#principle of binary states

[rustyrailways]

Everyday I wish they explored the class/house system in Piltover further so we could see just how vast the differences in economic status and quality of life exists in the city. We know there is a house system at the very least, but to what extent does it effect things?

[drdemonprince]

why would anyone even want an X on their passport? If you have a passport presumably you want to travel or at least have the opportunity to leave the usa if shit gets bad. But with that X you are limiting yourself to like 10 countries to go to, its going to cause you issues at any passport check that isnt overwhelmingly progressive.

I think that many people are rightly horrified by the fact that coercive gender assignment at birth has forced them within a particular category, and that this determines the shape of many of their interactions with large institutions and the identities and roles possible for them. they see removing that forced gender marker as a means of escape from coercive gendering -- though in actual practice, it essentially never works this way. having a non-binary gender marker on your identification doesn't change the fact that most insurance providers only categorize customers according to the binary, and will assign a binary categorization to every person regardless, or that virtually every government institution and state on the planet views binary gender as an essential means of sorting individuals, and will continue to sort individuals even if you attempt to personally opt out. I think many of us in the United States in particular are especially inclined to think of queer liberation in terms of personal identity, rather than political might, and so they're not primed to think of the pitfalls of outing oneself as inscrutable to the state. we get indoctrinated from a very young age into thinking that freedom is earned through taking a principled stand and speaking one's truth - this propaganda leads many of us to believe that our only means of enacting change is through our stances and identities as individuals, and it does not make us particularly politically shrewd or self-protective. particularly those of us who are white and from a European background within the imperial core are not accustomed to the idea that the state is not our friend, and can cast us out as enemies at any time. many of us don't even think about the risks inherent to giving more vulnerable information about ourselves to the government. but I hope that more and more of us do.

[nostalgicamerica]

Here are a few of the assinine projects on which USAID spent US tax dollars:

— $7.9 million to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid “binary-gendered language”

— $20 million for a new Sesame Street show in Iraq

— $4.5+ million to “combat disinformation” in Kazakhstan

— $1.5 million for “art for inclusion of people with disabilities”

— $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala

— $6 million to “transform digital spaces to reflect feminist democratic principles”

— $2.1 million to help the BBC “value the diversity of Libyan society”

— $10 million worth of USAID-funded meals, which went to an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group

— $25 million for Deloitte to promote “green transportation” in the country of Georgia

— $6 million for tourism in Egypt

— $2.5 million to promote “inclusion” in Vietnam

— $16.8 million for a SEPARATE “inclusion” group in Vietnam

— ~$5 million to EcoHealth Alliance, one of the key NGOs funding bat virus research at the Wuhan lab

— $20 million for a group related to a key player in the Russiagate impeachment hoax

— $1.1 million to an Armenian “LGBT group”

— $1.2 million to help the African Methodist Episcopal Church Service and Development Agency in Washington, D.C., build “a state-of-the-art 440 seat auditorium”

— $1.3 million to Arab and Jewish photographers

— $1.5 million to promote “LGBT advocacy” in Jamaica

— $1.5 million to “rebuild” the Cuban media ecosystem

— $2 million to promote “LGBT equality through entrepreneurship” in Latin America

— $500K to solve sectarian violence in Israel (just ten days before the Hamas October 7 attack)

— $2.3 million for “artisanal and small scale gold mining” in the Amazon

— $3.9 million for “LGBT causes” in the western Balkans

— $5.5 million for LGBT activism in Uganda

— $6 million for advancing LGBT issues in “priority countries around the world”

— $6.3 million for men who have sex with men in South Africa

— $8.3 million for “USAID Education: Equity and Inclusion”

— USAID’s “climate strategy” outlined a $150 billion “whole-of-agency” approach to building an “equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”

For decades, USAID bureaucrats believed they were accountable to no one — but that era is over.

————————

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

[twomiddlefingersforthehaters]

Blue and orange are complementary colors, which means they are opposite each other on the color wheel, positioning that signifies their complementary nature. When these two colors are placed together, one color tends to make another color stand out, highlighting a contrast. Blue is the color that contrast with orange, they can create the strongest visual impact.

Sasuke is associated with blue color and naruto is associated with orange color. On the color wheel, blue is the direct complement of orange. Since orange is a mixture of red and yellow, your complementary colors will be purple and blue respectively. Blue can be the complement of both yellow and orange

VOTE1 & VOTE2 = Blue & Orange

Blue (Sasuke) is a cold color while Orange (Naruto) is a warm color.

Kage summit arc

VOTE2

Also Sasuke is associated with purple color and naruto is associated with yellow color. Purple and yellow it brings high drama, contrast, and emotional tension. They are each really emotional colors, and they create fantastic tension with each other.

The giant explosions created by the collision of Rasengan and Chidori in vote1 and vote2 are exactly opposite colors. Naruto's chakra color (yellow) and Sasuke's chakra color (purple)...they are opposite side of each other as well.

Note: (Cool colors) Sky-blue, blue and violet/purple indicate night time, means 'yin'. Violet color indicates midnight. (Warm colors) Yellow, orange and red indicate day time, means 'yang'. Naruto & Sasuke colors are complementary and when they combined or mixed, cancel each other out by producing color like "white or black". Sasuke would become 'black' and Naruto 'white'. They are yin & yang.

Yang began to signify the sun itself and the state of brightness and openness while Yin began to signify the moon and the state of darkness and closeness. As a result, they further derived two mutually complementary principles, of which Yang represents masculinity, light, warmth, dryness hardness, activity, etc., while Yin represents femininity, darkness, cold, moisture, softness, passivity, etc

the interdependence of Yin & Yang means that each of the two aspects is the condition for the other's existence and neither of them can exist in isolation. For instance, without daytime there would be no night; without male there would be no female. Hence, it can be seen that Yin and yang are at once in opposition and in interdependence; they rely on each other for existence, coexisting in a single entity.

The basic idea of Yin and Yang is not just the existence of the binary elements nor the dichotomy of phenomena but the harmony of opposites: they are not just in contrast or contradiction. Through the appropriate combination of Yin and Yang, these co-existing elements create beauty, balance and completeness.

Literally, Yin means dark or shade and Yang means bright or shiny. Both the physical and metaphysical worlds can be defined in terms of the relationship of the binary elements. The coexisteiice of opposites is a universal principle: love and hate, happiness and sadness, life and death, pure and practical, material and spiritual, black and white, and so on. Yin and Yang produce everything in the universe through combining in various proportions. In Onmyōdō, Heaven is Yang and Earth is Yin. Without Yang there is no Yin; without Yin there is no Yang. Both create a totality, a complete whole.

[accountability-movement]

How Far Into Project 2025 Are We?

Here is a status report of Project 2025's primary goals, organized by the anticipated timeframe for their potential implementation in the United States. A green check (✅) indicates goals that have been completed, a red check (❌) denotes those that have not yet been achieved, a question mark (❓) signifies goals attempted through executive orders, and a yellow dash (🟡) represents goals currently in progress.

Within the Next Week:

Appointment of Key Officials:

Appointment of individuals aligned with Project 2025 to significant administrative positions.

Example: Appointment of Russell Vought as Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Status: ✅ Completed

Within the next month:

Restructuring Federal Agencies:

Initiation of efforts to downsize or eliminate specific federal agencies, such as the Department of Education and the Department of Commerce.

Example: Proposal to abolish the Department of Education.

Status: ❓ Attempted through Executive Order

An executive order has been prepared to begin winding down the Department of Education, urging Congress to pass legislation to abolish it. However, significant challenges exist due to the department's funding and existence being mandated by Congress.

Policy Reversals:

Reversal of existing policies related to environmental regulations and LGBTQ+ protections.

Example: Rolling back climate change initiatives.

Status: ❓ Attempted through Executive Order

President Trump signed Executive Order 14162, "Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements," directing the immediate withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement and other international climate commitments.

Within the Next Year or Longer:

Judicial Appointments:

Appointment of federal judges who align with Project 2025's conservative principles.

Status: 🟡 In Progress

The administration is in the process of nominating and confirming judges aligned with its conservative agenda.

Legislative Changes:

Enactment of laws to implement tax reforms, such as reducing corporate tax rates and instituting a flat income tax.

Status: 🟡 In Progress

The administration has proposed significant tax reforms and is working with Congress to pass the necessary legislation.

Social Policy Overhauls:

Implementation of policies to infuse government and society with conservative Christian values, including restricting abortion rights and redefining marriage.

Status: ❓ Attempted through Executive Order

President Trump signed an executive order titled "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," which implements strict binary definitions of sex and mandates their use throughout the federal government, affecting policies related to gender identity and LGBTQ+ protections.

[doctornerdington]

What I love most* about season 2 of Good Omens is the way it's such a delightful and silly confection but then it sneaks up on you with deadly serious themes, but then even those are so optimistic and comforting.

Like hey! War might not be the natural state of humanity or civilization! War might be rooted in institutional power systems, actually. And also! Binaries might not be the natural organizing principle of humanity; they might just exist to perpetuate the control those institutions have over us. And oh no! It takes courage and strength to challenge this! It's dangerous, it's risky, and we’re not always going to get it right. But if we act with love and integrity—if we strive for that, even imperfectly, even if we fail—we’re doing something worthwhile. Because success and failure is just another binary and maybe it's better not to think about things in that way quite so much.

*I love a lot of things the most about season 2 of Good Omens: equally Aziraphael's eyebrow sass and Crowley's ummm snakey joints?

[natsmagi]

The hyperfeminization of Arashi by the fandom has been such an issue for the longest time: from forcing her to wear pinks, skirts, dresses *ALL* of the time, to constantly making redesigns of her outfits to fit what they deem to be more feminine. It isn’t a problem to wear any of these, and trans women do wear a lot of these, but the problem is that it not only is not true to her character, but the people who do these things only conduct such because it’s what THEY think is more feminine (because it is what was considered traditionally feminine). When in reality, Arashi herself is already feminine. Everyone knows the writers struggle to respectfully portray her character at times, but her principles have ALWAYS remained the same, and clear. She doesn’t enjoy her gender identity being paraded on, she is comfortable in the clothes she wears. It’s especially frustrating when people redisgn her to always wear dresses, have longer hair, and other things they think makes her more feminine when Arashi chose to dress the way that she does. She likes pants, she likes short hair, the whole point of her character is loving the way that she is- why would she change it so drastically the way that the fandom does? They act as if she is a damsel in distress, when Arashi is one of the most strongest and confident characters. She’s in touch with her emotions most times, and wouldn’t willingly choose things that would make her dysphoric. It’s especially upsetting when the fandom does these things because it begins to hurt real transfem people, and in turn hurts the rest of the community because of how high these expectations go. They expect Arashi to be 100% feminine all the time, degrade her when she shows a bit of masculinity, which then becomes real life transphobia in expecting trans women in real life to hold these standards. This then hurts other trans people in expecting transmasc to be 100% masculine all the time, or non-binary/agender/etc. people to be 100% androgynous all the time. We must accept that Arashi is trans. People think they do already but don’t ACTUALLY accept that she is. They use the pronouns and correct such, but they don’t correct the internalized transphobia they have because they don’t think they have any. Arashi has stated that she does enjoy exploring masculinity at times and feels comfortable to do so, and so we must accept that she will be exploring masculinity when she feels like it: just as any other transfem person would. The people who constantly parade her identity make me think that they don’t surround themselves with other trans people, because they would know that many trans people explore their expression in different ways. Why is it okay for trans masc to wear makeup, dresses and skirts while not having their integrity questioned yet transfem cannot wear pants, have off days or just explore masculine expression when they are already comfortable with their identity?

All in all, it’s disgusting to constantly police Arashi’s gender identity just because it was uncomfortable for the viewer that cannot accept that transfem are allowed to explore their gender identity

!!!!!! YES EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU EXPLAINED IT BETTER THAN I EVER COULDVE!!!!!!!!!!! i agree with u 100%

i dont have much more to add but i will say i feel like people often forget that queer identities are REAAAAAAALLY NUANCED AND COMPLEX. like. you dont need to look a certain way in order to Be something. theres plenty of cis women who prefer wearing pants or having short hair or whatever, so why cant trans women??? why do we always need to fit so perfectly into these little boxes society places onto us in order to be viewed as valid and respected?

being queer is about defying norms, not creating new ones. You can act like youre a trans ally all you want but if you refuse to accept or acknowledge the nuances that comes with being trans and the unique and individual relationships we all have with our assigned gender and masculinity/femininity as a whole, no matter how often you use the correct pronouns, if you keep needing us to be and look a certain way in order for you to acknowledge us as actually Being our gender for YOUR comfort, youre transphobic.

its frustrating how feminism used to be a push for allowing women to dress and act however they want (aswell as having rights ofc) But now for some reason we're right back at square one where women need to be soft and delicate and petite and wear pink dresses or else youre not a real woman or youre seen as lesser. That is not queer allyship, nor is it empowering women

[opencommunion]

"My analysis challenges a number of ideas, some mentioned above, common in many Western feminist writings:

Gender categories are universal and timeless and have been present in every society at all times. This idea is often expressed in a biblical tone, as if to suggest that 'in the beginning there was gender.'

Gender is a fundamental organizing principle in all societies and is therefore always salient. In any given society, gender is everywhere.

There is an essential, universal category 'woman' that is characterized by the social uniformity of its members.

The subordination of women is a universal.

The category 'woman' is precultural, fixed in historical time and cultural space in antithesis to another fixed category—'man.'

... Merely by analyzing a particular society with gender constructs, scholars create gender categories. To put this another way: by writing about any society through a gendered perspective, scholars necessarily write gender into that society. Gender, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. The idea that in dealing with gender constructs one necessarily contributes to their creation is apparent in Judith Lorber's claim that 'the prime paradox of gender is that in order to dismantle the institution, you must first make it very visible.' In actuality, the process of making gender visible is also a process of creating gender. Thus, scholarship is implicated in the process of gender-formation."

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (1997) ~

"Feminist anthropologists of racialized peoples in the Americas tend not to think about the concept of gender when they use the term as a classificatory instrument, they take its meaning for granted. This, I claim, is an example of a colonial methodology. Though the claim that gender, the concept, applies universally is not explicitly stated, it is implied. In both group and conference conversations I have heard the claim that 'gender is everywhere,' meaning, technically, that sexual difference is socialized everywhere. The claim, implied or explicit, is that all societies organize dimorphic sexuality, reproductive sexuality, in terms of dichotomous roles that are hierarchically arranged and normatively enforced. That is, gender is the normative social conceptualization of sex, the biological fact of the matter. ... The critique of the binary has not been accompanied by an unveiling of the relation between colonization, race, and gender, nor by an analysis of gender as a colonial introduction of control of the humanity of the colonized, nor by an understanding that gender obscures rather than uncovers the organization of life among the colonized. The critique has favored thinking of more sexes and genders than two, yet it has not abandoned the universality of gender arrangements. ... Understanding the group with gender on one’s mind, one would see gender everywhere, imposing an order of relations uncritically as if coloniality had been completely successful both in erasing other meanings and people had totally assimilated, or as if they had always had the socio-political-economic structure that constitutes and is constituted by what Butler calls the gender norm inscribed in the organization of their relations. Thus, the claim 'There is gender everywhere' is false ... since for a colonized, non-Western people to have their socio-political-economic relations regulated by gender would mean that the conceptual and structural framework of their society fits the conceptual and structural framework of colonial or neocolonial and imperialist societies. ... Why does anyone want to insist on finding gender among all the peoples of our planet? What is good about the concept that we would want to keep it at the center of our 'liberation'?" María Lugones, "Gender and Universality in Colonial Methodology," in Decolonial Feminism in Abya Yala: Caribbean, Meso, and South American Contributions and Challenges (2022)

[irritatingsquawkingnoises]

There are a lot of reasons to dislike egg jokes, but to be honest my personal least favorite thing about them is that they fundamentally reinforce gender binaries. Even when the jokes incorporate identities other than just “female” or “male”, they still operate on the principle that there is something suspicious or incorrect about not conforming in every way to your stated gender. When people joke about me being an egg, I don’t feel shamed for being cisgender, I feel shamed for being gender non-conforming.

Like, if you wouldn’t tell someone “lol you can’t be a woman because you have a penis,” then don’t tell someone “lol you can’t be a man because you wear dresses.”

[innocet]

I don't know how to verbalize this, because every time I do I feel like I'm going to come across as invalidating other non-binary people, especially non-binary tma people, but i do struggle to find coherent analysis and theory of gendered oppression that doesn't find itself having to misgender non-binary people who don't want to be understood as Transmasc or Transfem. I get the value of these labels as guiding principles/tools of solidarity/etc, but i find often my experiences aren't shared with transmascs, because i am not aspiring to masculinity (nor am i aspiring to femininity). that category does not at all effectively describe my gendered experiences (again, i don't seek to be "masculine" in most of its definitions or to be in community with men on the shared experience of being men), and only sometimes describes my sexed experiences (ie taking testosterone, seeking a hysterectomy, etc). This isn't about whether my or anyone else's Non-Binary Identity Is Valid, it's that trans gender theory that actually materially engages with lived experiences of sex and gender tends to assume that materially non-binary gendered experiences don't exist and are actually just aberrations of binary* gender that can only ever be weaponized social forces against marginalized people (third-sexing, degendering).

this is NOT to say that non-binary transfems and transmascs are Less Non-Binary than i am, and it is ESPECIALLY not to say that my gender is Uniquely Transgressive In A Way These Binary Trans People Could Never Understand. as I've said before, I'm not trying to be the most transgressive transsexual in the police state, I'm simply looking for how to make my own identity and experiences legible and articulable in a way that does not actively enact harm against other trans people, transfems especially.

[turquoisewaves07]

"What does the CJEU decision [that data should refer to a person's lived gender identity, not that assigned at birth] mean for the UK?

The UK's position on gender recognition is now nominally at odds with the EU's Data Protection regime. But the UK mustn't let their data protection regime come unmoored from the EU's, or they will lose their status of 'adequacy', threatening the free exchange of personal data that their economy relies upon.

So it seems likely that this is the high water mark for the Imperial gender binary. The UK Supreme Court decision applies to one word in one act. But, without coming undone from the principles of data protection, the UK state can't lawfully take actions to process people's gender data in a way that ignores their lived experience in favour of their gender status at birth. If the government tries to operationalise the judgment more generally, the UK GDPR sits waiting for it like the troll under the bridge."

- Simon McGarr, The Gist: Trans rights are Data rights

[dchan87]

The incendiary political climate surrounding Israel/Palestine since October 7th, 2023 needs no introduction. For the better part of a year, the war in Gaza has dominated the discourse and maintained a fever pitch of emotional intensity like few issues in recent memory. Amid the blistering outrage of the war’s most vocal critics, one of the world’s most intractable and longstanding conflicts gets reduced to a bumper sticker. The Western, pro-Palestinian left takes a complex history spanning over 75 years and more than a dozen wars and armed conflicts and collapses it into a simplistic moral binary in which Israel is the evil, oppressive empire and Palestine is the helpless, oppressed victim. Indeed, the loudest voices on the front lines of the pro-Palestine movement see themselves as kindred spirits of the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars, the resistance fighters from The Hunger Games, and the Fremen from Dune. This is the level of sophistication they bring to the issue.

None of this should be especially surprising given that the core of the Western Palestine movement is driven by young people. They believe a fictional version of history in which Israel is a white European colonial project, never mind the fact that half of Israeli Jews are Middle Eastern Mizrahis or that 18 percent of Israelis are Muslim. They don’t know which “river” or “sea” they’re chanting about. They don’t know that the Palestinians rejected a chance at a state of their own on no less than five occasions, each time preferring war to peace. But The Hunger Games — that they know. And so they engage in the most loathsome behaviors, trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes, harassing random Jews, and rolling their eyes at rape victims without regard for principles or decency. The worst part is, none of this is even about Palestine.

You can tell a lot about what people actually believe by looking not at what they say, but at what they do. And just like pro-life “family values” congressmen who secretly get abortions for their mistresses, we can see by the actions of pro-Palestine protesters that they don’t really care about the cause to which they profess. They may think they do, but their actions do not reflect a sincere desire for lasting peace. The movement is not just immature and profoundly unserious — its atrocious behavior and lack of clear goals actively works against the interests of the Palestinian people.

I used to think that anti-Zionism was separate from anti-Semitism, but October 7th changed that. After seeing the naked anti-Semitism of the pro-Palestine movement spring to life on October 8th, before Israel had even responded to Hamas’s attacks, I began to question my priors. I saw actual swastikas on display. I saw demonstrators justifying the slaughter at the Nova Music Festival. I saw protesters throwing Hitler salutes. I saw Holocaust memorials defaced, holocaust ceremonies picketed, and Jewish businesses attacked despite no apparent ties to Israel. At a certain point, it became impossible to deny: a virulent hatred of both Israel and Jews is rampant in the pro-Palestine movement.

Whenever these blatantly anti-Semitic actions are called out, we hear the familiar chorus of “anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism.” But with every heil Hitler shouted at a protest, it becomes less and less credible. If this overwhelmingly leftist movement was consistent with its own purported anti-fascist values, such anti-Semitism would be swiftly shut down and forcefully kicked out of the movement, not downplayed or denied. Years ago, there seemed to have been some daylight between anti-Zionists and anti-Semites. Right now, the Venn diagram between the two is fast approaching a perfect circle. For all the valid criticisms that could be levied at the Israeli government, it has sadly become rational for Israelis and American Jews (91 percent of whom are Zionists) to feel that anti-Zionists are simply anti-Semites.

The fact that the pro-Palestine movement is fine harboring racists isn’t just a moral problem — it works against their own stated goals. When the most vocal and visible advocates are the worst people imaginable — tearing down hostage posters, blocking traffic, telling Jews to “go back to Germany”, and protesting an exhibit for massacred partygoers — any sane observer will be turned off. Viewed from the perspective of wanting Palestinians to have a real shot at peace and an independent state of their own, the movement’s repellent antics and lack of realistic and achievable goals make no sense.

If, however, we view the Western pro-Palestine movement not as a serious campaign for justice, but rather as a masturbatory exercise in virtue exhibitionism, the pieces begin to click into place. Evaluated by their behavior, the real goal of the protesters is not to affect change, but to be seen among their peers as a Good Person™ who is opposed to all the Bad Things™ — colonialism, fascism, capitalism, you name it. The war in Gaza is just the latest convenient excuse to take to the streets and call for revolution — or in this case, intifada.

This is by no means a new phenomenon. The activist left has always been a haven for the rudderless children of the upper-middle class with a penchant for role-playing. Whether it’s burning cities and decapitating pigs to defund the police, or defacing the Mona Lisa and Stonehenge to stop fossil fuels, the point isn’t to find a realistic path to change. The point is to gorge on what Aldous Huxley once described as “the most delicious of moral treats”:

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people that they will have a chance of maltreating someone. [...] To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”

What makes Israel/Palestine unique is the combination of issues it weaves together in the minds of young leftists. Pro-Palestine activism ties the war in Gaza to Western imperialism, Islamophobia, US-style racial identity politics, and anti-Americanism. Israel, in this view, is an apartheid state, a settler colonial regime as bad as the Nazis, genocide and all. That European colonialism never once involved a land where the colonists had cultural and religious ties dating back thousands of years, not to mention a continuous presence, or that imperialism is in no way specific to white European countries, is lost in the shuffle. As is the fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict is more geopolitical than religious (Israel has normalized relations with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, both deeply religious Muslim nations).

The accusation of apartheid likewise falls flat upon considering that Israeli Arabs have the same rights as Israeli Jews. As for the absurd charge of genocide, much has been made of the case brought against Israel by South Africa in the United Nations’ International Court of Justice (ICJ), as though the mere accusation of genocide was ironclad evidence. But far from proving these serious allegations, the president of the ICJ who presided over the case clarified that it “didn't decide the claim of genocide was plausible.”

What illustrates the anti-Israel fetish on the Western left is the near total apathy for the world’s many other — and often far worse — humanitarian crises. Where is the outcry over the Yemeni Civil War, a war involving slave-owning terrorists that has seen 377,000 dead? Where are the protests over the Syrian Civil War, which saw a staggering 617,000 dead? Or the ongoing oppression of the Uyghur Muslims in China? Or the Sudanese Civil War? Not a peep. None of this is meant as a whataboutism. 600,000 dead in some other war doesn’t give Israel carte blanche to kill civilians. But to have activists so passionate about one conflict that they’re literally setting themselves on fire while completely ignoring all others is eye opening. It’s hard to see the Palestine movement as a principled opposition to oppression and civilian casualties rather than an unhealthy fixation on the world’s only Jewish state.

For all that the pro-Palestine movement calls for “peace” and “ceasefire”, they have little to say about Hamas’s role in the violence. Imagine if Hamas laid down its arms in surrender instead of trading Palestinian civilian lives for anti-Israeli PR. Imagine a Gandhi-like peaceful Palestinian resistance. The international pressure behind them would be overwhelming. Israel would lose all justification and have no choice but to back down. But Hamas would rather continue seeing their own people butchered in the crossfire of urban warfare, because Hamas doesn’t want peace or coexistence — they want the complete eradication of Israel and the Jewish people. And the Western leftists who support them don’t want a negotiated peace — they want Israel abolished, with no thought for what would happen to the Jews living there now. The pro-Palestine movement does not want a Mandela-like figure building reconciliation. They want a Robespierre-style revolutionary to burn the entire system to the ground.

Consider, by contrast, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. Although fiercely controversial at the time, King’s activism and the broader protest movement of which he was a part ultimately paved the way for reforms that ended Jim Crow. How? Because King had a brilliant strategy with a clearly defined, achievable vision. With a principled commitment to non-violence, protesters forced the authorities to make the first aggressive move and thus traded their own suffering to change hearts and minds and create political pressure. It was brave, intelligent, and most importantly, effective, because the movement had concrete goals and a realistic method for getting there. None of this ethos is present in the pro-Palestine protests. They would much rather chant “there is only one solution” or pointlessly occupy a university building and then demand the administrators feed them. There’s a reason why the protesting intensified the moment the weather got warm and finals were around the corner. It’s all so endlessly sophomoric.

In a saner world, I would be a moderate on Israel. I oppose the settlements in the West Bank and think that Israel’s far-right Likud party and its obstinate leader Benjamin Netanyahu have been obstacles to peace. I believe in a two-state solution, and acknowledge that in this long and bloody conflict, neither side’s hands are clean. But because the far left would rather engage in apologia for terrorists than learn the most basic nuances of the conflict, I come across as a pro-Israel hawk, which is a sign of how unhealthy the discourse has become. Israel is stuck in an impossible situation, surrounded by hostile actors and under constant bombardment by terrorists. That doesn’t justify the loss of civilian life in Gaza, but I have yet to see a single pragmatic solution to the war coming from the left that doesn’t amount to Israel willingly exposing its throat to those who would gladly cut it.

If I thought that Hamas would honor a ceasefire, I would call for one too. But as the world saw on October 7th when Hamas broke the previous ceasefire, they are not a party that can be reasoned with — they must be defeated. And their Western supporters, who couldn’t discredit the Palestinian cause more if they were Mossad agent provocateurs, are only making that fate more likely. 

Every principled supporter of Palestine should look to the comrades at their side and ask, with friends like these, who needs enemies?

[greenmansgrove]

To Worship a War Goddess in the Modern Era

This devotional writing is dedicated to the Great Queens, Na Morrígna, She who has called me to service. Inspired by a nightmare, this writing is offered to uphold an exchange. May these words aid not in teaching others how to think, but in learning to listen.

One thing since being called by the Morrigan that I’ve had difficulty resolving is the Morrigan’s being a war goddess in the age of the military industrial complex, where wars, especially on the part of the US and other imperialist nations, are fought not for sovereignty or “defense,” like so many USAmericans are raised to believe. Authors on the Morrigan agree war has changed since the days of her worship among the Celts, but none I’ve found talk about what it means to worship her in the face of wars fought for unjust causes and for profit, or the fact that veterans are made forgotten victims instead of honored warriors, or in watching the genocide of the Palestinian people, among other ongoing injustices worldwide. I worry that sovereignty for the Morrigan is equated with imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy, especially given some personal history interacting with devotees who themselves hold such values. Surely, with just how sick the land and its people are thanks to poverty, climate change, etc., the current “sovereigns” in power do not have the Morrigan’s blessing?

I admit I do not have all the answers or all the vocabulary to speak as strongly as I feel on this topic. As only an Acolyte still forging my relationship with the Morrigan, I am in the process of learning what worship of a war goddess in the modern age looks like. The Morrigan and her care have changed since ancient times, and they should. Her being able to do so speaks to the power of what she represents and the needs of the communities who call on her. Her complexity only grows in the modern age, especially in the face of global economies and imperialism, and as her worship is taken beyond the bounds of her homelands. Thus, I am left wondering how to consider or work with her warlike aspects.

In folklore, the Morrigan is often an antagonist, appears to fight for the “wrong” side, and starts wars out of nowhere. Authors like Courtney Weber (2019) and Stephanie Woodfield (2021) mention that we do not know for what purpose she started wars in ancient times, but both urge that the concepts of war and violence are complex not just to the Morrigan but to humanity. The Morrigan, by her very nature and actions across even her seemingly mortal lifetimes, is a goddess in the grey areas who rejects false binaries between life and death or war and peace. She teaches us not to believe in things blindly or warns us against simple stances on complex subjects. Jewish Witch, devotee of the Morrigan, and staunch anti-Zionist Asa West (2014) says, “The Morrígan implores us not to glorify war or reject all armed conflict on principle, but rather to understand and work through humankind’s propensity towards violence.” I think to deny violence on principal, and especially to uncritically shame its use by others, is a shortsighted stance. I firmly believe in the necessity of violence to end violence. I believe that victims of state-sanctioned violence have a right to defend themselves. I believe that nonviolence has its place (this is the purpose of magick, after all, as well as the Morrigan’s and the Celts’ battle cries, so that enemies may be deterred from battle), but it cannot be the only way to peace when the tools and means to defend oneself are available and help ensure one’s right to life. In these ways, I feel that I understand the Morrigan better. She is not a goddess of war and violence to glorify it, but because it is a facet of our reality. If there are any gods to rule over war, I would want her to be one who understands all its facets, complexities, necessities, goals, and consequences, who mourns as well as celebrates, who seeks peace as its ultimate means, and knows that none of it is so simply defined or easily attained.

So how does the Morrigan fit into modern concepts of war, if we recognize violence as a both a reality and a necessity? To that end, I think it is important to look at the ways war has changed in modern times. To USAmericans and other global imperialist nations, wars are rarely if ever fought locally. Our views of war have become physically distanced as a result of deploying our people overseas, selling weapons to arm other peoples for us, and by employing technologies like drones for environmental terrorism. All this makes obliviousness to and normalization of war easier, contributing to willful ignorance to those impacted by the machinations of individuals who perpetuate and profit from it. As a result of the military industrial complex, I think the purposes of war get lost and even corrupted. I fear oversimplifying this discussion, but I find it important to at least describe how a world economy based on war not only distances us from the realities of war, but makes it easier to forget the different types of, ways that, and reasons for which wars have been and can be fought. Given how often the concept of sovereignty is debated in the Morrigan’s community, perhaps the concept of war requires it, too, because I refuse to believe in a god who would condone the actions of, incite the kinds of violence perpetrated by, or fight for a “side” like those of Israel and United States over the years.

In the modern age, I think the Morrigan incites the internal wars, too, both within the individual and within a country’s political climate through protests, demonstrations, political movements, and the like. These, too, are wars, where violence occurs and where it has shown to be necessary, though not the only armaments for change and peace. Wars for justice in the modern era are ones that have brought us concepts such as Restorative Justice, which seek not only to put an end to things like retributive justice and the concept of a carceral state, but improve the lives of even perpetrators of violence and harm. Woodfield (2021) says of the Morrigan that this is the true cost of peace:

“I could hear the Morrigan in my mind, saying, ‘The true price of invoking peace is that you bless even your enemies, so that all might be whole again.’ Because how you end a battle is sometimes far more important than how you began it in the first place. Or how you fought it […] [A]ll people will remember is how it ended. […] Peace really isn’t peaceful. It’s earned only when you are willing to fight for it.” (p. 67)

Peace doesn’t mean people aren’t held accountable—that’s among the ideas that Restorative Justice seeks to uphold. Peace means ensuring all involved parties learn, grow, and heal from the experience.

And it is why that I believe the Morrigan revels in these grey areas of the definitions of and purposes for war. All authors agree the Morrigan is a peace-bringer as much as she is a war-maker. Those who analyze her mythologies will tell you she wages the wars she does specifically to bring about the kind peace she ushers at the end of the Battles of Moytura. Perhaps the true reasons of the wars mentioned in the mythologies are lost to time or have been romanticized for the purposes of a good story, but there are still lessons to be learned there, I think, for the Morrigan’s faithful.

I am personally drawn to the myth of Macha Mong Ruad, who, in defeating Dithorba’s sons, did not kill them, but charged them with constructing her fort, Emain Macha. Rather than killing those men, she reintegrated them into society, she gave them work, and she presumably treated them well so that they could complete that work. I see that work being a form of justice as they took part in the construction of safety and peace against which they had originally rallied out of selfishness and disrespect for Macha’s sovereignty and gender identity. I imagine they most definitely were outcasts among Macha’s people henceforth. Her people even question why she spared the men in the first place. Shame is a necessary for accountability to take place, and it is sadly something perpetrators of violence and injustice avoid or refuse to let themselves feel, because oppressors can only ever imagine the violence they commit being done unto them. Macha’s decision was an important one for her to make so that not only was peace maintained and her power demonstrated, but also so Dithorba’s sons could be given time to learn the lessons of their transgressions and experience all facets of accountability, including shame.

Peace is a war, too, as we try to heal and restore others to health and happiness, give even our enemies the space not just to learn from and internalize the lessons we have sought to teach them through war, but now ensure that they thrive because of it. Revenge on and eradication of our enemies is what we have been taught war is in the modern era, but I prefer to entertain the notion that that is not what it should be. I would love to reach an era where international wars are fought differently, where machines of violence are eradicated, and where the struggle is spent learning to empathize, learning to negotiate, and learning to wish wellness upon even the people who have hurt us. Revenge and retaliation distract us from and become easy ways out of the harder, healthier work. Thus, we must work to get there, which in this day and age means making use of the tools available to us in order to secure not only our survival and victories, but our abilities to thrive afterwards.

I like to think the Morrigan knows all this, too, and this is what she wants. If she didn’t before, then maybe she knows now as her worshippers have found her across all corners of the globe and as she has grown and changed with them. I think it is important to remember that faith and spirituality are ecologies: there are things gods can do that mortals cannot, and there are things mortals can do that gods cannot, so they rely on one another. I think that ecology includes the negotiations for change and growth, if we are all living and continually changing aspects of nature. Change is good, change is expected. It is a war goddess like the Morrigan, whose changes are near constant, I would trust with the domain of war. May we all, in the face of war both just and unjust, learn to grow, change, and heal together just as fervently as we fight.

[justrustandstardust]

Can I ask your opinion on answer to this : https://www.tumblr.com/gojuo/742796780522061824/is-satosugu-a-queerbaiting-ship?source=share ?

for reference, this is the post anon is talking about. feel free to check it out for context before reading my response.

this person is basically saying that stsg cannot be romantic because there is no romance depicted between them onscreen; all of their interactions are meant to be regarded through a platonic lens because it's never explicitly indicated (in canon) to do otherwise.

this goes back to the whole idea of "projecting" queerness onto geto and gojo despite them being queered already, which i've touched on before. i'm going to respond to this person's ideas in two main parts: 1) queerbaiting and 2) canon, alongside the idea of "shipping".

as an idea, queerbaiting refers to the marketing technique employed by creators and publishers to increase a media's appeal, achieved through teasing a queer connection between two characters romantically unentangled in canon. queerbaiting dangles the proverbial carrot in front of the audience only to snatch it back with forced love interests or open declarations of brotherhood. it operates along the binary of friends/heterosexuals and queered/romance, dangling the carrot in front of the latter only to resolutely plant their feet in the former.

shockingly, i actually agree with this person— gojo and geto are not queerbaiting because they are queer-coded. the blatant difference between baiting and coding is that the former uses the appeal of fetishism as a marketing mechanism and the latter employs subtextual traits, literary devices and narratorial mechanisms that are recognizable as queer without being stated outright.

queerbaiting is always negative; it operates through stereotypes and functions to create the illusion of representation to ultimately reify the sex/gender binary. queercoding, on the other hand, functions in a more neutral space to create all forms of representation. (although western media has historically queercoded villains, which is an example of negative mechanization).

when engaging in discourse around queerbaiting, it's important to remember that queerness does not present uniformly across borders and time periods. when we seek open declarations of love as affirmations of queerness, we are seeking western representations of queerness, which are often founded in romantic love. the person who wrote this post is engaging in a solipsistic analysis from a western perspective, a perspective of which too often assumes the 'default' in anglophone fan spaces.

gojo and geto are not meant to be interpreted through a western lens because they are not borne of the west. applying a western conception of queerness to them as a barometer is unfair, incongruous and downright disrespectful to their characters. it's akin to shoving a box into a circular hole and declaring the box at fault for not being able to fit. simply because gojo and geto do not fit your static conception of queerness does not negate the core tenets of their characters that can only be understood through a queered lens, albeit a non-western one.

this brings me to my second point, which regards conceptions of canon and the practice of shipping. this person applies the same binary to fandom/canon spaces as they do sex/gender, dichotomizing jjk media into 'source' materials and 'fan-generated' content, much of which they relegate to the "stsg shippers [that] forc[e]their headcanons down your throat and manipulat[e] you into believing that shit".

a guiding principle amongst purists of any media is that there is "original" and "unbastardized" content, and then there are fan "mutilations" of said content that come after. they maintain a sanctimonious attitude and imply that people who engage in bastardizing media therefore understand the "source" content to a lesser degree (a requisite qualification to engage in mutilation).

in polarizing fan content and 'source' content, purists willfully blind themselves to the true essence of media— it does not exist independently of the imagination of the populous, it is made and continues to be made of the populous' imagination itself. once created, each re-imagination is not adjunct to the 'source' material but rather an extension of it on an equal ontological plane.

functioning less like an island in the ocean of our worldly milieu, media is more of a current, pushing and pulling on different sociocultural forces and being shaped by them in return. regarding it in a puritanical manner is a perversion of its nature because media does not merely live in the world, it becomes the world around it.

this person divorces so-called 'fan' content from 'original' material, and derisively declares that "Theories you read? That's fandom. Art you reblog? Fandom. Memes you consume and regurgitate? Fandom. Sending me asks about JJK? You're engaging in fandom". in doing this, they fundamentally do not understand that the two are inseparable because they are co-constitutive. jjk is fandom, and fandom is jjk.

fan culture is not supplemental to 'source' content; it a manifestation of media achieving its intended purpose, which is to join the world that bred it. fandom is perhaps the highest form of intellectual engagement with jjk because it executes the understanding that media exists within the world and not outside of it.

the things fans create are not inferior or antithetical to the 'source' media; however, i'm not saying that they're all inherently favourable either— they can be anything because they can just be. media invites itself into our world and in doing so, sends an amorphous invitation back. when you pompously declare that "in canon there is no romantic love between those two and there never has been", you slap the hand that extends itself to you and defy the maxim of media: it is not prescriptive, it is participatory.

when people acknowledge that gojo and geto are queercoded and choose to understand their coding in a romantic context, they are not "forc[ing] their headcanons and misinterpretations of the material down everyone's throats". they optimize media's purpose and reach back towards the waiting hand of fiction instead of isolating jjk and forcing it out of the creative medium that birthed it. "shipping" is one form of engagement amongst many, and is a reductive term that belies the intricate textual analysis required to arrive at its conclusion.

one key dimension of the "shipping" discourse is that it's mainly conducted by people who aren't men. men, in principle, are used to dominating every discursive space. to them, it is utterly flabbergasting that people who aren't them might have more insight into their favourite media than they do; nuanced and complex insight at that. compressing the discourse about stsg into "shipping" is reductive and disregards the complex conceptual and narrative analysis conducted to reach the so-called "shipping" conclusion, a practice which requires analytical capabilities that elude the men who deride them.

maybe the people who are "annoying as fuck" are not the "stsg shippers" but the people who insist on interacting with jjk in a purely prescriptive context, clinging to a vacuous relationship with their favourite media and removing themselves from its most authentic, intellectual and enjoyable facet in the process.

[jacobwren]

"We learn commitment and discipline not from the soulless neoliberal conditioning that turns radicalism into a brand rather than a practice, that tells us the only way we can make change as writers is to “witness” or to “speak out” as individuals, but from the examples of revolutionary writers, who are also some of our greatest organization-builders, who have sacrificed everything for their people.  We learn from Ghassan Kanafani, who said to his niece Lamees the day before they were both martyred by Zionist forces in 1972, when she asked him if he would ever focus more on his writing than his revolutionary activities, “I write well because I believe in a cause, in principles. The day I leave these principles, my stories will become empty.” We learn from George Jackson, who wrote more than fifty years ago from prison, “Understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved… Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.” As writers we are trained in description and critique, in imagination. But what we need more of is practice. Practice withholding our labour, practice talking to each other, practice organizing our own alternative spaces that aren’t beholden to corporate sponsors who profit from producing death, practice giving something up to help each other survive.  Every campaign we wage together is practice. It goes beyond any one prize, any one sponsor.  We’ve fielded a lot of critiques since this campaign started, some genuine, many in bad faith from elites now attending the Giller gala across the street—for expanding our targets to include Indigo Books and the Azrieli Foundation, for not trying to make slow institutional change from the inside, for not trying to find a third way, a more “pragmatic” way.  To that, I want to share the words of the political theorist Joy James, who writes, “If you’re going to use the term ‘pragmatic’ to discipline radicals, my preference is that you say nothing…If you want to discipline rebels then pony up something tangible: raise bail funds, pay for their attorneys, feed their kids while they are inside, or try to get them out. You cannot lecture risk-taking people about being politically ‘infantile’ out of your fear or out of your accumulations…There’s nobody we admire who is pragmatic… Everybody could have been ‘pragmatic.’ But if they were, we would not have any ancestors.” I want to do away with this false binary between writers and organizers. Culture alone, the work we do on the page, will not be enough. Reasoning with or trying to reform the cultural institutions that prop up this settler colonial state will not be enough. We have to be willing, at the very least, to take risks for each other, to relinquish the false accolades, the fancy galas, all of them the oppressor’s incentives to keep us from actively building solidarity with each other." - from Jody Chan’s Boycott Giller Speech

[argyrocratie]

(...)

Can you describe the process that led you to refuse military service?

From a very young age, I knew I would never hold a weapon or hurt people. I had an aversion to violence. But I mostly accepted what the adults in my life told me: that there are other ways to serve [in the Israeli army], that there are all kinds of non-combat roles.

When I was 14, I came out [as transgender], and then I found “The Communist Manifesto” in my grandmother’s library. This was during the COVID-19 lockdown. I didn’t connect with online high school classes and didn’t really have friends, so what I did — all day, every day, for two years — was read. 

This also deepened both my personal depression and my deep political depression. I was consumed by how messed up the world is and I felt immense frustration, like I had no power to change anything.

Then, at the beginning of 2023, the protests against the judicial coup began, and suddenly I had an outlet to channel my frustration into action. I met other young people, and together we formed the Youth Bloc Against Occupation. From there, I just kept going. Later, my friends and I organized a protest against the launch of “Irreversible Damage” [an anti-trans book by an American author that was translated and published in Hebrew].

You’ve also been involved in activism against the occupation on the ground in the West Bank. How did that affect you?

I spent about half of the summer between 11th and 12th grade in Masafer Yatta and at various protests in Beit Dajan, Farkha [a communist agricultural village in the West Bank], and Sheikh Jarrah. That had an impact on me. The activism in Masafer Yatta changed the way I experience and engage with political injustice, as did our work in Farkha. 

It didn’t really change my decision about the draft, but later, when my uncle would argue with me at family dinners, it reinforced my conviction that I oppose the occupation. It also made me more emotionally connected; I got to know and interact with people affected by the situation, and I was affected by it myself.

I think that if before I had a mostly principled opposition, now I also have resentment, anger, and rage toward the IDF and the police, because of the reality I’ve seen firsthand.

(...)

Does your refusal also have a queer or trans aspect to it?

The easiest connection to make is that the systems we fight against are the same. As trans people, we challenge the same rigid, patriarchal, binary system of roles that demands we serve — these structures of men and women, fathers and mothers, that produce another generation of soldiers and workers. We disrupt that system, which is why we scare the regime so much, and are such an easy scapegoat that they keep returning to.

I think draft refusers challenge the Israeli military narrative in a similar way, because we don’t fulfill the role assigned to us. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I was drawn to questioning more and more fundamental assumptions after breaking one of the most basic ones. And yes, for me, as a trans person, I want freedom for myself and for everyone. I’m not interested in an “equal right” to oppress others [by serving in the military] or a clear-cut entry pass into the existing system — to be in the state’s ranks instead of resisting it.

I think the struggle to be included in structures of power rather than dismantling them is misguided. We’ve seen for years how that has failed repeatedly — and specifically within the queer movement.

(...)