#this is my anti diet culture post! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lychee-angelica · 1 year

Text

8th house lord through the houses ✧˖°

vedic astrology

disclaimer ~ this is based on my own research & opinions, so if it doesn’t resonate please let it go. this should go without saying but please do not plagiarise heh

how to find your 8th house lord ~ for starters please only use your vedic/ sidereal chart & whole sign house system. the 8th house lord planet is indicated solely by the sign that falls within the 8th house of a chart. look for the house in your chart where your 8th house lord planet is sitting in. i have included a guide at the very bottom of this post as well but if you need clarification feel free to dm me x

✧˖° 8th lord in 1st house

these people are very seductive & alluring! high physical sex appeal & most likely has very high sex drives. they have a very mysterious & hypnotic presence. highly mystical & intuitive - it is very hard to deceive these people. sensitive & has a very emotionally vulnerable side to them - they try to keep this side of them low-key. comes across as mystical, deep & sensitive. may have health issues that deteriorate their vitality whether mental or physical - keep on top of your well-being. these people have powerful potential to transform one’s self physically - like they can drastically transform other’s perception of them. as per stereotypes, may be prone to seclusion & secrecy on a characteristic level

✧˖° 8th lord in 2nd house

people with this placement have very sexually attractive facial features, especially the eyes & lips. seductive voices! these people are very ‘sensually seductive’ - if that makes sense. may have very deep issues related to self-worth. may be prone to disordered eating & consumption of intoxicates as a means to pacify psychological issues - please be careful of diet culture & intoxication if you have this placement. ability to benefit off other people’s money - just saying reminds me of sugar baby archetypes (8th house is the finance of others & 2nd house is material items). other wise, benefits financially from work related to investigation, research, psychology, astrology, mystical practices, sex, finances or health

✧˖° 8th lord in 3rd house

people with this placement may be very interested in occult, fantasy, mystical, true crime or mysterious topics. has a mind for mystery. these people are most likely shy - especially when it comes to talking to others. seductive & hypnotic way with words - other people may often take what you say as suggestive even if it’s not. amazing placement for creative writing, especially fantasy or criminal genres. these people may be very sexual inclined, however be careful of not over doing it with sexual activity or becoming too infatuated with it (8th house is sex & 3rd house is hobbies). may be interested in longevity & anti-aging

✧˖° 8th lord in 4th house

highly intuitive, empathetic & good at supporting others. has a great need to connect with others intimately & usually does so intensely, especially within emotional & sexual relationships. for this reason sex & love tend to go together for these people, they often desire devotional bonds/ relationships. these people may harbour or bottle up feelings of shame, isolation & victimhood. usually these feelings are associated with the mother, childhood or home environment in some way. mother may be a scorpionic person or if there are no afflictions the mother may just has interest in spirituality/ mysticism. these people should be very cautious of attracting people who treated poorly within their intimate relationships

✧˖° 8th lord in 5th house

these people most likely express themselves creatively in a scorpionic way, whether that is intentional or not - megan fox has this placement & she has always been subject to roles that objectify & sexualise her (8th house is sex appeal & 5th house is theatrical entertainment). these people likely enjoy having sex very much, especially within romantic/ committed relationships. has a good understanding of occult, taboo, sexual topics although may be to overly obsessed with these themes. their creativity comes in sudden bursts of energy. if this person has children/ is wanting to the relationship with them may be challenging & dramatic. most likely able to financially support their children. people with this placement should be extra wary of accidental pregnancy

✧˖° 8th lord in 6th house

profound ability & strength to overcome their obstacles whether they are financial, emotional or psychological. prone to feelings of victimization & vulnerability, be very cautious of others who may try to take advantage of you especially sexually or monetarily. prone to other’s competing with them due to their sex appeal, attracts jealousy from other people - jealousy could even be very low-key, ik this sounds bad but it’s just because you’re so gorgeous! may routinely deal with unwanted attention. very talented in research & investigation. monetary gains can come from disasters, health issues, insurance or injuries. take special care of your own health & the health of your pets x

✧˖° 8th lord in the 7th house

these people relate to others in a very primal, seductive or intimate way, vice versa. people with this place have many admirers for this reason but be cautious of other people maybe getting the wrong impression of where your interests lay. may be the types who may are good at stalking/ gathering information on a love interest usually via social media. enjoys having sex & is sexually skilful. likely to desire marriage/ commitment. your partner may be passionate & mysterious, a scorpionic type of person. may have sudden disruptions or changes in relationships & marriages

✧˖° 8th lord in the 8th house

deeply interested in occult or taboo subjects, understands & contemplates things deeply. may be detached & caught up with fantasy rather than reality. may be prone to disturbing fascinations related to occult, hidden aspects of life or sex. psychic & intuitive. highly sexually appealing & connects with others intensely during sex. likely to desire commitment & marriage. sometimes this applies but work toward bettering negative thinking patterns & emotions like spite, meanness & manipulative tendencies. additionally, always take care of your mental, emotional & physical health x

✧˖° 8th lord in the 9th house

non-conforming & breaks traditional faith/ beliefs. challenges, tempts or even disturbs other people’s moral compass & faith whether this is intentional or not. greatly intelligent, opinionated & insightful on topics of occult, mysticism, sex & death. most likely occultist or atheists. may be very lucky & experience sudden increase in fortunes. most likely able to benefit from inheritance, wills & insurance - by any legal means. powerful & skilled at manifestation through intention & prayer. that being said, manifestation is so powerful that these people need to be very mindful of negative thinking as this may also manifest itself. be very wary of teachers or older men who may cross boundaries or establish inappropriate relationships. may have sudden disruptions or changes in your higher education - beyond high school

✧˖° 8th lord in the 10th house

people with this placement may seem to be shy, reclusive or deep in thought in the eye of the public. otherwise in more extroverted people the sexual side of the 8th house can be more aligned with their public prominence. these people may be overlooked by other’s but when they do receive attention from authority figures or older men it is intense & overwhelming - always be wary of older men who are sexually interested in you, particularly if they are of a higher status than you. great research & analysis skills which makes them well suited for careers related to secrets, scandals, psychology, investigation, death & surveillance. avoid scandalous behaviour as it will most likely hinder your public image or even career. may experience many sudden changes in status & work

✧˖° 8th lord in the 11th house

people with this placement may have trouble fitting in & feels like an outcast usually due to issues w/ social anxiety. often attracts friends & people within their social circles that are sexually interested in them - so be cautious of people in your circle for this reason. prominent placement for people who gains financially through sexual, mysterious, investigative or esoteric activities - i noticed this placement to be prominent in top only fans creators. may experience very sudden rises in wealth/ gains & fame/ social status, although be wary of scandals as they may cause sudden negative turns in luck the same way. generally these people will have a better adult life than their childhood

✧˖° 8th lord in the 12th house

these people are highly skilled at spiritual practices such as detachment, yoga & meditation. they have true understanding of spirituality & reincarnation. most definitely can be shy & introverted types. people with this placement may have emotional or psychological issues that stem very deep. deeply fascinated with fantasy or mystical topics. prone to feeling victimised, at a loss or trapped. high sex drive although may be frigid toward sexual intimacy with others. may have sleep troubles or disorders - please take care of your sleep. be wary of taking bad/ negative actions as they may lead to loss. be very cautious of sexual relationships that debilitate your energy especially via pressuring

guide ✧˖°

#vedic astrology #astrology #jyotish #astrology observations #sidereal astrology #vedic #8th house #scorpio #8th house lord through the houses

2K notes · View notes

random-thought-depository · 2 months

Text

One of the thoughts I had while writing that post on Barbara Ehrenreich's Blood Rites, anti-predator defense, and the origins of the male gender role is if that model is correct it implies Larry Niven got the relationship between a sapient species's diet and culture/values pegged wrong, at least as far as the Kzin are concerned. Courage is the virtue of a prey species that engages in collective defense; a smart predator attacks the weak, avoids fights against strong opponents, and is quick to retreat from any fight in which it loses the advantage; a sapient species with a long evolutionary history of being big game hunting carnivore apex predators would probably value/honor courage less than we do, so Kzin biology and implied evolutionary history is actually kind of an awkward fit with the kind of assholes the Kzin are. Asshole aliens with a long evolutionary history of being big game hunting carnivore apex predators might be sneaky raiders with an unapologetic "if they outgun us, trade, avoid, or appease, if we outgun them, raid and pillage!" mindset, or something like that; they probably wouldn't have the prideful machismo, hotheaded aggression, and disdain for restraint of the Kzin (you could argue calling it machismo is an anthropomorphism because Kzintosh aren't men but lbr human machismo is very obviously what the Kzin attitude is modeled on).

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's unrealistic for the Kzin to be the way they are, cause Kzin values could plausibly arise from intra-species competition and my rationalization for why the Kzin are as they are is a mix of that and "the Kzin are like that because their right-wing authoritarians won their history and got to shape their culture." But, as I said, I think the kind of assholes the Kzin are wouldn't logically flow directly from their ancestral subsistence strategy/ecological niche.

Which makes me wonder: if as a spec-bio exercise I tried to make a species which's biology would predispose them toward becoming approximately the kind of asshole Proud Warrior Race the Kzin are, what traits would they have?

Here's what I came up with:

First obvious thing is to give them a "harem" social system like gorillas, elephant seals, certain ungulates, etc.. This lends itself well to a species with a highly competitive male hierarchy in which male social and reproductive success is contingent on being able to make credible costly signals of being strong and badass.

One major obstacle to a species like that becoming a threat on the interstellar scale is control by a single dominant male is a pretty hard cap on group size. I propose that this species has overcome that by developing a social system with dominant bull coalitions, so instead of being limited to groups of one to three dozen individuals controlled by a single dominant male, they can have e.g. groups of a few thousand individuals controlled by a few hundred dominant bulls and so on; this eventually scaled up to an interstellar empire with billions of subjects and probably at least a few hundred million dominant bulls in loose coalition (that big dominant bull coalition is the empire's warrior-aristocrat class).

Unlike the Kzin, in this species the females will definitely be sapient and have lots of soft power; all the internal male social competition and external war and imperialism is largely about impressing them.

Another major point of difference from the Kzin: this species definitely should not have much evolutionary history of cooperative big game hunting. Pack hunting strongly incentivizes and rewards cooperation and solidarity (I suspect this plus the smaller group sizes of carnivores is why you see "harem" social organization more in herbivores), whereas I think to get aliens that are assholes in approximately the way the Kzin are we want a social system that's highly internally competitive. This probably implies a mostly herbivorous diet, though there might be some supplementation with small game; the important thing is this species has had basically no selection pressure for being effective predators of animals strong enough to require cooperation to take down.

Related and important point: the evolution of sapience in this species was more-or-less entirely driven by social competition and sexual selection, and they got too big to be tempting targets for the predators of their ancestral environment long before they developed sapience. So this is a species with no recent evolutionary history of being a prey species.

I guess we're maybe looking at something like a mix of gorillas and elephants here; maybe ancestrally browsers of the savanna and open woodland (though they'd gradually switch toward eating more richer food such as fruit, tubers, young shoots, meat, etc. as they developed more efficient food production). If we're doing the Mass Effect "more alien-looking than Star Trek forehead aliens but still implausibly humanoid" thing some kind of big beefy horned minotaur-looking humanoids would be a pretty appropriate look for the dominant bulls (with the subordinate males being more slender and the females being more slender and substantially smaller - this would be a species with way more sexual dimorphism than humans), not sure what I'd make them look like if I went the route of making them more realistically alien-looking.

Organized violence (i.e. war) developed in this species partly as a mating ritual. Large-scale battles gave males the same kind of opportunities to demonstrate strength and courage that fitness signalling duels did, but the much more complex tactical environment of a large-scale battle also offered opportunities for males to conspicuously demonstrate intelligence and cooperation. The switch from duels to battles as the primary arena of fitness signalling was a major selection pressure driving the evolution of sapience in this species. Originally the ultimate aim of war in this species was group fusion in which the dominant bull coalition of one group would defeat the dominant bull coalition of another group and the two groups would merge with the victorious dominant bull coalition being the dominant bull coalition of the combined group and the males in the defeated dominant bull coalition being either killed or demoted to subordinate status with their new lower rank being rubbed in by bullying and humiliation rituals. As the species developed bigger and more sedentary social groups this developed into territorial conquest with conquered communities remaining in their old homes under the rule of viceroys. But the thing where wars were partly giant mating rituals meant often neither side was particularly in a hurry to finish off their enemies as no more enemies to fight would mean diminished opportunities for social mobility and impressing females; there tended to be a "we have always been at war with Eurasia/Eastasia" dynamic where the conflict itself was effectively treated as having social value and actively maintained and subject to various forms of ritualization that limited its destructiveness so it could be kept going longer.

So, this is a species that's gotten lots of selection pressure from intra-species competition and violence, but has no recent evolutionary history as cooperative predators of animals with comparable size and strength to themselves and has no recent evolutionary history as a prey species. This species will have instincts and intuitions about violence totally optimized for intra-species violence that's mostly a mix of coalition politics propaganda of the deed and male fitness signalling rituals (and, of course, their culture will build on those instincts and intuitions and the dynamics that selected for them). I think this would lead plausibly to people who share one of the defining traits of the Kzin: being aggressive imperialist warmongering swaggering bullies who endlessly congratulate themselves on their ferocious warrior spirit and supposed mighty warrior prowess and supposed right to rule derived from that but are not actually all that good at war compared to a species like us that has been shaped by hunting and being hunted.

The thing about intra-species violence that's mostly a mix of coalition politics propaganda of the deed and male fitness signalling is it simultaneously incentivizes restraint more than inter-species predator/prey violence and incentivizes aggression more consistently than inter-species predator/prey violence.

On the restraint side, intra-species violence means potentially violence against relatives or potential mates, and in a social species violence against potential helpers. This obviously creates an incentive for restraint. Violent intra-species competition is where you get natural weapons and combat set up to probably not do too much damage (bighorn sheep knocking each other on their hard blunt horns instead of stabbing each other in the fleshy flank or face with sharp horns), notions of fair and honorable fights, "why don't you pick on someone your own size?," chivalry, rules of war, boxing gloves and rules against hitting below the belt, etc.. This post touches on some of the dynamics I'm talking about here.

I think plausible cultural development of this species might enhance this. A highly competitive "harem" social system means at least the males of this species are likely to be less cooperative than humans, and a less cooperative species will have a harder time forming effective equalizing coalitions. This species never got our probable evolutionarily significant period of living in mostly relatively egalitarian societies; compared to us their males at least are likely to be less wired for cooperative coalition-building and more wired for trying to individualistically climb their way up viciously competitive hierarchies; again, it seems likely this would make the formation of effective equalizing coalitions harder. The females are a bit of a wild card here, not sure what'd be going on with them, but considering they find aggressive, violent, domineering males sexy, I can see them not having instincts terribly promising for forming effective society-wide equalizing coalitions either. A species that's not very good at forming effective equalizing coalitions is likely to be not very good at coming up with ideologies of equality; equivalents of liberalism, democracy, socialism, anarchism, etc. may not exist at all in their philosophical tradition, or if they exist are likely to be obscure and marginal. The implication may be the political landscape of this species was a pretty dismal picture of oppressive oligarchies everywhere for pretty much the entire existence of their species. Like I said, I expect this species would develop a lot of practices to limit the destructiveness of war and focus its destructiveness on direct combatants. Defeat of a community in war would likely mean little change in the social or material conditions of most of the community's members; one oligarchic dominant bull coalition would replace another, and the only real change for most people would be a change in the names and faces (or scents or whatever they primarily recognize each other by) of their masters. Plausibly, the females of a conquered community would even approve of the change, seeing their community's new ruling dominant bull coalition as having proven themselves more desirable breeding material by winning. All of this would tend to encourage a sensibility that wars are basically social games between males and the only thing important at stake in them is the personal social and reproductive success of the direct combatants.

On the aggression side... Violent coalition politics involves lots of costly signalling, bluff, and martyrdom. The kind of violence a species like the one I'm describing here engages in is probably going to include a lot of violence that's basically an implicit statement of "I am exceptionally strong and brave and badass and would be an exceptionally good subordinate or ally, please give me a promotion!" And when it comes to male violence done as male fitness signalling to females, well, sperm is cheap and ova and wombs are expensive; in a "harem" social system demonstrating your mere viability will probably not be enough to impress females into mating with you, they are likely to require a costly signal of exceptional excellence before perceiving you as a desirable breeding partner, and if you die trying to make that costly signal, well, rolling the dice on a 65% chance of getting killed while young and a 35% chance of getting to breed might easily be selected for over contenting oneself with dying childless at a ripe old age.

Basically, I think you might plausibly end up with a species with bone-deep intuitions that:

- Violence is a performance, it is primarily communicative, using it to send a message to your opponent and/or to witnesses is at least an important secondary consideration and may even be more important than the actual concrete outcome of the fight. It is not enough to simply defeat your enemy, you must do so in a way that effectively communicates what you want to communicate.

- The most consistent purposes of violence are to show off your own strength, bravery, and fighting prowess and to terrorize and humiliate your opponent into submission.

- War is basically a game played among males. It's not a trivial game, it's literally deadly serious for the males involved in it and your society is largely organized around it, but it's fundamentally a game; the only people who have really big stakes in it are the direct combatants, and having fun and displaying good sportsmanship and putting on a cool performance are important secondary considerations and may even be more important than the actual concrete outcome. If you've ever read Ian Banks's Player Of Games, Azad (the game and the institutions and culture around it) in that book is the best analogy I can think of for what war would be to these people.

- Your enemies will be basically following the same rule book you have.

When these people develop interstellar travel and meet other sapient species, they'll apply the instincts and cultural institutions they developed for intra-species competition to those other sapients. I.e. they'll turn into nasty imperialists. Conquered aliens would get incorporated into their society in about the same social position as weak males. In their society weak males with little hope of rising to dominant bull status are kept around for labor and to assist with the care and education of the offspring of their female relatives and have a social status roughly equivalent to serfs; this would be the obvious niche to put conquered aliens in, with some modifications, e.g. conquered aliens would be expected to keep reproducing with each other.

Combine what I said in the previous paragraph with how much these people's social instincts would revolve around volatile male hierarchies reinforced by bullying and humiliation rituals, and I expect being a conquered subject of them would tend to be unpleasant to horrific. Being a primarily herbivorous species, these people wouldn't occasionally eat their slaves like the Kzin, but I could totally see the dominant bulls occasionally casually caving some poor slave's skull in out of a combination of some petty irritation and wanting to remind everyone who's boss.

Let's say we want these people to get approximately the same nasty surprise when they attack humans that the Kzin did. Model favorable to that:

In this setting, the most common pathway to sapience is through social and sexual selection. Sapient species usually evolve in environments without big predators, e.g. isolated islands, because serious predation pressure tends to prevent the very strong commitment to a long-lived slow-breeding very K-selected life strategy that leads to sapience. Sapient species usually do not have recent evolutionary history as big game hunters (the typical sapient is a physically not very strong omnivore, often primarily an eater of fruit, tubers, seeds, insects, and small animals, though also a lot of sapient species started with an ecological niche roughly equivalent of fish-eating birds that nest in large rookeries). Species that evolve sapience through this pathway usually have strong social and artistic intelligence, but lack instincts and institutions of organized violence (they aren't always peaceful, but if they do have significant intra-species violence it's murder, done by individuals or very small groups, not war).

When the warmonger aliens I've spent most of this post describing meet species like this it usually goes similarly to what happened when the Maori met the Moriori, or at least like that event as described in a book I read once. The warmonger aliens will roll up and be like "Yo, what's up, losers! You are now our slaves! We're awfully fond of presents called 'tribute' which you'll be giving us regularly from now on, and you'll be obeying our orders from now on! You can start by performing these humiliating submission rituals to acknowledge our superiority!" and this will be kind of an OCP to their victims, who will usually either basically surrender immediately or try to resist but fold pretty quickly cause they aren't well-equipped for war psychologically, culturally, institutionally, or materially. The warmonger dominant bulls honestly find it kind of boring, to the point that they fight a lot of highly ritualized flower war style conflicts among themselves as a mix of oligarch class dispute resolution, bloody enrichment, and live fire training to keep their warrior skills sharp.

Basically, the galaxy is full of weedy theater kid nerds, and these warmonger aliens are the meathead jock bullies of the galaxy going around shoving those nerds into lockers and stealing their lunch money.

The exceptions to this pattern the warmonger aliens met before us were a mix of 1) other species like themselves, 2) sapient species with a long evolutionary history of being big game hunting carnivore more-or-less apex predators (who are basically sneaky raiders). The warmonger alien dominant bulls tend to hate the latter and bitch endlessly about how they "have no honor," but savor tangling with the former in a "finally, worthy opponents!" way.

Then they met humans.

Humans have a long enough evolutionary history of big game hunting that this may have subjected us to significant selection pressure for increased cooperativeness that the warmonger aliens didn't get. But that isn't special in this context, the warmonger aliens have tangled with sapients descended from big game hunting carnivores before.

The thing that makes humans relevantly special is our relatively recent evolutionary history of being a prey species that engaged in collective defense, and the instincts we have that formed in that context but can be activated in other kinds of conflict.

Going back to that "real fights" thing earlier:

"but how often are you ever going to be in a fight where you’re willing to rip the other guy’s cheek out, gouge out his eyes and so forth?"

A fight against a predator that wants to eat your child looks like that.

If you're fighting a member of your own species, the entity you're fighting might be a relative, potential mate, or potential helper, so there's an incentive for restraint.

If you're a predator hunting, well, a carnivore species needs their prey species, that's their food source; smart lions wouldn't want to wipe out their prey species, they need their prey species, they would prefer their prey species thrive and be abundant and healthy; again there is an incentive for restraint; very plausibly one of the first lessons a sapient carnivore species would have to collectively learn after becoming sapient is restraint, learning that it would be all too easy to use their new, better weapons to kill too many of their prey and that they need to consciously avoid doing that.

Prey defending themselves from predators are the ones who'd have more-or-less zero incentive for restraint. If you can hurt or kill the lioness that's trying to eat your child, there is basically no reason to not go for it except self-preservation. Predators need their prey, but that's not symmetrical; prey don't need their predators, and sapient prey smart enough to do birth control and cull any dumber competitor species would probably be unambiguously much better off if all their predators dropped dead (Pleistocene humans could have done semi-reliable birth control by abstinence, outercourse, and lactational amenorrhea).

Humans are a slow-breeding species. A pride of lions could easily gradually eat a small early human band into extinction, and would have little incentive to avoid doing so cause humans aren't even their primary prey so when they ran out of humans they could just eat more of the antelope and so on that are already most of what they're eating anyway. The warmonger aliens have no evolutionary history of conflicts so existential.

The warmonger aliens have an idea of self-sacrificial heroism, but their version is entirely oriented (in an "adaptation executor, not fitness maximizer" way) toward burnishing the reputation of surviving close male relatives by association and thus increasing their reproductive success. They would have nothing in their recent evolutionary history like the experience of standing between a child and a hungry lioness. They would not grok "get away from her you bitch!" (that essay talks about the role of males in anti-predator defense but, yeah, women would have this too, who do you think would be the last line of defense for the children if a predator got past the male defensive ring?).

(The warmonger aliens definitely think it's a bit weird that we have mixed gender armies, not so much in a conventionally sexist way - they're inclined to see the size and strength differences between human men and women as obviously trivial compared to the much bigger sexual dimorphism of their species - but in that the idea of females caring enough about the outcome of a war to fight in it is alien to them. It's not that weird to them though, the big game hunter ancestry carnivore sapients they've encountered have mixed-sex armies and unwarlike sapients that try to resist conquest usually form them when they scramble to put a military together so it's got precedent in their experience.)

Like, yeah, the warmonger aliens are exactly the kind of people where some human commander would draw some of them into a clever trap they wouldn't anticipate cause prioritizing actually winning over looking heroic is alien behavior to them and then the comrades of the ones who died getting punked would bitch about how "dishonorable" it was of us to fight to win instead of obediently lining up to get slaughtered like cattle in some set-piece battle because that'd be the "honorable" thing by their definitions.

But also, something a lot like Londo Mollari's little speech about how brave the humans were in the Earth-Minbari war but it's some warmonger alien dominant bull describing the resistance we're putting up against his people and instead of admiration it's spoken with a tone of queasy puzzlement tinged with fear, irritation with our "irrational" resistance mixed with fear of the possible implications for what might happen if we start winning, it's alien behavior to him and he's admitting that it scares him.

Also, turns out species that have been strongly selected for solidarity (that's us!) are good at building equalizing coalitions and creating memes to coordinate them around, so not only are human ideologies of equality such as liberalism and communism effective at supercharging our resistance against imperialist conquest in a way that's an OCP to the warmonger aliens, they also turn out to be really disruptive to the warmonger aliens' shitty empire when some human chaos agents have fun spreading them around in it.

#writing ideas #warning: long

66 notes · View notes

fandomsandfeminism · 11 months

Note

thank you for your anti diet culture post (and for continuing to reblog it with additions). I appreciate seeing it on my dash every time.

You're so welcome! It's been wonderful to see people adding on their own tips and positivity to it.

It's honestly impressive it took this long for a little negativity to find it, but ultimately, that's just an opportunity to reaffirm what that post is all about- finding joy in food and doing what you can to eat food in a way that makes your body feel good, however that looks for people.

#anti diet culture #food is a gift

71 notes · View notes

nikonladyz4 · 2 months

Text

Fatal Addiction - Michael Jackson Documentary on Roku - Are there any parallels to BTS and in particular Jimin?

I just finished watching a documentary of Michael Jackson on Roku that chronicles his rise to international fame as the king of pop. The short documentary focused on his lost childhood, mental and physical abuse, extreme loneliness, extreme dieting for a dancer’s body and addiction to painkillers after his hair burning accident. Michael begin experiencing mental health issues of depression and anxiety after the first child molestation allegation. He also began taking strong anti-depressants and anxiety medication. All these drugs contributed to his early death.

I bring up this documentary because it made me think of the trials and tribulations that led up to BTS wanting to disband in 2018. And it also made me think of Jimin in particular, based on what he went through with his extreme weight loss to obtain a dancer’s body and his depression in 2017/18 and again in 2020-2022.

Jimin suffered betrayal by friends and staff, loneliness, chronic pain, bullying/hate by fans, insecurities and possibly self hatred of self until he accepted who he is. He also has issues not being able to live his authentic self due to the conservative nature of the military and his country. So how does/did he deal with all these issues? Abuse of alcohol, use of pain killers and multiple injections of steroids for his chronic pain. Will staying in the public eye and even living in Korea impede his long term happiness and mental health? Will continuing to dance impede his long term health?

Although I see many similarities to Michael Jackson, I also see some major differences. Jimin has achieved worldwide fame in just a short 12 years. Although he is not at the stature of MJ today as a solo artist, if he stays in the music industry over the next decade or so and really hones his craft, I think he can possibly achieve MJ’s status. However, that status will depend on staying healthy, physically and mentally along with overcoming his insecurities as a performer. The level that he dances now through pain and injury can result in long term health problems with the least being arthritis. Although Jimin recognized in 2022 that he was lost and drinking too much, he is still at risk of alcoholism. He has gone through major depression twice in the last ten years. He coped through the use of alcohol and he still drinks a lot. It is just his culture to consume lots of alcohol. It is also part of their culture to unalive themselves when life becomes too difficult. S. Korea has the highest unalive rate for young people in the world.

Now some major differences I see is the positive support he receives from his family, members of BTS, and close friends. I also believe his personal relationship with Jungkook in particular keeps him grounded and feeling loved. In spite of the extreme hate he receives from a small, but loud portion of the fandom, the majority of the fandom loves and supports Jimin. Michael had a lot of people in his life, but few real friends. I believe Jimin has a few more people in his life that support him and keep him grounded.

This post is not meant to be a negative against BTS and most importantly my bias of the group, Jimin. I was just interested in the comparison/contrast between two major superstars. I would love to hear your opinion on this topic as I may be completely off-base.

If interested, let's discuss with respect.

#jimin #bts jimin #bts #micheal jackson #kingofkpop #king of pop

12 notes · View notes

lylahammar · 3 days

Note

Your love of dungeon meshi is very sweet and makes me smile. I like how you write meta/your opinions out it's so full of joy and love for this series. Also funny you have a wondeeful way with words.

Also I needed that chastising reblog on your post (on the dying in the dungeon weight one) helped me a lot rethink some stuff and I always pull it up when I'm falling into toxic body thoughts about my current size and it helps. A lot. You brighten my day and have a positive impact on this site, hope you have a great week ❤️

AWWWW THAT IS SO KIND OF YOU TO SAY THANK YOU 😭🙏💕 For the longest time I was the only person I knew who read or cared about dunmeshi, so I spent a long time hyper fixating on it alone in me own noggin and ended up forming some very strong headcanons/opinions about it 😂 unfortunately that resulted in me getting very neurodivergently territorial and defensive when I see people having different opinions that I perceive to be "incorrect" LMAO (which is something that I've been trying to work on)

I'm really really glad that you've been rethinking that stuff!! Unfortunately I still get people replying to that post with really disordered, internalized fatphobic comments when they see it reblogged without the addition. Not many people actually consider how bad that way of thinking is, like you have! I've made a point to delete the comments immediately whenever they come up so no one will feel hurt when they look in the notes and see it, but I can't do anything about tags 😔 Fat liberation/positivity and anti diet culture is very very important to me and I wanna make sure my blog only helps and never harms when it comes to people's body image!

#lyla trivia hour

13 notes · View notes

honeysuckle-venom · 3 months

Text

So. I actually started a lot of lifestyle changes about a month ago, shortly after getting my MRI results and checking in with my therapist a bit. I felt 95% sure the hepatologist would tell me I needed to lose weight, and I knew that if I hadn't started at least a little bit on that path before seeing her I would be even more triggered by being told that. Once I did, unsurprisingly, get told that on Monday I further cemented some of those changes and got a bit stricter about certain things, but in general this has been in the works for a little over a month.

I'm basically dieting, I guess, except I'm trying to be healthy about it and make "lifestyle changes" instead of like going on paleo or whatever. The thing is, I don't believe in dieting. I detest diet culture, I hate moralizing about food and fatphobia and all of that bullshit. I love the anti-diet and fat liberation movements, and while I never fully recovered from my eating disorder, that lense helped me more than any other form of treatment ever has. I am, generally speaking, morally opposed to a lot of what I'm doing right now. But I also need to do it, because I don't want to risk tumor growth and complications or surgery. And I know going into it with this specific motivation and attitude is different than just deciding to diet because I think I need to be skinny to be pretty or whatever, that I'm doing something medically necessary and not actually betraying my values, but it doesn't always feel that way, and that struggle is very hard.

I also don't know how to talk about what I'm doing without using diet culture terms and concepts at times. But I need to be able to talk about this whole experience on my blog, because it's kind of taking over my life atm. So I will do my best to warn for things and I will ALWAYS at the very least use the tag "weight loss cw" on all posts related to this, because I don't want to be irresponsible or trigger people, but I also need to be able to talk about my life.

So. Below this is where I really start talking about what I'm doing and how it feels. Warning for some diet culture language, discussion of restricting certain foods, exercise, food journaling, nutritionists, intentional weight loss, and other related topics. No numbers, but this is potentially more triggering than posts related to my food issues have been in the past because I do discuss specific behaviors.

So. For the past month I've been attempting to lose weight. The current strategies I've employed include: exercising every day, keeping track of what I eat in a food journal, and cutting out a lot of "unhealthy" foods. I hate even saying that, I believe that all foods have a place in a healthy diet (and also that health isn't a moral obligation but that's a separate though related issue). But! I am doing a specific thing and don't have better language to talk about it! Saying "less nutritionally dense foods" just sounds stupid so, whatever. "Unhealthy" or "less healthy" it is for now. The biggest change is I'm not eating refined carbs 90% of the time. There's room for a little bit of them but not much. I'm trying to get a lot of protein, fiber, and healthy fats. Lots of vegetables and legumes and whole grains and whatnot. The good news for me is that I actually already really like a lot of those foods. Lentils are one of my favorite foods of all time, I like all beans, I like most vegetables, I like farro and brown rice, I like carrots and hummus, I like all fruits except grapefruits, etc. I enjoy the foods I do get to eat. So that's nice. But even though I ate all of those things before, these days it's all I eat pretty much. I used to also eat potato chips and m&m's and things like that. But I got rid of all of that stuff and haven't had it in over a month.

I'm also exercising every day. So far it's been primarily on my exercise bike that I have at home, because it has a desk attached and I can distract myself on my computer while I bike, because I HATE exercise. I just hate it. I hate being gross and sweaty and feeling like my heart's pounding and I can't breathe, but that's the fucking point lol. My muscles hurt and sweat drips down my face and it's just miserable. But as of today my dad and I have joined the local community center, which has a pool. Swimming is the one form of exercise I like. You don't feel how sweaty you are because you're in the water, your joints don't hurt, you can pretend to be a mermaid. It's so much better. So that's really good news. Hopefully I'll swim a few times a week and use the bike on the other days, and that will make everything more pleasant and also use more muscles than just my legs on the bike.

The thing is, it's actually not that hard to eat this way? My brain is obsessed with food rules, and has been since I was literally in preschool. I have always had various rules around food. Adjusting those rules to be more permissive is incredibly difficult, but adjusting them to be stricter? Not hard. I'm not tempted to "fall off the wagon" or whatever, because those foods have entered a space in my brain called "forbidden" and so I can't even imagine eating them without an alarm blaring in my head. And that's dangerous. The thing that is hard about what I'm doing is I know I'm in relapse zone, but I don't know how to not fucking be there when I'm trying to lose weight. I'm spending hours and hours each day obsessing about food and exercise, planning what to eat next, researching nutrition information and vegan recipes, etc etc etc. It sucks. I get trapped in these awful spirals and it's just all-encompassing. I've managed to avoid the worst behaviors: I haven't looked up fitspo even though I've had strong urges to do so, I mostly manage to avoid counting calories, and I don't let myself look at the scale. My therapist takes my weight once a week but I don't look. I'm trying to keep things on the healthier side, to not just full on relapse. But it's really, really fucking difficult to do both at the same time. I don't know how to find the balance yet.

The good news is that I found a nutritionist who I think shares a lot of my values and is willing to support me with weight loss, which I was worried wouldn't be possible. Bc all the anti-diet folks don't do weight loss at all, and all the weight loss people are...evil? Yeah, evil. But I really feel the need for professional support, even more than just my therapist, and so I didn't know what to do. But I think I found someone. I haven't met with her yet, but I've gotten in touch and hopefully we'll find a time for next week and I'll be able to update with how she is. Because this is really hard, and trying to balance the physical and mental without falling off a cliff is proving impossible without a lot of help. I have good help from my therapist, but if I could have some additional support it would be a good thing. So fingers crossed for that.

#my post #text post #weight loss cw

13 notes · View notes

uncanny-tranny · 10 months

Text

Once I started being completely honest with myself about how I wanted my body to look and how I wanted to present, the clearer my path forward has become.

Now, instead of being blinded by traditional ideas of the masculine body, I'm embracing the masculine body I've always had. Even though it isn't "traditional," I have never felt more masculine and more secure in my maleness and also my place in the world.

This is why I so strongly recommend that people leave out as much societal pressure as they can when they think about what is best for themselves. It's unreasonable to ask people to completely leave society out of their decisions, I think, but doing that as much as you can where you are at currently is very freeing. It has taught me how to value myself and how to build my sense of self-worth.

#anti diet culture #bodily autonomy #advice #not sure how to tag this but!!! this is heavily inspired by anti diet culture!!! and is why i wanted to make this post :)#my thighs feel so muscular now because i'm embracing that this is what my *own* maleness is #and i won't pretend like i'm ~above society~ and am never influenced by my surroundings (because i am to a degree!)#but i want to do my best to learn how to prioritize my own drives and ambitions over the shallow ideas of what i 'should' do y'know #if you want to try this out: please do. you have nothing to lose but your chains. you are ALIVE

74 notes · View notes

yuribeam · 10 months

Text

yeah I've really gained a lot of weight lately... (faint sounds of gay approval) my belly's gotten really big and my chin is softer now.. (distant lesbian cheering) I have a lot of thick rolls and new stretch marks.. (dykes hootin and hollering) my clothes aren't fitting anymore either.. (thunderous lesbian applause)

#this is about the beauty of lesbian rejection of mainstream beauty standards. love and peas #internalized fatphobia vs the many women who would suck you silly and take you out to dinner #my posts #lesbiansafe #lesbian #wlw #lesbian positivity #fat positivity #anti diet culture #body positivity #sapphic

61 notes · View notes

solarpunk-0possum · 10 days

Text

white queers and antiracism

hi hotties. this is my second post written on the thoughts i've been having about the intersections of race and queerness in my community. I'd suggest you go read my first post so you have a little more context.

Since moving to SE Colorado, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time in communities with people that are new to me. I grew up in eastern Iowa. I haven’t had any experience living in a community that isn’t entirely white before moving to Colorado. Where I moved to, on the other hand, is very diverse. White people are a demographic minority here, with 43% of the town identifying as white. I’m thankful for the many opportunities I’ve had to listen to the Brown people I know here. I’ve learned a lot. Like a lot a lot.

Two times since moving here I’ve encountered organizations that claim to be all-inclusive, but end up being filled with white people. The first was a campus queer organization that I quit. The second is a volunteer organization that I’m definitely reconsidering my relationship with. For both organizations, I have asked the question- in a city that’s 50% Hispanic, why don’t our demographics reflect that?

The biggest thing I’ve found? Even after 2020, after the anti-racism work (performative or otherwise) we did, white queer communities still have a racism problem. It’s just more subtle. More than that, most of us (when I say “we” or “us” in this essay, assume I mean white queers) haven’t done enough decolonization work. Many haven’t even started it. We still live in bubbles of privilege, and people who don’t live that way can tell when we do.

What do I mean by decolonization? As a white AFAB person from the midwest, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best person to define this. I beg of you, don’t let me be the only person you learn about this from. My experience with decolonization so far has entailed a willingness to learn, a willingness to stare privilege in the face, and a radical humility. The first aspect of my life I really worked to decolonize was my relationship with nature. (I strongly recommend reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Anything I have to say on the matter is better said by her.)

The thing about decolonization, though, is that it’s kinda like taking the red pill. (The Matrix was made by trans women. The red pill was intended as an allegory for understanding gender. I do not use this in a bullshit conservative way.) You decolonize one thing about yourself, and through that process, you find a whole lot more stuff to deal with. It’s a slow and uncomfortable process, that requires scrutiny of the most integrated and normal-feeling patterns of your life. It has changed my diet, my relationships with family and friends, my approach to education, my creative process, and much more that I don’t even realize. I’ve had to consider my own relation to race, gender, sexuality, work, ethics, everything! The harms and attitudes created by colonization are still deeply embedded in white American culture. While many white American queers have physically left the communities where this behavior originates, we have yet to decolonize our minds.

Let’s reference the cultural iceberg here. I use this all the time. I love it. It’s a great way to talk about leaving hurtful communities. When white queers leave their hurtful communities, it’s pretty easy for us to change the tip of our cultural icebergs. We start going to pride. We wear new clothes. We go by different names. The surface-level of our lives changes drastically. This is an important part of deconstructing one’s shitty past beliefs. It’s a vital first step, but it’s far from the last one. This is what a lot of white queers fail to understand. Just because you now visually fit into a new group, doesn’t mean you are completely free of the deep culture that you were raised with. While you look different, the shitty puritanical attitudes most of us white queers were raised with haven't gone anywhere. Therefore, there’s a bunch of white queers who are going around taking out their unresolved shit on each other. It sucks.

There’s a lot of ways this manifests in everyday life. Being of that culture myself, I don’t even notice it sometimes. It’s subtle and easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for. I can only speak to my personal experiences, but I’ve spent a lot of time around white queers. I’m by no means an expert, but I do have pretty good pattern recognition. There’s some repeating behaviors I’ve noticed that I want more white queers to marinate on.

While there’s a lot of incredibly important discussion about the harms of colonization on the colonized, as white people, we need to discuss how it’s hurt us. Colonization, imperialism, and the shitty domination attitudes it brings has caused spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional sickness in white Americans. While we must decolonize for the sake of justice (and that should be reason enough alone), it’s just as important to decolonize for our own sake. In the process of creating a system that gives us white privilege, we’ve given up vital parts of ourselves. We’ve lost our connection to nature, to our pasts, to spirituality, all of it. We’ve sold our souls for the sake of comfort. We must give up that comfort for the sake of our own healing.

White queers need to be far more committed to anti-racism. In both organizations I reference, I have been the person to speak up about the whiteness. I’m one of the younger members of both of these groups. There are people with much more experience in advocacy than I, yet I am the one to speak up. I have a feeling that if I didn't say something about it, things would continue as they are. For people who claim to be so radical, they sure seem ok with the status quo. I’m a little ashamed of it, to be honest. White queers need to do a lot better. If we aren’t committed to decolonizing ourselves, any work we do is going to carry evidence of that, and people will pick up on it.

We really need to figure out how to communicate with each other in healthy ways. I don’t know what it is, but the white queer communities I’ve been in have been notably marked by the most annoying, pointless drama out there. In one org, a lot of people like to joke with each other, but sometimes jokes have gotten mean enough that they’re not funny anymore. As members of an emotionally sick society, we must realize that we’re emotionally sick, too, and we must do the work to be better. We have to take accountability for all of our behaviors.

The definition of “safe space” needs to be fundamentally reconsidered, especially among white queers. I am of the opinion that there is no such thing as a truly “safe space.” We don’t know how to create safe spaces because many of us haven’t experienced one in the first place. We carry unresolved traumas from the past (often ones that are direct consequences of fucked up colonizer behavior, and it's commonly generational) and instead of taking accountability for them we enact them on each other. I’ve been on the receiving end of this multiple times. It is unbelievably soul crushing when a place claiming to be “safe” actually isn’t. In fact, it was places calling themselves “safe spaces” where I have been the most hurt. We say somewhere is a safe space and close our eyes, plug our ears, and whenever someone has an issue we say "BUT THIS IS A SAFE SPACE!" without doing any real work. It's performative. If that's not annoying-ass white people shit, I don't know what is. We need to put our money where our mouth is. Just because a place is safe for white queers doesn’t mean it’s a safe place for others. We really need to figure that shit out.

If we are truly seeking justice, we must understand solidarity. In fact, we must be radically committed to it. My liberation is fundamentally wrapped up in the liberation of everyone else. Even if I as a white queer person can live a life with relative freedom, if someone else doesn’t get that, my freedom is at risk. If one person isn’t free, than none of us are free. Even if we have perceived freedom, what we call freedom is actually privilege. If systems of injustice exist anywhere, than any of us can have our rights taken away. To be the best allies we can, white queers must accept that systems of injustice are still alive and well in our communities. We will not be liberated until everyone is!

We have to do the work. It’s not easy work- like I said earlier, it really does involve a fundamental reassessment of your whole paradigm and way of life. We have to look our privilege right in the face, really sit with that discomfort. That’s not easy. Through that work, we will be able to truly see the dynamics of our privilege. It is not any of our faults that we have privilege, but it is our fault if we are complacent in it. White queers must go beyond being aware of privilege. We must decide how we are going to use our privilege to dismantle the system that creates it. It isn’t comfortable, but it’s worth it, and it’s the only way we can find genuine, sustainable, long-term healing.

I am reminded of a quote from Mindfulness in Plain English, by Bhante Gunaratama. (Total side note, this book is great, the way they teach meditation was the first thing that worked for me!) It goes “Ignorance may be bliss, but it does not lead to liberation."

Ignorance is a privilege that not everyone has. If we truly want liberation, we must understand this an make a radical decision to give it up. It might not be comfortable, but do you know what’s more uncomfortable? Being a Brown person in a room of ignorant white people who think their queerness exempts them from antiracism work. I'd rather deal with the emotional discomfort of decolonization than make someone else go through the discomfort of dealing with my ignorant white ass. It's a privilege to be ignorant. Don't be a jackass.

I think it's good practice to leave some advice on decolonizing yourself, to turn this from complaining about problems yet doing nothing about it, into complaining about problems and doing something. Do your own research for sure. I'm no expert. Just a jackass on tumblr with some big feelings about how my fellow european americans are really failing to be good antiracists. I mentioned Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer earlier, but honestly, just set a priority to learn from Brown people. Read books written by Brown authors. Look for diverse entertainment. Make it a radical priority in your life to seek out the opinions of all marginalized groups no matter the issue. The people who are being fucked over by the system usually have the most valuable insight on how to fix it. Humble yourself, shut your mouth, and listen. You will have time to yap later. People are usually pretty down to share their thoughts with you if you approach the situation with humility and a willingness to learn.

#solarpunk #antiracism #intersectionality #queer #seriously guys it's not that hard #you will learn more and be more effectively challenged by listening to people different than you. always #and know the discomfort this causes is pretty temporary. because then you get the benefits of decolonizing ur mind #and trust me it's pretty worth it #my life is better all-around because i am committed to decolonizing my brain. i feel better

4 notes · View notes