they send gay and LGBT citizens. 

We would like to mention these go entirely against your belief and political structures about LGBT+ issues, oppression, and gay rights.  We notice you never mention those.  We notice you never complain about them and how evil they are. We wonder, is it because it goes against your narrative of “communism is the truth and the way” or do you just not care? 

We would like to point out it would seem like those are true injustices you could fight against and for...not...how everyone needs to behave and believe how you want.

We would like to set the snark aside for a second and say, we’re always up for discussions.  We need to clarify that you always reduce the conversations to insults and calling everyone who disagrees with you “racist bootlickers”, so the issue is not on our side, but with you, so stop lying that we and all your critics are the unreasonable ones.

“And until we care more about taking care of each other than protecting our deities’ reputations, nobody should be surprised when our community remains a toxic, misogynistic, homophobic, Nazi-infested shithole, while everyone is more than happy to spend hours arguing about the particulars of shrine setups and deity name pronunciations and whether or not it’s okay to offer potato chips and Netflix binges to ancient deities who, ultimately, realistically are not that likely to give a shit either way. “

Literal Nazis wandered into our community and your reaction was “meh so what” and continued bullying other innocent people, who you labeled as nazis and racists.  You’re a one tune piano smarmy, and you just keep tooting the same tune.  It wasn’t believable when you were “the holy ambassador, ordained by Jesus, to the hellenics” it is not believable now.

“Until we fix the problems with our collective paradigm, until we fix the way we treat each other, until we genuinely value wisdom, compassion, humility, and courage over our reputations, we are all gonna have to accept that the gods we worship are not all that interested in revealing their actual, authentic, awesome, strange and unexpected powers to people who are determined to believe they are either incapable or unwilling to do so.“

We agree, you should start treating people better, starting with inatier and all the other people you’ve spent YEARS defaming, bullying, berating, harassing, snubbing, and demonizing.--Memphis

Actions speak louder than words Smarmy, and based on yours none of these are your values.  We have seen you bully and cast aside community members who did their research and were willing to share, we have seen your utter lack of compassion throughout your time here with anyone who has the nerve to disagree with you, and the idea of you having humility is a joke.  You worry more about being seen as your edgy, antifa, communist [insert additional labels here} self than about having the courage to suck it up, show some compassion, and value the wisdom of trying to mend the fences you have broken so badly over the years.

Additionally, we have had no problem seeing the many wondrous and varied faces of our gods because we are not hell bent on forcing them into tiny boxes that fit only our own personal beliefs.  If this is a problem you have been having, perhaps you should take your own advice.--Cairo

My colleagues have added much to these particular points of your diatribe, but I’ll add my bit here. While it seems like you may be in a better place physically (despite claiming you know more about psychology and medicine than your previous doctors do), you seem to be going down a dark, dangerous road mentally. You might just find yourself in jail yet, or worse if you don’t reevaluate your thinking.

“The insomnia is what caused my other symptoms to get so bad that they become delusions, paranoia, mania, and once, auditory hallucinations.” So you’re admitting to having breaks from reality, along with your emotional instability. Yet, you get butthurt when people are skeptical to your religious experiences. I’m no psychologist, admittedly, but I don’t automatically trust random people’s religious experiences, much less someone with a history of psychosis. Whether it’s you or anyone else. 

I would also recommend you be very, very careful using THC. I don’t know what medications you’re taking, but THC can interact with several different drugs, including Prozac. High levels of THC can cause paranoia and psychosis as well. 

You’re trying to act as a leader and activist when you’re still dealing with some very serious conditions. This is why so many people recommend to not use magic or occultic practices when dealing with mental health. People are not being elitist or ableist when they do this. The whole purpose is to encourage others to first attain treatment for their conditions. You’ve been claiming your own voice as Set’s, threatening violence to attain your desires in regards to politics, and using magic to harm your political enemies. You refuse to understand the motivations of people who don’t hold the same political opinions - even “centrists”, so that even the politically moderate are your enemies. This is even a symptom of borderline personality disorder, which you say you’re diagnosed with. Clearly, your symptoms aren’t completely managed.

https://www.webpsychology.com/news/2015/09/01/dangers-black-and-white-thinking-228391

You have a long way to go in terms of healing. You can blame the outside world all you like for not getting treatment or for a lack of progress, but your mental health is YOUR responsibility and you need to take responsibility and fix yourself before you’re in any position to try and “fix” the world with your ideology.

I highly encourage you to take a break and get some further professional help; wherever you are and however you can get it. Your writings are extremely troubling to us here. The last thing you need is to get arrested or committed trying to “punch a Nazi” or “take down the system”. You’re going to really screw up any chances of getting on your feet, getting treatment, and doing something actually meaningful with your life if you continue down this road.

--Karnak

[sophygurl]

WisCon 43 panel Learning to Hear the Dog Whistle

[Just wanted to say this was one of the panels I suggested and I’m so glad it went through and that I was able to make it to the panel. This is something so many of us need to work on, and I’ve made it a practice to point out when I think someone has unwittingly passed on a dog whistle-ish message, in large part because I hope/want for others to do the same for me when and if I do it, myself. Anyway, I learned a lot and this panel was really good.]

Political dog whistles are meant specifically to target one audience who agrees with you, and perhaps to trick others into agreeing with your subtle and covert language. It's important for us to be able to recognize these dog whistles, often used by racist, transphobic, and other bigoted groups. How do we learn to listen for and recognize these whistles when they are used specifically to dodge our ears?

Moderator: Heidi Waterhouse. Panelists: Seth Frost, Keffy R. M. Kehrli

Disclaimers: These are only the notes I was personally able to jot down on paper during the panel. I absolutely did not get everything, and may even have some things wrong. Corrections by panelists or other audience members always welcome. I name the mod and panelists because they are publicly listed, but will remove/change names if asked. I do not name audience members unless specifically asked by them to be named. If I mix up a pronouns or name spelling or anything else, please tell me and I’ll fix it! 

Notes:

Heidi started the panel off saying that the panel was obviously not full of all kinds of representation (example: the panelists were all white), so they were going to miss some stuff. The hope was that they could impart more generally how to recognize dog whistles. [They also had a lot of audience additions later on]

She also said that when we talked about racism and antisemitism, etc. - we’re talking about a set of behaviors vs. individual people. She suggests giving someone a chance to walk back a dog whistle you’ve just heard them use and asking them if they know what they’ve just said.

Seth said he knows more white supremacy dog whistles than even he’s comfortable with, and he points them out whenever he sees them.

Keffy doesn’t know as many as he’d like, but he lives on social media and finds it important to recognize them whenever possible.

Heidi took a moment to define dog whistles - intentionally coded language meant to be covertly used within a group or community. For example: “interested in ethnic heritage” ~might~ mean someone is really into their Scottish heritage and actually eats haggis on purpose, but it also might mean they’re a white supremacist. 

Seth used an example of a time the host of a TV show he was watching had a spider web tattoo on his elbow - without context he didn’t know if it meant the host just really thought spiders were cool or if he was a white supremacist. For context, Seth would have needed to see other tattoos, or what his political affiliations were, etc. Another example is Norse stuff, which can be totally innocuous, but is also something white supremacists are co-opting. 

Keffy brought up seeing the number 88 on people’s user names - it might mean they were born in the year 1988, or it could be a white supremacist signifier. 

Seth added that many Nazi’s are not smart. They use this “bullshit numerology” where 88 = HH = Hitler. However, 88 is also a lucky number in Chinese traditions, so that’s another example of something being used in multiple ways and not knowing without context how someone is using it.

Seth also talked about the 14 words - a white supremacist mission statement. So “14 words” or even just the number 14 can be a white supremacist dog whistle.

Heidi brought up the fact that we’re using dog whistle in it’s negative sense, but all in-group communities have their own language they use to recognize one another. 

One example Heidi noticed was a show Forged in Fire about blacksmiths. A lot of them wore Thor stuff due to that connection, but slowly over time less and less of them continued to wear Thor-themed things as they’d had it pointed out to them how white supremacists were using those symbols.

Keffy talked about one way to notice if something is being used as a dog whistle or not is to pay attention to who shows up when you see it. When, for example, TERFs swarm to a post using specific language, it’s time to look up the terms used and understand how they’re being used. 

Keffy explained what TERF meant, and used scare-quotes around “radical feminist” because he doesn’t see them as being particularly feminist or radical - especially not in the sense it was used in the 80′s. [yup]

Keffy also mentioned the use of pattern matching. If someone is using XX or XY in their bio - well, that’s not bad in and of itself, but if you take a moment to look at their page and you see them harassing a lot of trans people, then you have your answer.

Seth added that watching how they interact with others can be important. If you think they’ve used a dog whistle but aren’t sure, it’s okay to put some distance between you and them to just observe who they’re interacting with and how. 

Keffy said it can be important to have friends from many different groups, and if someone tells you that something is harmful to them - listen and believe them. We often learn by being told after accidentally reblogging or retweeting something, and that’s okay. You just have to believe that people know better about their own oppressions. 

Heidi talked about how bigots were using the triple parenthesis around names of Jewish people to mark them on twitter - some Jewish people and allies started to use the triple parenthesis for themselves intentionally as a sort of “I am Spartacus” protest. There was a big discussion about this in regards to reclaiming vs. causing harm due to generational trauma. It was important, in that instance, to listen to the Jewish people whose trauma was being triggered, and to believe them about not doing this.

Keffy added that he stopped retweeting as much from people who were using it because his followers had told him it was a trigger for them. 

Seth said, as a Jew and trans person, “If I ask you to stop using a hurtful thing, that’s a big show of trust”, so he thinks about that when people come to him in a similar manner. 

Heidi posed the question of having scripts for when we call out our friends, or when it’s time to ping an ally to help us out.

Keffy said he’s not that organized to have a script, but he does have some friends that he’s asked to take over. Gave an example of taking T and shifting pronouns, had a friend with a more masculine sounding voice call the pharmacy to ask about it first due to concerns about not being taken seriously.

Keffy also talked about the term calling in, rather than calling out, which is a more personal and quiet approach. He’ll usually DM someone or talk to them privately about these things - unless the discussion has already spiraled out in public.

Seth also said he doesn’t have a script for this, but in person he’ll usually just comment with something like “oh that’s gross” and if asked why, he’ll explain with as few words as possible. 

Heidi agreed, saying that person is probably freaking out internally, and won’t hear a lengthy response anyway.

Keffy said no matter how long he’s been working on social justice stuff, when he’s called out/in, he still feels shame or defensiveness or both. It can take time to work through that, so expecting a full discussion right away might not be realistic.

Keffy also advised that if you ask an ally to do this for you, make sure they’re actually getting the right point across.

Heidi shifted the conversation to how to support people being targeted. The first step is to believe them when they tell you something. The point of these dog whistles is to seem like they aren’t a big deal, when they are. 

Seth agreed, saying they throw just that much doubt about how they’re being used, so that people aren’t sure if it’s something bad or not. He advised defaulting to at least a base level of politeness when asked to stop using something - you can just stop. 

Keffy gave an example of “drinking the kool-aid” to refer to something being cult-like. Keffy gave some background on the phrase coming from what happened in Jonestown. The leader was very abusive and he did dry runs of giving his followers laced drinks. They were punished and even killed if they didn’t drink it, which made it safer for them to assume it was fake again and to just drink it. Knowing all of this, we can see that no one was really consenting to drinking the laced drinks. Hundreds of people died, and their family members and loved ones can be very triggered by the callous and casual use of this phrase popping up in what seems like otherwise-innocuous instances. 

Heidi gave another example - death marches. These kinds of phrases are used so commonly that we sometimes forget, or don’t even initially know, the history of them or the gravity of that history. 

Seth talked about the trouble with hearing dog whistles when other people don’t. It can be very isolating to have other people saying “no I don’t hear anything.”

Heidi said a panel like this could easily become a “you’re not aware/angry/anxious enough” discussion, but really the world expands more when we learn more about it. 

Seth talked about the main stream media often using antisemitic language that they may or may not be aware of, or mean. Examples: coastal elites, bankers. Keffy added that it’s gotten to the point where if he hears George Soros’s name brought up, he just stops listening. [RIGHT?!]

Heidi put it to the audience to give more dog whistle examples for us to be aware of.

One audience member talked about the “from (whichever city is nearest)” being code for black, poor, and violent. It was pointed out that Chicago is used as code for this nationwide. 

Another audience member talked about Reagan’s “welfare queen” mythology that was put together on purpose and is still ongoing today.

Someone else in the audience asked how to tell if someone is trying to recruit you as an ally or just accidentally passing on a dog whistle they weren’t aware of.

Heidi advised looking for other clues in their language and interactions. Keffy added that this is why dog whistles are so insidious. The welfare queen myth became a meme that people began to believe in. So if you explain the history and context of it’s origins and watch how people respond to it - bigots often respond to these sorts of things by telling on themselves. You can tell in the reaction how they meant it once it’s pointed out to them.

An audience member gave another example  - the peanut gallery. It has racist origins due to segregation - black people had to sit in the balconies and the myth was that they were unruly and tossing peanuts into the theater.

Another audience member talked about “urban” being used as code for black people in a negative sense. This audience member is a white teacher of mostly non-white students and urban can be used professionally as just a definition but she has to be careful about usage due to it’s other association.

Someone else in the audience talked about intelligence, but I missed most of what they said about it. 

Keffy added on to that, by adding that IQ is just racist, and if it’s not being used to be racist, well then it’s still ableist so it’s still wrong. [good points]

An audience member talked about how eugenics is used as a dog whistle for “less intelligent people shouldn’t breed.” 

Another audience member talked about gas stations and other places often owned by immigrants proudly displaying signs saying “American owned”. This is code for saying “this is the white gas station” for racists and xenophobes. 

Someone else in the audience brought up the issue of faux dog whistles, such as the ok symbol. Another audience member replied that the problem is that they become associated with the bigotry anyway. 

Seth added that everything is made up at some point or another. 

Keffy expanded on that by saying the problem with “just for lulz” dog whistles is that this is how white supremacists recruit a lot of teens and young adults. It might not initially mean what it comes to mean, but it draws people in, which is the point of it.

An audience member brought up the dog whistles of merit, merit-based, and meritocracy - a commentary on reverse racism and affirmative action. 

Keffy talked about commentary in science fiction genres about how there’s no more fun adventure stories because of all of these serious issues and social justice inclusion - codes for bigotry.

Heidi discussed ableism and how lots of times people just don’t know they’re using ableist language, but other times it’s done on purpose as gatekeeping. One example was putting “athletic” as what someone is looking for in a dating profile. Keffy added that you could do a whole panel on dog whistles in dating profiles.

Seth offered the example of people referencing Idiocracy as a dog whistle for eugenics. 

An audience member brought up people talking about dueling accommodations - which is a real thing - but it’s often used to say that we shouldn’t even bother trying to accommodate people. Also gatekeeping through issues like service animals, claiming people aren’t “disabled enough” to use them, etc.

Keffy complained about things like signs saying “be healthy, use the stairs”.

An audience member talked about people casually claiming they have OCD or ADHD when it’s not true.

Heidi asked the panelists and audience to consider some transphobic dog whistles and gave the example “real women.”. 

Seth said when people put “bio female” or “Webster’s dictionary defines womanhood as....” (which by the way isn’t even what Webster’s says but whatever). 

Heidi talked about cis women even being attacked for seeming trans - both sides of the political spectrum tend to do this one. 

Heidi also talked about fatphobia used in this way, such as making fat jokes about Trump - but that hurts all fat people. 

Keffy brought up people who claim that cis is a slur.

I raised my hand from the audience to bring up people claiming queer is a slur as a way of excluding lots of groups beyond gay and lesbian, like trans people and asexual people. Keffy added that this is an effective dog whistle because it sounds social justice-y. Keffy also talked about “get the L out” - lesbians wanting their own group outside of the queer community.

Seth added the phrase “gender critical” as another one that sounds on the surface like a good thing, but is used by TERFs. 

Keffy said they often tweak and claim terms that trans and non-binary people use to make fun of them or take power away from them.

An audience member brought up people using respect as a key-word to keep minorities from being angry and standing up for themselves.

Heidi brought up racist school dress codes, and asked people to add more dog whistles to the panel’s # -  #HearTheDogWhistle. It’s a process to learn these things.

Seth closed by saying if someone tells you a thing is problematic - stop. Do some research. Even if it turns out you disagree with them in the end, it doesn’t hurt to stop and find out more. Respect other people. 

[tranarchist]

(person who messaged you before) no that's exactly what I'm saying though - I think it's bad to be framing this as links between feminists and the far right, the way you're doing. at BEST, it's appropriating anti-racist struggles to further the interests of primarily white activists. at worse, it's trying to sweep bigotry in "our" spaces - which again, is frankly worse in my experience as a trans Jew - under the rug.

           (same again) like honestly your response made it worse? because it clarified that you’re not treating this as “worth calling out, but still an aberration” , you honestly think that this is a problem that feminists have that you don’t, when I’ve experienced WAY WAY MORE institutional antisemitism from “our” side than from feminists.          

I’m not denying at all that antisemitism is a significant issue in queer spaces that needs to be addressed, and I wasn’t framing it as an us-and-them division between feminism and lgbt people in general. Maybe it wasn’t clear enough in that post but Janice Williams is a lesbian and has been continually active in lgbt spaces. And likewise there are also plenty of openly antisemitic and otherwise bigoted lgbt people, and even at the extreme end open fascists, who are not also terfs.

But TERFs are a very specific movement and their danger lies precisely in being an organized and well-funded movement, which as a whole is fascistic and dangerous and the links with the far right are very real. While likely only a small number are literal fascists there is plenty of evidence that the TERF movement is fascist-adjacent and that their networks overlap. From adopting esoteric fascist terminology, the sticker campaigns, approaching random men in the street calling for violence against minority targets to protect the purity of their wives and daughters, sharing trans women’s details with fascists etc. Conspiracy theories are another part of this package adopted from the right and for a formal TERF organization rather than an anonymous twitter follower to share that kind of content is a clear escalation because the plausible deniability is no longer there.

In pointing to antisemitic conspiracy theories as part of this TERF-fascist pipeline, I’m not claiming they are unique to it.

[think-queer]

I’ve started to change the way I’m tagging things, there are still a lot of things in my queue that use my old method of tagging but I think that I’ve found a system that works better so I’ll be switching over to that. More information under the break for anyone interested or who wants to be able to block certain tags.

There are four categories of tags I'll be using:

1. Blog specific tags: I use these in case anyone wants to avoid those posts from this blog specifically. If you follow me just for reblogs and don't want to see flags I make then you can just block my personal flag tag and still see other people's flags.

2. Organizational tags: these are mostly so it's easier to look through the blog archive. Many of these are positive or funny posts that people can go through if they need a bit of positivity. Undescribed videos and images will also be tagged, if you need descriptions you can block this tag and if you are able to do descriptions you can look through this tag (I am rarely able to do descriptions myself)

3. Mentions: these are tags for if an issue is being mentioned or discussed. I recommend blocking these tags for anything that you find extremely triggering and don't want to see mentioned at all. I know some people might use this to avoid thinking about ways their actions might hurt people, but I've decided it's more important to me that people are able to keep themselves safe than it is to prevent people from hiding from certain discussions. If you need me to tag mentions of anything then feel free to send in an ask (you can request I respond privately) There are some things I may not be able to tag or may not always remember to tag. I have a lot of physical and mental health issues that make it difficult to remember things sometimes.

4. Content Warnings: these are tags for things that are directly shown or graphically described in the post itself. For example, if someone is telling a story that involves mentions of blood I will tag it "blood mention" but if someone posts an image with blood I will tag it "blood cw" I use CW (content warning) instead of TW (trigger warning) because I feel it's more accurate. It is a warning that the post contains something, and people may want to avoid it even if it isn't technically a trigger. There are a few that I don't add the CW because it feels like it would be disrespectful.

Blog specific:

TQlk - text additions and text posts

TQ Orig - original posts

TQ Art - my art

TQ flag - my original flags

Ask to TQg - posts that I feel like might need to be tagged but I'm not sure how to tag them

TQA - publicly answered asks

UnTQgged - posts that I feel like need tags but can't tag. either because it feels disrespectful, because op requested it not to be tagged, or because I don't have the spoons to tag

TQ Update - posts about the blog, changes to queue or tagging system

Off TQpic - posts that aren't explicitly about queer issues

TQ personal - things that aren't really important updates but are just me talking about the blog or life. These probably aren't worth reblogging, although I won't mind if anyone does. 

TQueue - queued posts, usually reblogs

TQ rant -Text posts about issues that I feel very strongly about, usually also angry.

TQ Giveaway -Posts about planned or current giveaways of some kind, probably won’t be used often.

Organizational:

Humor - memes, jokes, and light hearted posts

Positivity - posts that focus on positivity

Art - queer/pride themed art

Video - video posts

Audio - audio posts

Undescribed -video, audio, or image without a description

Uncaptioned - video without any captions

Flags - pride flags and coining posts

Resources - resources for things like transitioning and coming out

Queer history -Posts about the history of identities, queer historical figures, or the history of queer movements.

Mental health - posts that are mainly about mental health, including resources and support

Mention (common tags, non-exhaustive list):

Sex work mention 

Transphobia mention

Homophobia mention

Transmisogyny mention

Transandrophobia mention - transphobia that specifically targets trans men and transmasculine people

Coperate pride mention -discussions of the commercialization of pride

TERF mention

Exclusionism mention

Aphobia mention

Panphobia mention

Biphobia mention

Racism mention

Ableism mention 

CSA mention

Grooming mention

Abuse mention 

Rape mention

Sexual abuse mention

Suicide mention

Self harm mention

Police mention

Pedophilia mention

Transmedicalism mention

Etc.

Content warnings (common tags, non-exhaustive list):

Kink at pride (no cw) for discussions of kink at pride and the arguments surrounding it

Body image (no cw) posts that focus on certain types of bodies in a way that may trigger dysphoria or other body image issues

Scars (no cw)

Anger (no cw)

Sex work (no cw)

Long Post (no cw)

Sex cw -specifically for graphic or detailed descriptions of sex that may bother someone sex repulsed

Fakeout cw -posts that start off as if they're saying something bigoted and then switch to being supportive

Negativity cw - overall negative or pessimistic posts

Genitals cw

Transphobia cw

Homophobia cw

Transmisogyny cw

Transandrophobia cw

Transmedicalism cw

Exclusionism cw

Biphobia cw

Aphobia cw

Racism cw

Anti indigenous racism cw

Police brutality cw

Etc.

I’m going to update the tags page on my blog and will add to it as needed.

Again, I deal with a lot of physical and mental health issues, so there will be times that I may forget to tag something or tag it incorrectly. If you notice that I didn’t tag something then please inform me in a respectful manner, I am doing my best but I am far from perfect

[korrasera]

One of these things...is just like the others

TERF

Truscum/transmedicalist

Exclusionist

It always gets me when I see someone who proudly calls themselves anti to one or two of these groups but then identifies as the third. You know the ones, the people who write “anti-terf/anti-truscum/proud exclusionist’ on their blog.

There’s a reason that we see the same arguments come from these groups time after time. There’s a reason that they act the same but just target different people.

Authoritarianism teaches people to be bigots. Each of the ideologies above is an authoritarian ideology that teaches people to be bigots.

Identify an in-group to protect and police:

TERF - Cis lesbians, cis women, and a very small amount of AFAB trans people.

Truscum/transmedicalist - Binary trans people with gender dysphoria related to the shape of their body.

Exclusionist - Lesbians and gay men.

Anyone in these groups who doesn’t agree with the authoritarian is a traitor and automatically loses their protections. This is why you’ll see TERFs, truscum, and exclusionists who assume anyone who they attack is a member of their out-group and thus worth of attack. Ever noticed how exclusionists attack non-aces that don’t agree with them starting from the assumption that said person is an ace?

Identify an out-group to attack as the enemy:

TERF - Trans women.

Truscum/transmedicalist - Non-binary people, trans people who experience social dysphoria, and trans people who don’t experience dysphoria.

Exclusionist - Aces. A long time ago they also went after bisexual people. Oh, and anyone who even *thinks* of identifying as queer.

They pick a group that can act as the vessel into which they can pour all of their fear. A marginalized group that has no power, socially or politically, and is vulnerable to the kind of attacks that these authoritarians will launch. They’ll pin every ill on this group to justify their attacks, because they’ve imagined these groups as the boogeyman ready to destroy their sense of security.

Put your biggest, meanest, most violent people in charge:

Although we don’t often see singularly powerful authoritarian bigots come out of these groups, although I’d argue that TERFs have several such figures like one notable fake goth I can think of, I think this manifests in a slightly different way than what you see with conservative Christians and right-wingers in US politics.

Namely, people in these groups compete to see which of them can be seen most aggressive in attacking their chosen enemy. They’ll create reblog chains that are full of endless mockery trying to attack the group they don’t like. They’ll find people talking about something that doesn’t even come close to intruding on their special topic and flock to it like moths to a flame. If you’ve ever seen an exclusionist show up on a post by a queer person talking about a queer, specifically to cry out that queer is a slur and how dare any of us identify that way, you’ve seen it in action.

Authoritarianism teaches bigotry and the reason that we can so easily draw comparisons between these three groups of people is because they’re all authoritarians who operate in basically the same way. They’ll feed into one another’s communities because once you’re terrified enough of trans women to become a TERF, you might easily decide that aces are worth being terrified of too and so identify with exclusionism.

The comparisons are real and obvious and supremely depressing, but I reserve a special sadness for people who understand why one or two of these groups are bigots, but can’t see clearly enough to recognize their own devotion to authoritarian ideology.