#me when liberals claim to be caring and inclusive only to turn around and claim that because someones name isnt on their birth certificate

[vintageghoststories]

my mum stop being fucking transphobic challenge

[hrt-shpd-systm]

The Political Landscape for Transgender Rights and Its Implications

Anna Bojorqiez

Many people don’t even realize that transgender rights are under attack, or care about the “culture war”, the cultural conflict that has become much more prominent due to failing institutions, growing inequalities, and technology that encourages people to cluster in their cultural groups.

But the fact of the matter is that this culture war is going to harm the people it is targeting. Former President Donald Trump has promised to ban gender-affirming care for minors, and to go after gender-affirming healthcare providers.

During this past years Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC), which is a political rally full of speeches, panel discussions, breakout sessions, and networking breakfasts. Michael Knowels, a political pundit with conservative values on the media company known as the Daily Wire, has called for the eradication of “transgenderism”.

The state of transgender rights to gender-affirming healthcare is dire, and help from cishet allies is needed.

In this essay I will define those who stand in the way of gender-affirming healthcare and the context surrounding it, the implications of banning it, and then provide solutions to making gender affirming care a national right.

My Personal Experience

As a transgender person myself, I feel the impact first-hand. There are nights when I cry myself to sleep, knowing that my trans siblings in conservative states might or will have their access to gender affirming care cut off by these invasive laws and consequently die out of fear that the same could happen to me if a Republican takes office as president again.

It is a traumatic experience to watch our rights get slowly stripped away, state by state, and it is an experience that is not talked about enough within spaces occupied by cishet people.

LGB Drop the T

Even in the gay community, there is a growing number of gay people in the UK who are aligning themselves with the LGB Alliance, which is a trans-exclusive radical feminist (TERF) group.

TERFs, as the name would suggest, are radical feminists who reject the inclusion and recognition of transgender people in feminist spaces.

However, this differs from the intersectional feminist ideas of intersectionality, which takes account the different ways in which women experience discrimination, whereas TERF feminism is a form of white feminism and has a tendency to overshadow not only the struggles of queer women, but women of color, disabled women, and women in other minority groups.

This puts TERFs in a weird position where they align more with fascists that believe in authoritarianism and the exclusion of people who don’t fit into their definitions of “normal”.

JK Rowling And Matt Walsh Bond Over Transphobia

In fact, the author of the Harry Potter book series and well known TERF activist J.K. Rowling, has made numerous transphobic dog whistles on twitter.

She has also praised the right-wing political commentator for the Daily Wire who has directly quoted fascists’ speeches, Matt Walsh, for his What Is a Woman documentary, stating that the film did a “good job exposing the incoherence of gender identity theory and some of the harms it's done.”

This is just a minuscule example of how even liberal people who consider themselves openminded individuals can just as easily turn around and stab the trans community in the back.

No, Were Not Grooming Your Kids.

With that said, many conservatives and TERFs have repeatedly made the claim that transgender people are “grooming kids” into transitioning, which is a process by which a predator builds trust and emotional connection with someone, usually a minor, for the purposes of abusing or exploiting the person who is being groomed.

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that transgender people are grooming children. There is, however, ample evidence to show that gender-affirming healthcare, such as Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) and puberty blockers, greatly improves the lives of transgender minors.

Why Minors Are Coming Out and the History of Left-Handedness

One might be asking, “if trans people aren’t grooming kids, why are so many minors coming out and transitioning?” The answer to that is simple.

If you are familiar with the left-handedness graph from the beginning of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century, you will see that left-handedness was at a low. Over the years it began to increase, and for similar reasons the transgender population is increasing. In the early 1900s, around 3% of the population identified as lefthanded. Over the course of the next 60 years, we saw an increase in the amount of left-handed people, but after the 1960s, the graph begins to even out.

This is because in the 1900s, there was a lot of religious and societal stigma around left-handedness, and people who were left-handed were forced to use their right hands, and wouldn’t admit to being left-handed due to the potential social backlash. (10)

Similarly, up until recently, most people didn’t even know that transgender people existed, and those that did often used offensive terms to describe transgender folks, which contributed to an environment of hostility towards transgender people.

For so long, so many trans people were afraid to come out due to the social backlash that came with it. But in the late 2010s and early 2020s, trans people were just barely starting to be shown in some mainstream media outlets in a positive light, and more people started to come out overtime.

Overtime, as acceptance of the transgender community begins to grow, the percentage of transgender folks will start to even out, just like it did in the left-handedness graph.

Left-handed people did not groom right-handed people into becoming left-handed, acceptance of left-handedness increased. In the same way, transgender adults are not grooming kids to become transgender; transgender kids are just starting to feel safe enough to come out, and it would be silly to suggest otherwise.

Banning Gender Affirming Healthcare Is Going to Kill Us

 In addition, there is evidence to suggest that these bills that are banning gender-affirming care for transgender people, particularly minors, have been and are going to increase suicidality in the trans community.

In a policy analysis by Journal of Law Med Ethics, it mentions that these laws impact the trans community by shaping the contexts within which they receive social services, healthcare, and engage with their communities, and by “creating an overarching social landscape within which anti-trans sentiment and rhetoric cultivate misunderstanding of, hostility towards, and even violence against trans folks."

In a 2018 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that “nearly 14% of [transgender] adolescents reported a previous suicide attempt,” while the Journal of Law Med Ethics policy analysis found that the suicide attempt rate for transgender youths in 2022 was 19%.

The suicide attempt rate increase may seem small and insignificant, but that is a major increase. It is no coincidence that the suicide attempt rate has gone up as the amount of anti-trans bills being proposed goes up. This goes to show just how dangerous these laws are to the transgender population, and the need for everyone, including cisgender people, to stand up for what is right.

What Can We Do?

The situation in the US surrounding gender-affirming healthcare rights may seem hopeless to some, especially trans folks, but there are ways to help.

Cis allies need to talk to other cis people about the issue, spread awareness, and advocate for trans rights. People who are anti-trans aren’t going to listen to other trans people.

Cis people need to stop voting for the Republicans, and consider voting for a progressive candidate. Engage with lawmakers, especially local lawmakers. Attend townhall meetings, write letters, make phone calls, and use social media to urge them to oppose or repeal discriminatory legislation with evidence-based arguments and personal experiences.

And if all else fails, go to protests and make your voice heard.

Final Thoughts on the Issue

Hopefully this essay will clear up any misconceptions about the political implications of banning gender-affirming care.

In conclusion, the rights of the transgender community are being stripped away state by state. This will cause irreparable harm to transgender people, and will result in an increased suicide rate among those who are gender-nonconforming.

We need to meet each other where were at and ask questions to better understand each other, engage with lawmakers, and vote. It is vital to the survival of trans community that we take action now.

Biography

Anna Bojorquez is a college student taking an English 101 class. She is passionate about the transgender community. She enjoys playing her guitar, writing music, reading, witchcraft, and learning. She is majoring in social work to become a licensed therapist and a mental health legislation advisor.

[buckybarnesdiaries]

i won't let you down

© @snyderzack

bucky barnes x reader. ⎢ masterlist.

Bucky helps you and gives you hope.

word count: 1.196 words.

warnings/tags: very brief mention of domestic violence, the winter soldier coming to help you.

author notes: none of my stories contain reader’s body descriptions to be inclusive.

Join the tag list here.

BUCKY POV

It was the fourth month he was living in the same building as you, concretely, in the apartment next to yours. Since the very first moment you met in the lift, you were extra kind with him and he couldn’t help but think that you were hiding some kind of intentions, until the days passed away and he discovered it was part of your naturality. He remembered, as if it happened yesterday, the first morning he knocked on your door asking for some coffee and you practically invited him to have breakfast together. You two talked about your part-time job in a cafeteria by morning, close to the neighborhood, and another one in a book shop by evenings. Bucky was fascinated by how much you used the hours of your days, letting you work out and have long walks in Central Park.

And he also remembered the night you knocked on his door for the first time, after hearing him having some nightmares and not being able to go back to sleep. The walls seemed like thin paper. He didn’t get it out of his head that time he heard you crying in your room, in the small hours, after a fight with your boyfriend. A punk who didn’t deserve an angel like you. On all the occasions you two argued, Bucky wanted to intervene, but he didn’t because what was his right.

Until a night where the heated talk escalated too quickly to swearings coming from him, and a painful scream coming from your lips after a loud hit. Bucky kicked the door down without doubting, panting furious and breaking into your apartment like a bat out of hell. As soon as he reached the living room and saw you crying and lying on the floor, all his rage contained during months got concentrated on the same point. Five cold fingers closing in a big and dangerous fist.

“Who the fuck are you?” Your boyfriend spat raving mad.

“A guy who’s gonna disappoint his therapist for breaking rule number two”. The soldier hissed, not giving time to the other to react.

With his left hand grabbing your boyfriend’s throat, Bucky pinned him to the nearest wall with so much uncontrollable strength that he almost opened a hold in it, straight to his own house.

“Listen to me now, you son of a bitch”. Their faces were separated barely for a couple of inches, drinking each other’s breathing. “If I see you coming again, laying a finger on her… I promise I’ll turn your life into a damn nightmare”.

Bucky could see the horror borning in his eyes when your boyfriend recognized him. That voice. Those blue orbs. The metallic fingers cutting off the air from his lungs. He was in the news for a long time. The Winter Soldier. One of those freaks with superpowers, with the difference that he was a trained assassin. Only a fool wouldn’t obey his threat. But for some reason, Bucky wasn’t able to loosen the hold around the other man, driven by the desire he had for killing him. After all the suffering he made you go through, after all the nights hearing you crying, after all the time waiting for your boyfriend to change. He wanted to end his life.

“Bu— Bucky”. Your weak sobs brought him back to reality. To New York. To the year twenty twenty-one. To the new century.

As if it was an automatic act, his fingers opened making your boyfriend fall to the floor. Coughing, choking with his own saliva and the lack of air. The poor coward ran away before Bucky could blink twice. Shaking his head to shut up the voices inside his head claiming him to chase the man, he turned around and squatted next to you. A thin thread of blood poured out from the upper right corner of your lip, as your cheek was burning in pain after the punch. The soldier held you onto his arms, listening to the sound of the police sirens coming. Probably some neighbor called them, fed up with the fights inside your house.

You were crying inconsolably and ashamed when he walked into his apartment, placing you with so much care on his sofa. Bucky didn’t utter a syllable, heading to his bathroom to take something to fix you up. He had a good medical kit since he didn’t want to visit any kind of hospital. Coming back to you, the soldier knelt next to you, feeling a knot inside his chest pressing out his skin. He wetted a cotton in hydrogen peroxide and placed his warm free hand on your untouched cheek to urge you to raise your head towards him. You couldn’t help but draw a grimace of pure soreness that broke his heart in one million pieces.

“Sorry…” Bucky murmured, earning your look filled up with sadness. “I, uh… I wanted to… So many times, I…”

“Thank you… for saving me”. You stuttered in low tears, while he continued healing your lip and cleaning the blood on it. “You’re a… good man, James”.

“I just did what I had to”.

“We’re… more than fifty persons living here… And you’ve been the one who has saved me”.

Knocks on his door interrupted your little chat, causing him to frown as the two of you heard it was the NYPD. Bucky left a delicate caress on your cheek before standing up and attending the call. The cops came into his house without asking if they could, knowing very well the man who was living there.

“Ma’am, you okay?” One of the officers inquired walking closer.

“Yeah, it was… I just… slip off to the fl—”. Tell them about your, now, ex-boyfriend wasn’t an option for you, feigning a soft chuckle as you cleaned the tears in your eyelids.

“His boyfriend hit her”. But Bucky interrupted you.

“And you helped her, mister Barnes?”

“Yeah, and she’s gonna make a complaint”.

That wasn’t an option for you either, but by the look coming from his eyes, you knew it was the only one for him. You couldn’t persuade him.

“Ma’am?”

Bucky licked his bottom lip, shortening the distance between both to grab his cozy and baggy black hoodie to offer it to you. He was determined to help you. He really wanted your welfare.

“C’mon”. He almost begged you in a whisper, shaking briefly his hand holding the piece of clothing to convince you of taking the good road. “I’ll be with you, I promise. I won’t let you down… Not again”.

It took you a couple of seconds to nod your head, getting up from his sofa being helped by the cold hand showing up. Bucky made you wear his hoodie, with so much careless to not touch your right cheek still burning because of the pain. Under the attentive look of the cops, he placed his flesh arm over your shoulders, not caring about the lack of distance when you clung yours around his waist and tried to hide your face on his chest. For the first time since you started that toxic relationship, you felt safe. You felt liberated.

feedback is appreciated, please, leave a comment to let me know if you liked it.

and REBLOG!!! support the writers 🤍

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[its-feekle]

South Park S23E7 (Spoilers)

OMG! That was a terrific episode! Best of the season so far, hands down.

This will be disorganized and point form since I literally just finished watching it ten minutes ago:

- i loved how they actually looked at both sides, how some guys are insecure about letting girls play their games (Cartman) while most don’t care.

- there are things girls are good at, there are things men are good at. And it’s not transphobic to say that.

- It reminded me of the time Cartman pretended to be retarded to compete in special olympics, in this case “Heather” (ie. Macho Man Randy Savage) claims to be a woman to compete and dominate women’s sports. At some point, people need to be allowed question this stuff without being called transphobic.

- I think the PC family now realizes that. They realize how insane this shit is getting.

- Cartman being sexist and manipulating Butters and Scott was funny and showed the worst elements of other side, while most of the boys didn’t care and even liked the idea of girls in gaming.

- I think that is a nuanced jab at the #GamerGate thing a few years ago which was defined in the liberal media as a misogynist hate movement when in reality there are only a minority of assholes, while most guys didn’t care. They just got sick of having this shoved in their faces constantly. They just wanted to be left alone to play games.

- Like the bit near the beginning when Strong Woman commented on how Mulan was “outdated”. God forbid! EVERYTHING doesn’t need to be about identity politics, you know? Something else the ‘woke’ people need to understand.

- I also liked the part where the boys are not allowed in the girls board game club. It points out one of the great hypocrisies of the ‘woke’ left. Inclusiveness, except not. You have to let girls play boys’ games, but not the other way around. They nailed that one!

- “Heather”’s package flopping around in front of the kids was the kind of shock humor gag this show is famous for.

- Like Butters, I think Scott needs an episode all his own.

- And I hope Cartman was only making up the statement about Scott’s diabetes being terminal...

- I liked when Mackey said to Cartman: “So they’re smarter than you and beat you at the game”. Ouch! That HAD to hurt his ego.

-Overall, I think they did a good job looking at the insanity that is identity politics.

- like Cartman, “Heather” turns out to just be insecure about losing to a woman.

- the Strong Woman song seemed to be a take on ‘Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult.

Anyway, I expect a lot of butthurt from the ‘woke’ left on this one. About how it was a bad take and how they missed the point, etc. etc. That’s what everyone says when this show attacks their own sacred cows. But South Park is used to that. hence, #CancelSouthPark

Bring on more PC Babies. They’re finally growing up. And for the first time, i actually like the PC family.

[a-room-of-my-own]

Authenticity & empathy: Meghan Murphy

Meghan Murphy is a freelance writer and journalist. She has been podcasting and writing about feminism since 2010, is the founder and editor Feminist Current, Canada’s leading feminist website and has published work in numerous national and international publications.

This is the text of the speech she gave at the 22nd meeting of Woman’s Place UK.

I’ve been thinking a lot about authenticity lately. We’re currently living in a culture wherein authenticity has been traded in for fakery. We support and reward virtue signalling and punish those who are real, those who tell the truth, those with integrity, those who insist on making political arguments based on critical thinking and what is right, rational, and ethical, instead of based on what is politically correct or popular.

I have a rather overzealous commitment to authenticity, which I think has played a sizable role in my insistence on pushing back against gender identity ideology and legislation. I know I have friends, or acquaintances, or friends of friends, or random internet followers with self righteous opinions who think maybe I should just back off of this. Or who claim I’m being ‘mean’ or unempathetic, because I continue to operate in reality rather than the fantasy land we’re told is the new normal, wherein black is white, up is down, and men are women.

But I see no empathy for women and girls on the part of trans activists, that is to say, those pushing gender identity ideology and legislation. What I see is bullying, threats, ostracization, and a misogynist backlash against the feminist movement and much of the work it’s accomplished over years.

I see no empathy for women who are now being forced to compete against male athletes in sport, essentially rendering women’s sport nonexistant, as they can no longer compete on fair ground, if forced to compete against men. I see no empathy for the female athletes speaking out against this reprehensible trend — instead they’re being smeared and threatened. I see no empathy for the lesbians being bullied right out of their own events and communities, as the LGBTQxyz+++ whatever movement does nothing to support them, and in fact seems instead to support the men pushing them around and hurling verbal abuse at them, simply for asserting that lesbians are females who are attracted to other females, not heterosexual men interested in playing around with lipstick.

We held an event in Vancouver earlier this month, addressing the issue of gender identity and kids, and our venue — the Croatian Cultural Centre — received so many threats they had to file a police report, hire their own security, and bring in the Vancouver Police Department to keep protesters off the property. They, for once, didn’t blame us — women, feminists — for the threats of violence sent their way, and rather asked, with disbelief, how it was us the trans activists were accusing of being ‘hateful’, while simultaneously verbally abusing and threatening violence against the venue’s staff.

Somewhere between 150 and 200 protesters showed up, and stood outside with signs saying things like, “Support trans youth”, “Love and Solidarity”, “Love trans kids”, “be careful who you hate, it might be someone you love” and “love wins.”

All this branding around “love” has been incredibly successful, of course. We — women fighting for women’s rights, people fighting for the truth, those of us who insist on acknowledging that biology is real, that females and males are real things, and that, no, there is no such thing as a “female penis” —have been painted as hateful, intolerant, and bigoted, despite the fact that we are the only ones engaging (or trying to engage in) respectful, civil, rational debate and discussion, and being shut down over and over again.

Despite the fact that WE are the ones concerned about male violence against women and how gender identity ideology and legislation will hurt women, as well as kids, who are now being sent down a path towards hormones and surgery that will destroy their bodies permanently, simply because they don’t conform to sexist gender stereotypes, it is trans activists who have positioned themselves as caring and politically correct, and us as cruel and intolerant.

As I was leaving the venue after that event, the stragglers screamed at me that I had blood on my hands. Which of course I do not, and which, of course, is incredibly ironic considering how many times I’ve been told I should be murdered on account of my belief that you can’t change sex, and that it is not possible to be ‘born in the wrong body.’

I see no empathy in trans activism for the girls who will lose scholarships and opportunities to boys who can easily beat them in athletic competitions.

I see no empathy for women and girls who don’t feel comfortable with naked men in their change rooms at the pool. I see no empathy for youth being put on hormones that will have a lasting impact on them, including permanent sterilization, all to accommodate adults who don’t want to see trans ideology questioned under any circumstances.

I see no empathy for the women and their children who will have nowhere to turn if their local transition house is defunded on account of a women-only policy.

I see no empathy for Kristi Hanna, a Toronto woman and survivor of sexual assault, who had leave her room at Palmerston house, a shelter for recovering addicts, because she was made to share a room with a man, and did not feel safe.

I see no empathy for the 14 female estheticians who were asked to give a male a brazilian bikini wax, then dragged to court when they declined, saying they only offered the service to women.

I see no empathy for the girls allegedly predated on by this man, who is being protected by our very liberal, very progressive society that’s choosing to put male feelings and desires above all else, under the guise of ‘inclusion’, and thanks to trans activism.

Women and girls are being told they may not have boundaries. That they may not say ‘no’ to men. And this is what we are told it means to ‘choose love’. This is what we are being told is ‘feminism’.

Trans activism says women may not define their own bodies as female. That we may not have our own rights, services, and spaces, that ‘exclude’ men. It says gender stereotypes are real and innate, but the female body is a social construction. It says that ‘woman’ is based only on adherence to or an affinity towards femininity, something feminism has fought against for years.

So much of what women fought for over the past century is being rolled back, and progressives are insisting we all shut up and take it, because it’s ‘nice’, and of course, women must always be ‘nice’, even if it means putting our lives, autonomy, safety, opinions, and rights aside.

NOTHING about the trans movement is progressive and nothing about it is feminist.

I brought up authenticity earlier on, partly because I am sick to death of this social media based culture wherein we put forth personas we believe our audience will like, modeling perfect faces, lives, and thoughts, which I find incredibly boring and depressing, but also because I see this devaluing of authenticity as having an incredibly destructive impact on political discourse, and certainly it’s manifested itself powerfully in the trans movement.

I don’t believe that, aside from a few exceptionally delusional or troubled people, a majority of the population believes it’s possible to change sex. I don’t believe that all these so called progressives look at a man we call him ‘she’, and believe he is literally a woman. I don’t believe all these people claiming ‘love wins’ and insisting women be more ‘empathetic’ as they give up all their rights and spaces, while these activists spout vile, hateful insults and threats at us, are really very loving at all.

I think people are not telling the truth. I think they are repeating mantras and going along with ideas and policies in order to appease their Facebook friends. I think they value social status a lot, and are willing to give up ethics and truth in order to be liked. And I think it’s pathetic. I think that these people are throwing women under the bus and even selling themselves out in the process, knowing that they’re spouting lies for virtual cookies and using us all to fake politics.

And I refuse to be used as some kind of stepping stool for empty headed, cowardly hipsters — these extremely privileged people who have fetishized oppression, but have no idea what marginalized groups actually face and deal with on a daily basis, because certainly it’s not ‘misgendering’ that is keeping people poor and vulnerable — who can’t be bothered to read, listen, or think before announcing, boldly, that women with actual politics, who actually understand history, and who are bold enough to take a stand against actual bigotry and oppression should be silenced, punched, or even killed.

The wrong side of history is an embarrassing place to be.

But unfortunately I worry that, by the time these people realize how much damage they’ve caused by going along with such a destructive trend, it will be too late. What does give me hope is all of you. This massive and growing movement of people standing up and saying ‘no’, we won’t take this silently and sitting down. This groundswell of people insisting on telling the truth, despite the fact that we lose friends, jobs, social status, and sometimes safety, for doing so.

And the more we keep doing it, the more will join us.

Meghan Murphy

20th May 2019

[amphtaminedreams]

The Misogyny of Game of Thrones and its Treatment of Daenerys Targaryen: A Tale in Two Parts

TW// Discussion of Rape and Sexual Assault

The best way to sum up the majority of the Game of Thrones fan population’s relationship with Daenerys Targaryen is-

Daenerys: *breathes*

Game of Thrones fans: *insert Kermit trembling with anger GIF here*

You see, whilst every other character on the show can get away with anything short of rape and still be lavished in praise, Daenerys Targaryen only has to assert her claim to the throne and people are up in arms. 

And this tirade, courtesy of series 8 episode 4 of the show, isn’t just aimed at the fans. It’s aimed at the writers too. I’ve spent pretty much all day on Reddit criticising the way her character arc is clearly headed and desperately trying to make all those I-like-Arya-Stark-so-I-can’t-be-sexist fans see why I am so vehemently pissed off about it. Almost as pissed off as I am about the fact that every time I go to tweet something about Thrones on twitter, the most popular hashtag has multiple spelling errors. 

It’s hard not to notice that in an episode where one of the other female characters basically says that she needed to go through the abuse that she did to be the smart woman she is today (I mean, her just existing in King’s Landing and travelling alongside Little Finger would’ve been enough to explain Sansa’s political smarts and talent for manipulation but you know! Gotta throw a bit of rape in there too!), we also had Dany’s 2 male aides sit around and gossip about how the woman they’re supposed to be advising is out of control. Of course, forgetting the fact that part of Daenerys’ current state of mind is to do with her losing the majority of her army thanks to said advisors’ god awful advice; funnily enough, one of the most tired criticisms of Dany is that she doesn’t listen to anyone else but, like, I WISH that was true, if ONLY she would stop listening to the naive, dumbed down version of himself that Tyrion has become. Anyway, although it probably seems I’m writing this a bit prematurely, since we haven’t actually seen Daenerys go full “mad queen” yet, with all the mentions of her father (nicknamed the mad king after his enjoyment of roasting innocent people alive) and the way other characters have been speaking about her, it’s pretty obvious what’s to come. Not to mention that this episode’s final moments delivered what we are most likely supposed to see as the final trigger of Daenerys’ descent into “madness”, which was the wonderfully tasteful slaughter of the show’s only prominent woman of colour. I’m not even going to go into the symbolism of Missandei of Narth, previously liberated from slavery, dying in chains and how blatantly fucked up that is.

Imagine, the arc of a woman we’ve watched build an army, build followers, build self-confidence for 8 seasons, a woman who has been through abuse, rape, the death of her husband and child, the death of her best friends, the armies she built up, all of it, reduced to her ending up as the “mad queen” within the show’s universe. We know she won’t get a Jaime, Theon or Hound-style redemption arc either, she’ll end up dead, probably killed by one of the fandom’s more beloved characters. Because we all know her supposed madness justifies that, right? And lately on this show, everyone not protected with a hasty coat of plot armour and/or favouritism is dropping dead. 

I’m not saying Daenerys has to sit on the Iron Throne for me to be satisfied. She just deserved better than this. And in a show where Jon Snow can come back to life and Arya and Gendry can end up together and Sam Tarly can survive the Battle for Winterfell, surely, that isn’t so much to ask? She deserves to die without having her name dragged through the mud, without people acting as if her actions are inexplicable, without her being portrayed as if she’s just as bad as Cersei. She deserves to die that heroine that she is, the breaker of chains, the mother of dragons, the Khaleesi of the great grass sea and all that jazz, not another “crazy” woman.

She especially deserves to die without the fandom celebrating her demise as well, which they almost certainly will. The same fandom that cheered on Stannis Baratheon (up until the, ahem, daughter burning incident) for his ambition, ruthlessness and pride have long been calling Daenerys Targaryen a crazy, unreasonable tyrant for exhibiting the exact same qualities, albeit probably to a less cruel degree. Daenerys kills two traitors and she’s beyond redemption whilst Stannis burnt his own followers and was still rooted for by the masses. Jon Snow, The Hound, Jaime, they all cut down man after man after man and charge into battle without thinking, no big deal, they’re “good people at heart”, but Daenerys Targaryen is a psycho bitch, apparently, for using the weapon at her disposal to deal with enemies whilst at war and to punish slave masters. Double standards all round. It’s fine to dislike Daenerys Targaryen, but when criticisms are inconsistently applied to female characters versus male characters, I can’t help but think it’s rooted in misogyny, especially in a show with superfluous amounts of violence against women, a largely male audience, and since season 3, not a single woman in the writer’s room. If Dany does go on to burn down King’s Landing, it would be in a desperate attempt to wreak revenge on Cersei, a motive that usually spawns calls of “badass!” and an action movie trilogy when it’s a dude doing it (funny how women doing the same thing always gets them called vindictive and spiteful, isn’t it?). It would be an act of grief and an understandable outcome of having everything you’ve worked for all your life slip through your fingers to someone who doesn’t even want it, whilst in a foreign land, everyone you care about either turned on you or dead. If it was true that the woman who liberated thousands of slave men, women and children didn’t care about sparing the lives of the people living in the Red Keep, she would've burnt down King’s Landing and taken it the moment she arrived in Westeros, you know, back when she still had a huge army and 3 living dragons. Before she sacrificed them to save the lives of people she could’ve easily gone back to Essos and let perish, and wait for the winter to kill off her enemies. 

Yes, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of Game of Thrones ending with two “crazy women” facing off against each other whilst inadequate men, who’ve had a whole host of opportunities to stop things from getting to this point, sit around and get praised for doing the bare minimum. I’m uncomfortable because so many people with both conscious and subconscious misogynistic biases will delight in slagging off a bunch of female characters for being unreasonable and not fit to rule (don’t get me wrong, this definitely applies to Cersei but I will not stand to hear this about Dany, who did a fine job in Mereen when not having to deal with the Sons of the Harpies WHOM SHE EVENTUALLY DEALT WITH ANYWAY), whilst still patting themselves on the back for being inclusive just because they fanboy over the two female characters who refuse to associate with anything remotely feminine. Who excuse one character becoming a super assassin off screen but can’t excuse her pretty, dress wearing sister picking up some political know-how whilst spending her teenage years observing small council members and studying under Little Finger. Yes, as much as I love them, I’m talking about Brienne and “other girls are stupid” Arya Stark. In all of this, god do I want to apologise to Emilia Clarke and Nathalie Emmanuel for having to put up with their characters being decimated in such a way. They deserve better. We all do.

[extra-fulgadrome]

MVP - a Snapshot of Hana Song

Hana’s grandmother, born Sagong Chŏng-sun, had been a child when the Japanese occupation of Korea ended. At the height of the occupying force’s cultural suppression, Chŏng-sun’s own grandmother had taught her young granddaughter traditional Korean games that would have otherwise been stamped out — games rooted in folklore, some even older than hangul. These were Hana’s precious heirlooms, and many were the days spent cooped up in her mother’s tiny apartment, playing yutnori and gonu with her grandmother while they waited for the rain to let up.

“Halmoni…” Hana had once whined, pushing herself away from the low table to lie back against the threadbare rug. “You never let me win.”

Her grandmother simply gazed down at her, eyes steely and unsympathetic, as she gathered up the spread of playing cards to shuffle.

“If you want to win, work for it, child.”

She wasn’t the sort of person who backed down from a challenge. Bolstered by those words instead of being discouraged, Hana started to match her grandmother’s skill in games with her own cunning, despite the gap in experience. She won perhaps one in every five games they played, and was always improving — and when she won, how her grandmother’s eyes would shine with pride, and the moment wasn’t even spoiled when the old woman would tease her (“Are you getting better or just more lucky, Rabbit?”).

Then, her grandmother’s health took a turn for the worse, and little by little the games they shared became increasingly seldom occurrences, until they stopped altogether.

It was hard going for a long while after Grandmother passed. When Hana looked at the chess set in their once-shared bedroom, the game half played, never to be finished… it was all too much.

Seeing Hana’s despondency, her mother, a serious woman who did not share her family’s great love of games, did an impulsive thing. One late evening, she detoured on her way home from her work and purchased an old Sega Dreamcast from the secondhand shop, along with a handful of scratched CD roms. It was an ugly plastic box, two console generations out of date. Hana had never been too interested in video games — it was one of a number of “boy things” that, like wrestling in the muddy yard and smuggling nude magazines into school, she wasn’t terribly curious about. When she connected it to the little television in the dining room, only half the games still ran. But the dull glow of the television, the bleep-bloops of music, and the click-clack of colorful buttons was engaging enough to occupy those quiet, lonely hours before her mother returned home every night.

Hana wasn’t sure what changed, or why, but at some point before graduating middle school and after she had completed all of her Dreamcast games several times (perfect save files all in a row, one-hundred-percent completion) she found herself standing outside of a gaming cafe. The cafe’s staff charged by the hour to use their high-end PCs, top of the line rigs which outpaced her school’s computers (and the brick of a laptop her mother sometimes brought home, which was little more than a spreadsheet machine) to an absurd degree.

With only vague ideas of what she was getting herself into, Hana sat herself in a plush chair and pulled herself towards the computer, drawing a few curious looks from the largely male customers — curious, but not unkind as she had feared. With bright eyes and a heart full of hope, Hana logged on for the first time.

The subsequent year passed by in a blur, studies falling to the wayside even as she entered high school.

Warcraft. League. Counterstrike. Age of Empires.

A crowd at her back, cheering her on, as she no-scope headshots a platinum-level player from halfway across the map, again.

MMORPG. MOBA. FPS. RTS.

Her mother, face pulled into a frown, asking her why her grades have been dropping, asking where Hana went after school.

Casual. Noob. Hobbyist. Veteran.

When did the games become more than just a distraction, Hana wondered, idly purchasing herself a Starcraft subscription.

Winning got me this far, as she signed on to her first esports sponsorship. How much father can I go?

Then, later, when the MEKA recruiters come, was it in my blood all along?

Life was a challenge, but not one she couldn’t overcome. The training was tough and the hours were long, but it was just as fun as it was exhausting, and she always performed best under pressure.

Hana Song was a excellent gamer and entertainer, well-loved by her fan-base, but D.Va was transcendent. Rising star, liberator, celebrity, soldier. An idol, a warrior. The face of MEKA’s elite pilots, “D.Va” was a household name the world over, proudly and decisively combating the Omnic crisis. All of this came with perks — her mother would never have to work again, and what little time D.Va spent off of the training grounds or the battlefield passed in luxury.

And that was all well and good, but she’d be lying if she claimed any of that was the reason why she devoted herself to the Korean army’s Mobile Exo-Force.

Was it any real surprise that war was the greatest game mankind had ever produced?

Was it shocking, given that it was the favored subject matter of countless movies, novels, video games, children at play, and great works of art? Humans invented war before they’d made the wheel. D.Va turned war into the casual online entertainment of record numbers of steam watchers the world over. The world continued to spin.

There was some controversy at first, the rumblings of malcontent parents worried that their children would be desensitized to violence, but, well. It wasn’t as if she was fighting actual people, was she? Her heart went out to the sane Omnics in the world, the ones who hadn’t rebelled against their programming and spewed out appliances of death and destruction, but the thing that had risen out of the east Chinese sea and threatened to sink the Korean peninsula wasn’t exactly a cute little roomba.

Meeting the Bastion unit that old man Torbjörn dug out of Sweden had made her reconsider her position on Omnics, just slightly.

It had been during a photo-shoot they had met, a joint operation between the South Korean and the United States militarys — the kind of event that the Americans called “cross-promotion” when what they meant was “propaganda.” D.Va’s inclusion was almost an afterthought, pitched by MEKA for her brand’s popularity and to widen the expo’s audience appeal. For the most part, all she had to do was shake hands with shoddy old bureaucratic men and pose with her mech. After a few hours with the photographer the organizers ran out of things for her to do, and she was shuffled off into the gardens outside the building to sip non-alcoholic sparkling cider and be bored as hell while the “adults” talked business.

Then, from a behind a shrub, beeping. “Bwee, bwoo bwoorbweebweep booo…”

D.Va abandoned her empty plastic champagne flute to investigate, because beeping bushes were the most interesting thing that had happened in hours.

She followed the noise to its source, a pristine Bastion unit that she would have balked at the sight of and sounded the alarm… if it hadn’t been very carefully unshelling a bag of vending machine peanuts with its huge robot hands, and feeding them to a family of ravenous squirrels. D.Va vaguely recalled the news that they’d reclaimed a Bastion unit over in Europe, but she’d thought it would be under lock and key in some remote facility, not hanging out in a government park, making nice with the local wildlife.

“Bweep bweep,” the thing chimed, shifting its… optic?… over in her direction. Spotted.

D.Va took a step back, and snapped a twig beneath her heel, sending the rodents scattering. The machine beeped sadly at their departure, and five minutes later, despite herself, D.Va found herself keeping the Omnic company, sitting on its back as it rolled around the park in tank form.

It… Bastion unit E54, was a good listener, she’d give the robot that much. She spilled her guts to the machine about her frustrations and anxiety, and Bastion always replied with the appropriate emotion (if you could call it that) in its signature style. Sad bwoops for D.Va’s worries, curious bweeps when she talked about gaming, happy bwops and beeps when she talked about how proud she was of her progress.

A photo of D.Va in an elegant gown, riding on top of a Bastion unit as it plucked a flower and offered it to her, made its way on to Omnic rights webpages as a sign of peaceful progress between the races of man and machine… then was picked up a few days later by the mainstream media, who smeared her with rumor-mongering headlines like “KOREAN MECH PILOT, LYING DOWN WITH THE MACHINE?” and “SO-CALLED HEROINE OPENLY EMBRACES ENEMY”. It was a short-lived scandal, but those tense few days where MEKA threatened to pull D.Va from the spotlight made her sick with stress until the PR department managed to spin the story in a positive light.

Her fans (with a few crybaby outliers screaming about betrayal, but screw those guys, really) just thought it was a cute photo. Her Japanese audience especially appreciated its “moe factor” and spammed her with fan art.

D.Va was just glad that the experience, which she would remember fondly as the most open she had been since her grandmother had died, had not been entirely tainted by the unexpected aftermath.

From that point onward, however, MEKA was much more careful about where D.Va was allowed to go. Her life became nothing but endless training, drilling, and fighting. If she had thought her schedule had been strict before, the D.Va of a few months ago wouldn’t have been able to imagine what it was like to only be allowed nine hours to herself a day — eight for sleep, one for meals. Perhaps it was MEKA’s way of punishing her, or perhaps they feared an increase in the Omnic’s ferocity after the recent assassination of Tekhartha Mondatta, leader of the Omnic spiritual movement, the Shambali. Either way, with no time to spend on her usual hobby, the most she got in the way of stress relief was reading the travel blog of Mei-Ling Zhou (and a mobile version of  mahjong she played for a little before bed each night, but that was more so her brain didn’t get cobwebs).

Mei was a figure of fascination to D.Va — sleeping in the cold for nine years, only to emerge into a tumultuous world where her organization had been disgraced and disbanded. Having to escape from the arctic tundra with nothing but her wits… then going on to continue the work right where she and her fallen comrades had left off. Saving the world! ...from an ecological crisis, sure, which wasn’t exactly as cool as an evil empire bent on conquest or a dark god from beyond the stars or a demon army, but Mei very much had the indomitable spirit of her favorite video game heroes.  

So when she heard Mei was coming to South Korea to set up a weather data collection device at one of their military bases, D.Va asked — not begged, or pleaded, but seriously and maturely requested for her CO to grant D.Va the honor of acting as an ambassador during Mei’s visit.

Sooner or later the higher-ups at MEKA had to stop treating her like a child. She was fighting their war, they came to her for aid.

They tentatively agreed, provided D.Va remain on her best behavior leading up to the visit. It was like dealing with her mother all over again, and left a sour taste in her mouth as she exited the administration building.

At least the excitement made the coming weeks bearable.

Finally, the day came. D.Va stood tall, dressed in a pristine MEKA uniform, her arms crossed confidently over her chest and her stance wide and strong, as the transport shuttle reached the helipad and touched down. Her first thought, as the scientist clambered out of the craft somewhat unsteadily, was that Mei-Ling Zhou looked different when she wasn’t bundled up in that heavy fur coat.

A moment later second thought was she’s so cute! Round face! Big dewy eyes! And she was so short D.Va could reach down and scoop her right up! The MEKA pilot approached the older woman, smiling brightly.

“Zhou-Seonbae! Welcome to sunny South Korea,” D.Va said, bidding Mei peace with a gesture — or, as D.Va preferred, V for Victory.

“Hello Miss Song,” the woman said, in mildly accented hangul. Then, switching to english, “Just call me Mei, if you don’t mind!”

“Only if you call me D.Va!” she chirped, and Mei smiled back at her as she hefted a large metal case out of the cabin. She was strong for such a little woman.

They thanked the shuttle pilot, and D.Va escorted Mei to a waiting car and their security escort. The ride over to the cellphone tower where Mei would be installing her probe was only twenty minutes travel the base’s airport, but the short journey was full of happy chatter. D.Va confided that Mei’s travel journal was a source of great personal inspiration to her, and the older woman introduced her to Snowball, Mei’s cute little drone.

“Snowball… that’s nun mungchi, in hangul.”

“Nun mungzhe…?” Mei said, consideringly, patting the little bot on its round head. Snowball’s blue LED eyes swiveled around to look at her. Adorable.

“Nun mungchi.” D.Va held up a finger, her face serious. The spitting image of a patient, if strict, teacher.

“Nun mungchi.” Mei repeated earnestly.

“You’ve got it!” D.Va said, delighted. Mei put her hand on her chest and beamed, as if receiving a great honor.

“Niiirn miiirrchiii,” Snowball whirred cheerfully, bopping the car’s roof in its excitement before careening back down to the seat below, blue eyes spinning cartoonishly.

They were still laughing when their car pulled up to the tower.

At the end of Mei’s stay, the two women parted with great reluctance, both promising to stay in touch. D.Va couldn’t have been happier to count Mei among her friends, and refreshed from the time she had spent getting to know her hero, plunged back into her training with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.

Just in time, too, as MEKA mobilized in response to one of the worst Omnic raids yet, spearing farther inland than even the most pessimistic estimate predicted. The enemy forces had quickly spilled over into unevacuated civilian territory and time was of the essence. They deployed at four in the morning to hold down the line in Daegu while the infantry set up a defensive perimeter. Her orders were to cut the enemy off from encroaching further, to minimize damage whenever possible, and to defend fleeing civilians.

As D.Va touched down in Daegu and began to repel the machine invaders, she saw there weren’t many people left to defend.

This battle, she thought grimly, as she gunned down a line of drones as they swept through an abandoned playground, is not exactly livestream material.

Hemmed in on all sides, D.Va made a tactical retreat and found a vantage point from which to target her foes at more of a distance — everyone knew the high ground was most advantageous. Her fusion cannons were essentially buffed shotguns, the wide spread of buckshot not meant for precision shooting, but she would manage. The targeting system of her mech got a real workout as she sniped stragglers from the Omnic’s main forces (“Boom, headshot!”), eventually drawing their attention all over again.  Nowhere to go, she switched mental tracks to tower defense game and activated her mech’s defense matrix, unleashing a strategic barrage of missiles. Soon, the twisted bodies of the Omnic assault forces lay strewn around the pitted street, their zerg rush at a merciful end — for now.

“...multikill,” she panted, the fusion cannons mounted in her mech’s arms smoking, the barrels white-hot. Any more and the metal would warp — not that it mattered much now, seeing that she was down to less than three-fourths of her ammo capacity. A bead of sweat dripped down her face. If she were being honest, that had been... a real pinch.

Time to restock.

“Need a supply drop,” she said into the comms, waiting for confirmation from command. A minute passed in worrying silence.

“This is D.Va, requesting a resupply drone. Please acknowledge, over.”

There was no response. She switched to the encrypted channels, trying again to reach command to no avail, before attempting to contact the various squad captains.

Nothing.

“Is it broken…? Well, that’s just my luck!”

Even in the privacy of her thoughts, she refused to acknowledge the bleak alternative.

A plan started to come together. Under the circumstances, D.Va would have to make her way over to the supply depot on foot... so to speak. She boosted into the air, intending to take the rooftop route, collateral damage be damned. It was just a few short miles to the north, along the perimeter.

An unexpected burst of fire caught her mech across its visor, the heavy steel slug sending a long hairline fracture through the supposedly bulletproof polymer. She wheeled around to face the source, spotting an airborne Omnic with a mounted railgun of all things. She strafed left, aiming carefully for the machine’s rotors, but it simply tilted away, her barrage deflected harmlessly by its armored shell.

...OP, plz nerf.

Not missing a beat, she fired her last missile at the hovering Omnic, but the distance was too great — it simply swiveled its body 360 degrees clockwise on an axis, the missile sailing harmlessly through the spot its bulk had been occupying a nanosecond previously. Just as she began contemplating activating her mech’s self destruct sequence and booking it, the readout on her HUD indicated a swarm of enemies was approaching from the southwest. Fast.

“Ah, shi-bal…”

No choice now, she would have to make a break for it—

“I’ve got you all in my sights.”

A splash of light in the alleyway where the Omnic hoard was approaching, and one by one the enemy’s icons flickered out, leaving just two — the flying railgun in enemy-red, and the unknown combatant in grey, who was approaching her position now. Were they friend or foe?

As the grey icon came nearer, one thing was clear: they were about to walk right into that railgun’s line of sight, and it was almost done charging a second shot.

Time to be a goddamn hero.

“STAY BACK,” she shouted, the mech magnifying her voice, as she grabbed her light gun from its holster and activated the self-destruct subroutine. The mech launched forward and she launched back, and she was briefly airborne before landing on her heels, digging into the asphalt even as she tried to gain some distance. The timing was crucial, and she knew it by heart, but this was cutting it a little close—

The fusion reactor detonated, shattering a block’s worth of glass and decimating the aerial Omnic.

Well, if anyone asked, she’d just say an Omnic did it.

D.Va, upright and unharmed, popped her gum and turned to face the stranger, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She narrowed her eyes.

“I know you,” she said in english. “The American vigilante… Soldier: 76. Is that right?”

His weapon, which had been raised in alarm towards the explosion, slowly lowered as he took her in. She kept her grip on her light gun tight, but let her arm hang at her side. This guy could be dangerous, could be an ally. She would have to play this by ear.

The masked man grunted by way of greeting, then relaxed his stance. That was no way to react to a warrior of her caliber, but if he wasn’t going to take her seriously as a potential combatant, she would happily take advantage of his oversight. Moreover, now that D.Va could get a good look at him, he seemed injured. There was no visible blood, but he was favoring his left leg… a sprain or break, perhaps.

“You’re that… actress.” Tch.

“I’m a proud soldier of the Mobile Exo-Force of the Korean Army, and you are wanted by the UN for questioning.” He ought to know his place, this old man.

“You, a soldier?” He shook his head, and without the benefit of seeing his expression, it was difficult to tell if it was in disbelief... or amusement. “Your country drafts middle schoolers, now?”

“I am a mech pilot with hundreds of confirmed kills, and unless you can withstand a direct hit from a weapon that damaged tech developed on a multi-million dollar budget, I also just saved your life.”

Perhaps he was shocked into submission, or perhaps he was grateful but too proud to admit it, but regardless, the old man had nothing to say to that. Cool and professional despite her distaste, she approached him from his injured side and offered him her shoulder. Grumbling, he slung his gun around his back and wordlessly accepted her aid, leaning on her as she supported him. Soldier: 76 was heavy, but D.Va didn’t just train in mech piloting. No, she was also quite talented on the track, in the obstacle course, and (naturally), on the range. With her free hand, she twirled her gun.

“You’re a decent shot, right, 76? Try to keep up. It’s a long walk to the perimeter.”

“Hmph. We’ll see who slows down who.”

The destruction of Daegu was a huge blow to the people of South Korea, who had grown comfortable and confidant after MEKA began its initiative to outfit its mechs with pilots and repel the Omnic invasion. Morale was especially low in MEKA’s headquarters, the mood desperate and mournful since the confusion caused by the communications blackout (which resulted from an Omnic hack) had seen many young pilots killed. The populace’s faith in MEKA was shaken, just as those pilots who had managed to survive the disaster where shaken by the loss of their comrades in arms.

It wasn’t the first time they had taken casualties, but never before have they been so numerous.

D.Va felt a wave of pity and understanding for the dissolution of Overwatch, an event of which Soldier: 76 had spoken to her about, just a little, as they fought and fled their way through the streets of Daegu. It had been what little information she managed to get out of him, between his long bouts of gruff silence, occasional condescending remarks, and even rarer praise.

For her part, D.Va was keeping busy with disaster relief. She, along with a bulk of the MEKA recruits, had volunteered their time to the recovery efforts. Command had cleared them for this duty almost almost as soon as they put the request in, probably just because it was a good idea to stay visible to help PR, but who knows? Maybe they thought it would lift their spirits.

As much as D.Va believed this was valuable work, however, it just depressed her. The sooner she was allowed to fight again, the happier she would be. No matter what that Grandpa: 76 said, she knew her place was on the battlefield.

For now, at least, she could occupy her time constructively. It was better than sitting back at base, doing nothing. Yesterday she had cleared a street of rubble, today she assisted the paramedics with search and rescue. Tomorrow she might help with handing out supplies...

Her mech beeped twice, and a bell icon appeared at the bottom of her HUD. A call, nonurgent.

She pressed the receive button, accepting it immediately.

“D.Va,” she identified.

“It’s Maeng,” came the familiar voice of her fellow recruit. “We’ve got a VIP waiting in the market district. You mind playing babysitter until we can get a security detail on him? My shift is just about over and I wanted to grab a bite before I get some shuteye.”

“Yes, yes,” she replied, as he pinged her the VIP’s location on her minimap. “You can always  count on me to make a good impression!”

Her usual cheer wasn’t quite there, but Maeng still thanked her before he exited the call. He was a sweet kid, and it was heartbreaking the way he hadn’t been sleeping since the incident. It was the least she could do.

D.Va headed over, detouring briefly to assist with an electrical fire that had broken out, before arriving at the designated area. Exiting her mech, she checked her hair in the glossy reflection of its visor, winking at the cute girl mirrored back at her.

“Oh my gosh,” went a warm voice behind her, from inside a large emergency tent, “I mean, I knew you were from here, but I never thought… well…”

That voice was… familiar.

The man stepped into the light, and D.Va’s eye widened. The Brazilian DJ smiled sheepishly, scratching the back of his head as he walked… no,  skated forward.

“It’s so cool to meet you. Wish it was under better circumstances, but I’m a big fan, D.Va!”

“You’re Lúcio! The Lúcio,” she exclaimed, a disbelieving smile pulling at her lips. That Maeng could’ve at least warned her…!

Lúcio blinked at her, then grinned goofily. D.Va trotted forward giddily, and the two shook hands enthusiastically.

“Haha, you’ve heard of me? Man, that’s wild. People know me even in Korea, huh. Makes me feel even better about doing this charity concert, if people won’t be wondering ‘who’s this guy?’ the whole time, you know?”

“Of course we know you! Synaesthesia Auditiva has topped the music charts here for months and months now! A lot of us followed you even before that, on the internet.”

“I’d been told global reception was pretty good, but you know, there’s a big difference between being told and seeing it for yourself, I guess! I probably don’t even have to say this, but you’re really big in Brazil. The kids call you Coelhinho, and I’ve even seen people with tattoos of your logo, believe it or not.”

“Oh, I believe it,” D.Va said confidently, putting her hands on her hips. Lúcio laughed good-naturedly, doubling over and shaking his head so all his funny dreadlocks waved around. When he rose, D.Va couldn’t help but think that he was awfully tall. She stood up straighter, feeling her face light up just a little bit.

“So you’re doing a free concert?” she asked, leading them back to the seating in the tent. Folding chairs. Not the most comfortable or appropriate thing for a pair of international celebrities, but that was life.

“Yeah. I’ve done this a couple of times before, like during that hurricane that wrecked Georgia and Florida, or when that bad earthquake hit Italy. Trying to use the power of music to lift spirits, you feel me? First time I’ve ever had a concert in Asia, though.”

“I’m sure the people here will be happy to have you play for them,” D.Va said. She meant it, too.

“I’ve got a fundraiser going online right now, too, and it’s going pretty good. Hopefully I’ll be able to give a little more than good vibrations,” Lúcio said, smiling conspiratorially. “I’d give you a sneak peak at the set I cooked up, but I can’t even get ready until the power in this area comes back, and the last guy told me it might be a while.”

“...probably a few hours, at least,” she admitted.

The conversation lulled into a slightly awkward pause, as they both smiled and tried not to look at each other. D.Va didn’t understand why she was being so silly about this — she had met scores of K-Pop artists and famous actors, so she shouldn’t be feeling this flustered. She stared at the dusty ground, and traced a line in the dirt with her foot. It gave her an idea.

Finally, she broke the silence.

“Lúcio, have you ever played gonu?”

“Nope,” he replied, flashing a winning smile. D.Va liked that smile. She liked it a lot.

“It’s a traditional Korean game — a little bit  like tic-tac-toe. Here, let me show you…”

Happy Birthday, @cervamater. Keep on shining, starlight.

[sykesplaining]

What are the views of celebrated radical feminists on the transgender issue?

The answer might surprise you, my dear “TERF”:

So now I want to be unequivocal in my words: I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make. And what I wrote decades ago does not reflect what we know today as we move away from only the binary boxes of “masculine” or “feminine” and begin to live along the full human continuum of identity and expression.

– Gloria Steinem, feminist icon & activist

Work with transsexuals, and studies of formation of gender identity in children provide basic information which challenges the notion that there are two discrete biological sexes. That information threatens to transform the traditional biology of sex difference into the radical biology of sex similarity… Every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions.

– Andrea Dworkin, radical feminist pioneer & activist

Male dominant society has defined women as a discrete biological group forever. If this was going to produce liberation, we’d be free.… To me,��women is a political group. I never had much occasion to say that, or work with it, until the last few years when there has been a lot of discussion about whether transwomen are women… I always thought I don’t care how someone becomes a woman or a man; it does not matter to me. It is just part of their specificity, their uniqueness, like everyone else’s. Anybody who identifies as a woman, wants to be a woman, is going around being a woman, as far as I’m concerned, is a woman.

– Catharine MacKinnon, radical feminist pioneer & activist

The notion that truly revolutionary radical feminism is trans-inclusive is a no brainer. I honestly do not understand how or why a strain of radical feminism has emerged that favors a biology-based/sex-essentialist theory of ‘sex caste’ over the theory of ‘sex class’ as set forth in the work of Witting, Andrea, and MacKinnon. Can radical feminism be ‘reclaimed’ so that its trans-inclusivity—which is inherent—is made apparent? I hope so.

– John Stoltenberg, radical feminist & activist

Transphobia in the feminist community isn’t new and continues to be promoted by radical feminists such as Sheila Jeffreys, Germaine Greer, and Julie Bindel who pathologize transgenderism for a variety of reasons. They characterize being transgender in various ways: as an extremely kinky sexual practice or a mental illness such as body dysmorphic disorder. Sometimes the criticism is paternalistic in claiming that transgender people are merely exploited victims of the medical industry’s drive to make money with various surgical and hormonal procedures. The 1994 book Transexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male by Janice Raymond describes being transsexual as a medical invention manufactured to create profit. Another criticism is that transgender people reinforce gender roles or expression. For example, Germaine Greer once referred to transwomen as “ghastly parodies of women” with “too much eye-shadow.” Sometimes the attacks on transgender people reach conspiracy levels by those who see the phenomenon as an effort by men to turn themselves into women in order to infiltrate “women”-only spaces. Radical feminists Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen blend transphobia with “anti-civilization” environmentalism in Deep Green Resistance (DGR). Julie Labrouste, a contact of Radical Women, was repudiated by DGR, which had been urging her to join until she mentioned she was trans-female.

– Radical Women, 2nd wave feminist organization, formed in 1967

The opinions of two radfems whose values predate the current sexism, racism, and hysteria in the radical feminist echo chambers:

AB: Provisionally, and partially. I am more interested in movements like materialist feminism at this point but I think it is crucial for people to recall the function that radical feminism served prior to its falling into transphobia. ... ... I next interviewed Jillian Horowitz, a 26 year old graduate student of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at the CUNY graduate center. Jillian discusses the problematic elements of radical feminist thought (namely, transphobia and racism), but goes on to urge feminists to not disregard radical feminism. Instead, she illustrates the way she believes radical feminist thought has influenced contemporary feminist thinking. ...

...

I do think radical feminism has had a crucial role to play in the advancement of women’s rights in the US. However, I am absolutely not “canon” to what radical feminism has come to mean today. There is a mortifying, first-wave essentialist transphobia constructing straw arguments about trans politics and glibly erasing the structural marginalization against TGNCI people in the US experience. This narrative implies that if you are a lesbian, someone is out there who will force you to have PIV sex with a trans women to prove you are not transphobic. This same narrative erases trans men by saying that they are really just women, colluding with male supremacy. Jack Halberstam has written a great essay deconstructing the border wars between butch lesbian women and transgender men. And so while I am interested instrategic essentialism, I don’t subscribe to traditional notions of gender identity — even for the sake of exposing sex/gender hierarchy. Abolish the Harry Benjamin scale! 

(Personally, they sound like typical intersectional feminists to me, without the evident reverse bigotry, but the point remains.)

And there you have it. Anti-transgender attitudes within so-called radical feminism are newer than you think, and in fact, are indeed anti-radical. You are, after all, reinforcing gender roles, not uprooting them, as radicalism (ultimately from Latin for “root”) connotes that you are getting to the root of the problem, not reacting to novelties like a conservative (which “TERFs” more or less are, not to mention masculine). Most “radfems” are actually tradfems--they just drop the T, unlike the testosterone coursing through their veins.

The fundamentalist’s archetypal quest to purge clean their founders' ideology continues.

[meggannn]

race and character customizing

this is a post about a discussion other people have been making before me for ages but i’ve seen it spark up again on Andromeda’s release. a few comments i’ve seen over the past few days on white fans who are interested in making non-white Ryders have made me want to talk about it.

this is not an argumentative post. this is a post documenting my understanding of different sides an argument to help me to get my thoughts down. please do reply or reblog if you have thoughts or comments, especially if you’re a BW fan who’s not white (and a writer).

so there’s this discussion i see going around with white fans of bioware games asking whether or not they’re “allowed” to make non-white characters. to fully document my perspective on this, i need to first list reasons that white fans, in my experience, won’t or don’t make poc characters in customizable games. reasons tend to be the following:

they don’t want to “mess up,” ie, accidentally fall into stereotypes about poc characters when they don’t mean to

they don’t want to offend poc fans

they genuinely just don’t want to make poc characters, either because they’re only comfortable playing white people, or they don’t want to spend the energy to connect with poc (when they have a million other white ocs....), insert racist reason here, and some of them have learned to hide behind reason #1 or #2 when confronted about it

and there are so many problems that occur when white fans do make poc characters that i’d consider it really irresponsible to say “if you consider yourself an ally, you should probably consider making a non-white character,” which was more or less a recommendation i’ve loosely supported until recently. and yet, i’ve seen white fans making characters of color:

as a way of earning ally brownie points

then oversexualizing their character/using them for an “aesthetic” with no substance

then ignore criticism of their character from actual poc they’re representing

then trying to “claim” a race, ie, saying things like “i got angry at [my friend/a random person on the internet] for making an [asian] character, because i was going to make an [asian] character!”

that last one isn’t a joke, i actually saw it yesterday, the day of andromeda’s origin access launch -- someone making the default character heads at bioware must’ve done a really good job, because one of the female asian models is supposedly very popular, and someone posted that in response. i really hope i don’t have to explain why these things are wrong, but needless to say, when i want to encourage people to write outside of their comfort zone and create diverse rep, that sort of fake ally shit doesn’t help anyone and in fact actually hurts fellow fans by making character customizing into some sort of contest.

i was part of a discussion on @omegastation‘s blog this morning and an anon said they were interested in making a non-white oc but didn’t want to because they had been more or less intimidated out of it. i replied voicing my support for them to do it because, if i’m honest, i’ve started to view “i’m too nervous to mess up a coc” as a socially acceptable excuse not to bother caring about coc  -- even though i do know there are people who genuinely mean it.

the thing is, if someone is a writer or content creator of any sort and consider themselves an ally to marginalized groups they aren’t apart of, i think this way of facing our fears and stretching our boundaries is necessary as creators who want to write inclusive and respective material. (it’s just a responsibility to not act as though these characters are the epitome of representation or the best that will ever be done, so those marginalized should be nice to you for it.) as a mixed wlw and aspiring writer, i think examples like character customizations in games like mass effect and dragon age are great ways of stretching a writer’s legs with diversity. largely the characters are technically already written for us -- characters like shepard, hawke, and ryder are free of bias or racial leanings, they already have depth, and they’re just waiting for you to fill in the blanks with headcanons and fanart and fic and whatnot.

and yet that seems to be where white fans trip over the most. either they fall into stereotypes; or they’re so afraid of messing up that they avoid engaging or thinking about their coc too much, so they end up flat and more or less ignored for their white characters; or they oversaturate their coc so much it doesn’t even become a real person but just a empty mould with a diverse face for the sake of Peak Representation. it’s been a rare instance when i’ve seen a white fan of a BW game create a poc character that has actually been, like, a decent, fully-rounded character; on this site i see coc by white people fail usually by either doing too much or not enough. i am usually guilty of doing not enough when i make characters who aren’t my race, so this isn’t exclusive to white fans. i’m attempting to rectify that in andromeda by making my ryders multiracial with largely ambiguous heritage (mostly out of annoyance tbh, because mass effect takes place 200 years in the future, right? and bioware has confirmed that most humans are at least biracial by this point, so why are there so many natural blondes and redheads???? it drives me NUTS). mixed rep is representation I personally feel really passionate about because so many of us are misrepresented by being forced into one ‘category’ or another, but even with a narrative reason for widespread multiracial heritage in the mass effect universe, I feel like mixed characters are so rarely explored in this fandom.

ANYWAY. for most of my time in BW fandom i’ve largely been theoretically supportive of white fans making diverse characters because i’m quite frankly tired as shit of seeing white people complain about BW’s diversity and i figure interest is at least step in the right direction. hell, my friend is looking into MEA fan boards right now and is reporting to me that there are white fans complaining there is no good ‘pale white’ skin color. like frankly, if that’s your biggest concern, i don’t care about your feelings on representation and don’t expect you to understand what real underrepresentation feels like. (and no, you’re not actually losing hairstyle options when some of the designs are specifically for black women so they can have natural hair options. what the fuck?) so if i see other fans who want to stretch outside their comfort zone and be more inclusive in their character designs, like sure, why not? at least some people are stepping in the right direction, and if they’re friends, at least i can help them if i see them making a wrong turn and know they’ll respect me.

well, okay, more seriously: why not? after reading other opinions on this, i have a few reasons.

sometimes i see poc characters written or drawn by white ‘allies’ and i literally want to run my nails down a chalkboard. it might be well-drawn or -written, but even in tumblr’s relatively liberal atmosphere, it can still offensive, and it can still clearly done for attention or ‘friendly’ stereotypical jokes, not for actual love of the character. i want to think most people know better not to make obviously stupid mistakes, but I’ve driven people away with unintentionally offensive jokes in the past, so i know absolutely nobody is above this one.

even unintentionally, it can still drown out characters made by actual non-white fans -- who are just as talented, and spend just as much time creating and promoting their work, and consistently are paid less attention to on average than white fans.

fetishization. ties in with the ‘aesthetic’ point above.

it’s not enough for me to say “okay, only DECENT allies can make poc characters” because obviously everyone considers themselves a 'good’ ally, and even people that you thought were ‘good’ allies can get defensive when they’re confronted with the fact that they messed up.

i’ve also been thinking and i don’t think i’ve ever seen a white fan make a mixed race character who’s been my specific mix of heritage, but if i did, i don’t think i’d be offended. i’d be offended if they acted like they should be rewarded for it, but just the character? sure, go ahead. but i totally understand why other people would be offended, and i one-thousand-percent respect that and don’t want to talk over their feelings just because i happen to be more of a “do whatever you like so long as you’re not hurting anyone” kind of person anyway.

i also 100% think that white fans making non-white characters might actually make us better writers and storytellers and artists, but i 100% understand why poc consider that absolute bullshit, because we’ve seen the evidence and sometimes it does more harm than good.

so, i guess i have a question for my followers: if you’re a bioware fan who’s not-white, what’s your stance on this? if you’re a content creator, do you feel overshadowed by white creators when they make coc or does it happen so rarely it doesn’t affect you*? am i overthinking or not considering a point? do you have an opinion on this? (or do you care?)

this is not intended to start discourse. this is meant to be a question post to ask how other non-white BW or custom RPG fans feel about a common problem I personally feel very divided on.

(*personally i see white OCs far more than non-white OCs in BW fandoms, so much that it’s a fair assumption on my end that 95% of the COC i see are made by poc, which makes it practically a non-issue for me, but that's just be my experience.)

[gyrlversion]

Fast, pain-free divorces? They are slow agony for our children

Fail to keep up payments on a house or car, or break your employment contract, and see what happens to you.

The courts will take the side of the person or company you have wronged, force you to pay up and probably throw in a punishment too.

But break a marriage contract and the courts will now take your side and punish anyone who gets in your way, especially anyone who wants to abide by the contract.

The person who wants to stay married and refuses to accept the end of the pact, can – if he or she resists – be dragged by force from the family home, under the ultimate threat of prison.

The supposedly Conservative government last week revealed that it is to strip away the last shred of legal protection from the former institution of marriage. You may have said all kinds of things about sticking around, but from now you just need to say ‘It doesn’t suit me anymore’, and in six months the marriage will be dissolved, no delay.

This strikes me as amazing in itself – that there is one unique area of law where the delinquent person is rewarded and the dutiful person punished.

You’d have thought more people would be interested. But, as so often when really strange things happen in our revolutionary society, nobody notices or cares.

The supposedly Conservative government last week revealed that it is to strip away the last shred of legal protection from the former institution of marriage.

You may have said all kinds of things about sticking around, but from now you just need to say ‘It doesn’t suit me anymore’, and in six months the marriage will be dissolved, no delay.

The philosopher Sir Roger Scruton is not a friend or an ally of mine. I greatly disagree with him, for instance, about his Cold War view of Russia. And I thought he was foolish to accept even an unpaid post from a Tory government that only wanted to use him as window-dressing. 

But his sacking from that post, by the Housing Minister James Brokenshire, because of remarks attributed to him by the Left-wing New Statesman, is still shocking. 

Did Mr Brokenshire (who similarly sacked a conservative doctor from a government body in 2011) call for and obtain a full recording or transcript before acting? Or did he just run away? 

Sir Roger is unworldly and sometimes obscure, but the idea that he is an anti-Semite, or any other kind of racial bigot, is absurd. 

I understand that some people think this is a good idea, but isn’t it a pity that there’s no major political organisation in the country which is prepared to stand up for the other point of view?

Well, there you are, if you like anything traditional and British, you have no friends at Westminster. Get used to it.

Everyone involved will deny this, but the people who pay the real price for this destruction of secure home life are the children.

Every statistical measure shows that the breaking of marriage harms them. But they have no voice. It is the adults, liberated from their responsibilities, who write articles in the papers, make the programmes on the radio and TV, and the speeches in Parliament, which claim everything will be fine.

It won’t be. Our monstrous taxes, and most of our worst social problems – from chaotic schools to crime and overstretched hospitals full of old, ill people – arise from the very expensive failure of the state to substitute for the stable, solid family which used to be held together by lifelong marriage, and now isn’t.

Perhaps the simplest, most graphic way of showing that neglect of children is now an epidemic, is last week’s news from Walsall, where an infant school has designated a staff member to change the nappies of five-year-old children because so many pupils are not toilet-trained.

These poor children also cannot communicate or hold a pencil properly, let alone use cutlery or dress themselves.

What else have they not learned in these vital years? What sort of adults are they going to be? I am not sure I want to be around to find out. 

A wonderful revolt took place last week against the miserable dumbing-up of the once-entertaining TV quiz programme University Challenge.  

Instead of asking questions which every educated person might be able to answer, the show now spends an immense amount of time asking highly specialised questions about science, which take ages to read out and which only about one person in 100,000 could even guess at.

In the semi-final between Durham and Edinburgh, presenter Jeremy Paxman (whose knowledge of science is, I guess, sketchy) enquired sternly of the Durham team: ‘Give the two-word name of the bacteria from which the following thermo-stable polymerases were first isolated.’

Eh? I bet he understood that.

The Durham team simply refused to pretend they even cared they didn’t know, and wisely responded ‘Pass’. If others would only do the same thing, the programme might become fun to watch again.

In the semi-final between Durham and Edinburgh, presenter Jeremy Paxman (whose knowledge of science is, I guess, sketchy) enquired sternly of the Durham team: ‘Give the two-word name of the bacteria from which the following thermo-stable polymerases were first isolated.’

A miserable attempt to rewrite the past

I used to love museums. I prefer quiet to noise, and enjoy the way old things communicate the real nature of the past. As Thomas Hardy wrote in his marvellous poem Old Furniture: ‘I see the hands of the generations, that owned each shiny familiar thing.’ They were like huge attics. Nobody was trying to tell you anything. You could just dream a bit.

One of my favourites was the Ashmolean in Oxford, which displayed Guy Fawkes’s lantern, and the overpoweringly lovely Alfred Jewel, once owned by that great King. They’re still there, but modernisers are hard at work, turning this great collection into a politically correct nursery of equality and diversity.

A sad employee has sent me a miserable document, Ashmolean For All, which the museum tells me is genuine. It opens by saying it is ‘central to the Museum’s Strategic Plan 2018-23’ – and if that does not make your heart sink, it adds: ‘It is a new policy focused on equity and inclusion.

It aims to improve the way the Ashmolean serves, represents and includes diverse communities and individuals.’ It must ‘evolve to remain relevant to all its potential audiences’.

Oh, and it’s all ‘in response to a changing political landscape and awareness of new thinking about the current role of cultural organisations around the world’.

There’ll be ‘decolonisation’ and searches for ‘coded racial harassment’ and ‘systemic racism’. Go soon, if I were you, before the project’s finished.

No old, beloved, established thing is now safe from the commissars of political correctness. We are in a slow-motion version of China’s cultural revolution, and at the end of it hardly anyone will remember who we used to be.

This drama is brilliant – as a spotlight on failing Britain

When Detective Sergeant Lisa Armstrong is assigned to a missing persons investigation, at first it seems like any other. As a Family Liaison Officer, she’s trained never to get emotionally involved. But  there’s something very different about this particular case. With horror Lisa realises she’s got a personal connection with this family; one that could compromise her and the investigation. As she grapples to get justice for the grieving family, Lisa discovers it could come at a cost. 

The plot of ITV’s police drama The Bay is ludicrous. I can’t even begin to work out who has killed whom or why, though for once it doesn’t seem to be all based on child abuse.

But the series, which is filmed in Morecambe, is a wonderful spotlight on modern Britain as it actually is – the casual swearing, the dreadful schools in which the young endure fear and are corrupted by all kinds of moral slurry on their computers, the expensive new Blair-era public buildings with their nursery colour-schemes.

The sort-of heroine (played by Morven Christie, left), a senior police officer, engages in knee-tremblers in alleyways with people she’s hardly met.

It is also a world in which the old professional middle class has almost completely vanished.

Only one minor character speaks in the authoritative BBC tones once associated with this class. And he is a pensioner running the food bank. To me, this gives a sense that there’s really nothing underneath any more, and if you fall through a gap, you’ll fall for ever.   

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click here  

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[republicstandard]

Gay Pied Pipers of “Polymorphous Perversity” Penetrate Schools

What do gay and transgender activists penetrating Britain’s schools have in common with the Jesuits?

Jesuits were said to take the attitude, “Give me the child for his first seven years, and I’ll give you the man.” Jesuit co-founder St Francis Xavier tweaked the axiom to: “Give me the child until he is seven and I care not who has him thereafter.”

Atheist missionary and pulpit thumper Richard Dawkins plumbs the potential of the Jesuitical proposition and points to “the useful gullibility of the child mind,” in The God Delusion. The Jesuit boast “is no less accurate (or sinister) for being hackneyed,” he agrees.

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Gay activists have discovered the same truth. By fusing this Ignatian truism with the Freudian dogma of “polymorphous perversity,” the Pied Pipers of Stonewall are wreaking revenge on heterosexual conformity and leading our children into the Weser-like waters of sexual and moral morass, where they will drown like the mass of mesmerized rats, as in the dark legend of the Rat-Catcher of Hameln.

The bullying barrage of militant gay and transgender ideological activism would embarrass Soviet propaganda commissars for strategy and residents of Sodom and Gomorrah for shamelessness. Gayducation is now a non-negotiable item of the curriculum in British schools and who in Stonewall gives a fig if half of British children are leaving primary school unable to read and write properly?

The sexualization of our children is now a national pandemic, spreading like swine flu. Drop in at one of the Kama Sutra sessions offered by a local primary school in London and listen to 5-year-old children shouting “penis” and “vagina” like communist slogans and waving around Play-Doh models of lumpy genitalia they’ve made. Talk to Muslim academic Dr. Kate Godfrey-Faussett, a psychologist and Dialectical Behavior Therapist, who receives complaints from parents all over Britain about the pornification of the school curricula.

The pansexual proselytizers want our kids to be sexualized from Kindergarten. Lynnette Smith of Big Talk Education wants lessons to start “in nursery.” Five-year-olds at a London primary school are being taught about pornography, a BBC documentary reveals. Mick Manning and Brita Granström’s textbook How did I Begin? graphically explains procreation to 5+ years kids: “As they cuddled, your dad’s penis moved gently inside your mum’s vagina and the sperms flowed out.”

The eroticizers of education want to quarantine parents from the poison injected into their children. A 2010 Ofsted report found that schools rarely consult parents about sex education, even though the guidance encourages them to do so. Now that Ofsted has stepped up its inquisition against conservative schools, its recent report on sex education doesn’t mention consulting parents at all.

The golden coupling between sex and marriage is never mentioned. Only two commandments of safe sex and consent guide the discourse. “Making love is like skipping. You can’t do it all day long,” says the illustrated text Where did I come from? by Peter Mayle for 7+ years children. The Living and Growing DVD for 5-13-year-olds shows a group of little boys a public toilet where there’s a condom machine. “They have even got different flavors,” says a child in the film. Sex is as amoral and recreational as sit-ups and as multi-flavored as ice cream.

The goal is to brainwash kids into an anti-traditional family and promiscuously pansexual worldview. Seven-year-old children learn that anal intercourse is “sexual intercourse where a man puts his penis into another person’s anus” and oral sex is “using the mouth and tongue to lick, kiss or suck a partner’s genitals.” Subjects for discussion include homosexuality, bisexuality, abortion, rape, incest, sex abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and Aids.

Heather, who runs her own workshops in schools in East London, helps teens to discover sadomasochism. “Maybe you read a really hot bit of erotica while looking up Dominance and Submission. Maybe you saw some awesome strap-on porn or just found some cool looking sex toys you’d like to use,” she writes on her website, urging the child to share the discovery with their partner.

Apart from pushing its gay agenda pretending it is “creating an inclusive school environment,” Stonewall brainwashes toddlers with transgenderism: “Babies are given a gender when they are born. Trans is a word that describes people who feel the gender they were given as a baby doesn’t match the gender they feel themselves to be,” its literature advocates, thus reframing gender dysphoria as a chic identity badge.

Drag queens are brought into taxpayer-funded nursery schools to read nursery rhymes and sing songs so 2-year-olds can learn about gay and transgender issues. The Drag Queen Story Times website says it aims “to capture the imagination and fun of the gender fluidity of childhood while giving children a glamorous, positive unabashedly queer role model.” Transgender lifestyles and same-sex relationships should be “promoted” to children as young as two to reduce hate crime, says the National Union of Teachers (NUT).

Except for very few Catholic, Jewish and Muslim schools, faith schools are falling like ninepins before Aphrodite’s chariot, with the Church of England going out its way to garland the new cult of gayducation. Anglican bishop Stephen Cottrell tells the House of Lords that the “Church of England works closely with Stonewall,” while Catholic bishop Philip Egan attacks Stonewall for burying Britain’s “Christian patrimony” and proposing “Orwellian changes to our language” and “draconian restrictions on religious expression.”

Egan is right. Gayducation is unrelentingly absolutist. According to Shraga Stern, thousands of Charedi Jews will leave Britain unless ministers back down from forcing faith schools to teach children about gay and transgender relationships after the Education Department forcibly introduced “homosexuality, same-sex relationships and gender reassignment” lessons in classrooms. On Thursday, the head of Ofsted Amanda Spielman said that all children must learn about same-sex couples regardless of their religious background.

Confused parents are asking two questions. First, how did we begin sexualizing our children—not just providing them biological instruction about human reproduction, but eroticizing them into accepting deviant sexualities? Why is this junk touted as scientific?

Remember Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis? He designed the scaffolding for sexualization children. Children are “polymorphously perverse” he said. Before a child is educated in the conventions of civilized society, it will turn to bodily parts for sexual gratification and will not obey adult rules that determine perverse behavior. But traditional education will suppress the polymorphous possibilities for sexual gratification in the child, said Freud.

Sexologist Alfred Kinsey took this further claiming that even the tiniest of infants have the “capacity” for orgasm. Hence, sexual satisfaction is a childhood goal to be pursued. Kinsey’s theory of early childhood sexual development became the standard for sex education in schools. A scandal broke when Kinsey and his associates were accused of masturbating thousands of little children for scientific data to confirm Kinsey’s theory. Kinsey also claimed that 10-47% of Americans are gay. His two “findings” paved the way for gayducation.

Second, parents are asking why Pied Pipers of polymorphous perversity are not tolerant of real diversity. Why the bigotry and totalitarianism? Why are gay and transgender evangelists desperate and determined to convert innocent and impressionable minds to their cult of Eros (even though they hate “conversion therapy”)?

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The gay liberation movement began with a libertarian argument. Leave us to do our thing. Western society then gave LGBTI+ folk freedom to do their thing. That wasn’t enough. The plea for tolerance became a demand for equality (and same-sex marriage). Equality implies that people are equal before the law. It doesn’t go far enough and sanctify certain practices as morally good. To achieve this goal, you’ve got to aggressively and subversively push for normalization—starting with the most malleable minds.

Children are powerless and offer the least resistance. Once you’ve have brainwashed them—you’ve got them for life. This is the goal of the sex education industry—as it milks the government (and taxpayer) for millions of pounds. “I have come to indoctrinate your children into my LGBTQ agenda (and I’m not a bit sorry),” says children’s author and activist S. Bear Bergman.

There will be pockets of resistance opposing your project for normalization and moral canonization. You’ve got to eliminate them by orchestrating a coup d’état and establishing totalitarian control. Even the tiniest resistance poses a threat. Why? Because the struggle between light and darkness is unequal (as the soaring prologue to the gospel of John poetically and philosophically portrays).

For darkness to triumph, it must be complete and total. “The light of a single candle, somewhere in the universe, defeats it; there is now light where formerly there was none,” writes Michael Walsh. “Either there is Light or there is not; there can be no synthesis.” The tiniest flicker of candlelight is sufficient to expose and unsettle the hegemony of darkness.

From September 2020, the state wants to make Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) and teaching LGBT+ concepts compulsory in all primary and secondary schools. StopRSE is resisting the darkness of polymorphous perversity. Parents of all faiths and none are lighting candles to help save our children. The debate on the new RSE will take place on Monday 25 February at 4.30 pm. You can sign the petition to Parliament demanding you choose what your child learns.

Parents of Hamelin! Your taxes are paying for the Pied Pipers of polymorphous perversity to lure your children into Des Teufels Lustschloss (The Devil’s Pleasure Palace). It’s time you sang to the state-funded Piped Pipers: “We don’t need no gayducation. Hey! Stonewall, leave our kids alone.”

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine https://ift.tt/2EmUK4Q via IFTTT

[jenmoboba]

SWAG (A New Hybrid of Courses, not tailored towards the alternative word for “cool,” but Sexuality, Women’s, and Gender studies)

I decided to give it a try for myself:

WGS. 101 Introduction to Women’s and Gender studies

How would you define the terms “feminism” and feminist?

Feminism is a social movement that claims to want equality among the sexes, but actually wants vengeance on the male sex. A feminist is a brainwashed female that subscribes to the fad-like movement that is feminism and is encouraged to make that decision. Anyone that doesn’t subscribe to feminism has axiomatically deemed them a misogynist and a woman-hater.

What connotations or associations do the words “feminism” and “feminist” have for you?

Feminism claims to want equality, but how can you announce that a movement supports equality when the movement’s name has feminine gender modifiers? That makes no sense to me as a female. The only movement that I would join in this nature, would have to be called “Equalism.” An association that I make with feminism, is Nazism. Feminism mirrors many of the aspects of Nazis that make me fearful for a second Holocaust; causing the extermination of millions of males across the country. One of the connotations that I observe with “feminists,” are radical women that roam the streets naked with black lettering on their bodies, screeching for peace and equality instead of applying for the job that they claim they got discriminated against because they don’t meet the qualifications. I find protesting pointless when you could be doing something more effective, and actively creating change.

How has feminism/feminists affected you?

Feminism is a movement that has affected me greatly. I do not identify as a feminist; however, I do not believe that I have to participate in this movement to advocate for the equality of rights among the sexes. Feminism is a movement that preaches diversity, and inclusion, yet all they do is close the door on those that disagree with them. They want men, and other people to join their movement, yet their festival, or Women’s March, is an anarchic roast fest upon the male gender, and pointing fingers at their minute imperfections. I do not believe that women are oppressed in society, and we need to stop brainwashing women into believing that they are born victims and need to eradicate men in order to safely roam around at night without the required fist keys. Women always generalize men when it comes to “rape culture” and I refuse to believe that all men contribute to this satanic snowball of inappropriate behaviors in and out of the workplace.  

Feminist Thought (Social Construction: Class, Gender, Race, Disability)

1.       Social Construction

a.       A social construction, in my opinion, is an idea that is created and accepted by people.

b.       Something is socially constructed if society accepts it as a truth.

c.       I don’t believe that gender is socially constructed, it is a fact, and can’t be debated. Examples of social constructionism are whiteboards, computers, and hairbands. These are items that are created and accepted by people. They aren’t hypothetical or unobtainable.

                i.      America is a social construct because it was created by people.

               ii.      Femininity is not a social construct since being a female makes you feminine, and those are not up for debate or changeable.

              iii.      Giftedness is a social construct since we agreed upon the definition of giftedness and apply it to those that it belongs to.

              iv.      Fitness is a social construct since we have defined what it means to be fit, and what it means to not be fit.

               v.      Families are social constructs since we have defined what families are, and we know what they are made out of.

              vi.      Race is not a social construct since we don’t have a choice in determining them, we are born with them.

             vii.      Sex is not a social construct. I cannot wake up one morning and be a male since that is genetically impossible despite genital mutilation and hormone injections. That doesn’t change the chromosomal makeup that creates my femininity.

Gender is not malleable. Gender is not a social construct, nor is it up for debate. I don’t care if you identify as graysexual, agender, biromantic, but you cannot expect me to modify my personal definition of gender/race/sexual orientations because you have your own beliefs. If you identify as a penguin, I am not going to address you as a penguin, but I will never tell you to stop doing what you do. So give me the same respect, since I am giving it to you. This is what people are learning in gender studies classes, and people want to call me brainwashed. If you are anything other than heterosexual you are not going to contribute to the future of humans. You can adopt, but that doesn’t mean that you created a human being, the child’s parents did, not you. If the human race is going to continue, we need to have heterosexual couples reproduce in order for there to be human beings in the future. 

If you have an issue with the gender disparities in STEM fields, have you ever considered the hypotonic solution that is school? Women are the concentration and depending on the variety of selection, the cell can either shrink or swell. If more women are studying liberal arts, that means that there are fewer particles outside of the concentration gradient to study STEM fields. The same goes for men. If you are upset that not enough women are studying STEM majors, maybe switch majors? That’s like going to the grocery store for milk and being mad that someone didn’t buy your cereal. I was a biology major, so you’re welcome for the solution humor. 

Every feminist I have ever met always posts one rant of some sort detailing their horrific experiences and encounters with men, especially regarding Tinder dates. Feminists always want to blame their problems on men, and blame society for victimizing them. Men didn’t teach you to fist your keys, or not to walk alone at night, women did. Women were taught to prepare for the day where they would become a victim, and then graduate into their pink knit pussy hats, and Rosie the Riveter posters to raise a fist in the name of feminism. Your problems are never your own fault, and you have an arsenal of names to place blame on so you don’t feel bad about it. 

Feminist: “I didn’t get the job.”

Also Feminist: “I have to file a complaint with a female supervisor because I was discriminated against because a male applicant stole my job.”

Could it be that you weren’t as qualified? Or that you weren’t willing to work as many hours? Did the interview go well? Feminists won’t even consider that things are their own fault because that is victim blaming (not allowed). 

American feminists love to paint themselves as the most oppressed and tortured individuals in existence. They don’t think that soldiers storming the beach of Normandy had it worse than they did, because that’s conceding to the notion that men have suffered. White men can’t have it that bad, women have always had it worse. Everyone, no matter what gender or race, has gone through various degrees and forms of misfortune and tragedy. Suffering is not a competition either, feminists. Just because you were raped doesn’t mean that you are entitled to VIP citizenship benefits. There are purple heart veterans that don’t get properly compensated for their suffering, think about the other people out there that have it worse than you do. Be thankful that you live in a country where you have the same rights as men, because in most countries women aren’t allowed outside without a male chaperone, and are systematically built to fail. 

President Trump has a wife, daughter, and a nation full of women that he has to take care of. Drumstick was pardoned by Trump, following presidential history that dates back to 1940, when George Bush started a tradition to pardon the White House’s Thanksgiving turkey. If you take something so simple as a Thanksgiving turkey and manage to create a feminist meditation on how oppressed you are, you should get a degree in Science to combat the gender disparity in STEM fields.

I love this tweet. The curriculum for kindergarteners is going to start covering nonbinary and gender nonconformity to brainwash kids into being confused about their gender. Please take your Women and Gender Studies degree to the trash and get a real job, instead of complaining that your bullshit degree doesn’t allow you to earn as much as a CEO with an MBA. 

Hear that, men? Feminists want to be the only people outside of prison...to recreate humanity the way that they wanted, but reproduction requires a dick. How’s that going to work, again?

Actually @feminist-gamer, women already have equal rights. It’s feminists like you that are picking apart the Constitution and trying to bend its words to complain that it doesn’t apply to you. Those 23 cents might be in your pocket if you worked the same hours as men did, didn’t take mental health days, etc... We have representation in the gaming world, I’m sorry if you bought a game that doesn’t have female characters, but that’s your own fault. If I turn on the Spanish channel and don’t see a white female, should I complain or change the channel?

Nobody is genetically programmed to rape, and that is something that women especially need to learn. Men are being berated and harassed for their contribution to rape culture when some haven’t even touched a woman before in their lives. 

We’re all about equality, right? Men have to be drafted, and so should we. Men usually lose custody cases, and so should we. Men have to buy an expensive engagement ring that’s big enough, and so should we. Upset that you have to wait for a man to propose to you? I have the solution for you; propose first. If men are pigs, then so are we. Equality!

If you’re sick of the phallic haze of Tinder, try Bumble. It’s the feminist tinder. Women have 24 hours to initiate the first conversation, and are in control, with a roughly balanced male to female ratio. Just for the record, I met my fiance Destry, on Tinder. 

What’s the point of being on Tinder to find a man...if you’re not waiting for a “prince?” Tinder is an app that you use to meet people that you could possibly hang out with, and date. And if you can afford to insult his pick up line, where was yours? Quite honestly, that was a creatively made pick-up line. The Tinder user shown above is thetinderqueen on Instagram, and here is her bio: “The boys of tinder have finally met their match - a feminists guide to the world of dating apps - dm me your best moments  queer posts welcome!” If your solitary purpose on Tinder is to deter men from dating you, you shouldn’t be on Tinder. And feminists have the audacity to call me a misogynistic troll. Feminists are the epitome of trolls.

[h0lybasil-blog]

Facts Are Not Feelings

The double-edged sword of activism linguistics.

QUEER LANGUAGE

If you know me at all, we’ve probably gotten into a conversation about linguistics at some point.

I’m particularly interested in the way language affects our ability to connect with one another, and how what we say influences how we feel.

A lot of activists in the queer community are also quite concerned with linguistics, and it’s an issue every person seems to relate to differently.

This morning, I woke up to a thread of Facebook comments on a casting call I posted, requesting “male bodied humans”.

The word choice was intentional. I didn’t want to ask for “dudes” or “men” because a fair amount of the dudes and men I know have vaginas. While I love them and want to celebrate their bodies and experiences, this particular project required someone who inhabits a biologically male body, regardless of how they identify their gender, which is a totally personal detail, and doesn’t have a lot to do with the body you inhabit, in my opinion.

Usually, when I’m at work, I am usually “in drag” as a cis-woman - I am dressing the part that society expects when they see my physical form. I’m comfortable with this! I’m also comfortable when I leave the house in jeans and a backwards baseball cap. Because I don’t identify as either gender, dragging as both can be a fun experience, and a powerful way to play with image.

I’m here, I’m queer, and I’m doing my best.

How I choose not to identify seems to cause confusion in people who aren’t up on the “in-group slang” (aka people who exist within the bounds of mainstream culture) — I’m not a man, not a woman, not a feminist, not a liberal socialist, not an anything, really, as I believe identity politics only lead to frustration.

But Tate, didn’t you just tell us all that you’re “queer”?

Yes! I did. That is an identity. You caught me :) While I claim my queerness, I am still a human first. I think that might be what I mean by identity politics — letting a facet of your experience become the lens through which you interpret and interact with the rest of your experiences.

This is hard. I want to be kind and respectful to everyone. I also want to be able to express myself in a way that feels authentic.

This next thing is difficult to say, because I know it will upset some people who are passionate about social justice:

I’m tired of being yelled at. Especially on the internet.

Today, I was accused of marginalizing and contributing to the physical harm of trans people. Going back to labels and identity politics, I don’t choose to call myself trans, though multiple people have told me that technically I qualify as transgender, since I don’t fit into the socially expected gender of my body. I don’t identity as trans because I think that while the word may have a more inclusive annotative definition, it is my perception that transgenderism has been culturally understood as males who identify as women, or females who identify as men.

Let me take a minute to explain this, before you start scrolling to the comment section to tell me that “female” and “male” are improper ways to describe people’s bodies.

Male/female are the medical ways we describe most of the population’s genetic sex. To be crass, a person usually has a sex organ that is either an innie or an outie, and that sex organ usually determines the balance of hormones they have in their body, and the shape and appearance it takes overall. Taking out of the mix people who have modified their bodies with hormones and surgery (fuck yeah for the freedom to body modify!), I am fully aware that individuals exist who’s bodies generate hormone imbalances, or are intersex.

These people are valid, and I care about them. I care about everyone. I want all of us who feel less than supported and celebrated by our current social/political/economic system to be free from whatever is telling them they aren’t allowed to reach their full potential. Just because someone is different than you doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be respected.

A lot of people prefer to use “AFAB/AMAB” or “DFAB/DMAB” — assigned/designated female/male at birth. To me, these terms are practically analogous with “male/female bodied human”, though I can see the argument that FAB/MAB is more inclusive to people who are intersex, as it acknowledges their being marginalized/erased by the medical system.

So why use the clunky term “male/female bodied human” if it causes strife?

Well, I use “female bodied human” to refer to myself, as I find it to be validating of my gender in the many situations where I am qualified for participation due to my female sex, regardless of the fact that I don’t identify as a woman. Work, for one, when it involves playing a role, as it often does. (Quick shoutout to Asia Kate Dillon for using their notoriety to leverage a much-needed change in the entertainment industry!)

Just because a silly string of words makes me feel comfortable, it might not work for everyone. And I think we need to be okay with that!

PRONOUNS

This is something I have struggled with. I prefer “they/them/theirs” pronouns. It’s awkward to ask people to use what feel like foreign language to refer to me. Most who aren’t a part of the queer scene will be confused by me “referring to myself as multiple people”. In a lot of ways, that feels accurate and comfortable for me — it feels like a truer reflection of my multi-faceted human experience. (Not that cis-gendered people can’t have multi-faceted experiences…)

I don’t ever expect perfection, nor total understanding, but if someone wants to be in my life, I do expect them to try. It’s hard to understand someone’s existence that you can’t relate to, but that’s where empathy comes in. While pronouns may be tricky, I don’t think it’s hard to understand someone’s desire to be seen as their true self. I think everyone should have the opportunity to identify however feels authentic, and also to have the freedom to disengage with people who don’t desire to respect their self-perception.

It’s all personal choice!

I identify as human, and I use my human capacities to work towards the greatest good for all humans, as far as I can understand it. Seems simple, right?

As it turns out, not really. Society is big, and takes time to change. We do change, though! Less than one hundred years ago, I likely would have already been jailed for taking one of my love interests on a simple date. In this country’s short existence alone, we have come to see women as more than property, black people as more than slaves, and homosexuals as more than perverts. I know we can do this gender thing, but it’s going to take work.

In the English language, we regard pronouns as a “fixed class” of words. This isn’t technically true, as “fixed” in this case just means “harder to change”, not “permanent”. More than two classes of pronouns for humans is so new to the mainstream, it’s still just a little larvae of a concept. We have a while to go before alternative pronouns are a butterfly of language, free and easy.

EDUCATING THE MAINSTREAM or COMPASSIONATE ACTIVISM

This is not something I ever thought I would say, let alone publish, but I want to publicly thank my mom for getting into a comment debate on my Facebook page. She brought up some valid points, properly gendered me, and was gracious to a stranger who (I believe with good motives) angrily typed in her direction.

Let me paint a picture: my mom is a self-described “boring 52 year-old” real estate agent who lives in San Diego. It has taken years of learning how to share my feelings and preferences with her to help her understand my perspective and experience. The conversation has spanned over a decade, and took a lot of incremental retooling as I became more comfortable with myself, as well as a better communicator.

I started with yelling at her as a teen, and slowly moved through stages of avoidance, confrontation, and finally listening to her — letting her teach me how to ask for what I want from her. We have learned to meet each other halfway in our vastly different life experiences. While one of her best friends is publicly gay, she doesn’t have access to the young, queer scene up here in Los Angeles. Hardly anyone does.

In activist communities, there is a lot of conversation around wanting people who aren’t in the know to “self educate” before they even ask questionsabout someone’s life they can’t begin to understand. Have you ever thought that since these people are open and curious enough to ask questions, they might be worth a few moments of your time and knowledge?

I’ll be the first to admit, if I observe said person starting to speak combatively, I walk away. No one deserves to be the whipping boy of a bigot. I trust you, compassionate activist, to make the distinction between a naive, normal person and someone who is festering in their hatred for things they don’t understand (usually including themselves).

If we weirdos, as the self-appointed teachers of the rest of the known Universe, can take the time to educate ourselves on how to best express our thoughts and ideas, we might start getting somewhere. But please, no more yelling.

I’m not saying no yelling in general, just no yelling at people. If like me, you have neighbors, great places to yell are into a pillow, in your car, and that’s about it.

It is so explicitly important that we learn how to communicate in a way that invites others to experiences and revelations, rather than chastises them for not knowing the newest in-group slang. It’s not fair to be mad at someone for not knowing something that you didn’t know less than a year ago.

If you know something before others, congratulations! You get a chance to be a teacher. It’s one of society’s most esteemed — and poorly paid — positions. In fact, you’ll be doing this job for free. But you don’t care, because you believe in the cause of all people being treated with respect!

So, let’s start by mastering how we introduce our philosophical ideals. Let’s be kind and generous with people who we perceive to be less knowledgable than us.

NON-VIOLENT COMMUNICATION

I can’t recommend highly enough that anyone who does any kind of activism familiarize themselves with the concepts of NVC (Non-Violent Communication), which is self-described as a system of “skills that foster compassionate relating”. I’m not saying it’s a perfect system, but I think it’s a lot better than what we currently fumble with, which is a lot of blaming, name-calling, and CAPS ATTACKS — three things I’m sure your rational mind recognizes as inefficient ways to get people to listen to you.

But Tate, gender/queerness/feminism/racism/etc. are emotional issues! We aren’t allowed to be emotional about emotional issues!?

Yes, these issues have deep emotional ties, which is why the conversation is hard. I’m glad you have strong feelings about oppression! I do too. Let’s examine how we want to transmit our feelings about injustice to those who may not be so aware, in an attempt to bring them on our team of humanist do-gooders. (Yes, it’s probably because of privilege that they aren’t aware of the way that some people struggle. No, I don’t think using the word “privilege” is going to strengthen your argument. It’s still in-group slang.)

Calling someone an oppressor is not going to get them to listen, either. We have to stop blaming white people. We have to stop blaming straight people. We have to stop blaming men. Mainstream culture is a representation of the average social experience. Yes, we can look back and see that a lot of our societal infrastructure is the product of many years of non-consensual power imbalance, but that doesn’t mean that every straight white guy alive today has to pay for it. It’s no more their fault that our world is unfair than it’s your fault for being whatever you are.

I’m saddened by the number of awake, compassionate men I know who have expressed the only way they feel welcome in any political conversation is to shut up, and publicly reduce themselves to a string of insults, “I’m a hopelessly cis-straight-white guy”. Perpetuating the cycle of blame and shame is not what we need. We need everyone on board, inspired to be their most compassionate and inclusive selves. We can’t do this by alienating most of the mainstream population, a lot of whom are smart and have skills to contribute.

If you have someone in your life who you want to introduce to the concepts that have freed your mind from the oppressive systems at play, please treat them with the same respect you want to be treated with.

I often find this NVC formula quite helpful. Ready for a mini lesson?

Verbally identifying these aspects of emotionally charged situations — in order — has been extremely valuable to me.

Observation

Feeling

Need

Request

Observation: What this means is, first, I want to identify — without judgement — exactly what is happening. This is different than an interpretation of events, which is often how we defend ourselves when we feel our ideology or identity is being threatened. I’m not using this example to shame anyone, but because it is fresh in my mind, I will use the Facebook debate as an example.

With the use of NVC skills, the conversation might have looked more like this:

“I notice that you’ve used the term “male-bodied humans” to effectively refer to “men”. Some trans people have told me that this is not how they like to be identified.”

2. Feeling: Next, I like to relate how what I’m observing affects me. Not how the other person “makes” me feel, because that isn’t a real thing, but how I naturally react to what I’m observing.

“I feel uncomfortable knowing that some people might feel excluded or erased by your choice of words.”

3. Need: This is the most important part. Relating your feelings back to a universal human need, and acknowledging the other person’s needs establishes mutual respect and understanding. Helping your conversation partner feel seen and cared for will do the opposite of attacking them - it has the potential to open them up to learning something new.

“I recognize our need to be specific when referring to people, and to have clear concepts for effective communication. I also want to respect the needs of others to be seen and accepted with our use of language.”

4. Request: Lastly, this is how adults ask each other for things. We make requests. We don’t demand, and we don’t passive-aggressively stew in our disbelief that someone hasn’t already read our mind and acted perfectly according to our silent desires. We ask specifically for what we want out of the interaction, and are prepared to hear “no”. No ultimatums.

“May I request you consider changing the term you use? I can suggest a different term that might be more palatable to more people.”

SUBJECTIVE OBJECTIVITY

People are rooted in their personal experiences more than anything. We all experience our objective reality through unique, subjective lenses.

Because my subjectivity has led me to like the term “male/female bodied human”, it will probably take me a good amount of convincing that my preferred terminology (as someone who is already on the fringe of society) is unacceptable.

We run on an infinite treadmill of PC terms turning into slurs. It seems like each week another word goes out of vogue. We can’t get mad at each other for not knowing the latest, least “offensive” way to refer a person or concept.

We aren’t going to achieve equality by cyclically pushing people down and blaming them for our problems, which are all built on the backs of dead people. That’s why our prisons are filled to the brim with people of color. That’s why trans people are getting murdered daily. It’s not because I used the term “male/female bodied” (as a fellow “trans” person!) — it’s because we don’t know how to change the mind of the opposition.

This is exactly why political revolutions fail: the oppressed become the oppressors. Facts are great, but they won’t change people’s minds. People aren’t changed by statistics and lecturing. People are changed by personal experience — in other words, people’s opinions are changed by their feelings. (Ever wonder how Trump became our leader? Certainly not with facts.)

[nicemango-feed]

Thoughts on Manchester Attack....& Responses that Just aren't Helping

The Manchester terror attack broke my heart, as each and every terror attack does. It chilled me to my core…again. 

Image from CNN.com

With the frequency of these attacks, it’s hard to process them all and properly mourn the loss before your attention is diverted to yet another tragedy. 

During the time I finished up this very blog post, I heard of deadly attacks in Baghdad and Kabul. It's hard, so hard to take it all in and grasp the magnitude of loss around the world. 

My thoughts are with all those who have suffered. 

----

The Manchester attack targeted children while they were out having fun, enjoying music, enjoying life... 

Image from here

It’s those very freedoms that terrorists hate, they abhor those who don’t live in the same ideological cages as them. 

I sit here and try to absorb all the fragmented commentary coming from all angles, trying to make sense of this, trying to understand how we can change it for the better. How do we stop this from happening? I don’t know.. because the terrorists motivations seem to lie in a tangled web of things, parts of which each side wants to deny. The most obvious of those is extreme blind faith in an ideology they consider to be infallible.  

I look around me, and see there’s nothing new here…

The left though well intentioned, nor the right, theists, nor atheists - no one is hitting notes (on this subject) that deeply resonate with me anymore. It’s pretty much the same tired commentary, the same motions we go through after each terror attack. 

“Islam is evil”

“”Nothing to do with Islam”

“Muslims must do more” 

“Muslims should not have to apologize for something they have nothing to do with” 

“Islam is war”

“Islam is peace” 

“Its all about foreign policy”

“Its all about religion” 

We really have to do better than this, because neither side on this issue is getting through to the other. Just screaming at each other till we’re blue in the face isn’t going to accomplish anything. 

It’s obvious this is a problem that needs to be addressed, denying links to Islam as people shout Allahu-akbar and take lives just doesn't suffice. It’s not helping anyone, least of all muslims. 

This isn’t to say that how all muslims practice Islam is hateful, divisive and dangerous...but we must acknowledge that some extreme muslims do take it this far, if we want to start solving this. Of course every community has it’s extremists..but Islam does have a lot more Westboro Baptist equivalents …and too many who are even more extreme than Westboro level.

There is a fundamentalism problem coming directly from the rigid orthodoxy that Islam commands in the 21st century. Our communities can certainly do more to promote diversity and inclusivity…we do fall short there, we’ve got to own it…only then can we begin to tackle it.

All that said though, here’s another thing thats not cutting it; Laying the blame on all Muslims collectively. 

This is like me saying portland, Quebec, NYC - white supremacist murders all by you white people. Its just not right to lump innocent people of the same demographic with violent savages who murder people. 

In this case in particular, it’s not fair to say Muslims could have, or should have done more as a community…as the bomber, Salman Abedi had been reported to authorities multiple times. There are mixed reports about him being banned from his mosque, so I'm not sure about that. But mosques can always do more to try and root out extremism. 

Full story here

With a frightening surge in white supremacist and anti-muslim attacks in this Trumpian era, the polarization amongst us is growing at such an alarming rate...I fear we’ll end up at a point where we have to pick a side between nazis and jihadis. Already people seem to think you can’t care about both…each team trying to emphasize the horrors of ‘the other side’ while trying to downplay or deny the horrors that come from people within their communities. 

Full story here

Full story here

We’ve got to do better, all of us. Looking inwards, is important for all communities, self-critique is how we improve.

——

The post terror attack scenario, is sadly our reality more and more often…around the globe. I understand its a moment of panic, anger, high emotion. People aren’t always thinking clearly on any side of the debate. But we have to do better, it’s the only way we can beat this monster. The one thing they want is to divide, disrupt and create chaos, sow hatred... in the days, weeks, months after…it’s something we should not let them have. 

There are a lot different types of counterproductive behaviour that emerge right after a terror attack, I feel we can make an already horrendous, painful situation a little more bearable if we refrain from this type of behaviour: 

'The Nothing to do with Islam’ chorus - I get it, it’s a reflex to distance either yourself (if you’re muslim) or an already persecuted minority from the worst, most violent people among them. But as all the liberal/muslim defenders of the religion will tell you, Islam is not a monolith. There are many people, majority of muslims in fact who manage to ignore or ‘re-interpret’ the same verses that drive the terrorists to kill. Why then does it all of a sudden become a monolith with boundaries that exclude terrorists when convenient? You simply cannot deny that those verses too come from the same religion. Just a different interpretation…if you start defining ISIS as ‘not real muslims’ you are playing their game. This is essentially what they do to dehumanize muslims that aren’t living up to their barbaric 7th century standards. The defensiveness and the desperation to distance terrorists from the religion that they themselves claim inspires them, makes defenders appear intellectually dishonest or in deep denial. In order to see the whole picture we cannot keep hiding from the fact that religion has a major role to play in religious extremism. There is hatred of music, hatred of women, of LGBT, of non-muslims coming from Islamic scripture, and theres no way you can modernize, reform or improve things if you at the very least don’t acknowledge that this problem exists. Fine…say this is not how you read it, but you can’t deny that the raw material exists for others to interpret in more violent ways. 

Sharing selective out of context Quran quotes guy - Nope. If you think you can share selective positive quotes, then don’t forget that people can and will rightfully share selective violent quotes to counter that too. This just looks like dishonesty or incomplete knowledge (which is also an issue, as many muslims are taught a curated version of scripture and often in a language they don't understand, I honestly didn’t know the existence of some of these verses till I did some research on my own…and hence, ‘ex-muslim’... 

I’ll make the same point for those who randomly share selective violent Quran quotes in the aftermath of a terror attack…not as a rebuttal to anyone denying violence in scripture…but just putting it out there that ..’look the scripture is violent… this scripture ALL muslims live by is dangerous” - no, this isn’t the time or place for that. I wholeheartedly agree…the scripture is vile, violent and all that. But tying ordinary muslims to these violent words when they may not fully be aware of its meanings, or even know of its existence is just in poor taste when they will likely already face a backlash of anti-muslim sentiment after an Islamic terror attack. I would say at other times, absolutely share this stuff, make muslims aware that this is what it says, and ask them to question if they’d really endorse this stuff. But RIGHT after a terror attack? Not a good idea imo. The bible has some vile violent verses too…we’ve just reached a point where many people don’t take it literally, and I hope we get there for Islam too…but if thats the goal tying *muslims in general* to violent verses in ancient scripture post-terror attack is harmful and counterproductive. 

Reminder, for the 'but what about Islam' types, I'm not sharing this to deny or shift blame from the fact that the Quran has equally violent, abhorrent verses that do inspire such horrors. But just to demonstrate that it is not uniquely evil, it is just unique in how seriously it is still taken today by many...unfortunately. 

Being blindly narrative driven without any regard for the truth - whether on the left or right, all muslims bad or all muslims good. This can take the vicious Nazi-esque Katie Hopkins form (far more dangerous and sinister of course), or it can take a well-intentioned but dishonest form from a magazine trying to portray muslims in a good light. You might be well intentioned but if you knowingly lie about things (see Cosmo screenshots below), ultimately you’re doing more harm to Muslims than you are good, and also providing fodder to the far right…who will find it easier to dismiss positive stories about muslims because of things like this.  

So they seem to know it's a Sikh person at this point...

How then...does this dishonest headline get printed? I mean there might very well be muslim Taxi drivers doing this as well, but juxtaposing it with this picture of a Sikh man, is really misleading!

Jump to Islamophobia concerns community leader - usually a guy being interviewed on TV who actually barely says two words about the horror of this attack before turning it around and making it about him and his community. Come on dude, priorities…yes there will likely be an anti-muslim backlash…i feel you…I get your concerns, I think anyone of muslim background shares those…generally people with brown skin might be fearful, as some non muslims have been killed as well in anti-muslim attacks. So i get it, legitimate concern….but in the aftermath of an attack, the first thing on your mind shouldn’t be the impact this will have on you…have some sympathy for the victims, for the horror their families will be dealing with.  

Similarly, on the fliplside theres the 'You can only care about one thing at a time' person - To this individual if you are concerned about a woman’s hijab being violently ripped off at the same time as the attack, you clearly have no regard for the victims of this brutal attack. This seems absurd to me. You can simultaneously express concern for both…because both harm innocent people. To assume there is no real violence being committed against perceived muslims is deeply foolish or deeply sinister…this isn’t about a few mean words hurled at muslims. This is about pregnant women being kicked till they lose their babies, this is about innocent people being killed. Their lives are no less valuable than those who went to the concert. You can and should express concern about both, of course one of these is not a large scale terrorist attack so one is more pressing and urgent, but this doesn’t mean that anyone expressing concern for both cares any less about the victims of the actual bombing. It just means they are looking at the bigger picture and concerned both about longer term as well as immediate effects. Sad this has to be explained, but there are many 'skeptical takes' out this week saying the victims of the bombing take a backseat if u care about anti-muslim sentiment rising during this attack. Its not one or the other, this is tribalism, plain and simple. And until we stop making it about us vs. them…and see that it is a cyclical problem where hate feeds hate...and that far right anti-muslim hate also fans the fires of Islamism, we won’t be able to combat it. 

The niqabi who decides to wear a grenade t-shirt on TV - ok this is rather specific…but i’m referring to a real fucking person who thought it was a good idea to be on TV and be interviewed about radicalization in the muslim community while wearing a black t-shirt that spells love in fucking *weapons*. 

At first i thought it was a photoshop job.. but sadly not...See video here

What kind of a person thinks thats a fucking good idea..? I mean of course Tommy Robinson was all over that. I don’t think it necessarily says anything about her sympathies or affiliations, as it appears to be a widely available 

t-shirt, 

but I mean the optics of this on a hipster kid and on a niqabi talking about extremism on TV after an *islamic* *terror* *attack* are completely different. Of course people are going to draw conclusions about what she was thinking. It might very well be that she foolishly thought it was a good ironic msg about peace, love and being anti violence or something…but fuck...it does not come across like that. Terrible terrible idea. NOT HELPING. 

'Hashtag Terror attack you say?!...Buy my books because I generally talk about Islam & stuff' person - 

Seriously...don’t be that person…don’t plug your non-specific stuff using a terror attack that took many lives. Of course some content is genuinely helpful and some content has been created as a specific response or commentary to this attack. That’s not what i’m talking about… it’s perfectly ok and also necessary for us to have access to different commentary and viewpoints after an attack. It’s how we process and form our opinions. This very piece is that… I’m talking about unrelated things that people are plugging using the hashtag and all. Don’t do that. That’s really in poor taste. 

Projecting negative intent on anyone that’s visibly muslim - Don’t be like Molyneux, probably a good rule in general.

(This is from the London attack, but the point remains.)

Whining about how people express their grief - Im sorry but people cope in different ways... are you that miserable of a person that you cannot let people heal in the ways that suit them? Coming together in groups, singing, feeling part of a community can feel powerful....and unite us at a time we feel so helpless otherwise. It can make us feel like we're doing something at least. Expressing ourselves through music and song is one of the things jihadis hate... its why they attack concert halls ffs. Don't be the guy that piles on to that. "Liberals just sing while the terrorists bomb us" - right cuz the singing is how they specifically plan to combat bombing. Liberals would go to battle ISIS armed with Jon Lennon songs I'm sure. 

I mean can people seriously have a problem with this kind of thing?

Goosebumps! The amazing moment Manchester crowd joins in with woman singing Oasis - Don't Look Back in Anger after minutes silence http://pic.twitter.com/Cw4mOq8yde

— Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday) May 25, 2017

Is this not a valid & beautiful unifying, powerful response to human suffering? I don't understand the pettiness...

But What about [Name other Tragedy] - This isn't a contest, human suffering isn't a contest, please don't try to negate one tragedy by saying another deserves more attention. Yes some things get more air time than others, sometimes because it's closer to home, other times because of some aspects of the story. I wish i knew how to insure that all tragedies got equal attention, but this doesn't happen in the real world...so please don't take away from other horrific acts because the one you're talking about got less coverage. 

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I’m sure there’s a ton of more examples of unhelpful behaviour… feel free to add your observations too, in the comments below. But I just felt I had to put this out there after seeing so many cringeworthy takes, making an already tragic situation worse. 

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The Good Fight Recap: Social Media and Its Discontents

Christine Baranski as Diane Lockhart. Photo: Elizabeth Fisher/CBS

Social Media and Its Discontents Season 1 Episode 6

Editor's Rating 4 stars

Spoilers ahead for episode six of The Good Fight, now streaming on .

There are times when The Good Fight’s “ripped from the headlines” approach to storytelling feels exhilaratingly current, and then there are times when that immediacy hits a bit too close to home. This week’s episode, “Social Media and Its Discontents,” which tackles online abuse from the alt-right, is a bit of both.

Now that he’s moved all of his business to the new firm, Neil Gross has a massive task for his new lawyers. ChumHum (God, it will never not be depressing to type that word) wants to develop a new terms of service agreement to limit the rampant harassment on its platforms, especially its Facebook-like site. While I’ve tried, with limiting degrees of success, not to compare The Good Fight to the real world, this storyline feels especially unrealistic. The CEOs of social networking platforms have demonstrated that they’re much better at pretending to care about harassment than actually taking action against it. It’s too much to hope that that Facebook and Twitter’s leadership find inspiration in Gross’s proactive response, right?

That said, the framing of the storyline is incredibly effective, and it opens with several men against a plain backdrop, reading offensive comments aloud. The language is spot on, from its use of “cuck” and “SJW” to the specificity of its rape and death threats. (Still, I did find it a little surprising that the episode’s writers chose to include a threat naming a specific female celebrity, who is a woman of color. Using the very real harassment she’s faced as a plot point feels tone deaf to me.) As they review thousands of pages of comments, the firm’s lawyers are immediately besieged with questions. Does the N-word have to be censored, considering how that might limit the posting of certain hip-hop music videos? Does a rape threat have to include “I’m going to” instead of “I want to” in order to be taken seriously?

Ever the voice of reason, Lucca realizes they won’t be able to develop a one-size-fits-all set of standards. What they need is an appeals process. She suggests that after a certain number of threats or harassing statements, a user should be banned until a panel can review their activity on the site. It’s a good idea, though it’s a bit baffling that no one mentions how many employees would be needed for such a task. Still, problem solved … right?

Wrong. Enter John Cameron Mitchell, playing Felix Staples, a Milo Yiannopoulos-esque alt-right provocateur. His ChumHum account is almost immediately suspended under the new terms, which he interprets as a challenge, not a warning. He comes before the panel at the firm — side note: why are they the evaluating body, rather than ChumHum staffers? — and tells them his heroes are Christopher Hitchens, Wyndham Lewis, Andrew Breitbart, Yitzhak Rabin, and Lil’ Kim. I have to wonder the inclusion of Rabin is a nod to Mitchell’s musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which features a character named Yitzhak. It’s clear Felix will be trouble from the start — he immediately proclaims himself a martyr to the firm’s “political correctness.” (Mitchell nails this performance from start to finish.)

The firm’s lawyers start reading Felix’s online posts back to him, in which he calls for a selective holocaust, but he’s prepared for their onslaught. Although his rhetoric is incredibly wrong, he’s well spoken and smug, comparing himself to Ferris Bueller and bringing in a gay male prostitute to give him a blow job in front of the panel to prove a weird point about homophobia. (Seriously.) He eventually leaves the office, but not before “warning” Diane that a barrage of online harassment is about to come her way.

When Felix comes back to continue his appeal, the firm examines his harassment of a pro-choice activist, complete with threats of doxxing, the invocation of the Second Amendment as a scare tactic, and abusive speech like “bitch, bitch, bitch, double cunt.” The latter is a strong example of The Good Fight using its online platform to tell stories that The Good Wife couldn’ton network TV. It makes the episode harder to watch, but online abuse shouldn’t be anesthetized in a story that’s truly trying to get at the depths of digital cesspools.

The trouble with Felix is he’s funny and engaging — and, as Diane ruefully points out, sometimes he’s right. He’s also far too knowledgeable about the firm’s review process, and directs his minions to stop at 12 harassing posts each, knowing that the arbitrary number of posts in the new terms of service dictates suspension at the 13th offensive post. Jay and Marissa investigate the leak of that information, but everyone automatically suspects that Julius is the one who let it get out. He’s furious when he finds out that he was a suspect, claiming that Barbara and Adrian are targeting him because he voted for Trump. There’s a lot of paranoia at work here; were Julius thinking about it rationally, he might realize that his colleagues suspected him because he took such a devil’s advocate role in determining what constituted online abuse. But Julius quits anyway.

Meanwhile, Maia’s Uncle Jax comes to her office and warns her about her father’s motivations. He assures Maia that Henry is going to wear a wire the next time he sees her and try to get her to say something incriminating. Maia talks to Elsbeth, who tells her she has two options. She could feed her father false information, and if it gets repeated, she’ll know her father is trying to set her up. Or she could record their conversation. In the end, Maia does both, even though it’s clear she desperately wants to trust her father.

Colin comes to Lucca at the end of the episode and repeats back the fake story Maia told her father, which means he told Mike Krestiva about it. Given that Maia’s story fell firmly into subplot territory this week, I’m really impressed with how far it was advanced in a handful of relatively short scenes. In Good Fight’s first few episodes, the balance between Diane’s story and Maia’s felt a bit off, but it’s felt much more even as the series has found its footing. The only unfortunate side effect? Lucca’s story in this episode felt scant. While her chemistry with Colin is compelling, and I’m enjoying seeing her developed as a person, I don’t want to see her relegated to sexy phone calls and car makeout sessions.

By the end of the episode, Neil is fed up with the whole affair, especially when ChumHum users start using his name as a replacement for the N-word in posts. Neil decides that the whole thing with Felix needs to end, and directs Diane to throw in the towel. “He has too many followers.” Ah, now that feels more like the leaders of tech companies in our world. Diane, Barbara, and Adrian tell Felix they’ll be overturning the ban, and he’s devastated about the sudden loss of attention. “We took the oxygen from your room,” Diane says. “Go home.” She all but says, “Shoo!” to him, and it’s incredibly satisfying.

What’s less satisfying is Diane’s final conversation with Neil Gross. She knows that the leak came from the ChumHum offices, and she’s not particularly diplomatic about telling him. Neil asks why ChumHum would leak the deliberations, and Diane replies, “You wanted to censor your sites, but if you failed, you could to point to us as the problem. A liberal, African-American firm.”

Neil’s incredulous, but he doesn’t say she’s wrong. “That’s why we’re here, sir. To make you look good,” Diane continues. Later, Neil asks Barbara and Adrian to come and speak with him about some international business, explicitly excluding Diane in a retaliatory move. She’s left sitting alone in a conference room, a stark contrast to the strut of victory she took out of Adrian’s office at the end of last week’s episode. That’s one of the core strengths of The Good Fight. Where The Good Wife felt almost oppressively static in its later seasons, Fight is incredibly dynamic. It’s tempting to feel sorry for Diane as she’s shut out of the meeting, but it’s encouraging to know she’ll have every opportunity to turn things around.

Source

http://www.vulture.com/2017/03/the-good-fight-recap-season-1-episode-6.html