I have had these thoughts bubbling away in my head for like...eighteen months or so now (it will become very obvious why shortly) but the discussion in this post has pushed me to write them down: I think societally we HUGELY underestimate how motherhood for primary caregivers, particularly first-time motherhood, can be a source of vulnerability to radicalisation.
There is obviously huge cultural variance here, but for a lot of cis women becoming primary caregiver to an infant in a capitalist Western society represents a time of immense vulnerability because in general you are:
Incredibly sleep-deprived (which has well-documented knock-on effects for your judgement, mental health, etc)
If you gave birth, recovering from a significant challenge to your physical health (even in the best-case scenario)
Isolated from your previous networks and communities of people in full-time work
Completely separated from the context of your prior career goals and achievements
Under huge amounts of stress to learn how to care for an infant (don't get me started on breastfeeding)
And on top of this, you are also be experiencing a huge amount of messaging about how all this is natural, wonderful, something you're meant to do, something you should love doing, and something that you must do for the welfare of their child. It's a huge amount of pressure and life change even when everything goes right and there's very little cultural space to express negative feelings about it.
Any group of people who offer community, support, and affirmation to cis women in this situation are going to have a really good shot at radicalising them into some very weird and dangerous headspaces and in fact we see this happen all the time - think antivaxxers and TERFs. It flies under the radar because of the hazy positive glow that associates with motherhood and babies and also because we don't take the radicalisation of women seriously I guess because they rarely shoot anybody, but...yeah. It is such a vulnerable time!
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don't wanna derail the post I saw this discussion on- it was all in the notes anyway, so it certainly isn't op's problem. I'm gonna say this with so much love:
Calling somebody a 'theyfab' is not punching up. If someone's being transmisogynistic, say that, or call them a bigot. Naming the tangible harm done to you will always be the most effective thing to do.
The cis people who created that term made it with the explicit intent to mock and insult people's identities. No matter what you mean when you say it, this is its origin and to most people, its only meaning. It describes nothing about the discrimination you face.
People afab are marginalized, especially if they're queer. You cannot "punch up" on a fellow oppressed group. I understand the specific vitriol that they inflict on you hurts.
You don't need a word to call somebody, you need and deserve adequate justice for the tangible harm done to you; and my heart aches that nobody queer- especially trans women- ever seems to receive that.
I'm aware I can't make anybody do anything, so I'm not gonna try to tell you not to use that word. I just want to say it can't ever address, undo, or heal any harm done to you. It can only redirect it.
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ninja turtles are here for projecting and processing grief, apparently.
i've seen lots of 'the death of future donnie' comics, most recently ofc being from @somerandomdudelmao (i went back and forth abt tagging but then decided i would, because this is directly their fault, /pos) and then, of course, all the fan content that was made in response to said comic... and i love seeing so many people make so much awesome work! but it's also really fucking sad.
so often in the real world, there are no goodbyes, no dying in the arms of a loved one, no heroic sacrifices, there's just... death. people just die and it sucks. especially because in real life there's also no cool storyboarder assuring you that there's gonna be a happy ending and you'll see them again. and so it's like... then what?
i dunno. i was just sad about it for a while, and i wasn't really sure what to do with that, but i guess this is my answer. sometimes you don't get to say goodbye or hold them when they leave you, and you dunno if you'll get to see them again. but you can still have the mark they left on the world and hang onto that. because no matter what, once upon a time, they were there, and you remember. other people probably do, too.
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myth of the bare palm
text:
Our kind used to be hulking things of feathers and claws,
more gods than animals, roaming the snowed planes endless,
until we found each others
and in jubilant relief reached out
claws retracting,
feathers shedding,
so the moment of contact branded heat against bare skin.
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the supreme court is so comically evil like you really have to vote blue across the board they made it legal to criminalize homelessness, overturned chevron which means the extremely conservative courts get to override health officials and environmental regulations
like infant mortality has increased by 8% in some states post roe, they will avoid the trump immunity case as long as possible, they essentially shielded all the jan 6 rioters
if biden loses we could be stuck with 6-3 or 7-2 extremely conservative judges for decades!!! that could mean 40 years of social rights regulations and health codes thrown out the door!!! look how much we’ve lost in 8 years?
and what about pack the courts? you can’t pack the courts with this split congress you can’t pass roe laws with this split congress you really have to vote blue all the way
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