#on the basis of it being ‘by women for women’ (as comforting fiction should inherently be. no terrible bitchy women here no sir! /s)

[cuntylittlesalmon]

i’m finding it really hard to take more media discourse seriously right now because a lot of it tends to be hinder by emotional fragility. the “if something make me feel this type of way (namely the escapist, or the horny) it is inherently above criticism, and any attempts to critique (even if said critique is coming from a place of endearment) is an attack on my morality” stuff.

[with-my-murder-flute]

Hi everybody, thanks for the asks letting me know I made the top of @yusuftiddies’ list of Homophobes in TOG Fandom, you can stop sending them now.

So.

I can make mistakes and fuck up and own that. I am serious about listening to marginalized people. But... in this case, while @yusufstiddies generally describes factual events that happened and factual posts that exist, I have to say that I can’t actually apologize for the things I’m called out for because I don’t think they’re homophobic. The things he criticizes me for are things that come from a lot of personal experience as a queer bisexual cis woman, as well as a lot of reflection, research, and study. I believe in them really strongly and stand by them.

I’m really sorry if this makes TOG fandom too hostile, because it is not my intention to make this place so unpleasant that anyone feels driven out. I understand if my stance means people no longer want to follow me/read my stuff/participate in projects I’m involved with (though I’d rather hand off the Research Hub to someone else than see it go down with me). I’m posting this so people can know where they stand before they decide whether to keep interacting with my blog, or “deplatform” me as @yusufstiddies recommends.

I would recommend, for anyone who doesn’t want to see my posts, using Tumblr’s new post content filtering feature. If you type a username (like star-anise or with-my-murder-flute) into it, Tumblr will hide all posts featuring that specific string of characters, and therefore any post or reblog of mine.

To address the accusations against me:

I am an anti-anti: Yes. I’ve reblogged posts of mine about this before. I care passionately about preventing child abuse, but I think there are better ways to prevent child abuse in fandom (like concrete harassment policies so predatory behaviour can be reported and stopped early, and education about digital consent and healthy relationships) than attacking people who write “bad ships,” not least because the first people it hurts are abuse survivors trying to work through their trauma, and because the research says you cannot actually tell who’s a sexual predator based on what they write about.  Fiction affects reality, but not on a 1:1 basis. My mainblog, @star-anise, has a really extensive archive of my writing on the subject.

I said cishet men aren’t more privileged than gay men: Kinda. What I actually did was question whether Every Single Cishet Man benefits from more privilege than Every Single Gay Man. If a man is cishet but gets beaten up because people perceive him as gay, he’s not exactly feeling the warm toasty glow of heterosexual privilege in that moment. Oppression is complicated and there are times when someone’s lack of privilege on one axis is way less important than someone else’s lack of privilege on another axis.

The post above also includes me reblogging someone else’s addition about how straight men can be included in the queer movement: I’m queer. @yusufstiddies has made it very clear that he isn’t comfortable with the word “queer” and doesn’t like it. Therefore I think it’s understandable that he might not understand that the queer community sees ourselves as a coalition of people dedicated to dismantling the structures of sex and gender that oppress us, not a demographic of people whose gender identities or sexual orientations can be neatly mapped. However, I would say that doesn’t make queer theory inherently homophobic.

There are also some related points @yusufstiddies didn’t level at me specifically, but I would like to address:

The constant focus on the unsafeness of cishet people:

I’m not cishet. I’m a bisexual woman who’s dated women. Sixth-light is a queer woman married to a woman. This is not an issue of non-LGBTQ+ people blundering their way into something they don’t experience the daily consequences of. This is an issue of people from WITHIN the LGBTQ+ community who sincerely disagree with @yusufstiddies about the pressures we experience and how best to deal with them. I think that even if @yusufstiddies were to filter his fiction input to only LGBT-written work about LGBT experiences, or even only trans-written work about trans people, he would still find a lot of things he finds upsetting or transphobic, because sexual and gender identities are really diverse and not everything will suit one person.

The contention that saying “’Queer is a slur’ is TERF propaganda” is transmisogyny because it dilutes the definition of “TERF”:

People who point out the phrase is TERF propaganda are not calling every person who says it a TERF, and we are not trying to argue that telling a queer person that queer is a slur is inherently equal to the kind of damage a TERF does when she attacks a trans woman out of transphobia. Queer people being able to use the word “queer” does not have the same importance as trans women being able to live, work, and survive in public. Rather, we are literally saying, “This is a thing TERFs say when they take a break from attacking trans women and try to recruit new members to their group, so it’s in our best interests to not give it too wide a currency.”

Some people have experienced the word “queer” used as a hateful word hurled against them and don’t want to hear it ever again. I get that. It happens. Where I grew up, “gay” was a synonym for “shitty” and it took me a lot of years out of high school before the word “gay” wouldn’t shoot my blood pressure through the roof.  I actually do understand that and think that’s valid (and again, support using post content filtering for that word).

One of the things I do at @star-anise is argue with young people who are headed into full-on transmisogynistic TERF territory, and work at reeling them back and deradicalizing them. I use a tag called “weedwhacking” so my followers can filter out the sometimes lengthy back-and-forths we get going.

Something I’ve learned, interacting with so many TERFs and proto-TERFs, is that one way they frequently get recruited into harassing trans people was through discourse around the word “queer”. For one, it encouraged them to want to distance themselves from any perception of LGBT people as “weird” or “not normal”, which led to seeing trans people as “weird” and “not normal” and therefore not good members of the “gay pride” community. For two, repeating “queer is a slur” predictably causes a lot of queer people to react in a defensive manner, so by teaching young or new people to say it, TERFs can set them up to feel alienated from the larger LGBTQ+ community and more open to TERF propaganda.

The next issue isn’t mentioned in the original callout post, but I think it’s key to this entire issue:

@yusufstiddies has made several posts about what cishet people should and shouldn’t write. For example, cishets shouldn’t write Nicky experiencing internalized homophobia.  Another is a detailed post of things cishets shouldn’t write about trans people, including which sexual positions only trans people are allowed to write. I would imagine that part of his frustration with fandom has been the lack of traction those posts have gotten. I know I very deliberately didn’t reblog them.

That isn’t because I don’t agree that the things he complains about are rarely handled well by cishet authors. I agree that there’s a lot of bad fic out there that contributes to negative stereotypes against LGBTQ+ people and is basically a microaggression to read.

I have two very deeply-seated reasons for my position:

LGBTQ+ identities are different from many other political identities because most people are not born identifiably LGBTQ+. It’s something we have to figure out about ourselves. And one really important way that we do that is using the safety of fiction to explore what an experience would be like, sometimes years before we ever admit that we fit the identity we’ve written about. So banning cishet authors from writing something is really likely to harm closeted and questioning LGBTQ+ people. It will lengthen the amount of time questioning people take before finding the identity that really fits them, and force closeted people to be even more closeted. 

There’s a lot of undeniably shitty stuff in fandom. However, I fundamentally believe that trying to target the people creating it and forcing them to stop doesn’t work very well, and has the serious byproduct of killing the creativity and enthusiasm of the rest of fandom and resulting in less of the actual thing you like being produced. I think that it is infinitely more productive to focus on improving the ratio of good stuff in fandom than trying to snuff out every bad thing.

Like I said: I understand if this means former followers, mutuals, or friends no longer want to interact with me. I’ll be saddened, but I’ve obviously chosen this path and can deal with the consequences. 

I wish this could have worked out differently.

[sukumen]

sorry if this is a loaded question, ofc you don’t need to answer! what’s your take on the argument that dark content is harmful to reality, and that it romanticises traumas? personally i like reading some dc, but when i see posts about how it’s harmful to both survivors and readers (smth to do with psychologically normalising it) it kinda makes me feel guilty, like i’m doing something wrong? when i know i can distinguish between fiction and reality?

hey! so i’m going to keep this under a read more to avoid upsetting anyone - also because this is literally - and i mean, literally - an essay LMAO. i had a lot to say!

any anon hate will be deleted and blocked, but you’re free to engage me off anon (and kindly on anon) if you want to! anon, you’re also free to come chat with me in dms if you want to speak more freely about this :) 

warning for rape mentions, murder / mass murder mentions, dub / noncon mentions.

so, i want to preface this by saying that i don’t think that anyone is obligated to like or be comfortable with dark content. it truly is your prerogative not to be interested in it and you are valid if it makes you feel uncomfortable. so nothing i’m saying here is to convince people that anyone should like it or is wrong for not liking it.

but i don’t agree with the argument that people should be shamed for liking or writing it, that it romanticizes trauma, etc. i understand why people feel that way 100%, but i don’t agree.

sometimes, it feels arbitrary. “dark content” has become a pseudonym for dub/non-con fic, but is the the only type of dark content there is? dark stories can include murder, horror, gore, etc. yet, despite us knowing that murder (for example) is a crime and morally wrong, most people don’t bat an eye when a chara in a fic does it and is still protrayed as attractive or is the reader’s lover. we go crazy for mafia aus where characters kill and show power --- we love those characters, those scenes where they kill and go take their lover all covered in blood. i mean, even in the jjk fandom, one of the most popular characters is a cursed spirit whose first words in the series are about massacring women and children. and we love him. more than that, we love the gory, arguably dark world he comes from - we hypothesize about these characters, we sympathize with them, and we lust over them.

so it’s hard to reconcile that with telling fans who write dub/noncon that they are impacting people’s sense of reality. we’re all experiencing this series together - if written fan fiction is what desensitizes morality, what about the images from the anime and manga? would we make the same argument for banning it? would we say that the people who like sukuna are romanticizing mass violence or that gege is normalizing it for us psychologically by making the character who does it hot and engaging or showing/referencing it so much in the manga?

i just don’t think we would. i think we all understand that those things are wrong and like him knowing that, and can readily say he’s a villain or that the things we’re seeing is wrong. so, i don’t think there’s a black-and-white argument that seeing x in media will make you think y is a-okay or make you more comfortable with it in real life.

i do get that there’s a difference here: a big part of this argument is the sexual aspect of non/dubcon - it’s hard to feel like it’s not normalizing rape when people find a scenario like that hot (whereas no one is like...lewding a mass murder scene, haha). but i think that, at the end of the day, brains do what brains do and people just have dark fantasies. like it’s really as simple as that. rape fantasies in particular are common and talked about by psychologists all the time and i have never been able to find a common thread of them condemning people having them or even writing about them. what they DO talk about is the fact that consent is actually key to the fantasy - that the person fantasizing is the person controlling the situation, that the fantasy, despite being “dub/noncon”, is inherently exactly what they want because THEY are creating the situation, and that, in the end, it’s the absence of actual danger that makes it. ultimately: there is a difference between real life rape and an imagined fantasy or roleplay. so much so that it might not even be fair to call them “rape” fantasies at all.

“It’s crucial to recognize that real-life rape is anything but erotic for a woman. Being at the mercy of someone who’s so outrageously violating your will, holding you down, threatening you with bodily harm (or even death), and physically forcing himself upon you induces arousal all right. But not that of sexuality, but of utterly petrifying anxiety and panic. Contrast this to most imagined rape scenes, which are so electrifying precisely because they’re expressly designed by their female creator to stimulate the illusion of danger—which can, in fact, be positively arousing.”

>  from this article.

to me, this is ultimately what dub/noncon fic is. people writing out those fantasies for people who share those fantasies to process those fantasies.

you can make the argument that that it’s harmful to survivors, but that has its own issues when doctors have reported that some survivors have rape fantasies or find comfort in acting out those rape fantasies (and writing, in my opinion, is a form of acting that out). like are they not valid victims because they are contextualizing their trauma into something that they can control and can process on their own terms? i think the issue there is that the argument uses survivors as a monolith to make an argument on their behalf; but every individual survivor is valid in what they think about this because no two survivors process what happened to them in the same way.

i myself am a survivor and have no real issue with dark content (obviously). i don’t read it often and only write it now because of sukuna; but when i do read it, i draw the line at certain things because i personally cannot stomach it. but would i demand that person delete it from existence because of that? no, i wouldn’t. because again, at the end of the day, that’s the entire basis of the fantasy. i control what i’m fantasizing about, and if something that i do not want to happen to “me” as the reader occurs, i do not read it. i don’t consent to that experience or that fantasy, so i stay away. but at the same time, that other person’s fantasy isn’t mine to control or infringe on and it doesn’t make me a better person than them for not sharing the fantasy.

SO ALL OF THIS TO SAAAY: i don’t think you should feel bad for enjoying dark content. i don’t think the argument about whether or not you’ll know how wrong it is in real life anymore really applies because you could make the claim that any type of fiction runs the risk of distorting people’s perception of reality and making them desensitized to something. and i don’t think that’s what people’s struggle with this is. 

what it boils down to, to me, is that people can’t understand why anyone would find dub/noncon arousing, and think that they condone rape because of it. which, again, is understandable. rape is a horrible fucking thing to experience - it isn’t sexy, it isn’t hot, it isn’t arousing and it’s hard to see any nuance when you see “noncon” and “wow this was so hot” in one post. but based on the way psychologists talk about “rape” fantasies, i think the two things (the fantasy and the real life act of violence) can typically be distinct for people, even survivors, and it just comes down to whether or not it’s a fantasy you share. if you don’t, completely your right! block the tags, block the writers, do whatever you have to do to protect your peace and your limits! but the discourse about it always seems to go into the realm of shame or arguments about someone’s moral compass, which i think is unfair. 

hopefully this helps and wasn't an annoying thing to read! like i said, don’t mind talking about it more if need be!

[khali-shabd]

Gender Theory

Readers, let us begin with a simple question- what is gender?

The Biological Theory Of Gender, and a majority of society, would say that gender is defined by biological sex, namely hormones and chromosomes. If you release estrogen and have XX chromosomes, you are female, and if you release testosterone and have XY chromosomes, you are male. However, this is an extremely flawed vision of gender for two reasons: one, that whatever proof of hormones altering gendered behaviour has been found only in lab rats1, which possibly will not exhibit the same extreme change in behaviour if the hormones were administered to them naturally in their own environment- and rats are not human- we have far too many differences as species for this study to be considered valid for homosapiens as well. And two, chromosomes are not strictly XX or XY- around 1 percent of the world population is intersex (and a similar percentage is redheaded, so its not inherently ‘anomalous’ or ‘unnatural’) , which means that they can have chromosomal variations such as XXY, X, XXXY etc, all of whom develop differently as compared to people with the traditional chromosome combinations. 

Further, there are far more things that define ‘biological sex’, namely:

chromosomes

gonads

sex hormones

internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus)

external genitalia.

Out of these, in humans, genitalia and internal reproductive anatomy can be changed without there being a significant change in gendered behavior. Sex hormones, when administered to bodies change secondary sex characteristics more than any sort of behavior; with the exception of testosterone increasing sex drive and sometimes increasing ‘ego’. Every single part of this definition of binary biological sex is challenged by the existence of intersex people, henceforth proving that sex is not binary and never has been, unfounding the existence of a sex-based gender binary in itself. Further, transgender individuals have a completely different gender identity as compared to their biological sex, and it has been scientifically proved that this is because their brains develop in the same way the brains of the children of the gender they identify with do. That essentially means that the brain of a transgender woman develops similarly to the brain of a cisgender woman, and the brain of a transgender man develops in the same way the brain of a cisgender man develops. All in all, there are far too many differences in the experience of biological sex to confine it to a binary, hence unfounding the theory that gender is based on biological sex.

Then how do we define gender?

There are a number of theories, but the most logical one at the moment would be Judith Butler’s Theory of Gender Performativity. Butler says that gender, as an abstract concept in itself, is nothing more than a performance. We ‘perform’ our gender by carrying out actions that we associate with it. They further say that this does not mean that it’s something we can stop altogether, rather something we’ve ingrained so deeply within us that it becomes a part of our identity, and it's the part of it we call gender identity. Gender, hence, is created by its own performance. Butler also implies that we do not base gender on sex, rather we define sex along the lines of established lines of binary gener, i.e. male and female- despite the fact that more than 10% of the population does not fall into this binary sex, and has some variation in their biological sex that does not ‘fit’ into either category. Gender in itself is so culturally constructed by western society that anyone who does not perform their assigned gender ‘correctly’ is punished- this applies to not only queer individuals but even men who do not ascribe to or criticise predefined ideals of masculinity. They are made social pariahs and excluded as outcasts, leaving them to find and create their own communities and safe spaces. This is shown in the way society ostracises queer-presenting individuals, makes fun of ‘soft’ men, and forcefully tries to ‘fix’ intersex children whose variations in biological sex cause no harm to them. I quote:

“Because there is neither an ‘essence’ that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires; because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all. Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis. The tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of its own production. The authors of gender become entranced by their own fictions whereby the construction compels one’s belief in its necessity and naturalness.”

One of the criticisms of Butler’s theories is that it does not seem to apply to transgender individuals, whose innate gender identity is not the one that they have been assigned to perform at birth; whose brains develop the same way that their cisgender counterparts’ brains do from birth. Butler themselves have responded to this, saying:

“I do know that some people believe that I see gender as a “choice” rather than as an essential and firmly fixed sense of self. My view is actually not that. No matter whether one feels one’s gendered and sexed reality to be firmly fixed or less so, every person should have the right to determine the legal and linguistic terms of their embodied lives. So whether one wants to be free to live out a “hard-wired” sense of sex or a more fluid sense of gender, is less important than the right to be free to live it out, without discrimination, harassment, injury, pathologization or criminalization – and with full institutional and community support.”

Later on, Butler goes on to say that the main point of their theory is that identity is constructed, which means that it allows us to change how we view it as a concept. It leaves room for us to subvert gender roles, challenging the status quo on what it means to identify as someone of a particular gender, and re-structuring society such that we rally for change not along gender lines, rather on the basis of what’s right.

Further, if we combine the work of the psychologist Sigmund Freud with Butler’s theories, the latter does actually apply to transgender individuals. Freudian theory states that we internalize concepts of gender based on our parental figures at birth. That is, if you are born female, you begin to look towards the person who closest resembles your gender identity; which in this case would be your mother, to be your role model for your behavior as to how women are meant to act. Your mother would be your guide to how you perform your gender. If she crosses her legs, you cross your legs. If she dresses in a particular way, you would too, until you were exposed to the exterior world and allowed to develop your own sense of style. As such, you create your own gender identity within your mind, and perform that identity the way you have been taught to by your maternal figure. When you are transgender, you view yourself as innately as the gender you identify with, hence you base your gender identity off the parental figure of that particular gender. This means, if you are female to male trans, you would base your gender identity on your father, and accordingly perform your gender in that way.

Now the question arises: How do we create gender identity outside of gender roles? How do we identify anywhere on the gender spectrum while abandoning the performance that comes with that identity? Why is it important?

Well, the answer isn’t simple. For its importance, I allude, once again, to gender performativity theory- Butler even uses some evolutionary stances to support her views, saying that gender performance stems from gender roles which stem from the fundamental differences between the prominent male and female sex at the very beginning of evolution. Now that 'evolutionary' behaviors don't matter at this stage of societal, cultural, and psychological development, it renders gender roles and hence the performance of gender redundant. However, we still perpetuate these ideas regardless of their importance, or rather their lack of such. And in this process, we end up defining and segregating far too much on the basis of gender- from small things like friendships to even the feminist movement, which is majorly perpetuated and held up by people who identify as female. Other groups like men end up purposely excluding themselves from a movement that can benefit them as well(through deconstructing and eradicating ideas of toxic masculinity) just because of how strongly it is divided on the basis of gender lines. And as for how we create gender identity outside of gender roles; it takes a lot of work, at first, to unlearn all the biases you have internalized about what it means to be a certain gender. You have to actively work towards deconstructing what gender and gender identity means to you, and how much of it comes from societally misguided stances about the ‘role’ of a gender is. It may mean ridding yourselves of the school of thought that women belong in the kitchen and men belong in workplaces or even identifying and removing hidden biases such as those of toxic masculinity and/or toxic femininity. Lastly, it takes an understanding that often, gender expression is not the same as gender identity; and also that most gender expression is how people show how they feel the most comfortable viewing themselves. Once you’ve managed to deconstruct your biases, it’s just a matter of how you feel comfortable viewing and expressing yourself; and what label, among the myriad, you identify with the most. That would be your unique self-expression and identity.

[rametarin]

We deal with this, “fiction is reality” shit EVERY. GENERATION.

And I mean it comes back among authoritarians playing to sheep EVERY fucking generation on different pretenses.

It always boils down to a bunch of people that are insecure about the effects of culture and media on other people, and as a flimsy pretense/pretext to restrict access to things to other people “in society” for their own safety and sense of security.

And when it comes to, “obscene literature” or illustrations, the source is always jealousy, insecurity and an attempt to reduce other people down to a demographic statistic. Whether it’s reducing black people to a caricature and acting like hip-hop just turns the kids into violent, drug abusing, psychotic felons, or imagining pornography is what turns people into horny fucking do-nothings, it’s always about control.

And we’ve put it off for so long. We’ve put off the conversation about just what demographic these people play to in order to get traction and followers and staying power and warm bodies for their movements. They’re the demographic that makes antis- work, the demographic that screams for censorship because illustrations “hurt them personally,” or “cause men to hurt them.”

I’m talking about women. Particularly, cis women, as trans women are not in numbers enough to affect anything, and it is EXPLICITLY IMPORTANT that the source of the offense and complaint come from the population that are the gateway through which the next generation is born and brought up.

Individual men may be so clueless as to assume the way degeneration works is a person is left improperly or negligently nurtured, and so just make bad decisions because, “they were never taught better.” They embrace the idea that people only do bad shit because, “the society,” isn’t paying attention, or that individual people are just blank slates beholden to the righteousness and morality of the cultural hivemind of said society. That Society is an objective effect, and if bad people exist, it’s proof to them that there’s something wrong with said society.

But individual men know that the bad actions of other men are not caused solely by “male culture,” or the absence of it, or shitty “role models.” They see the shitty natural inborn attitudes of other men, and despite being raised in shitty conditions, naturally develop a good head on their shoulders, and despise actions like that. As men you can’t HELP but grow up watching boys around you make shitty decisions based on shitty impulse control and, no matter how often they’re punished, how much they’re loved, how much they’re compassionately talked to, STILL act the fool and wind up as terrible, stealing, violent adults. As men you can’t do anything BUT reconcile that some people are just fucking shitheads, and the idea as a man YOU should be punished or treated like the “association” of men itself is at fault, smacks of sexism. The same sort of sexism women’s lib supposedly is against- at least, when it happens to women.

Women, however, are not men, are not privy to the thoughts and feelings of men. Men are abstracts to these women, many of whom are so solipsistic or gynocentrist that they just see men as a class of monsters in a videogame. Just a pattern of individuals that surely must all get their code and culture from “society.” Clearly, when there’s bad men about, it’s proof this “society” isn’t doing everything it can to mollify and gentrify those horrible beastly men to make them safe and not dangerous and productive.

These women that see men like living aggregates for society, imagine that in order to “keep men working properly,” they need to not have “bad moral influences,” treating pornography and access to drugs and literature like a cleaning lady treats dirt on linen. They imagine that the only reason rape or murder or theft by men occurs is because “there’s a problem with men, thinking that is okay.” Like the only reason your average man isn’t running around violently raping people or killing them is because they sang enough hymns at church- by force. Or because they were prevented from, “getting deranged by wrongthink.”

So with this in mind, how do they imagine porn affects men, male minds, and this big abstract-turned-monolithic-concept called, “society?”

Well, they imagine fiction is reality. That if “people of lesser intellect” read a thing, then they’ll inherently believe it, because, “it presents itself as factual and reality.” When.. no. That’s not how it works. They believe, absolutely, that without some mechanism there to go, “BUT WE’RE JUST PRETENDING THO, IT’S NOT REAL!” that will inherently make people, whom all have tenuous and toddler-like grasps of reality and object permanence, think a thing in fiction is real and applies to reality.

And naturally, they see men as people of lesser intellect. So they reason, those dangerous statistical anomalies are just men that haven’t been browbeaten, and whom are subject to any given negative influence or writing or opinion or culture that preaches values and ideas incongruent with their preferences, as women. Therefore, they conclude, fiction that does not preach their “good values” is in fact advocating bad ones, bad habits, bad moral character, bad mental health- call it whatever you want based on your generation. It’s ALL THE SAME SHIT. All the same knee-jerk moralism based on justifying societal and institutional use of force to restrict and arbitrate and judiciously enforce and justify dictating censorship and good-think. It’s just a question of where that basis comes from.

And theres’ ultimately no reasoning with that culture of women when they grasp hold of a thing that appeals to them, flatters and justifies their prejudices and biases. You can sit there colorfully or dryly explaining the ways in which this shitty point of view is wrong, much as you can try to walk back a persons beliefs in their homophobia that they base on religious purism or use the purism to validate their homophobia, but you cannot just get them individually to give up those nice, comfortable beliefs.

And when grouped together for mutual support and validation, it becomes this negative-thought, field of fucking SHEEP braying “Nuuuh-uuuh!” and arguing for restriction of content and sanitation and disbarrment from certain subject matter to be in consumable porn or literature or even just art. The only thing keeping them in check being the consequences for vandalism, and the ability for a community or institution to police out the bias usurpers that would seek to enter their foundations and run them on behalf of the values of these easily upset, insecure sheep.

every FUCKING generation, it manifests in some manner. Be they from church ladies, to radical feminists, to intersectional feminists. If you capture the imaginations, insecurities, jealousies, foster and sanction them, interpret them, get young women believing them, participating in the romance that tells them the way to change the bad things or take the edge off the bad men is to foster and enable authoritarianism (be it regional social, regional institutional, or federal institutional) then you have this neverending avalanche of unending support for it. Be it from dictators, or just from pure ideology from a doctrine. They’ll do it. And stubbornly and obstinately believe in whatever compliments their biases, to the contradiction of everything.

And while you can remove a man and his influences on the next gen from the home, from the social radius of the next generation to be a significant source of culture and how they relate to young people, removing women from the equation, from whom the next generation comes from, is virtually impossible. So a male zealot, already susceptible to scrutiny and punishment for being so wild and zealous with their beliefs, can be retaliated against, muted, beaten and removed from relevance until they censor themselves or change their tune.

But you cannot do that to a female human, or women/mothers as a sex, without both women AND men taking it as an attack on humanity at their most prime and kernel. It has to be done with disproportionate authoritarian state power that does not fear mass dissent and violent retaliation, or it isn’t done at all.

So these zealous Karens that embrace wholly these ideas enabling authoritarianism under a banner they approve of, are allowed to propagate unchallenged, and even if challenged, cannot be subdued or subverted. Their own little cliques and echo chambers and lack of desire to even consider their positions are wrong. Any attempt to point the fingers at this very real, disproportionate and characteristic, objective power female humans have just on the basis of their sex and how that relates among them socially, can and will be trash binned arbitrarily as, “sexism.” Despite the fact, it’s absolutely true.

So long as women that believe “society” is an objective, monolithic thing from which, “that other sex” and other women get their marching orders on how to BE what they are, and don’t see them as billions of individuals with their own ambitions, instincts, inborn personality and character flaws, independent of “society’s failures,” believing those people can be saved or corrected IF ONLY WE CENSOR EVERYTHING or make all media “good thing,” we’re just going to have people with illiberal beliefs asserting their dominance and insisting it’s for the soul of the species, society and the planet.

I mean yeah there are male antis and shit, but honestly. Tell me honestly. How many fucking deranged fandom people that are doing shit like mailing cookies with sewing needles backed into them are male gendered or male sexed, either? As uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge or consider this might have a sexual grounding, I’m sorry. Not acknowledging it is simply rejecting reality.

[ouyangzizhensdad]

unpopular opinion: most of the mxtx critical discourse happens becouse people cant let go of their prejudes against bl genre

Somewhat agree? I know you used “most” so you already acknowledged that there are other factors at play, but I do think it’s important to consider that reactions like these generally do not have a single, easy answer. 

While people tend to conflate danmei and BL, we can’t ignore that there have been larger discussions about how women *should* or *should not* engage or produce m/m content, in and out of fandoms, in ways that even people who haven’t drunk the anti-fujo kool-aid are inherently suspicious of “straight women” writing m/m stories (the Love, Simon controversy is an example of that where the author was forced out of the closet for the crime of writing a m/m story as a presumed straight woman). But danmei/bl being non-western, non-white genres certainly accentuate many of these tensions. Racism funnily both play into the patronising/otherising takes regarding how ‘terrible’ danmei-bl is compared to other m/m content, but also in the criticisms of westerners who engage in danmei-bl: ‘so you guys just want to fetishise asian men/asian gay men’.

As well, there’s been so much discussions about what *should* or *should not* been written when it comes more broadly to romance and sex, about what is problématique or not, the conclusion of which seems to lean toward the idea that any content that is not a safe, sane and consensual PSA or entirely wholesome simply should not exist. And that’s not even mentioning the sort of “psychologisation” or “trauma-turn” of these discussions, where people assume the psychological states of people who write or engage with problématique content, or propose that only people who have the right list of traumas can produce or engage with these types of content. And that hangs heavy not only in the mind of people who produce content but the person who consume it. If the only reason you could possibly want to engage with anything problématique would be that you are, in a way, deviant or broken, then perhaps you will start consciously avoiding these types of works or people who produce them. And all these relate to large discussions about how “””fiction impacts reality””” and discussions about social justice and consent, etc. etc. Once more, we have overlapping discourses and so, so much intertextuality. 

And the thing is that, generally, it’s not like these discourses are “rotten to the core,” ie that there is not important conversations to be had about these topics or that real issues did not spark these conversations in the first place. However, many people tend to want to collapse these complex discussions with complex and sometimes contradicting conclusions into a single, convenient answer by going to the extreme. And we have to recognise that there is something rewarding about feeling like you’re in the right, especially when these discourses become moralised. The trade-off between giving up entirely on something for the reward of taking the moral high ground seems very appealing! And it’s a lot less difficult than to navigate on a case-by-case basis works of fiction or fandom discussions, or to figure how to like something you might also disagree with or question regarding certain aspects. 

However, not only is it a vain effort, it is also denies art its capacity for meaning. It is vain because, well, the sources of the issues are unlikely to disappear and will probably only move onto a newer manifestation, and because humans be problematic 🤷‍♂️ and we be living in a society 🤷‍♂️. It doesn’t mean we should not be critical and have debates and conversations and expect better--but it means that this belief that the internet will be a good place if only we can squash fandom group X is just..... a fantasy. A comforting one, perhaps, but one all the same. I wouldn’t mind it as much if there wasn’t harassment and aggression resulting from these beliefs, and if it didn’t stifle art and creativity, the latter relating to an underlying assumption that there is nothing of worth in exploring in fiction difficult or shocking themes, or relationship dynamics that are not perfect or healthy. And that is just..... fundamentally misunderstanding the point of art and fiction. 

As well, somewhat in relation to these discussions, it’s important I think to accept that a lot of people who engage with MDZS in bad faith do so after they have been exposed by takes demonising the work that they took at face-value. It takes a lot more energy, good faith, critical thinking, and good reading comprehension to end up finding arguments against a perception of a work that you already accepted as true before you read it. Especially since social media has made it so much more dependent on other people’s opinions to decide what we engage with, and in which manner we will, I don’t think it can be understated. If you have already been served an opinion, it is easier than having to form your own, and easier than challenging it. Especially if people frame that opinion as morally right, and the people who disagree with it as degenerate sickos. Wouldn’t want to side with the freaks!!!

Finally, MDZS is not a work of fiction that can be read on the surface, and is a work that likes to play with tropes in a manner than is not necessarily a complete and total subversion, things that make it easier for people to miss the point of many of its elements. It’s even harder considering the level of the available translation and the framing of said translation--and the fact that many of the readers are not part of the intended audience and lack many of the cultural or literary knowledge that would help them navigate the novel. And, let’s be honest, it’s easier to miss the mark at times when a writer decides to handle more complex and controversial topics. It’s not like I don’t think MXTX could have not done some things better.

[fireleaptfromhousetohouse]

So I see people are not only doubling down on ‘it’s ok to punch people for the opinions they hold’, but trying to aggressively expand the category (and explicitly this time!).

Just as planned. See, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to publish these two-and-a-half essays I wrote (in a fit of blind fury/sexual confusion after reading the book of Fight Club) about who it’s ok to fucking murder. Everyone on board with that? Everyone all good with some animals being more equal than others? After all, this is what’s cool now, right?

Why it is moral for the poor to murder the rich

We all heard of Ethan Couch, the young man in Texas who killed four people while drink-driving. At trial, his lawyers (doubtless good ones, given Couch’s wealthy family) used Couch’s privileged lifestyle as a defence, arguing he did not fully understand the consequences of his actions and would benefit more from expensive therapy than a custodial sentence. This subsequently became known as the ‘affluenza’ defence.

Couch was given probation. This involved a (minor) custodial sentence once he was no longer a juvenile. Couch only received this custodial sentence after violating his probation terms and fleeing to Mexico, prompting a manhunt.

There are plenty of other lurid, salient details to make this case seem even more unjust. The judge who sentenced Couch, for instance, had previously handed down a 20-year sentence in a similar case in which the defendant killed one person, not four. Couch himself had apparently driven himself to school since the age of thirteen, making his shaky driving ability even more damning, and had previously been under probation at the age of fifteen, having been caught intoxicated in his vehicle with a naked, unconscious fourteen-year-old girl.

One could attempt to defend this lenient sentence. One point raised was that his obscenely wealthy parents could afford effective therapy (this having been an element of his defence). Another was the speculation that the judge was banking on Couch violating his probation, so that once he reached the age of majority they could throw the book at him. My point is this – had it been your friend or relative mowed down by a spoilt little date-rapist, who was put on trial for it and walked free to return to his comfortable pre-frat-boy lifestyle, you’d probably feel it was unjust. That the justice system was letting down its end of the bargain, that it hadn’t fulfilled the terms stipulated on its end of the social contract.

Now a thought experiment. You and Ethan Couch are walking on the same street. Were he to suddenly pull out a gun and shoot you, or get in his car and run you over, or stove your head in with a baseball bat (deliberately or accidentally), would he face material consequences for this? What if he were still under-age? What if he were a serving police officer? What if his family were even more wealthy than they are, say Kennedy- or Bush-dynasty level wealthy? (I note here that Laura Bush, wife of the 43rd President, did indeed kill a man in a car accident at the age of 17, and was not charged for it.)

And what if you had dependants? What if Ethan Couch condemned your children to starvation – or the cruel mercies of state care – with one pull of the trigger, and faced no comparable degree of condemnation himself? What if they tried to take revenge, to themselves redress the injustice of your death, and found themselves being handed quite draconian punishments for it? Is that justice? Or, if you have no children, what if your parents had to bury you? Can you imagine their grief at losing their child by the hands of someone who – by nature – will feel no remorse?

What I would like the reader to take away is this – if you see a wealthy person, at any given moment they could murder you, and it would be very much up in the air as to whether they would be punished for this. Therefore you should strike first. Get them before they get you – kill them or at the very least disable them to the point they are no longer able to harm you. This is not simply self-defence, you understand, this is for the sake of your dependants, your innocent children who have done nothing to deserve the rank injustice of being told their parent is dead and the killer is walking free.

Why it is moral for weak men to murder strong men

In the previous essay I outlined how, if you are confronted with someone who can kill you without penalty, it is best for the sake of you and your family to kill them first.

To begin with a simple statement of fact: society has nothing but scorn for weak men.

You can see this in how they are invariably described in feminising terms. Broadly speaking, patriarchal societies hold the feminine as inferior, but these weak men lack even the scant comforts women enjoy. When women are in pain they are comforted (albeit in a paternalist, condescending way), when men are in pain they are mocked – mocked further, in the case of already-feminised men.

Young men learn this quickly. Despite societal boilerplate about condemning violence, the physically strong will be encouraged and praised for attacking the physically weak, on the basis that they are correctly performing what society thinks of as masculinity. They are gifted social capital, and are found attractive by heterosexual women, all for the ‘achievement’ of having been born bigger and stronger than their peers. And with a majority of teachers being women, small wonder that this seems so obvious it is barely worth commenting upon to any man who has been through a school system. To them it is part of the landscape, as integral to society as architecture.

This does not extend to the legal system, which will grudgingly prosecute strong men for assault, but even that seems more like some sort of bizarre exception than the rule. The state itself sanctions violent men in the form of soldiers or police (two careers, incidentally, held to be inherently worthy of respect, and the latter of which is necessary to prosecute those charged with assault). The media is full of tales of violent men – or, as we refer to them, the ‘heroes’ of any given work of fiction – killing those around them with gun and knife and bare fist, and only a tenuous moral justification. In the world of sports, very few other athletes reach the level of fame that boxers and martial artists do (this is not even limited to men – cf. Ronda Rousey). And within geopolitics (to look at this in a much broader manner), once a nation-state can credibly threaten sufficient violence, it can then commit whatever atrocities it wants without fear of intervention – the benchmark of this generally being whether or not the nation-state is a nuclear power.

So, let me present you with another thought experiment. If you were a physically weak man, and a physically strong man were to punch you apropos of nothing, what do you suppose people’s reactions would be? Would they be more likely to intervene, or to laugh? If a heterosexual woman witnessed it, would she find the strong man unattractive? To return to the legal sphere, if the strong man were to be judged by a jury of his peers, and their role was not to determine whether or not he committed that act, but whether he should be punished for it – do you think they would punish him? And in all these eventualities, do you think the people around you would be likely to begin speculating that you had invited this attack in some way? Would they, for a moment, consider whether he committed that act because it bolsters his performance of masculinity, and because he could get away with it?

As with the wealthy, if you see a strong man he could strike or kill you, and quite possibly face no consequences – indeed, he might even be lauded for doing so, particularly if you are socially unpopular for whatever reason (ugliness, say). Once again, you must get them before they get you. Strength is not the same thing as invulnerability, the strongest man is as vulnerable as anyone to a traffic accident or a house fire. And for the reasons I have outlined above, I would recommend that the hypothetical weak man reader start as young as possible – crucially, before they reach the age of criminal responsibility. The confidence of knowing they can alter their own circumstances will likely serve them well as they move into late adolescence.

----------------------------

So, what did you make of the above essays?

There follows a brief reading comprehension test, before which you may wish to re-read the essays. Ready?

- Add one point if you noticed that the justice system usually does not take ‘lurid, salient details’ into account.

- Add one point if you noticed the logical leap between Ethan Couch receiving a non-custodial sentence, and the later claim that he received ‘no material consequences’.

- Add one point if you noticed the reference to Laura Bush was disingenuous, particularly given that at the time she had not married into the Bush family.

- Add one point if you noticed the paragraph concerning your hypothetical dependants was little more than Helen Lovejoy’s notorious rhetorical sledgehammer ‘think of the children!’

- Add one point if you noticed that if you kill a rich person, that yes, it absolutely isn’t ‘simply self-defence’.

- Add one point for each of the following generalisations that you noticed:

- ‘society has nothing but scorn for weak men’ - ‘the majority of teachers are women’ and the insinuation that for that reason the majority of teachers will be aroused by their violent male charges - the idea that the legal system only ‘grudgingly’ prosecutes strong men for assault

- Add one point if you noticed the attempt to radicalise children under the age of criminal responsibility.

- Add five points if you noticed that it would have been easy to take, as the subject of a theoretical third essay, the fact that heterosexual male victims of domestic violence are figures of ridicule and that their attackers tend to receive slaps on the wrist at most, and to go on to make the argument that any given man should attack any given woman before she attacks him.

- Add five points if you noticed that the endgame of these essays seem to be the weakest, poorest person on the planet surrounded by a mountain of corpses.

- Add five points if you noticed that – while the essays explicitly attempt to justify attacking the rich and the strong – were a rich or strong person to read them, their takeaway might well be that they already have carte blanche to attack and kill those weaker or poorer than them.

[fictionfreakazoid]

i saw the post about writing muslim characters and your contribution was good too, and the post really make me lose a bit of the anxiety i had over writing muslim characters due to being afraid of messing it up. ^^; i really want to do my best re: representation, and you said you were open to questions? if you have any suggestions, things not to do, tips, etc. for a non-muslim person writing a muslim character (specifically in a fictional, fantastical setting?) i'd greatly appreciate it!!

Ans: I’m really glad you appreciated what I contributed to the post! I did spend some time on it and I’m glad it’s showing it’s value now with you asking me this! I would just like to say first off, feel free to message me if you ever have specific questions as well (unless you’d rather just look up the information you need). Second off, please write more Muslim characters if you want to! Just don’t do it arbitrarily, fact check stuff like you would on other topics you’re not knowledgeable on (for example people research science before writing anything about it). As you probably know, we really don’t have a great image in the global media right now and by writing well-thought out Muslim characters it will definitely help us. We desperately need good representation and attention, because the terrible representation we have literally puts our lives at risk. We have to constantly fear for violence against us and just like any other minority we can face serious discrimination. But by writing well-thought out Muslim characters you can not only help give us a better image, but it will also lead more people to research the actual religion rather than just believe what the media says. 

Ok first off, I think I mentioned this in the post, but not all Muslims are Arabs and vice-versa (though I believe the majority of Arabs are Muslim I do know there are millions who aren’t). All Muslims should know some Arabic because our holy book, the Quran (spellings vary, I think the standard is Koran but personally I don’t like that spelling and I just use Quran), is in Arabic and that’s probably one of the (many) sources for that misconception. I mention this because there are a lot of practices that are said to be Islamic but they’re actually practices of cultures of some Muslim countries or the like, not actual religious practice or concepts. In (actual) Islam, we believe in diversity and we don’t discriminate on race or gender or anything like that, there’s no “superiority” or anything and men and women are viewed equally. This leads up to some big points I would like to suggest to you and anyone else who wants to write a Muslim character: first off, please fact check things (and although just googling things is nice, I think for non-muslims it’s probably best to find an organization/phone number or whatever that specifically answers/deals with questions related to Islam/clearing misconceptions, or if you’re not comfortable with that, find a religious Muslim who both you are comfortable talking to and who is comfortable talking about it), and in regards to that specifically: please please please write diverse (and religious) Muslims (in regards to race/background) and please please please write strong/power female characters. A lot of non-Arabs get hurt by the stereotype (although sometimes it can also lead in their favor) that only Arabs are Muslim because no matter how practicing/religious they can be, someone will still be shocked to hear that they’re Muslim. And also it’s just bad and inaccurate representation to just have Middle Eastern Muslims in media and it’s hurtful to never see yourself represented and every minority group has to deal with this. Also, contrary to common belief, women are empowered in Islam and are supposed to be held in high regard and respect. Fun fact, Islam was one of the first sources to allow women to get divorces and was one of the biggest influences to allow women that right in history, even in nonMuslim areas (another fun fact: a Muslim woman was the one to first start an institution that eventually developed into the concept/establishment of universities). Like I mentioned in the post, women wear the hijab for sake of modesty and because God told us to, not because of oppression of men. In the original post, it was said that forcing someone to wear the hijab is a sin (I haven’t fact-checked this myself though, I doubt it’s wrong though) and a lot of things that are forced onto women are cultural, not religious. This is why fact-checking is super important. I went to this religious speaker event and something he said struck me: a lot of the misconceptions about Islam regard women so we have more pressure to clear them up. If you want an example that shows this: me. I’m an Arab Muslim and I wear the hijab (another concept to clear up: the Abaya, the full black covering that you typically see Saudi women wear, is not required by Islam, that’s just choice. Different cultures obviously have different versions of the hijab (which I think literally just translates to something around covering) and that’s something you should fact-check on an individual basis, but the basics of the covering include wearing a headscarf and wearing modest/nonrevealing/not tight or transparent clothing) and I’m not married and I’m an electrical engineering student and I can drive (the prohibiting of women driving in Saudi Arabia is cultural, not religious, as obviously there wasn’t anything even similar to cars at the time of the establishment of the religion and thus there couldn’t possibly anything in the prophet’s sayings or the Quran that would say we can’t drive). Women and men alike are encouraged to pursue knowledge. I think we all know that there’s a lack in general of strong female characters, but I don’t think too many people even consider that Muslim women can be strong, too, because people think we’re being oppressed by the religion or men. News flash: men in every religion and every background can be patriarchal and oppressive to women, that doesn’t mean the religions themselves oppress the women (just like I said in the post, it’s more likely that oppressions heard about in the media are cultural not religious). Another tip: please try not to write arranged marriages because although parents do try to like try to set their kids up with people/suggest potential spouses, which is probably the case for all parents honestly, it’s still the child’s choice and under the religion you can’t force someone into a marriage. It’s a sensitive subject but like personally I think it’s just better to steer clear of that topic because it will inevitably lead to a bad image and misconceptions. 

One suggestion I have is to not just make a Muslim character be Muslim just nominally, like make them actually follow the religion. I think it’s a mainstream tendency nowadays that “religious” is equal to “conservative in all sense” and thus people tend not to make religious characters, but those two things are definitely not equivalent. There are plenty of liberal religious people (myself and family included). People can be religiously conservative and still have a liberal attitude. I say this in regards to Muslim characters because a lot of times when there are Muslim characters, they don’t really practice the religion that well, like they miss prayer and maybe have alcohol or something that’s inherently against the religion. We believe that the daily 5 prayers are mandatory and that you can’t skip them (if you do end up skipping them, you can repent for missing them and just make sure you don’t miss any in the future, we believe that no matter what you do in this life, as long as you repent and try to be a better person you can be forgiven by God). So a big don’t do is don’t have them eat pork or drink alcohol. Another thing that we believe is required (there are 5 pillars of the religion that are Fard, which means obligatory, to practice to be Muslim) is to fast during the holy month of Ramadan. The other 3 basic practices (pillars) that are obligatory are our statement of belief (called Shahadah), giving charity (which is called Zakah) and doing Hajj (although if you die before being able to do it like for money or health reasons you will be forgiven). I would suggest making a point of having your characters stick to those required practices because it really is common for those practices to get disregarded in media. 

Sorry for the long reply but I hope that helps! Let me know if any of this is unclear or if you have any more questions! :)

[bridalpearlnecklace-blog]

The Saturday newspapers were especially boring this week, but fortunately, there was an amusing editorial in the Economist, praising fakes of works of art, entitled "New pictures of the emperor," Charles Wyndham writes in his article posted on the PolishedPrices portal .

In it, the author continues, it is said about the Dutchman van Meergeren (van Meergeren), who was threatened with the death penalty in 1945 for selling the picture of the artist Vermeer Hermann Goering, the accomplice of Hitler.

They say that his defense was that it was a fake, which he painted himself, and when asked to prove it, by making a copy of the picture of Vermeer, he refused a humiliating offer. Instead, he painted a completely new picture in the Vermeer style in front of his doubting inquisitors.

The article also talks about Gloria Rosales, who over the past 15 years has fraudulently persuaded two commercial art galleries in New York to buy 63 counterfeit works for an unthinkable sum of $ 30 million.

Therefore, there is amusing evidence that in the art market not necessarily aesthetics determine the price, but names, rarity, "experts" and the price itself, which is in fact the driving force of this market.

Reading about some huge "chestnuts" that are put up for auction in a few weeks, it becomes clear, at least to me, that when faced with a large diamond, much of the motivation is the same as in the art market.

I really do not think there is any woman whose attractiveness will increase if she has a 60 or 100 carat stone on her finger, in fact, I think that the same can be said for a smaller stone.

Those women who have found someone who is able to afford such a luxurious gift tend, I would say, themselves to be "luxurious" in the sense that it is unlikely, among other things, to have a 20 carat stone, because a huge The stone on the elegant hand looks somehow disproportionate.

But this is a screaming evidence of how much money was thrown at it (unless it itself bought it), or, as economists say, is an example of "status goods - things that are highly valued because other people can not have them" .

De Beers has always stated in the past that diamonds should be bought only for their inherent beauty, and this should not be correlated with the cost.

This opinion was significantly changed by Gareth Penny, being the managing director of De Beers, when he announced that he was going to create a diamond fund. There were, of course, other people from this company who reluctantly accepted the fact that diamonds have a characteristic "value" indicator that serves as the reason that people buy them.

Why it took so long to understand such an obvious truth is beyond my comprehension.

On the other hand, there were those who argued that this "foundational value" for diamonds is a complete fiction, if not a real fraud.

Firstly, this accusation, perhaps, does not take into account, for example, that, according to many, driving around on some huge machine adds to them sexuality or that some magic lotion will reverse the aging process.

Secondly, the fact is that at least half the time we do not know or do not want to know the reasons why we are making some kind of independent purchase.

It's all a little Freud.

When someone goes and spends several thousand dollars, not to mention a few hundred thousand, on a wedding ring with a diamond, they in no way do "investment", and it is not a fact that our industry will struggle to bring it to their intelligence.

But still this illusion can comfort someone, and as Richard Dworkin recently said, unconcerned faith is not necessarily a bad thing.

But if we go further, our industry has a rather unique problem.

Cultured diamonds, or as some incorrectly call them "synthetic diamonds," raised some interesting questions.

I specifically said that it's wrong to call cultivated diamonds synthetic because they are not fakes or substitutes. I used to give the definition of the word "synthetic" given by the Oxford English Dictionary, so I will not repeat it. But what is not cultivated diamond, so it's "synthetic."

Cultivated diamonds are 100 percent diamonds, which Van Meegerer can not claim about his work in the Vermeer style, which, of course, looked like Vermeer's work, but Vermeer did not draw it, which would make her famous.

Cultured diamonds are created by human hands, and this is the only difference between them and natural diamonds that are created by nature and extracted by man.

The basis is the deficit of mined diamonds, which is confirmed by astronomical prices, which pay for the rarest stones; If the 100-carat diamonds were everywhere, no one would be willing to pay the staggering prices that they actually pay.

For cultivated diamonds, by definition, there are no restrictions on delivery compared to natural ones, except for stones of a "larger" size (say, above 2.5 carats in the form of raw materials), since in this case the cost and technical issues significantly limit production .

Most of the value of ordinary diamonds is due to the halo effect of the sale of the largest and rarest stone, which creates a perception among buyers that this has at least some "investment" value, just to mitigate the buyer's experience in connection with the staggering amount of money that He is asked to pay for the ring in support of his eternal love.    

Of course, one of the messages acting on the subconscious in the famous advertising slogan of De Beers "The diamond is forever" is love and money.

If you cultivate cultivated diamonds for natural diamonds, then faith or even hope will be destroyed, not to mention that it's just a deception.

[thedoctj-blog]

AN ESSAY I WROTE FOR SOME SCHOOL SHIT

     Human morality is perhaps the best kept secret in all of human history. For many thousands of years, mankind has tried to answer the question of why we, of all creatures which inhabit the earth, have an ability to empathise with our equals and our lessers. Man has never had the answer, and until recently, has only been able to speculate about the origin of our innate sense of right and wrong. All of the world’s religions were created to answer this question; to tell us who we are, where we fit, and how we should live our lives. We generally, as a result of our inborn code of ethics, heavily desire for there to be a universal ethical code that somehow reaches beyond the corners of our universe and guides all of nature; everything within and beyond that which we can see. We are a truly unique species; as we evolved, we were able to use intelligence, rather than our physical traits, to place ourselves at the top of the food chain. It was our brains that helped us gain the upper hand; not speed or size, but intelligence. Surely, human morality is a key factor; we’re smart enough to know which actions are constructive and which ones are destructive. Our ability to judge which actions are helpful toward our species, and which ones are not, has given us the ability to form the advanced societies we all live in. Ultimately, this is the purpose of our inherent code of ethics.

    To quote Albert Einstein: “If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.” (Einstein) It isn’t logical to assert that religion gave us our sense of morality; that religion existed; then the universe; then Earth; then humans; then morality. If this were the case, only the people who choose to participate in religion would know the difference between right and wrong. The world would be complete and utter chaos; since there are so many different religion with so much different, conflicting ideology. Rather, it makes sense that, lacking the proper technology to study human biology, man speculated that, since he could clearly perceive actions to be either good or bad, a higher power must have made it so. However, simply believing something doesn’t make it true. Michael Gazzaniga, a professor of psychology at the University of California, writes in Toward a Universal Ethics: “The harsh, cold fact, however, is that these rich, metaphoric, engaging ideas- whether philosophical or religious- are stories…” (Gazzaniga, 419). Anything that cannot be substantiated with legitimate evidence is just that: a story; a work of fiction.

    Not only is religion illogical; it is detrimental toward human advancement. Friedrich Nietzsche writes in Morality as Anti-Nature in reference to Christianity: “But an attack on the roots of passion means an attack on the roots of life: the practice of the church is hostile to life.” (Nietzsche, 348). Doctrine which tells us to defy our instinct, our passions, the things that make us human, is destructive toward the progression of the human race. An example of this might be the uproar of angry Christians who take issue with Target Corporation’s inclusive bathroom policy towards transgender men and women, because the Bible calls them “abominations unto the lord.” (Deuteronomy). This attitude of these people, who claim that it is a “moral” issue, is destructive toward human passion. The major fallacy that lies with religion is this: how can we derive our code of ethics from something that goes against the very essence of what it is to be human?

    We don’t. Darwin’s theory of natural selection states that phenotypic variation exists within each population, and that those with variations that are better suited to their environment. Morality is a completely natural, random trait that exists in humans. Somewhere along our path to becoming  modern day Homo sapiens, there was a genetic mutation that allowed for the ability to empathize with others, which helped us to survive better. It was passed on to succeeding generations, and is now a trait exhibited in all humans that helps us to be better suited to our environment. Gazzaniga puts it this way: “We have cognitive processes that allow us to make quick moral decisions that will increase our likelihood of survival. If we are wired to save a guy right in front of us, we all survive better.” (Gazzaniga, 425). Our sense of right and wrong has given us the ability to form the complex, amazing societies that we have by providing us with the tools to get along; we aren’t all fighting each other to get to the top of the food chain. Morality exists as nothing more than a set of tools inside of us meant to keep us from destroying each other.

    As much as a lot of us would like to believe in a higher power; someone who creates rules which govern the universe and all of its processes, it isn’t logical to believe so. There exists nothing more than what is observable and provable through science. While it’s been argued that, since scientific theories are in a constant state of change, science cannot be accepted as a firm basis of understanding, the laws themselves do not change. The law of gravity exists and functions indefinitely, as do the laws of time, as do the laws of thermodynamics, as does every natural law. However, as our knowledge increases, we have to change our beliefs as well, otherwise we will remain stuck; behind. There was a point in time in which it was an accepted truth that the Earth was flat and as young as 6,000 years old, and anyone who didn’t accept that as fact was persecuted by the church. The only laws that govern the universe are scientific laws.

    Objectively, we cannot assume that the universe has a code of ethics; an ability to empathise and make decisions based on what it feels is right. The universe isn’t governed by what we perceive to be right and wrong. In the past, entire species have, without warning, been wiped off of the face of the earth in the blink of an eye. The universe does not consider life before it acts; the dinosaurs faced extinction as a result of an impact, not as a consequence of their actions, but simply because they did. The universe does not think before it acts; it just does. Therefore, anything that can happen on Earth does not ultimately make a difference. A “universal code of ethics” does not exist.

    As difficult as it can be for us to accept, the fact is that our lives aren’t meaningful to anyone except organisms that share our habitat. Anything we do may impact life on earth, but the universe continues to function in more or less the same way, no matter what actions we take, what we think, or how we feel. The only real differences we make are here on earth, since we are so small in comparison to the vast expanse of the universe, and so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. All life on Earth could go extinct, and the universe would continue to function. We like to think of ourselves as the most dominant beings in the universe, but in reality, the universe could wipe us off the face of the earth in the blink of an eye, without warning or reason. Since nature, the only provable “higher power,” does not consider us before it acts, our lives are ultimately meaningless.

    However, we can take comfort in the fact that here, on Earth, we all impact each other. This is our home, and we have a responsibility, if we are to advance, to act in a way that is constructive toward human progression. After all, morality exists for our progression. Right and wrong do exist at our level, even if they have no universal value. Our ability to decide which actions are constructive, and which ones aren’t, gives us an advantage over other organisms who compete with us to dominate, because we have an ability to work together. This has given us the tools to build beautifully complex societies. The only true “sin” is to choose to take actions that are detrimental toward our societies. Human morality exists solely as a tool which is necessary for us to build better lives for ourselves.