#the MLK post

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Oh god. Here we go. The day of my reckoning approaches.

[zonky-zara]

Hob's happy to have his friend back and a name to put to the face.

Dream is... having regrets.

[milf0bsessi0n]

cockwarming while watching a movie 😵‍💫 me on a mommy’s lap, filled with her strap. Her teasing my clit every once and a while before she keeps her hand there causing my moans to become louder the closer i get, which results in her grabbing a handful of my hair and whispering,

“shh baby, you’re being too loud and momma can’t hear the movie with your slutty moans”

[kelvaaro]

body to body

[ivrket]

Drawing of a screenshot taken from an URBEX HILL video.

[goldenflowers]

happy martin luther king jr. day, and happy twisted wonderland EN anniversary, and happy anniversary to the release of high school musical, aaand happy birthday to the late ken page, who voiced oogie boogie in the nightmare before christmas 💖 i think that's everything important that's going on today!

[howhow326]

Anyway, I think all Nazis should die. Like, we should round them up and exterminate them like the pests they are. Straight shoot on site if you are a nazi. I really do think it's ethical to kill one in cold blood, and we shouldn't stop doing that until every river runs red with their blood.

So how was your day?

[silvialightning]

So to understate it, a lot of political stuff is happening right now. And it’s a lot to take in currently. I’m sure some people will still want to be informed. And there is the potential to be overwhelmed by everything.

So I would recommend people watching The Majority Report on YouTube and Twitch. It’s a left-leaning political podcast. Live weekdays for about 2 hours, starting at noon EST. They talk about news stories, often do interviews with journalists/experts in their field. It’s more informal than typical news stations, which is a positive. Because they still carry themselves seriously while also being positive and realistic with the news happening.

And I do think there is something cathartic in watching other people reacting to news stories. But since these are people with years of experience in seeing politics play out, they can talk about it in a hopeful light. Seeing people keeping a level head and offering solutions/possible outcomes of certain things helps to digest the news.

Yesterday was MLK day, so instead of doing their typical coverage they played MLK speeches. Today they’ll likely talk about Trump’s inauguration. So if people still need something to help them digest this stuff….maybe tune in (or at least watch the stream segments after they are posted.)

[nateconnolly]

Yet another W for the Internet Archive is that they have a photocopy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s essay Out of the Long Night. I haven't been able to find it anywhere else. Not on a college website. Not on Blackpast. It isn't even in my print book of his speeches.

This is a vital historical document written by one of the most influential Americans who ever lived. It is ethical philosophy written by one of the greatest moral leaders in human history. And it's just... not preserved anywhere else.

Granted, this might just be a skill issue on my part. Maybe it's somewhere else and I just didn't look there. But if the Internet Archive hadn't preserved this document, I wouldn't have been able to read it. I'm so grateful for that opportunity.

The essay is on page 166.

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Every year I am haunted by the MLK post. Every year. I edited it within an hour after posting, and Yet. ‘Twas too late. The unedited version with mild misinformation is still being passed around. Dammit.

AND I didn’t even mention that he was a socialist in that post like. Must this be my tumblr legacy. Really.

[captinaubs]

As a young woman in America, I'm feeling a lot of anger and fear this Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I've spent too much time online today. Seeing everything coming our way. It's so overwhelming. I'm feeling a lot.

This was a very quick attempt to get some of it out of my system. I don't know if coming across the way I wanted, but I do feel a little better.

With all this hate and fear, I'm going to continue trying my best to be positive and kind. Our world could use some good vibes right now.

[bchargoissketches]

Happy MLK Day!! I drew this on Procreate while adding this important quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because it’s a reminder that even in difficult times, hope and light can still be found.

Especially in 2025. Stay strong! 💪🏽

Original post:

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BlueSky

[kelvaaro]

lockscreens for the new year ♡

[troythecatfish]

[dchan87]

[joshuadunshua]

[Image ID: a cropped image of an excerpt from “The Will to Change” by bell hooks. Various spots are highlighted in different colors. Beginning from the first full sentence, the paragraph reads, “He was not interested in forgiving him or understanding the circumstances that had shaped and influenced his dad’s life, either in his childhood or in his working life as a military man.” The following paragraph reads, “In the early years of our relationship he was extremely critical of male domination of women and children. Although he did not use the word ‘patriarchy,’ he understood its meaning and he opposed it. His gentle, quiet manner often led folks to ignore him, counting him among the weak and the powerless. By the age of thirty he began to assume a more macho persona, embracing the dominator model that he had once critiqued. Donning the mantle of patriarch, he gained greater respect and visibility. More women were drawn to him. He was noticed more in public spheres. His criticism of male domination ceased. And indeed he begin to mouth patriarchal rhetoric, saying the kind of sexist stuff that would have appalled him in the past.” The last paragraph is cut off, the top which is visible reads, “These changes in his thinking and behavior were triggered by his desire to be accepted and affirmed in a patriarchal workplace and rationalized by his desire to get ahead. His story is not unusual.” End image ID]

Trans mascs that “speak out” against transandrophobia/anti-transmasculinity/transmisandry/antimasculism/whatever word of the month they’ve forced us to coin, I need you to see yourself in this. This is you. This is you leaning into the patriarchal role of “protectors of the poor weak permanently victimized women,” this is you leaning into the patriarchal role of “ignore your pain, ignore your emotional distress, ignore your psychological needs, stuff it deep down inside and suck it up.” This is you enforcing patriarchal (and therefore also white supremacist) attitudes about gender. This is you learning to shift how you operate under the “logic” of a white supremacist, capitalist patriarchal system so that you can get and maintain access to what little scraps of privilege the system will give you for your conformity.

You cannot apply “logic” to oppressions—it is not a math equation you can solve for. It is not internally consistent.

(And when I say logic, I mean formal logic, I mean mathematical logic, I mean specifically Western conceptualizations of logic.)

You can’t simply state that “men don’t face oppression for being men because that then logically means [something untrue about women’s oppression] would be the case and it’s not.” Oppression is inherently illogical. To assume it operates on a truly definable and fully understandable logic is to suggest there’s a “good” reason for its existence. Which if you examine that for just a moment, you find it also then suggests that there is truth behind how oppression works. Or rather, that oppressed people did some thing or are some way that deserves oppression in response.

White supremacy doesn’t operate on any logical basis. Patriarchy doesn’t operate on any logical basis. They weren’t constructed to be logical, they were hardly “constructed” at all. They came about specifically to uphold and maintain powerful people’s access to power. To call the systems “constructed” is almost to give people too much credit.

Perhaps at one point “white supremacy” was a very specific spark in the mind of quite a number of powerful fair skinned Western Europeans, (though many would understandably point out that white supremacy existed well before it was made explicit), but to suggest that white supremacy as it exists now, as a self-perpetuating system that is able to chug away, an engine for capitalism built and sustained on the exploitation and slaveability of Black bodies, was consciously and carefully designed to operate only within specific bounds that we can define and uncover? That’s trying to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.

Trying to equate the operation of white supremacy with patriarchy, or any system of oppression with any other system of oppression (though you really do see this most often with people equating racism with sexism) similarly does not work because they are not organized logically. They are not separable entities, either. It is true that there are common elements to different oppressions (see: Suzanne Pharr, bell hooks, Paulo Freire) and it is true that the different systems are interlocked and work together to hold it all up (see: Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Andrea Smith) and it is true that they impact people at different intersections of oppressive systems uniquely and dynamically (see: Kimberlé Crenshaw, Jennifer Nash, Bonnie Thornton Dill & Ruth Enid Zambrana) and the systems themselves intersect and interact in different ways to produce unique effects which are dynamic across time and space and context (see: Cathy J. Cohen, Patricia Hill Collins, Rita Kaur Dhamoon).

At the end of the day, too, this whole conversation is also excruciatingly Western-centric, and most often Americentric. The white trans mascs (and any other white queers) decrying the concept that men could ever be oppressed for their being men, that men’s experiences of oppression could ever be shaped by their manhood (or their proximity to it), betray their ignorance to men’s experiences outside of their specific version of Western patriarchy. It betrays their understanding of patriarchy, white supremacy, and feminism as having been wholly informed by white radical feminists who appropriate the language of Black feminism while maintaining essentialist perspectives that reify and protect the same patriarchy they want to critique. As though patriarchy is just about men holding power over women and not also about men holding power over other men, not also about women’s complicity in maintaining and perpetuating it, not also about Western nations holding power over the Global South, not also about kinship organization, not about nationalism, not about colonialism, not about international and transnational politics, not about capitalist globalization.

I suppose this turned into something much bigger than it was originally meant to be, but I have fucking had it. I am fed up with white trans mascs from Western countries whose understanding of feminism is stalled at the stage where they’ve learned that white neoliberal feminism is bad because it’s not anticapitalist or intersectional enough but they haven’t actually learned what the fuck that criticism means because they think or behave as though “intersectional” is just another word for “diverse,” which they also maintain a neoliberal understanding of. I am also fucking heartbroken for all the trans mascs who are willing to lean into this patriarchal role where they close off their own emotions and dismiss their own problems and downplay the reality of being a transgender person at their particular intersection all because they’ve been convinced that men’s problems aren’t real problems, that the oppression they experience because they are transmasculine people is nothing to do with their masculinity or association with or proximity to (and subsequent distance from) manhood.

To claim that there is nothing unique about transmasculine experiences of oppression at the intersection of trans identity and gender is to willfully ignore reality in quite the same way that transphobes do when what they protest is “trans ideology.” Trans people will exist whether you personally believe our gender claims or not, right? So to fail to incorporate us into your reality is to have the temper tantrum of a toddler all because the world and its people aren’t as simple and uniform as you wanted them to be. Similarly, transmasculine people will experience oppression at this intersection regardless of what you want to call it, but to demand that we capitulate to language that flattens our experiences along the lines of either being transgender (it’s literally just transphobia) or our proximity to womanhood (it’s literally just misogyny), or even the two together but-not-really (it’s transphobia and misogyny but it’s not because of your proximity to manhood), is to suggest that there is nothing unique about our experiences of transphobia and misogyny as transmasculine people. Is to suggest that unless and until we are perceived as men by society, our experiences with oppression and penalization (and privilege by this logic, but notably not in practice) are indistinguishable from those of cisgender women and there is no value in discussing, dissecting, naming, or otherwise acknowledging anything transmasculine people experience—and then on the flip side, when society does perceive us as men, suddenly our experiences with oppression and penalization (and privilege by this logic, but notably not in practice) are indistinguishable from those of cisgender men, and so there is no value in discussing, dissecting, naming, or otherwise acknowledging anything transmasculine people experience.

We’re either basically cis women or basically cis men, whichever is more convenient and makes it easier to disregard us in the moment.