I am pro-kid because I am pro-human, and kids are people. No matter how much social bullshit tries to say they are not.
No one asked to be here. Everyone deserves a loving, gentle, safe childhood; and the world is actively a much worse place because that idea is somehow controversial.
Active hostility towards kids also *massively* entrenches the inequality birthing and feeding parents experience. If you really hate kids but you don’t hate women and people read as women, sell treating kids like people to yourself on fighting misogyny. And consider that hating any group of marginalised people for their marginalisation is bigotry.
You don’t have to like kids en masse. You *certainly* don’t need to have them if you don’t want to, or to babysit kids if you don’t feel comfortable doing so.
But you *do* have a responsibility to treat kids like people, including accommodating their needs. Don’t be a dick to kids you meet in the wild, and don’t be a dick to parents because their kids are acting like kids.
And be aware of the intersections of privilege when you are considering kids in public. Kids who are getting in your way in public spaces are likely to be doing that because of poverty, frankly. Very few parents *want* to take their young kids on a long ride on public transport, especially if said kids are clearly either tired and cranky or full of energy that public transport is a shitty environment to release it on. If they are doing this, it is likely because they have no other options.
And please don’t make the disingenuous “they chose to have kids” argument; horribly, bodily autonomy is not a given for birthing parents. About a third of births in “western countries” are unplanned. There is lack of access to birth control and reproductive healthcare and there are controlling partners (manipulation through sex and reproduction is a favoured tactic for far too many abusers).
A 3 year old having a meltdown is doing it because of their developmental stage and because their basic needs aren’t being met. It’s not deliberate and it’s not under their control. Being a dick about that as exactly as bigoted as behaving that way towards a disabled person who isn’t being accommodated either.
I’m physically disabled and neurodivergent. My adult brother is neurodivergent and learning disabled. I’ve seen a lifetime of people who hate kids hating disabled people too. Including too many privileged disabled people, frankly. There is absolutely such a thing as a clash of accessibility needs, but vocal hatred of other marginalised people, or being a dick to them, because their needs clash with yours is Not Okay.
I am also pro-old people for the exact same reasons I am pro-kid. Because they are all people, and marginalised people at that.
Childhood and old age are the times people living in economically-exploited classes experience the most poverty, because age, and the lack of capacity for economic exploitation that accompanies both old age and childhood, is a characteristic that people are marginalised for.
We live in a society here. We are communal creatures. We have a basic responsibility to be decent to other people, including people who are marginalised and dehumanised, and that includes kids and old people.
If you are organising, including kids and providing childcare is as essential as accessibility. If you don’t, you are literally entrenching the same power dynamics you claim to be organising against. This is a huge fucking problem on the left, and it’s one thing the second wave feminists got entirely right, despite all their other issues.
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The irony of saying #landback and “we live on stolen land” while condemning Israel’s existence is so strange.
You want land to go back to the natives - no matter how long ago the land was taken - unless it belongs to Jews. Then they can go F off.
And because you don’t have a reasonable defense for this weird combo of beliefs, you just deny the indigeneity of Jews altogether. This is something that can be proven with simple google searches and logic. Our ancient artifacts and structures are in the land, and our “origin stories” are largely about the land and us residing in it. Yet, you refuse to believe we are indigenous.
Even more funny is that you then argue Arabs are the real indigenous people to this land. Arabs are colonizers in the Middle East and North Africa. Arabic is a colonial language. They originated in the Arabian peninsula, and took over MENA countries. They had nationalist policies that largely eradicated the people and/or cultures already present in those lands. A lot of the people present were Jews, who were killed or driven out by pogroms.
Educate yourself for crying out loud.
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ok but what happened after annabeth ran away? how did frederick and the other lady react when one day, they woke up and their outcast child/stepchild (who is btw 7 YEARS OLD) wasn't sleeping in their bed? Did they NOT launch a police hunt for her? did frederick actually care but then the other lady shut it down? how did they feel as time passed and how did they live knowing that somewhere out there, a CHILD was dead or homeless and probably hunted down by monsters (which they knew all too well about) because of them? or did they both just brush it off as another burden off their shoulders, a blessing that was greater than annabeth's birth?
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the reason people get mad and upset over aang not killing ozai is because they can’t or are unwilling to understand what it really meant for him to be the last airbender
a lot of people don’t truly acknowledge what aang went through when they talk about him. it was a genocide. an ethnic cleansing. a GENOCIDE. and i think that’s because so many people are just incapable or unwilling to wrap their heads around how tragic and isolating and unchangeable something like that is.
i’ve seen countless people say they wish aang had found other airbenders hiding away somewhere. and while i totally get wanting that to happen for the happiness of the character (hell, even i have thought about how heart wrenching that utter relief would feel for him), i’ve also seen those takes associated with people saying they just find it hard to believe that none of the airbenders survived. that none of them were able to escape.
and that’s the thing that annoys me because genocide is a real fucking thing that has happened and IS currently happening in the world (just look at palestine, congo, sudan). it shouldn’t be so hard for people to suspend their belief into thinking it could happen in a fictional piece of media. this disbelief that a genocide can be real results in people being unable to fully sympathize with a character who is stated several times to be the definite, unchangeable sole survivor of his people’s genocide. and i’m not saying it’s wrong to want there to be airbenders who lived, but in canon it’s clear that none of them did. and the ones who did canonically escape were hunted and lured by the fire nation to their demise. and if we’re going to discuss characters and the intents behind their actions, aang’s character development is heavily, heavily heavily guided by his guilt and grief over his lost culture and people. but a lot of people still can’t wrap their heads around the canonical genocide he survived, meaning they can’t fully comprehend why aang would choose peace over a violent end. and considering atla is a western show with a largely western audience, its even more evident that this gap in people’s ability to understand and sympathize with aang is emphasized by their western intrigue toward violence. people don’t just misunderstand aang’s dilemma—they wanted him to kill ozai because seeing him do that would have been cool and interesting and satisfying.
but aang’s decision to spare ozai’s life was made due to his status as the last airbender. prior to meeting the lion turtle, i think it’s safe to say that he had resigned to what he had to do. that is to say, he was likely going to kill ozai despite the pain that was going to cause him. he was going to give up a part of himself, his humanity and the last remainings of his culture, to be the avatar the world needed. but he was then gifted the ability to energy bend, offering him, but not cementing, another option. aang still had the choice, and we saw in the fight that aang was so very close to killing ozai even with this new ability. but he couldn’t. because although killing ozai would have been a pretty justifiable thing to do, it would have fully finished off the air nomads. aang was the only living human who held onto their beliefs. if he were to push those values aside to end the war, the war would have ended the same way it started: with the death of the air nomads. and it may sound “cheesy” or overly dramatic or whatever to some people, but aang’s entire story arc has, arguably, been him trying to fit in a world that seemingly has no more room for the air nomads. not only is he 100 years in the future, but this future has none of his people around and war is everywhere. violence is basically required to survive. death is everywhere. greed has corrupted nations. everything the air nomads stood against made up this world, and aang, as the avatar, had no choice but to save it. for him to have given in to what everyone expected of him—violence—he would have ultimately eliminated air nomad values from the world. and the world would have not cared. aang’s victory would have been celebrated, but aang would have felt even more grief than before. he would have let himself and his people down. and balance would have never been achieved because the air nomads mattered. they were part of what kept the world going round. no matter how much the current world he was fighting for called for violence and death to achieve an end, the air nomads still had a voice through aang. they were still around because of aang. aang’s existence and dedication and love for his culture kept the genocide from being official.
and in my opinion, air nomadic values coming out victorious in a war that nearly wiped them clean (except for aang) is much more of a meaningful and satisfying ending than violence ending with violence.
and if you wanna call aang’s decision selfish, then fine. but i personally think it’s more selfish to expect a survivor of genocide to keep giving and giving and giving for a war that took his people from him until he has nothing left of himself to give. i think that is far more selfish. aang may be the avatar but he is also human. just as much human as his people were, and the leaders he was fighting against, and the millions of people he ended up saving, and just as deserving of having some sort of agency in the decisions he makes. call me crazy ig
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This is going to be my last post about this but I was talking to someone who said that “oh all character weeks and ship weeks do this where they don’t allow certain ships or characters involved. Banning Tamlain from Elain week isn’t something new”.
I literally went to Feyre week and there was no rule about banning Feytam specifically from Feyre week. Feyre, who was canonically hurt by Tamlin. People who ship Feytam also know it’s not the place to post Feytam on Feyre week because the shippers actively understand their ship and are comfortable with it for their own reasons.
Edit: And Elain hasn’t even INTERACTED with Tamlin, why do you care if people ship her with him?
You don’t have to like certain ships or characters. So don’t have to see eye to eye with the people who like Tamlin or explain his actions and have sympathy for him. But stop putting your own personal experiences and beliefs onto others because these are FICTIONAL CHARACTERS! Tamlin isn’t real, Elain isn’t real, etc etc.
What up with dictating what people like? Having this weird policing of fanon and art and fanfics that people create? It’s weird as hell. I swear some of you people have never been in a fanbase before this.
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Anakin haters have some pretty disturbing opinions that really make me want to facepalm. One referred to nine year old Anakin as Baby Vader when at that point in his life he wasn’t displaying any traits that could hint towards his dark fate, you only know about this because the Original Trilogy where he was already Darth Vader came out first, not because he was showing signs that he would become Darth Vader at nine years old. In fact Yoda even stated that at nine years old Anakin’s fate was unclear. Then to make it even worse, I saw another one say that Anakin doesn’t know what love is and he never loved Padmé. So are we saying that a character who at nine years old said that it was sad that not enough people in the galaxy helped each other out has no concept of love? Also weird how they think that Anakin has no concept of love and never loved his wife, yet what made him really start to waver when he was Vader was finding out that his son that represented the love he shared with Padmé didn’t die along with her. These people want to ignore the story that Star Wars is telling in order to make it look like Anakin was always evil.
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