#underrepresented group and blame them

[philsmeatylegss]

I will never fear undocumented immigrants anywhere near as much as I fear Republican law makers. And that is something that will never change.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The tax sharks are back and they’re coming for your home

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TODAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

One of my weirder and more rewarding hobbies is collecting definitions of "conservativism," and one of the jewels of that collection comes from Corey Robin's must-read book The Reactionary Mind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reactionary_Mind

Robin's definition of conservativism has enormous explanatory power and I'm always finding fresh ways in which it clarifies my understand of events in the world: a conservative is someone who believes that a minority of people were born to rule, and that everyone else was born to follow their rules, and that the world is in harmony when the born rulers are in charge.

This definition unifies the otherwise very odd grab-bag of ideologies that we identify with conservativism: a Christian Dominionist believes in the rule of Christians over others; a "men's rights advocate" thinks men should rule over women; a US imperialist thinks America should rule over the world; a white nationalist thinks white people should rule over racialized people; a libertarian believes in bosses dominating workers and a Hindu nationalist believes in Hindu domination over Muslims.

These people all disagree about who should be in charge, but they all agree that some people are ordained to rule, and that any "artificial" attempt to overturn the "natural" order throws society into chaos. This is the entire basis of the panic over DEI, and the brainless reflex to blame the Francis Scott Key bridge disaster on the possibility that someone had been unjustly promoted to ship's captain due to their membership in a disfavored racial group or gender.

This definition is also useful because it cleanly cleaves progressives from conservatives. If conservatives think there's a natural order in which the few dominate the many, progressivism is a belief in pluralism and inclusion, the idea that disparate perspectives and experiences all have something to contribute to society. Progressives see a world in which only a small number of people rise to public life, rarified professions, and cultural prominence and assume that this is terrible waste of the talents and contributions of people whose accidents of birth keep them from participating in the same way.

This is why progressives are committed to class mobility, broad access to education, and active programs to bring traditionally underrepresented groups into arenas that once excluded them. The "some are born to rule, and most to be ruled over" conservative credo rejects this as not just wrong, but dangerous, the kind of thing that leads to bridges being demolished by cargo ships.

The progressive reforms from the New Deal until the Reagan revolution were a series of efforts to broaden participation in every part of society by successively broader groups of people. A movement that started with inclusive housing and education for white men and votes for white women grew to encompass universal suffrage, racial struggles for equality, workplace protections for a widening group of people, rights for people with disabilities, truth and reconciliation with indigenous people and so on.

The conservative project of the past 40 years has been to reverse this: to return the great majority of us to the status of desperate, forelock-tugging plebs who know our places. Hence the return of child labor, the tradwife movement, and of course the attacks on labor unions and voting rights:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/

Arguably the most potent symbol of this struggle is the fight over homes. The New Deal offered (some) working people a twofold path to prosperity: subsidized home-ownership and strong labor protections. This insulated (mostly white) workers from the two most potent threats to working peoples' lives and wellbeing: the cruel boss and the greedy landlord.

But the neoliberal era dispensed with labor rights, leaving the descendants of those lucky workers with just one tool for securing their American dream: home-ownership. As wages stagnated, your home – so essential to your ability to simply live – became your most important asset first, and a home second. So long as property values rose – and property taxes didn't – your home could be the backstop for debt-fueled consumption that filled the gap left by stagnating wages. Liquidating your family home might someday provide for your retirement, your kids' college loans and your emergency medical bills.

For conservatives who want to restore Gilded Age class rule, this was a very canny move. It pitted lucky workers with homes against their unlucky brethren – the more housing supply there was, the less your house was worth. The more protections tenants had, the less your house was worth. The more equitably municipal services (like schools) were distributed, the less your house was worth:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

And now that the long game is over, they're coming for your house. It started with the foreclosure epidemic after the 2008 financial crisis, first under GW Bush, but then in earnest under Obama, who accepted the advice of his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who insisted that homeowners should be liquidated to "foam the runways" for the crashing banks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

Then there are scams like "We Buy Ugly Houses," a nationwide mass-fraud outfit that steals houses out from under elderly, vulnerable and desperate people:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/#homevestor

The more we lose our houses, the more single-family homes Wall Street gets to snap up and convert into slum properties, aslosh with a toxic stew of black mold, junk fees and eviction threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Now there's a new way for finance barons the steal our houses out from under us – or rather, a very old way that had lain dormant since the last time child labor was legal – "tax lien investing."

Across the country, counties and cities have programs that allow investment funds to buy up overdue tax-bills from homeowners in financial hardship. These "investors" are entitled to be paid the missing property taxes, and if the homeowner can't afford to make that payment, the "investor" gets to kick them out of their homes and take possession of them, for a tiny fraction of their value.

As Andrew Kahrl writes for The American Prospect, tax lien investing was common in the 19th century, until the fundamental ugliness of the business made it unattractive even to the robber barons of the day:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-04-26-investing-in-distress-tax-liens/

The "tax sharks" of Chicago and New York were deemed "too merciless" by their peers. One exec who got out of the business compared it to "picking pennies off a dead man’s eyes." The very idea of outsourcing municipal tax collection to merciless debt-hounds fell aroused public ire.

Today – as the conservative project to restore the "natural" order of the ruled and the ruled-over builds momentum – tax lien investing is attracting some of America's most rapacious investors – and they're making a killing. In Chicago, Alden Capital just spent a measly $1.75m to acquire the tax liens on 600 family homes in Cook County. They now get to charge escalating fees and penalties and usurious interest to those unlucky homeowners. Any homeowner that can't pay loses their home.

The first targets for tax-lien investing are the people who were the last people to benefit from the New Deal and its successors: Black and Latino families, elderly and disabled people and others who got the smallest share of America's experiment in shared prosperity are the first to lose the small slice of the American dream that they were grudgingly given.

This is the very definition of "structural racism." Redlining meant that families of color were shut out of the federal loan guarantees that benefited white workers. Rather than building intergenerational wealth, these families were forced to rent (building some other family's intergenerational wealth), and had a harder time saving for downpayments. That meant that they went into homeownership with "nontraditional" or "nonconforming" mortgages with higher interest rates and penalties, which made them more vulnerable to economic volatility, and thus more likely to fall behind on their taxes. Now that they're delinquent on their property taxes, they're in hock to a private equity fund that's charging them even more to live in their family home, and the second they fail to pay, they'll be evicted, rendered homeless and dispossessed of all the equity they built in their (former) home.

It's very on-brand for Alden Capital to be destroying the lives of Chicagoans. Alden is most notorious for buying up and destroying America's most beloved newspapers. It was Alden who bought up the Chicago Tribune, gutted its workforce, sold off its iconic downtown tower, and moved its few remaining reporters to an outer suburban, windowless brick building "the size of a Chipotle":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/16/sociopathic-monsters/#all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print

Before the ghastly hotel baroness Leona Helmsley went to prison for tax evasion, she famously said, "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes." Helmsley wasn't wrong – she was just a little ahead of schedule. As Propublica's IRS Files taught us, America's 400 richest people pay less tax than you do:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/13/for-the-little-people/#leona-helmsley-2022

When billionaires don't pay their taxes, they get to buy sports franchises. When poor people don't pay their taxes, billionaires get to steal their houses after paying the local government an insultingly small amount of money.

It's all going according to plan. We weren't meant to have houses, or job security, or retirement funds. We weren't meant to go to university, or even high school, and our kids were always supposed to be in harness at a local meat-packer or fast food kitchen, not wasting time with their high school chess club or sports team. They don't need high school: that's for the people who were born to rule. They – we – were meant to be ruled over.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/26/taxes-are-for-the-little-people/#alden-capital

[alice-after-dark]

Vox as an Abuse Victim

So here is that massive Vox post I promised, a day late for...reasons. I swear I have been working on this post for days, even before that StaticMoth discourse influx in my inbox.

After making my post about Vox and Angel and reading @deeply-unserious-fellow's post about a similar topic, I thought it might be finally time to make this post. Most people who have seen my content know how I typically portray StaticMoth. I have mixed feelings about Valentino at the best of times and outright dislike him at the worst. But frankly this post isn't actually about him (well, mostly). It's about Vox and why I am really hoping that Viv keeps the angle of Vox being an abuse victim.

TW for domestic abuse, physical violence, implied sexual abuse, abusive relationships, gaslighting/victim-blaming, and other canon-typical triggers. Contain abusive StaticMoth.

Honestly? The primary reason I hope she keeps it is because it would make him an even more complex character and bring attention to a criminally underrepresented group: abuse victims who are also bad people.

As pointed out in the post I tagged above, the world has become obsessed with this idea of a "palatable" victim, the poor suffering cinnamon roll. An abuse victim is expected to look like a victim. You're supposed to instantly feel sorry for them and want to protect them...but that's not so easy when the victim is someone who also hurts people, is it? It's not so easy to pretend they didn't do bad things too...but they are still a victim. That does not change just because they are a bad person. And thus it becomes complicated and interesting. Because it's not so easy to root for the victim when they're also victimizing others, especially when those others are people we care about...like Angel Dust. At the bare minimum, Vox is doing nothing to stop Valentino from abusing Angel or any of his other employees. Having Vox be a victim of the same abuse that Angel Dust suffers (at the hands of the same abuser no less) and yet also being someone who enables Angel's abuse creates a very complicated situation.

In a most media, the discovery of a mean/bad person being abused is frequently portrayed in a "well, they were abused so you can't be mad at them anymore" kind of light. Like "see? They're just an asshole because they were being abused! Now that we know, they're suddenly a good person!" Except that's not how it works. Someone can be a bad person and also be a victim. And even if them being an asshole was the result of their abuse, those behaviors and the consequences of those behaviors don't just vanish. They still hurt people and frankly I would riot if it came out that Vox was being abused by Valentino and then everyone in the show just up and forgave him for being an asshole. Like...no? He would still need to make up for his own shit and actually work towards being a better person. I like this character because he's an unapologetic asshole. If making him a victim takes that away, then that would be such a missed opportunity.

In fact, one thing I find interesting is that I definitely believe that Vox would have no problem admitting to being a bad person, but would rather fight an exorcist alone than admit to being a victim. His ego won't allow for it. He would probably laugh in your face and call you delusional while literally having a broken screen. Because he can't admit it, even to himself. He would see it as a sign of weakness and that's not acceptable to him (side note that being a victim does not make you weak, that's just what Vox's toxic mindset tells him). While I am fairly certain that he would have moved on from most 1950s mindsets since he is all about the future and progress and moving forward, toxic masculinity is still very much a thing today and I can definitely see him embodying it in some aspects, like needing to appear strong and in control at all times (and Hell's power hierarchy definitely encourages this mindset, so...). Fuck, even now in fucking 2024, men still have a hard time being taken seriously as the victims of abuse. Unless of course you fit a certain mold.

Angel Dust is the perfect example of this. He is a palatable male victim. He's effeminate, he's funny, he's friendly, he's caring, and we actively see him miserable in his suffering. Despite being in Hell just like the rest of them and having been a former mafia member and clearly able to stand on his own two feet it combat, his victimhood is constantly on display and the audience wants to protect and save him. On the opposite end, Vox is shown in a position of power that is constantly reinforced. He's an Overlord, he's manipulative, he's cruel, he's greedy, and he enables abusive behavior from others. He is not a palatable victim, which is why it's perfect.

Now let's get into what I believe is the actual evidence that this dynamic could still be present.

Something I see people commonly say is that Vox being abused by Valentino doesn't make sense because why wouldn't Vox just fight back? He could just shock Valentino into next Tuesday? And to these people I kindly say fuck you. Because while physical strength can be a factor in abuse, it is very rarely the thing that keeps the victim from leaving. Abuse, even when physical, is heavily psychological. It's like telling a victim "well, why didn't you just leave?" It's not that easy. Abusers tend to target those with low self-esteem and it's made pretty clear that Vox is a very insecure person (I feel the need to point out that having an ego and having high self-esteem are not the same thing, in fact having a big ego is typically a side effect of very low self-esteem). It's entirely possible that Vox makes the conscious decision not to fight back because he's afraid of what will happen if he does. He's afraid Valentino will leave. We know Valentino is just as mentally and emotionally abusive to those around him as he is physically abusive and we have actively witnessed him playing into Vox's insecurities and mentally messing with him (specifically in the events leading up to "Stayed Gone").

So let's talk about the scene leading up to "Stayed Gone," because I also see Vox's behavior towards Valentino here used as justification for why it's not possible for Valentino to be abusing Vox. Full disclosure, I myself in the past have even thought that it demonstrated them being mutually abusive towards each other, but have since changed my opinion after reading more takes and doing further analysis. Having rewatched this scene many times now, I have some observations.

There's a small moment that always caught my attention when I watched this scene because I wasn't sure what it meant, but looking at it in the context of this post, I think I can see a possibility. When Vox goes to see Valentino, he approaches the doors and they are opened for him by Valentino's servants. Vox pauses in the doorway, glances at them, then continues on inside.

What was the point of this moment? It seems out of place. Surely Vox has gone to Valentino's room before? Surely this door opening thing isn't new? And looking at Vox's face here, he looks...concerned? Like...they might hear what goes on inside? And he maintains that expression even as he enters the room, like he doesn't like that those two are out there and might hear them.

It also makes the entire situation feel so routine. Like Valentino is upset and these girls just expect Vox to show up and take care of it. And the scenes prior to this also sets it up as a normal occurrence. Vox rearranges his entire schedule to deal with Valentino, like he absolutely expects this situation could take up the rest of his day. And Valentino clearly doesn't listen to Velvette in this regard as she had to call Vox to come deal with Valentino despite him wrecking her department. Her comment even further establishes this as normal when she tells Vox that Valentino is "up in his tower, waiting for a flat-faced prince to calm him down." And when Vox arrives? "FUCKING FINALLY!" All of this sets up a standard situation: when Valentino is upset, it is Vox's job to calm him down and make him feel better. Valentino is a full grown adult and yet he has made it someone else's problem to manage his emotions.

Then of course we have the classic moment of Valentino literally throwing his glass at Vox only seconds after Vox has arrived. And this has to have been a conscious decision, because right before that, he throws his first glass on the ground before demanding another. So if he wanted to just break something, he didn't need to throw it at Vox, but he did. And I definitely don't think he cared if Vox got out of the way or not. But how easily Vox moves aside tells us that he fully expected to have things thrown at him and was ready for it. Now, I do believe that Valentino would throw shit at literally anyone when he is mad, but the key here is that Vox, his supposed friend, on-and-off lover, and business partner, is not exempt from this behavior. He even breaks Vox's phone when he realizes Vox is not paying attention to him. He has no qualms breaking Vox's property just to soothe his rage (I would also like to point out that he fucking obliterated that thing; just how hard did he fucking throw it?!).

Something in this scene that did initially throw me as I was writing this is that Vox doesn't seem particularly afraid of Valentino. Not the way we see Angel is when Valentino gets angry. We also see him actively get angry with Valentino, get in his face, and manipulate him. In the past, I believed this behavior from Vox to have established their relationship as mutually abusive. However, after reading yet another post from @deeply-unserious-fellow, I realized that everything Vox does here is only in direct response to Valentino's tantrum.

So let's go through some things here. When Vox initially tries to tell Valentino he can't go to the hotel, Valentino straight up ignores him. Does not respond to Vox's words, completely carries on like he didn't even speak. From this point on, Vox takes an entirely different approach to the situation. He manipulates Valentino into thinking that not shooting up the hotel is his idea and even offers further appeasement in the form of shooting his own employees as a method to satisfy Valentino's temper. I admit to initially viewing this as Vox being abusive, but frankly, when your options are being manipulative or letting your business partner go shoot up a hotel that houses the literal Princess of Hell, yeah, I'd take the manipulation route. Because, as I pointed out above, Vox cannot actually control Valentino. He tries to give him an order and is completely ignored. And even when he does successfully manipulate him, he still has to appease him in some capacity.

Now, there's also something here that is often played for shits and giggles, but I'm taking it 100% seriously right now. Many people point out that Vox's screen gets brighter when he gets in Valentino's face. Valentino is a moth demon and after Vox does this, he seems to be dazed for a moment, enough for Vox to rapidly switch back into manipulator mode and does his thing. It seems to have snapped Valentino out of his rage and I literally can't help but think that Vox has learned this as a defense mechanism. Valentino can't see very well, so it's very likely Vox's hypnotism doesn't work on him, so Vox had to find other ways of manipulating him and calming him down when he's in one of his rages.

Something I also want to point out is that it is made very clear through a single solitary moment that Valentino is in no way afraid of Vox. When he tells Vox about Alastor, Vox screams in his face, manhandles him, and Valentino just...pushes him off and saunters away, grinning like the cat that caught the canary. He doesn't even look upset or concerned when Vox grabs him. He just...laughs it off...like he knows Vox won't actually hurt him. Because I genuinely think Vox won't. Later in the episode, we hear Valentino's voicemails to Angel Dust and how he's emotionally manipulating him, telling him he can't really get better. I wouldn't be surprised to find that he's given Vox a similar treatment, especially considering that it's obvious Valentino knew what kind of reaction he would get out of Vox by bringing up Alastor. And sure, he brushes it off with a kink joke, but in all seriousness, why did Valentino keep Alastor's return from Vox? We know Angel has been at the hotel for a little while and Alastor has been involved with it as of a week prior to the beginning of season 1, so why suddenly bring it up? It's almost like he was specifically holding onto this information, waiting for the perfect time to use it that would be the most beneficial to him.

There's also another little scene that always caught my attention. It's when Valentino is getting pissed about the shadow construct that Angel Dust is flirting with.

Valentino starts getting pissy again, demands Vox's attention, gets annoyed when he doesn't get it, then immediately switches to mocking and confident when Vox starts bitching about Alastor. Like...he's so fucking proud of himself for getting Vox all worked up over Alastor. Like it's some kind of game for him. Riling Vox up and messing with his emotions is fun for Valentino. Alastor dredges up some real shit for Vox and Valentino exploits it. And from here on, he just keeps egging him on. Now, I'm pretty sure "Stayed Gone" would have happened with or without Valentino, but the point here is that he is definitely playing with Vox's emotions here.

As for the not being afraid aspect, again, Valentino hasn't actually threatened him with something that truly scares him. I don't think he's afraid of what Valentino could physically do to him. It's more likely to make him mad than anything else, even if he doesn't fight back (he'll probably go take out his anger on someone else). The thing about Vox is that we see that he does not like to appear weak in any capacity and I think this extends well into his own psyche. If he admits, even to himself, that he's a victim...to him, that's admitting weakness and he just can't do that. So Valentino's not abusing him, they just had a fight. He didn't hit back because he's in control of himself and he knows he could totally toast Valentino. It's Vox's own fault for pushing his buttons when he knew Valentino was mad. It wasn't rape cause he never said "no".

TLDR: Vox can be both an asshole and an abuse victim and it would be a really interesting aspect to his character as long as the show does it right and doesn't scrap his assholeness to make him a more palatable victim. Show him being a victim and also victimizing others. Show him not wanting to accept that he has been abused. LET PEOPLE BE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH FEELING SORRY FOR HIM.

(that's all for now, I have literally been working on this post for days and I'm exhausted)

[ayashitetsuko]

An open letter to David Jenkins

Some fans believe that we should not vent our anger and frustration to show creators. I don’t believe that. The thing about being a professional is that receiving criticism is part of your job—especially if you have done a terrible job.

OFMD went from groundbreaking to disappointing overnight.

There was a momentum to create a queer media that is smart, fun, sexy, and most importantly, respectful. In the way they are writing these queer characters. Especially older and disabled queer characters, a reflection of a generation of marginalised communities that have gone through so much. To give audience a glimpse of hope in their escapism.

But sir, you choose to Remus Lupin him instead.

This is not just about killing off a character. Hell, I might be willing to accept it. After all, I have read and even written fics with MCD in it—involving my favourite character.

But I want you to know that this is a special case. It is not just another popular character being killed off to drive plots.

I have issue with how you kill off a queer character that represents many marginalised communities in his arc.

Izzy is an abuse survivor who becomes disabled as a result of it. Izzy is a queer elder. Izzy is suicidal but manages to overcome it with the healing power of love and community.

Having him killed off just like that is a huge slap for fans who have gone through what he has gone through. Turns out, even in fiction, in our escapism, there is no joy. Only despair.

Also. Father figure? Where does that come from? Ed has never been shown to have any level of respect for Izzy. So let me ask you again. Where does “father figure” come from?

You have an opportunity to make a difference with OFMD; to be remembered in history for the right reasons. Yet somehow you choose not too. You choose to turn this into cheap, sensationalist entertainment where death and torture are thrown around for shock value.

It is like you have no idea how much power you have by being a professional storyteller.

Let me break it down to you. For you as a writer, perhaps killing off Izzy is nothing but an artistic choice. A plot point to figure out. But for audiences in marginalised groups, stories are mirrors. They see themselves in stories. That is how stories give them hope. This is why OFMD has never been “just a pirate story”. Perhaps this is hard to understand if you have never been part of an underrepresented community in the mainstream media, but this is how many are feeling about your work now. Your legacy.

OFMD has truly become an overnight failure. I don’t know how this happened. I would like to blame budget cuts, but your Vanity Fair interview makes me realise this is all deliberate choice.

So, what is next for us Canyonites?

If anything, this convinced me that queer and disabled people should write. And continue to write.

We can no longer trust major media to speak for us. We definitely can never trust David Jenkins again. Any form of progressiveness that he showed earlier was just coincidence, apparently. Even worse, it was fake.

As my friend Sam beautifully puts it, Izzy belongs to us now. We reclaim that character and give him all the happy endings he deserves in our fic, our art. We transform the works. We write about queer, disabled, suicidal characters the way the deserve to be written. If being a published writer is the path you choose, make sure you make wiser decisions than David Jenkins.

Thank you, sir. It was good while it lasts.

But this is a terrible job that you’re doing.

[uhhkpop]

A Perfect Girl - Eric Sohn x (afab)NB!reader

—

Content/Warnings: College AU, Smut (18+ mdni), Fluff, Angst, they/them reader, discussion of pronouns, reader’s gender identity not specified- implied to be slightly female aligned but outside the gender binary, misgendering (accidental and deliberate), insecurity, reader has body hair, reader is taller than Eric, Eric’s ex is a bully, virgin!reader with no dating experience, big dick!Eric (iykyk 👀), tit sucking, unprotected piv sex (DONT DO THIS), oral (receiving), marking (giving and receiving), reader becomes a bit possessive but Eric thinks it’s hot, an “ily”, hurt-comfort, this is ridiculously long, lmk if I’ve missed something

DISCLAIMER: I write fan fiction for myself and myself only. If you feel excluded or underrepresented by the content, that is because it is specifically intended to represent me. If you like it, that’s great, and I’m hoping a few people might, but if you don’t, then you are free to read something else.

—

By itself, crushing on a boy sucks. It sucks even more when you dress kinda masculine, have a couple inches on him height-wise, and you worry that as a (presumably) heterosexual man, these qualities on a woman (or whatever it is you are, you’ve given up on figuring it out) will be a turn off for him.

You like to think that Eric isn’t full of toxic masculinity or anything of the sort, though you wouldn’t blame him if he was a bit insecure— most people are, in one way or another. But at the end of the day, cis-het men like femininity and that is not you. So, all you can do is look at him wistfully from across the classroom and fantasize about things that you’re sure will never happen. Sighing, you think about how the only girls you’ve seen him date have all been short and pretty with frilly outfits, flowing long hair, and foreheads never too high for him to kiss. You aren’t jealous of their height or how they dress, you wouldn’t want to look like them anyway, but you are jealous that they get to be considered desirable and you aren’t. Eric Sohn is too normal for you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You’re so wrapped up in your own thoughts that you almost don’t hear the professor announce that partners for the group project will be posted tonight. You’re still sneaking glances at him even as class ends and people start filtering out when you see a girl jog in with a hopeful look on her face. She goes straight towards Eric and grabs his hand and although you can’t hear everything, the girl says something along the lines of, “Come onnnnn. We should spend time together again. I miss you, you know?”, in a coaxing tone. You watch Eric’s face harden as he speaks crossly,

“What did you think I meant when I said I didn’t want to see you anymore?” He fixes her with a glare. The girl just looks at him innocently.

“Well, I know you just wanted a few days to cool down, so I gave you a few days and now we can go back to our old routine!” She smiles at him, clearly ignoring the annoyed look on his face. You continue to pack up slowly because even though you know it’s not your business and you’re internally scolding yourself for being nosy, part of you feels compelled to find out where this is going. Because it’s Eric.

“You know that’s not what I meant. I’m not falling for this bullshit again,” Eric retorts. His voice is terse, almost angry. Your bag is all packed now and when you hear the girl start to speak again, an impulse takes over and you suddenly yell to him from across the room.

“Eric!” You call his name and wave at him. The face of the girl (who you now assume is a recent ex) twists into displeasure as you jog over. “Did you forget the reservation at that lunch place that we booked? I don’t want to be late.” Eric’s expression quickly goes from confusion to what seems to be relief.

“Lunch…” the ex scoffs, “with this ugly bitch? I see you’ve lowered your standards.” Well, ouch. That stung. She storms off before Eric can get another word in. Once she’s completely gone, you try to smile apologetically and offer,

“Sorry. You seemed a bit stuck there, so I wanted to help.” He laughs at this and shakes his head.

“No, you’re good! I’m actually glad she’s gone. I don’t think she’ll bother me again anytime soon.” He motions with his head for you to come along, so you follow him out of the classroom. “Exes, am I right?”, he quips jokingly. You shrug and stuff your hands in your pockets.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Wait, really?” Eric’s eyes widen a bit.

“Is it that weird that I haven’t dated yet?,” you ask curiously.

“No, no,” he backtracks, looking uncomfortable, suddenly aware of what he said, “that’s not exactly what I meant. I mean, it’s totally okay if you choose not to date, not everyone has to date if they don’t want to, I know that, yeah, I’ve just overheard you ranting to friends about being single before, so I figured…” Eric rambles and then trails off. You chuckle a bit in response as you walk across one of the wide courtyards on campus.

“Don’t worry, I’m not mad. But where are we going by the way?”, you ask.

“I don’t know, actually.” You look at him, puzzled about his response.

“But I’m just following you,” you say. He looks back, equally confused by your words and replies,

“I thought I was following you???” You stop in your tracks and burst out laughing and it isn’t long before Eric joins in. After a few minutes, you take a couple of deep breaths to settle down, a giggle or two still occasionally coming up. You can’t remember the last time you laughed that hard. It felt good, really good. “So,” Eric says, “do you want to actually get lunch? I’ll buy since I owe you for rescuing me back there.” You can’t keep the grin off your face.

“I’d love to.”

~~~

On the way there and at the cafe, Eric chatted nonstop about the ex who had bothered him (Gina, you think her name was) earlier as well as about anything and everything else that came to mind. You found that you actually enjoyed listening to him speak even more than you’d expected. It wasn’t often that you found someone who could both outtalk you and simultaneously entertain you enough that you genuinely enjoyed listening to them even when you didn’t get much of a word in.

The whole thing was like a dream and you roll around on your bed, covering your face with your hands and laughing as you reminisce about it. You thought he was cute before and now you’re pretty sure you might be obsessed, too. You don’t think your luck could get any better than it already is today but when you check the list of partners assigned by the professor, you’re proven wrong. The name next to yours on the chart is none other than Eric’s.

You had exchanged numbers at lunch, so you text him the news and set up a time to meet each week to work on it. You can’t believe you’re going to be seeing him outside of class and even though you’re a bit apprehensive (out of fear you might fuck something up), you’re mostly just excited to spend time with him.

You begin sitting together every class and as he’d predicted, Gina didn’t make another attempt at an after-lecture visit. Not only is the project coming along nicely, you now feel like you can say that Eric has become a good friend. You’ve even forgotten how self-conscious you used to feel whenever you were next to him. Or at least, you’ve mostly forgotten. He made you laugh often enough that you didn’t have much time to think about it, but now and then you still feel lingering doubts at the back of your mind. Doubts that hurtle towards the surface today when Gina suddenly marches towards you while you’re studying by yourself in the library, sits across from you, and affixes you with a glare, saying,

“I can’t believe he’s been spending so much time with such a poor excuse for a girl.” Her voice drips with venom and stuns you speechless, and she goes on, “I mean, look at you, what kind of girl dresses like that? What kind of girl lets herself have that much body hair? It’s kinda gross, not gonna lie.” When you open your mouth to ask why you would even have to be a ‘girl’ or dress in a certain way, she interjects again. “You aren’t pretty at all, and you seem pretty boring, too. Even if I can’t have him anymore, you should leave him alone for someone who’s actually in his league.”

At this point, you feel compelled to clarify that Eric isn’t dating you or even interested, but you don’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing that, so you just tell her the harshest thing you can think of in that moment: “I’m sorry that conforming to binary gender stereotypes is so important to you. Hopefully one day you’ll get a hobby that doesn’t involve judging other people for how they dress.” You look at her nonchalantly and she looks like she wants nothing more than to cuss you out right now. But she doesn’t. Gina just stands up abruptly and walks away. Unfortunately, however, the pride you feel for reacting so calmly, is edged out by a feeling of discomfort. If anyone’s opinion should be taken seriously, it certainly shouldn’t be hers, but you can’t shake the nagging sense that she isn’t the only one who thinks the way she does.

In general, you’re happy with yourself. You’re okay with not being pretty. In the end, how you look doesn’t matter, right? …right? Except it kinda does, because you want Eric to think you’re pretty, but that seems far fetched, so you remind yourself not to get any hopes up.

You stretch and begin to pack up. After that confrontation, the thought of being here much longer makes you feel ill, so you head out the door feeling unsettled and just plain bad. Why did some people suck that much? All you want to do is go home, nap, and try not to think about it. It doesn’t even occur to you that today you have one of your weekly meetings with Eric to work on the project together. Once you get home, you plop face first into the couch and after a bit of rolling around, quickly fall asleep.

~~~

You’re rudely awakened by both the sound of your phone ringing and someone knocking on your door. “What the fuck?” You mutter and stand up. As soon as you open the door and see Eric’s face, it dawns on you. You’d completely forgotten what day it was. This had never happened before and frankly, you’re embarrassed. Letting him in, you feel yourself wither away even more on the inside. Eric should be mad, you think, but his expression remains neutral, confused even. It’s hard to speak, just seeing him right now makes you almost want to cry, but you open your mouth to try to say something to him anyway. You don’t even get the chance. Once the front door closes, Eric gently puts his hands on your arms and asks,

“Shit, you okay?” He has a concerned look on his face. You figure you must look pretty pathetic right now if he’s this worried just from looking at you. It isn’t long before the dam breaks and tears stream down your face. Eric rubs your arms and guides you to sit down on your sofa. “Hard day?” You gulp down sobs and nod. “Do… you want to talk about it?” You shake your head even though you do, actually, want to talk about it. But you can’t let him know because you don’t want him to pity you or even worse, confront his ex which might make her target you even more.

“We should…" you swallow, "get to work." You lean to grab your backpack to remind Eric of why he came over in the first place. He stops you though, holding each of your hands in his, gently stroking your knuckles with his thumbs.

"No," Eric insists, "we can always finish it up later. You aren't feeling good right now, so we probably wouldn’t get a ton of stuff done anyway," You look down at your lap, not sure how to reply. Eventually, you force out a weak ‘okay’. “Is there anything I can do to help?”, Eric asks and you shrug, still looking down, not wanting to talk. He lets go of your hands and returns them to his own lap. “Would… you like a hug?” You nod and you feel him wrap his arms around you, warm and strong, adjusting yourself in his arms so you can rest your forehead on his shoulder. Eric holds you like that for several minutes even though you aren’t crying anymore. You savor this moment because you’re pretty sure you’re a little bit in love with him and you don’t know if you’ll get chance to be this close to him ever again. It feels wrong, as if you’re taking advantage of his kindness to satisfy how utterly touch starved you feel, but right now, you don’t have the energy to think too deeply into it.

Eric releases you from his hold and pinches your arm, giving you a smile that is mischievous yet still sympathetic, an expression you didn’t even know existed before meeting him. “So,” Eric chuckles, “if you don’t wanna tell me what happened, could you at least tell me who made you feel this way, so I can go kick them in the ass?” You laugh dryly, but it lacks much humor.

“I don’t care about what happens to the other person, but one of the people is me, and I’d rather not have my ass kicked, thank you very much.” You fix him with a weary smile and his expression drops, the only sound out of his mouth is a concerned whisper of your name.

“You don’t deserve that from anyone, least of all yourself,” Eric insists.

“I know,” you say, “and usually it’s not an issue, but I have insecurities just like everyone else and sometimes I meet people who are really good at reminding me of them. And it’s not even that I compare myself to other people,” you go on, “but it’s not like I can stop other people from doing that or even from saying it straight to my face. It’s fucking bullshit.” You lean back against the couch and look at the ceiling.

You hear him sigh. “I don’t know what to say, I’m sorry man, that really sucks.” The both of you sit in silence for a few seconds before Eric blurts out, “They must have said something pretty bad to upset you that much, usually you seem so unbothered by things.”

“I mean, kinda, but it’s just a front a lot of the time. I’ve learned to just roll with it to avoid attracting even more attention. I’ve always stuck out a bit, you know? Especially since I started college.” You sit up straight and look at him again, but Eric’s expression is somewhat unreadable.

“What changed?”, he tentatively asks. You shrug casually, trying to play it cool.

“Just the way I dress and refer to myself, I guess. New town, new me. I finally started wearing the clothes I wanted instead of making myself look like a girl to feel normal… and…” you hesitate at this part. You know he’ll be accepting, you’re almost completely sure of it, but you know that there’s always a risk with this kind of thing. A risk of people pushing you away out of judgment or prejudice. You know that Eric most likely won’t push you away, and that if he does, you’re better off not having him in your life anyway. But none of that makes it any less scary.

You inhale, hoping for the best, bracing for the worst, and confess, “I also started using they/them pronouns. I didn’t change my name or anything but I don’t refer to myself as a girl or a woman as often as I used to. I don’t mind people using ‘she’ or describing me with those words, but it just feels better when people refer to me more neutrally.” Your legs are wiggling nervously and you pick at your fingernails as you wait for a response.

“Cool,” Eric says calmly then gives you a genuine smile, “Thanks for trusting me enough to tell me. I’ll do my best to keep it in mind.” The weight on your shoulders has disappeared and you feel like you can fully breathe again. You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding and Eric laughs and reaches over to massage one of your shoulders. “Relax a bit, you’re fine,” he reassures, his expression still amused.

“Thanks.” You smile at Eric, truly grateful.

~~~

Since then, Eric has made a diligent effort to use the right language for you. You sometimes have to remind him that he doesn’t need to focus so hard on it; you feel like he sees you for who you are, and that’s the most important part. Still, he does his best, and it’s endearing, to say the very least. Part of you wishes you hadn’t told him— you already had feelings for him before and now that he’s putting in all this effort just to make you feel comfortable and seen, you’re falling for him even harder.

But despite all this, he clearly only sees you as a friend. It’s obvious, the way he’ll ask for an opinion about some girl’s profile on whatever dating app he’s using, how he’ll sometimes give you a fist bump as a greeting. You’re starting to wonder if he just sees you as another guy friend, and you really don’t want that.

Otherwise, everything is great between you two. The project went well and your professor commented on your chemistry when presenting together, saying that it would be nice if all of the teams worked together so well. Eric has started inviting you to hang out with his other friends who you’ve discovered are also really fun to be around. Everything is falling into place except your desire to be even physically and emotionally closer to him than you already are. But you’re a coward and you can’t tell him that. You don’t want to risk one of your best friendships. So you stay quiet and let things be.

The staying quiet part itself is easy enough but suppressing your feelings around Eric is not. Your urges to stare at him or giggle or grin like an idiot whenever he does something remotely cute or funny are overwhelming, so you wear a facade of ‘calm, cool, and collected’ as best you can. You think you’re succeeding, but you can’t be too sure, especially when Eric’s friends sometimes subtly nudge you, giving knowing smiles as if to tell you that they’ve caught onto your little secret. Now that you think of it, they definitely know. It’s not hard to tell when Eric asks you to come with him to a party they’ve all been invited to and Hyunjae looks at you with a gleam in his eye and suggests nonchalantly that it could be ‘a fun excuse to dress up, maybe try and catch someone’s eye,’ finally shutting up when Juyeon elbows him in the ribs and shoots him a pointed look. You’re slightly embarrassed that they’ve figured it out this fast but at the same time, you’re grateful that they haven’t seemed to have said anything to Eric yet.

Usually you’re not someone to go to parties. But for the sake of Eric, you agree quickly and begin to wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into.

~~~

As soon as you step into the party, you feel out of place. It’s uncomfortably loud, smells of smoke and booze, and whoever is DJ-ing is doing a very shitty job. Then again, most people here are probably too drunk to care anyway. If Eric hadn’t asked you to be here, you would’ve left already. A stranger comes up to you to offer a drink and gives you a rude side eye when you decline it and you know you’ve already lost popularity points that you didn’t have in the first place.

Your eyes scan the room for Eric, but it’s too crowded to tell if he’s even here. For all you know, he could be off wooing one of the many high heeled girls in their little black dresses and immaculate makeup, having completely forgotten about you. You don’t even remember the name of this other friend of his who’s having their birthday tonight. Maybe Eric just brought you along because he knew that you wouldn’t put up with his ex’s bullshit unlike the other ‘girls’ he could have asked. But what’s the point if he’s not even here? You text him again but get no response, he probably doesn’t notice the phone buzzing in his pocket anyway. You decide you’ll try one more time in a few minutes, but for now, all you can do is stare into space and wish you were somewhere else.

After a few minutes, you reach for your phone again, feeling ready to give up if you still don’t get a response but you’re interrupted by strong hands suddenly grabbing your arm. You startle, ready to punch someone if you have to, but upon seeing it’s only Eric, you let yourself relax.

“Hey, (Y/N)… you came!”, Eric says excitedly. He doesn’t seem super drunk yet but he’s certainly at least a bit tipsy.

“I did,” you sigh begrudgingly, fiddling with a loose thread on your pants.

“You look soooo cool, by the way,” he nods approvingly and even though you can tell he’s a bit more inebriated than you initially thought, for the first time tonight, you feel attractive, sexy even. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to wear ripped jeans and a suit vest as a top if Eric seems to like it. You mentally kick yourself for being so emotionally invested in a man’s opinion.

“Is there anything fun to do here that doesn’t involve drinking?” You ask, hoping that the response will be something other than no. However, you are not so fortunate.

“Not really,” Eric says, “unless you wanna dance?” His eyes light up mischievously but you shake your head at the suggestion. You do not want your chunky boots to make you look even taller than you already are in comparison to him. “Besides,” he adds, “I like having you here.” You aren’t sure whether to swoon or feel disappointed because that could mean plenty of things.

“Is it so I can tell your annoying ex to fuck off?” You inquire. He widens his eyes at your suggestion, looking almost offended you would assume such a thing.

“No, no, no… not at all! Well… maybe a little bit, but only a little bit. I invited you because I wanted to hang out,” he insists.

“There are better occasions for hanging out,” you grumble, but he doesn’t seem to hear.

“Let’s go sit!” Eric announces pulling you by your wrist to a couch near the edge of the room. Soon, you find yourself squeezed next to him on some piece of furniture that’s probably only meant for one person to comfortably stretch out on but not for two to sit next to each other. Eric goes on a tipsy ramble about something you don’t really understand but you nod along anyway. Your hands are resting on your lap and you wonder when he’ll realize that he’s mindlessly playing with your fingers. Not that you mind; it’s pretty cute, actually. This is nice, you think. You wouldn’t mind staying like this for the rest of the night, but the universe has other plans.

“You’re with her again? Don’t you know better?” Eric’s ever-lovely ex appears in front of you, wearing a scowl on her face. You’re not surprised that she’s talking about you as if you aren’t even there. Eric fixes her with a confused look.

“Why would I ‘know better’? As far as I’m concerned, being with them is better than dealing with your jealous ass.” Hearing this, Gina scoffs,

“You’re just doing this because you pity her and because you’re trying to piss me off by being with someone… who looks like that.” People are starting to watch the scene and you’re becoming self conscious.

“I think they look hot, so your opinion is irrelevant,” Eric snaps back at her. “Unlike what you seem to think, the reason I broke up with you wasn’t because I stopped finding you attractive, it’s because you act like this.” Eric pauses and you think he’s done with his rant until he suddenly adds, “also, you were shit in bed.” A scattering of whispers and murmurs goes through the group watching the confrontation and Gina looks like she’s going to cry. You immediately stand up and pull Eric with you,

“Alright, we’re gonna go now,” you announce, dragging him to the door with a cheeky smirk still plastered to his face. As much as you thought she deserved it, you figure she’s probably had enough humiliation for the night, so you wait outside the house with Eric and call a cab. Your head is spinning with thoughts and you have to know the details. You’re hot? His ex was bad in bed? But you don’t know where to start, so instead you just say, “you were pretty savage back there,” both surprise and admiration lacing your voice.

“I’m as savage as it gets,” Eric says proudly, barking and growling like a dog as he ends his statement. He grins at you and for some strange reason, you’re absolutely enamored with this weirdo.

“By the way, did you mean it?”, you ask. “Y’know, the thing you said?”

“Which one, the one where I said you looked hot or the one where I said she was bad at sex? Because both are technically true, in my opinion.” Eric shrugs and gives you a crooked, tipsy smile. Your heart is drumming. You know that his answer is going to either be the best news you’ve heard in years, or an absolute letdown.

“Can you clarify? Like, do you think I’m hot, or am I just hot in general?”

“Can’t it be both?” Eric looks at you quizzically.

“‘Cause, like, I have no doubt that you said that to annoy her which is totally valid to me, but I need to know if you just said it to annoy her or if you actually, personally, are attracted to me.”

“Look,” Eric says, “annoying her was not my plan when I said that, it just happened to be a nice bonus.” He giggles, swaying a bit and you wonder how much of this he’ll remember tomorrow. Eric purses his lips, “The thing I said about her being bad in bed, that one was to annoy her. It also happens to be true, but it was mostly for petty revenge.”

“Was she really that bad?”, you ask. Probably too personal of a question, but he brought it up, so you’re itching to know the story.

“Hmm, in a way, yeah. It was always very impersonal and she mostly just cared about herself. When I said I wanted her to be more attentive and caring towards me, she looked at me as if I was crazy. Like, can’t a guy just want some emotional intimacy?” He scoffs at the memory and you feel your heart squeeze. You think to yourself that you’ll store that information for later and then mentally scold yourself for being delusional.

“That’s stupid,” you finally reply. “She’s the weird one, not you.”

“Yeah! I know!”, Eric complains. Then he grabs your hand and leans into you. “See, this is why I like you. You get me.”

“Yeah?”, you murmur quietly, wrapped up in the moment.

“Yeah,” he repeats softly, and he looks at you so dreamily that it takes everything in you to not kiss him right then and there.

The arrival of the cab interrupts your moment and neither of you speak as the driver takes you to each of your respective destinations. When you finally get into your bedroom, you flop onto the bed without even getting undressed and scream into your pillow. You aren’t excited, you aren’t upset, you’re just… stuck. Overwhelmed by your feelings for a man you’re sure could never want you the way you want him. And it’s impossible to get rid of him now that he’s in more parts of your life than you can count. You couldn’t, anyway, no matter how much you wanted to. You know that even if you tried to cut him out, all it would take is a text from him and you’d come running without hesitation. Eric Sohn has you wrapped around his finger and he doesn’t even know it.

~~~

After meeting Eric the next day ‘to check on his hangover’ (aka gather info on how much he actually remembers from the previous night), you’ve discovered that he’s forgotten more than you expected him to. He remembers all of the events for the most part. Eric knows that he drank, talked with some friends, found you, got in an argument with his ex, and then was dragged out by you for saying something nasty. What he couldn’t recall is any of what he specifically said. Which left it up to you to decide how much to actually tell him.

It’s only fair that he knows, so you tell Eric everything. Well… everything except for your conversation outside. You aren’t sure why, but the idea of Eric finding out that he implied last night that he genuinely found you attractive and that he told you why he wasn’t satisfied with his ex in bed fills you with a sense of dread. Part of you is probably afraid that his explanation for the former has changed and as for the latter, you don’t want to embarrass him. At least that’s what you tell yourself because you don’t want to admit that you’re saving that information for the off chance you ever do get to sleep with him.

You fantasize that not only will you give him your body, but your heart, too, and that it will make him fall so deeply for you that none of those things you worry about will even matter. You’ll love him better than any of his exes did, so much that he won’t see anyone else but you. But those are dreams, not reality.

Straight men usually want girls who will complement their own sense masculinity, not challenge it. Straight men usually want girls. And unless you’ve misinterpreted something, he is one of the ‘straight men’ but you’ll never be one of the ‘girls’. And of course there are exceptions, it’s not like this is a rule, but how are you supposed to feel hopeful when you’ve never seen it happen in real life or even in fiction?

~~~

When Eric invites you to another party, this time at his apartment on a Friday night, you’re confused. After the events of last Friday, you’re wondering what made him think this was even remotely a good idea. But he promises it’ll be a small informal event and you’re weak when it comes to Eric, so of course you agree.

You decide to go a little more casual this time, just wearing your most comfortable jeans and a simple button up tee. Hopefully it won’t be too casual compared to everyone else there. When you get to his place, however, you don’t even see anyone whose outfit could be a potential gauge for the vibe of this party. It’s just you and Eric in the apartment. The lights are low and there’s music playing, so surely there has to be someone else here already, right?

“Am I early, or something?”, you ask as Eric lets you into his apartment.

“Nah,” he says, walking around aimlessly.

“Then why am I the only one here?”

“Uh… you’re kinda, like, the only person I invited,” he admits with a playful grin. You look at him incredulously and lightly slug him in the shoulder.

“What the fuck, man? You had me anxious for nothing!” You laugh in relief. “I was psyching myself up to get ready to endure several hours of being social, and now you’re telling me it was all for nothing?” Eric frowns facetiously.

“What do you expect me to do about it?”, he asks. You just snicker in response. Eric has you sit down at his small dining table while he gets you a drink and you watch his broad back as he opens the fridge and asks you what you want. You know you’re distracted by him, but you can’t help it. It’s even worse tonight because he obviously put some effort into his appearance and you think it certainly paid off. When he turns back around, you give him an awkward smile, hoping he couldn’t tell you’d literally been staring at his physique only moments ago.

Eric raises his eyebrows at you but doesn’t say anything and hands you your drink.

“So aside from, uhhh, chatting,” you say, gesturing around, “what’s the plan?”

“We’re gonna make up for what we didn’t do last time we were at a party,” he explains. “We’re going to dance.”

Dance? You’re confused. Eric had told you he didn’t remember much of what he said that night. You yourself had almost forgotten he asked you to dance because compared to everything else that had happened, it was barely even notable. Eric then suddenly speaks up.

“I was kinda disappointed when you said 'no' that time. You can totally, like, say no again, but I wanted to make another chance. Is that weird?”

Oh my god. Is he flirting with you right now? You really can’t tell. And the idea of dancing seems even worse this time since it’s just him. It’s not like you’ll have a crowd of people to blend in with that likely would include some even worse dancers than you. But Eric can see the apprehension in your face.

“C’monnnnnn! It’ll be fun.”

He taps something on his phone and the volume of the music increases and the song switches to something more upbeat. Before you can protest, he makes his way to you and grabs onto your wrists, pulling you out of your chair to lead you to a more open area. Eric doesn’t let go, moving your arms to the beat with him. You laugh and let him but you still don’t do any moving of your own. When you still don’t join him, Eric gazes up at you and pouts, giving you the biggest, most pathetic puppy dog eyes you’ve ever seen in your life. “Please…?”, he whines, effortlessly making your resolve crumble.

“You know what? Ok, fine, whatever, you win,” you concede with a defeated smile. God only knows the things you would do for this man.

“Hell yeah!” he celebrates with a fist pump.

And so, you dance. You don’t really know what you’re doing. In fact, you’re trying not to even really think about it, and just focus on moving around to the beat of the music. Before you know it, you’re both laughing and messing around, Eric shrieking when you decide to chase him with a small throw pillow you grabbed from his couch.

“Die!”, you yell dramatically as you chuck the pillow at Eric who goes down with a long ‘nooooo!’ as he tries to dodge and fails. When he realizes that you’re out of ammo, an evil grin spreads on his face as he decides to turn the tables and begins chasing you instead. You giggle as Eric runs after you, almost tripping over your own feet. Eventually, you’re cornered and you can see the wheels turning in his head as he decides what sort of silly revenge he should take. But he doesn’t even get the chance to make a decision when a new song begins, slow and sensual, changing the atmosphere entirely.

Your breath falters and the look in Eric’s eyes has gone from mischievous to almost… vulnerable? You’re now very aware of the way he has you trapped in the corner of his living room, and he seems to be, too. And yet… neither of you attempt to move. Eric’s eyes are full of both hope and worry and he opens his mouth and in a tone that is more nervous than you have ever heard him speak in, he asks,

“Do you want to dance? For real this time?”

~~~

Unspilled tears line your eyes. You’re finally this close to what you want and now that it’s right in front of you, you’re panicking. Suddenly your emotions have overwhelmed you and you’re terrified. You aren’t even being rejected, it’s the exact opposite. Nothing Eric has done tonight has suggested anything other than that he wants you and yet you’re scared. Scared you’re reading it wrong, afraid that you’ve missed the signal that indicates that this is all just a big joke.

Eric has his arms around your waist and forehead against your neck as he slow dances with you. He can’t see the anxiety on your face and he doesn’t know you’re freaking out. You do everything in your power to keep your breaths steady and even, but you can’t and you watch in slow motion as Eric’s face falls when he looks up and witnesses your expression.

He immediately cups your face with one of his palms. “Hey, what’s wrong? Talk to me… please,” Eric pleads. You sniffle but can’t stop yourself from leaning into his touch.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, blinking back your tears. Eric’s face is a mixture of concern and confusion.

“No,” he insists. “Don’t apologize, you did nothing wrong. I don’t know why you’re upset, but I promise, I’m not gonna get mad at you.”

“I’m just scared…” you choke out, “that none of this is real. That I’m misinterpreting everything. That… whatever it is you’re doing right now… doesn’t really mean anything to you and I missed the memo. I shouldn’t assume that I’m being tricked based on a few things that happened to me in the past but…” Tears are rolling down your face now and you’re barely holding together what little composure you have left. Eric wipes some of your tears away with his thumb and returns his hand towards your waist.

“Fuck,” he mutters, but there’s no anger in his tone. “I was trying to seduce you tonight, I never meant to bring up those feelings.” Your breath hitches and you’re so stunned you immediately stop crying. You stand there blinking at him, utterly bewildered. Eric chuckles awkwardly. “Why do you think I did my hair and dressed up tonight? I wanted to look good,” he smiles softly, “…for you.”

“Wh- why for me?” You stutter, unable to fully process the situation.

“Because I like you,” Eric replies, “Even if you’re a bit dense sometimes.”

Words fail you completely. The way he smiles at you, it’s like he has the stars in his eyes and you’re drowning in them, hoping you never have to surface. “You like me? Even though I’m…” You don’t have it in you to finish your sentence.

“I like you because you’re…” Eric says, imitating the way you left off the last few words. “I think you’re beautiful, you know,” he says running his hand through your hair. You want to trust him so badly but part of you still has a hard time believing it.

“So… you don’t care that I don’t look like a ‘girl’.”

“I don’t,” Eric confirms. “I think you’re attractive even when other people mistake you for a guy.”

You aren’t crying anymore, but you’re still overwhelmed and your breath shakes as you exhale. Before you even realize it, your hands are moving from Eric’s shoulders to wrap around the back of his neck, playing with the hair at his nape. You hear Eric sigh softly as he tilts his face up towards yours until your lips are mere inches apart. It’s as if you’re being pulled together by magnets the way you angle your face down ever so slightly towards his and he raises his heels off the ground to reach you. The feeling when Eric’s lips finally meet yours is euphoric. You don’t care that it’s awkward the way your noses or teeth sometimes clash because you have no idea what you’re doing right now. You’re just happy to finally be this close to him even though you’ve just made your lack of experience incredibly obvious.

Eric doesn’t seem to care too much either, the way his hands explore your face, back, and waist as if he’ll never be able to get enough of you. All it took was one taste and you know you’re already addicted to having his hands on your body and his lips against yours. Right as you’re thinking that you hope this will never end, Eric pulls away, leaving you feeling disoriented. “Fuck,” he gasps, gripping your waist. The two of you are panting, but with the way he stopped so abruptly, you feel like you’ve been deprived of oxygen, not afforded more of it.

You try to kiss Eric again but your heart sinks a bit when he stops you. “Wait,” he says breathlessly, “I want to take things slow with you. You deserve to have someone properly take their time with you and put you first. I don’t want you to feel pressured to do anything just because I’m a bit impatient.” Your cheeks feel hot.

“What if… you aren’t the only one who’s impatient?”, you suggest shyly. You feel Eric’s fingers dig into your sides and he moans slightly.

“Don’t- don’t tempt me like that,” he says shakily, clearly struggling to hold himself together. You’re struck with a sudden sense of boldness.

“I want you, Eric.” As soon as his name leaves your mouth, his lips are on yours again and then he’s spreading small kisses all over your face which quickly becomes wet, open mouthed kisses along your jaw and down your neck. You thread your fingers in his hair when he begins to drag his tongue up the skin of your throat. Eric moans against your skin when he hears you sighing his name.

His hands sneak under your shirt to caress the skin of your waist and the sensation of finally having his hands directly on you is so satisfying that you almost don’t start wondering if he can feel the obvious fuzz on your lower back underneath his finger tips. You choose to ignore that thought for now, instead focusing on the way Eric’s mouth is exploring every inch of skin he can access while you still have your shirt on. You’re self conscious still, but you undo the first few buttons of your shirt to let Eric roam further with his lips. He pulls you backwards into to his bedroom, lips never leaving your skin, until he falls back onto his bed, pulling you down with him. You let him roll you over onto your back so that now he’s on top and you’re underneath him.

“Fuck, I want to touch you,” Eric rasps, looking at you with sparkling eyes. You’re about to immediately say yes, then something stops you.

“I… have body hair…” you admit awkwardly. It’s a bit of an understatement, but you’re not sure what else to say. Saying, ‘I was called an animal by the other girls in the middle school locker room,’ would probably not help the mood.

“There’s nothing wrong with a little body hair,” Eric says reassuringly, but the gesture doesn’t help.

“That’s the problem,” you mumble. “It’s not just a little, it’s a lot.”

“Baby, it’s not gonna make me want you any less,” Eric says, leaning up to kiss your cheek. You sigh.

“Promise?”

“Promise. I still really wanna use my fingers on you or go down on you, if you’ll let me.” A shiver runs down your spine.

“Okay,” you acquiesce quietly. Eric runs his hands up and down your sides underneath your top and you allow him to unbutton it the rest of the way, letting it fall off your shoulders. He presses kisses over your sternum, smoothing his hands over your bra and trailing his lips along the path of hair running down your abdomen.

“You’re beautiful,” Eric whispers, his voice brimming with affection. He stops right above the waist of your pants and looks into your eyes, silently requesting to take them off. You nod shyly, and agonizingly slowly, he begins to unbutton them and pull down the zipper. As your pants are pulled down your legs, you become nervous again. You’re wearing underwear, of course, but they do little to hide the amount of hair you have.

“Can I touch you?”, Eric requests softly. You swallow your anxieties and say yes, trying to hide how worried you feel. You yelp in surprise as he pinches your outer thigh gently to get your attention. “Baby, I promise I want you,” he reassures, his calm eyes gazing into your apprehensive ones. “Give me your hand.” He rests his chin on your pubic bone and looks up at you. Eric may have a bit of a smirk on his face, but his eyes are full of sincerity. You allow him to reach up and lace his fingers with yours, giving your hand a small squeeze. “There you go, you’re so good for me,” he praises fondly, delicately trailing the fingers of his free hand over the damp patch that has formed in your underwear.

Eric presses a kiss over the fabric before he asks if he can take them off. Once you give him permission, he pulls them down your legs, tossing them aside, then instructs you to open your legs a bit and put them over his shoulders. You comply. This whole time, Eric still hasn’t let go of your hand. Your bottom half is completely bare now and one of the most handsome men you’ve ever seen, one you’re head over heels for, has his face between your thighs.

Your insecurity doesn’t even get the chance to fully resurface because with every kiss he presses to your inner thighs, Eric gives you a compliment. The closer he gets to your core, the more he reminds you how much he wants you, needs you, thinks you’re beautiful. Eventually, he reaches his destination and uses his fingers to spread your folds to get an unobstructed view. You don’t even realize how wet you are right now until you feel Eric’s fingers dip shallowly into your entrance and then rub your slick all over your clit. A small whimper slips out at the unexpected sensation. You didn’t realize how different it would feel to be touched by someone else for once.

You’re even more surprised when he attaches his mouth and begins to alternate between sucking and little flicks with the tip of his tongue. You gasp and grip his hand tighter, your other hand shooting down to grab at Eric’s hair. It’s not until he starts moaning that you realize he’s begun to grind his hips into the mattress as he eats you out. The sight alone is almost enough to make you cum. You can barely believe that not only do you have a gorgeous man burying his face in your pussy, but he’s getting off on it too. Eric suddenly moans extra loudly and the combination of hearing such a dirty sound come from his mouth and feeling his voice’s vibrations in your clit finally pushes you over the edge.

Choking out a high pitched moan, your body trembles and your hips spasm and you don’t think you’ve ever orgasmed harder than this in your life. You’re gasping and panting as you come down and you let your body go slack. “Oh my god,” you say with a bit of a laugh, your chest still heaving. Eric has a self-satisfied look on his face and normally you might find that annoying, but after the way he made you cum just now, you think it’s absolutely warranted.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and moves up the bed to cage you between his arms and give you a peck on the corner of your mouth. “Good?” Eric asks, still smirking a bit.

“I feel kinda like I’m floating,” you sigh with a blissful smile.

“Do you wanna keep going or are you done for the night?”, Eric inquires.

“I can keep going,” you insist, “just let me catch my breath first. Besides, it would feel awfully unfair if you got to see me naked tonight but I only got to see you fully dressed.”

“You’re still wearing a bra,” Eric points out cheekily. You roll your eyes good-naturedly.

“That’s not the point.”

“I know, I know, I’m messing with you,” he jokes, rolling off of you to sit up next to your reclining figure. “But I still would like to see you with your bra off,” Eric says cheekily.

“I suppose that could be arranged,” you say with a sly smile as you sit up. Reaching behind your back, you unhook it and let the garment slide down your shoulders. Eric looks intently at your breasts as you toss your bra on the floor.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he mutters under his breath, continuing to stare. Based on his facial expression you don’t think he’s even aware that he said anything. Eric reaches out a hand and stops only inches away from your chest before he asks, “can I?”

“As much as you like, Eric,” you confirm, obsessed with the way his mind seems to be almost crumbling just from looking at your tits. He finally closes the distance with his hand, grabbing and gently massaging the flesh and his mouth finds your nipple on the other side, running his flattened tongue over it then taking it into his mouth, beginning to suck.

Originally, you just agreed to let him do this for his own enjoyment. You didn’t expect to get so much more out of someone else touching your breasts than you did when it was just yourself. You’re unable to hold back a pleasured sigh due to how enthusiastic Eric is with his mouth and hands. He pulls his lips off of you with a slight ‘pop’ and before you can even register what’s happening, he’s biting down on the inside of your breast causing you to yelp in surprise.

Immediately, Eric apologizes, but there’s little remorse in his voice as he proudly watches the red mark bloom on your skin. He dives back in to kiss and lick the newly formed bruise. He goes up to kiss your mouth and he’s grinning widely, incredibly pleased with himself.

“Happy with your results?”, you ask, quirking an eyebrow.

“Extremely,” Eric says chuckling. You flick his forehead lightly.

“There’s something you need to fix, though,” you tell him.

“Fix?”

“Yeah. This whole situation still feels awfully unfair,” you complain jokingly. You almost can see the gears turning in his head and then a lightbulb turning on.

“Oh you mean this?” Eric raises his eyebrows with a smirk then gets off the bed to stand in front of it so you can watch him as he takes his shirt off.

“What a smart boy,” you praise sarcastically, watching him hungrily as he begins to remove his pants too. But when he’s finally down to just his underwear, your jaw drops a little bit. You hadn’t paid attention earlier but now that you’re looking, it’s impossible to deny that Eric is big. And this is only from what you can see while he’s still got a layer on. His smile is wolfish as he notices you staring.

“Got anything to say?”, Eric teases, crawling back on top of you and dragging his teeth down your neck with a chuckle. You just moan in response as he sucks another harsh mark onto your skin, this one directly at the base of your neck.

“No fair,” you whine, squirming underneath him. He bites you a couple more times, then you grab his chin. “Can’t I have a turn?” Eric simply hums in agreement then rolls onto his back and pulls you on top of him so that you’re straddling his hips. When you put your weight down, you can feel how hard he is within his underwear and you briefly wonder what it will be like once he’s inside you. Having him underneath you lights an unexpected fire in your belly and you’re suddenly consumed by the need to own him, have him as yours.

Which is exactly what you plan to do… as soon as you confirm one thing. “Eric,” you murmur, pecking him softly on the lips, “this isn’t just sex, right?” Eric smiles fondly at you.

“God, no. I want to be with you. Unless… that’s not what you want?” He looks at you hopefully.

“I want the same thing,” you agree and with a sudden rush of boldness, you lean down and mumble against his neck, “I needed to be sure that you were mine.” When you hear a shuddering breath escape Eric and feel his dick twitch in response, you know that you’ve had quite an effect on him. You roughly drag your front teeth down the side of his throat, pondering how to go about marking him. “Can I put marks where people can see? You’ll let me claim you, yeah?”, you beg softly, placing gentle kisses along his collarbone.

“Fuck… I didn’t realize you’d have a possessive streak,” Eric groans. “That’s really sexy.” He suddenly lets out a gasp of pain when you bite down. You move your lips to his jawline, right beneath his ear and pull a bit of skin between your teeth and start sucking hard. When you pull away and see the mark darkening on his skin, you feel yourself swell a little with pride at your success. You repeat this along his jaw and down his neck until Eric has a noticeable path of bruises reaching his shoulder.

With your full weight, you settle your hips back down on his, rubbing yourself along his clothed cock and relishing the way you can feel your arousal soaking through his underwear. Eric moans loudly but then grabs your hips to still your movements and sits up against the headboard. He emits a whine as you reposition yourself in his lap and run your hands over his chest.

“Can I fuck you now?” Eric’s eyes are desperate and ravenous. Nobody has ever looked at you like that before and it makes your insides burn with desire.

“…Yeah,” you choke out. You get off of him so he can finally uncover himself completely and you don’t expect your breath to hitch the way it does when erection springs free from its confines. “Holy shit,” you mumble, staring. How does it seem even larger up close? Is it even going to fit?

Without even really thinking about it, your hand reaches out hesitantly to touch him and you gasp in surprise when Eric takes your wrist and guides you the rest of the way. Experimentally, you pump him a few times before letting go to return to your original position in his lap.

It’s finally about to happen and you suddenly feel shy again, causing you to bite your lower lip and look into his eyes for reassurance. “We don’t have to go through with this if you aren’t comfortable,” Eric reminds you, but you shake your head.

“Please,” you beg.

“Anything for you,” Eric says, placing a quick kiss to your lips and then positions his cock right at your entrance as you kneel, hips hovering above his. You slowly sink down on him, barely enveloping him past the tip. It hurts more than you expected, but it almost feels good too, and you can’t help but let out a string of curses and broken moans as you try to adjust to the unfamiliar sensation. Pushing past the burn, you lower yourself down more, Eric praising you, running his hands soothingly over your thighs.

You’re panting as you dig your fingernails into his shoulders and if you didn’t pause to look at his face, you would have missed the way Eric is gazing at you as if you hold the whole universe in your hands. Neither of you has said those words yet, but right now, you can’t deny that you feel deeply and utterly loved. Loved by this person who chose to see you instead of just looking at you. You don’t want to say anything for fear of ruining this moment by taking things too fast, so you cup his cheek with one palm and hope that the gesture is enough for him to understand your heart. And when Eric flutters his eyes closed and leans into your touch, you get the feeling that he does.

It takes one more final push before you can feel him bottoming out inside you. You let your head fall back as you gasp for breath. “Please move,” you whimper. “I don’t think I can do it myself.” Eric pulls you towards him to press your torso against his, which lifts your hips slightly in the process. He uses the new angle to slowly pull himself out a bit then plants his feet to thrust back in from underneath you causing you to yelp and whimper. His movements are slow but strong, and the friction you feel inside makes your legs tremble. And much to your satisfaction, Eric isn’t remotely hesitant to be vocal, his extended moans, deep breathing, and occasional whines turning you on more than you’d like to admit. You feel like your whole body is burning from the inside out and you’re crying out his name like it’s the only word you know.

Gradually, Eric increases his pace and pretty soon, both of you have become an absolute mess — sweaty and covered in new bite marks, moaning each other’s names during the occasional moments when you aren’t kissing feverishly. You’re sure that at this point, you’re disturbing the neighbors, but you can’t bring yourself to care, not with the way you’re intoxicated from all of your senses being flooded with nothing but him. Eric is still fucking you hard, doing all the work from underneath and you wonder how he has the stamina to keep going like this. Deep inside, you can feel a familiar pressure building up again. Your orgasm begins to approach and from the way his thrusts become frantic and start to lose their rhythm, you know Eric is getting close too.

“Please, please, please…” you chant breathlessly as your walls begin to clench and spasm around him.

“Cum for me, please,” Eric begs you in return and then starts rambling fervently. “Just let go, please, you’re so good for me, please… I love you…”

And then you cum. Your orgasm crashes over you more intensely than you’ve ever experienced before and as you cry out and tremble in his arms, Eric’s words play over and over in your head. I love you. I love you. I love you. You don’t have the mental space right now to wonder if he even meant it or if it was something he just said in the spur of the moment. To you it felt real.

With a low groan, you feel Eric spill inside you, his hips stuttering until they still as he rides out his own orgasm. When you feel a hot tear drip down your face, you finally realize that you’re crying. You aren’t sure why at first — you aren’t upset, you aren’t in pain, everything seems to be fine. But when you look at Eric and he sees your glassy eyes and he starts to apologize, asking if he used the word ‘love’ too soon, suddenly it makes sense. You’re just emotionally sensitive right now and with a sniffle and your arms wrapped around his neck, you whisper, “I love you too.”

Eric kisses away your tears and smooths over your hair with his hand. His length slips out of you and you can feel sticky cum drip down your inner thighs as he flips you over and gently lays you on your back. He wastes no time in cleaning you up and soon enough he’s pulling a blanket over you and crawling into bed next to your still panting figure. Eric wraps you in his arms, pressing a sweet peck to your cheek. “Let’s just get to sleep, yeah?” He says and you allow yourself to doze off, safe and warm within his embrace.

~~~

When Monday rolls around, you don’t know how to feel about going to school with a few too many hickies to realistically cover up. You’re proud of who you got them from, but at the same time, you’re a bit mortified. People have been giving you weird glances since you arrived this morning and you know it’s because your neck is covered in bite marks and bruises. As you walk into the classroom, you see one or two people whispering and while you doubt they’re saying anything mean, it’s still embarrassing knowing that they can’t help but to mention to their friends how obvious it is.

Not long after you sit down, you hear a familiar voice cheerfully announce “Hey, babe!” You turn to smile at Eric who’s making his way towards you, giving you a quick kiss on the lips before he settles in the chair next to you. Both the simultaneous feelings of pride and humiliation return when it occurs to you that his neck looks just as bad as yours and now everyone can tell that you got those marks from each other. Regardless, you can’t suppress the smile that surfaces at the sight of your new boyfriend sitting next to you.

When class ends and you’ve both packed up your belongings, Eric grabs your hand and walks with you out of the room, swinging your intertwined hands as you go. You giggle at his affectionate gesture. “Any plans for the day?”, Eric asks as you walk leisurely through one of the campus’ green spaces.

“Hm,” you consider. “Not really. I was just considering grabbing some snacks and sneaking them into the library so I can eat while I study. Wanna come with?” Eric nods and soon enough you find yourself sharing a sofa in a more secluded study area, discretely feeding each other chocolate covered pretzels and trying not to laugh too hard at stupid videos you’re watching on his phone, the original plan to study completely forgotten.

You’re so content right now that nothing could spoil this moment for you. Not even when Gina (who usually makes your blood boil) accidentally happens upon the scene while Eric is pressing a long kiss to your neck, not even aware she’s there. You smile a little and wave and you can tell she’s noticed the marks decorating both your and Eric’s necks when she subconsciously touches her own, facial expression brimming with disgust. As you let out a brief chuckle, Eric detaches his lips from your skin and looks at you questioningly. He raises his eyebrows but you just shake your head. “Nothing important,” you say and run your hand through his hair. Eric shrugs.

“Okay.” Then he leans his head against your shoulder as you both absentmindedly fidget with each other’s hands, just enjoying the peaceful moment together.

“Eric?”, you ask, getting his attention.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

That’s all you say. You give no context, no explanation, but that’s okay because when you look into his eyes, you see that he knows exactly what you mean.

——end——

Holy shit I’ve never written something so long before or even thought about writing something this long. I think I might be insane. But that’s okay. It resulted in this fic and I’m happy with it.

[woman-respecter]

This group of “Trans guy MRAs” are just mad that they believed the lie that transitioning would take away the misogyny they faced (it doesn’t) and give them power in the way cis men have (it doesn’t). What you get is no more catcalls (if you pass) and things like that lol. Nice, sure, but nothing that shows up in, say, government representation (underrepresented), or statistics about who’s a victim of sexual violence (overrepresented). They NEED to PROVE they are men somehow, so they get online and write big angry paragraphs and blame it on women - they can’t blame it on men because they desperately want to be accepted by men. If they push too hard the house of cards will fall and they can never climb to the top! I also think a lot of them still harbor resentment towards women and girls because being bullied in childhood for their masculinity. (Speaking from personal experience on that one, and with a lot of compassion.)

Well-adjusted trans men with critical thinking skills do not do this, though, lol. They find any number of ways to understand the shifting gendered experiences, and see that women as a class are not causing their issues. Patriarchy continues to oppress us. Appealing to cis men is useless to me because I don’t support the hierarchy they created. I don’t want any part of that. If that makes me look Less Manly, so be it. I’d rather stand alongside women and acknowledge both our similarities and differences, and fight for the same issues.

i think that’s a p good analysis of the situation!

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

When I was an edgy teenager, I was listening to a lot of punk, specifically grunge and riot grrrl (make fun of me later). While I liked how the music sounded (LOL, I was fourteen/fifteen and had no taste), the messaging was patronizing, even if I was the target demographic, technically. (I'm a woman with a lot of "checked boxes"). All of these artists were saying outwardly that "women, POC, and The Homos™ are totally oppressed and if you hate them then we hate you." Grunge/riot grrrl/punk, despite their desire to "make a difference," really didn't, I don't think, unless they wanted to make social relationships worse. It was also a genre full of white people who were drowning in white guilt and actively admitted as such - I blame feminism.

In their quest to sound non-bigoted, this group of woke/leftist heterosexual white men and bisexual white women were calling all minority/"underrepresented" people helpless victims and advocating for violence and degeneracy (which worked). Yes, non-homosexuals with white saviour complexes, you totally know what you're talking about. (There were a couple homos in there too, unfortunately, and they loved that these people were giving into their victimhood mindset - I still think we're better than this shit).

Oh, and the best part? If any woman, POC, or homosexual called them out on their bullshit, they called them handmaidens, Uncle Toms, or under the heterosexual's boot, including actively harassing them. They called them names, said they were unwelcome, and pushed them out of spaces they claimed to have made for minorities. Really sounds sexist, racist, and homophobic if you ask me.

The bigoted leftists who claim to be "fighting bigotry" is not new. The rhetoric people think is new and from the 2010s has been around for a long time. These genres came out in the 1980s and 1990s, but it feels like even back then they were lying about how bad things were. I've seen multiple videos, including street interviews, home videos, etc, from the time and socially, it was much better than things are today. People of any sex, race, or sexuality were friends and outwardly said they cared for each other. "I love my white brothers," "I don't care if she's a woman as long as she loves rock 'n roll like I do," "Straight people in my community don't give a shit about lesbians/gays, even when we're in drag/cross-dressing." (paraphrased)

I've also noticed that the metal bands that were grouped in with grunge/riot grrrl/punk purely by association (rather than by genres overlapping) had not only the best music, but the band members actually had brains and didn't fall for the victimhood bullshit, even if they weren't explicitly conservative. I still listen to Layne Staley and Kat Bjelland because of this, and metal has so many conservative (or at least non-leftist) artists. That's where it's at.

The "grunge/punk icons" who are still alive today are now the type who are advocating to let trans-identified males into women's spaces and cheering on the female teachers (trans-identified or not) who are grooming kids in classrooms, among other popular leftist viewpoints. None of their viewpoints have changed in over thirty years. I'd say it was a fall from grace, but I'm not surprised at all. My generation (Gen Z) loves them because they were/are saying the same stuff my generation says today, and my generation acting all shocked that this rhetoric isn't new ("They were saying this stuff in 1992!!! Can you believe it??? Can't believe nothing has changed >:(.") is unbelievably cringe and shows how uninformed they are. Yeah, nothing has changed - leftists are still pushing the same dividing, hustler bullshit.

TLDR: Punk has always been shit and full of pussies, metal reigns supreme.

Worthwhile read.

Also a great endorsement for late 90s-mid 2000s pop punk. Most of that was about how much school sucked and how no one can find girlfriends. Very apolitical. XD

[thestoriesofimmigration]

Federal Government Hikes Income Requirement for Foreign Students, Targets ‘Puppy Mill’ Schools

Ottawa will require foreigners applying to study in Canada to have double the amount of funds currently required, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Thursday.

He also threatened to cap visas in provinces that don't help house students or who won't shut down educational institutions that he argues shouldn't be operating.

"There are, in provinces, the diploma equivalent of puppy mills that are just churning out diplomas, and this is not a legitimate student experience," Miller said at a news conference.

Miller said the measures are meant to ensure international students aren't vulnerable to sketchy employers and "unscrupulous" schools that leave them unable to afford life in Canada.

"Clearly, we have become a country that has been targeted for abuse and exploitation by some unsavoury actors," he said.

Starting next year, prospective students will need to show they have access to $20,635 instead of the $10,000 requirement that has been in place for two decades, in addition to paying travel and tuition. The amount will be adjusted yearly based on a Statistics Canada benchmark for living costs.

For years, critics have argued that some colleges are providing foreigners with inadequate educations while giving them a chance to get visas to work in Canada and to eventually immigrate.

The issue has attracted close scrutiny as an uptick in international students has coincided with a housing shortage. Media outlets have reported on students scraping by in exploitative jobs.

"It would be a mistake to blame international students for the housing crisis. But it also be a mistake to invite them to come to Canada with no support, including how to put a roof over their heads," Miller said.

"It's why we expect learning institutions to only accept a number of (international) students that they're able to provide for — able to house, or assist in finding off-campus housing."

Miller said there will need to be more conversations with provinces before any visa caps are introduced.

"Enough is enough. If provinces and territories cannot do this, we will do it for them, and they will not like the bluntness of the instruments that we use," he said.

"We could potentially miss the mark. Provinces have a number of tools at their disposal — namely the regulation of the designated learning institutions, that in some cases just need actually to be shut down."

Changes to Employment Rules

The Liberals are also winding down a policy that lengthened the time graduating international students could work in Canada without an employment visa.

Miller said Ottawa is reviewing how many hours students should be allowed to work in Canada, saying that capping it to 20 hours a week would be "on the draconian end of the spectrum" but allowing 40 working hours per week would give people reason to come to Canada and not focus on their studies.

The advocacy group Migrant Students United urged Ottawa to come up with clear rules.

"Federal immigration policy is a roller-coaster," national organizer Sarom Rho said in a statement.

"We don't need monthly improvisations and chaotic twists that let exploitation and abuse continue. We will continue to speak up for stable, fair rules and permanent residency for all."

Rho added that the increase in funds required to apply for a student visa, as well as recent changes to permanent-residency requirements, will leave students "scrambling."

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said in a press release it is considering pilot programs for "underrepresented cohorts of international students" who are unable to study in Canada as a result of the new income requirements.

Source: CBC NEWS

[sublimeobservationarcade]

The Early Education Rip Off In Australia

I have a daughter working in child care in Australia. She loves her job and is very good at what she does. However, she is paid a pittance for her skills in this space and the undervaluing of early education in Australia is a disgrace. Listening to Jessica Rudd from The Parenthood advocacy group speak at the National Press Club was enlightening and inspiring. Very little has shifted over many years in this space. The early education rip off in Australia continues. Ten years of Coalition federal governments did next to nothing for the nation in this important sector.

Photo by Oleksandr P on Pexels.com

Child Care An Expensive Failure In Australia

The Libs and the Nat’s are all about private enterprise making profits at the expense of the national need, especially when it comes to the care sector. Proper restructuring and investment by government in the early education space is required. Australia is considered to be a wealthy nation by the raw numbers alone. However, much of this wealth is hoarded by private interests and the policies of the two main political parties are designed around this. Australia is lacking in affordable universal child care, proper aged care, and universal dental care as part of Medicare. Social housing is now a crisis black hole in Australia after decades of neoliberal policies, which neglected investment in the social infrastructure of the nation.

Private Wealth Interests At The Expense Of Public Need The economic policies of the conservatively minded parties are all about individuals amassing wealth at the expense of the shared fiscal responsibilities of the nation. No capital gains tax on the family home, even if it is worth tens of millions of dollars. No death taxes. There is no redistribution of wealth measures to help promote a level playing field. The Coalition introduced regressive taxation measures, which are culminating with the stage 3 tax cuts. These further entrench divergence between those born into wealth and those not. The wealth divide in Australia jumped massively during the last decade via the economic policies of the Liberal party and National party governments. “Capital gains tax concessions for a main residence were worth $48bn in 2022-23 and rental deductions $24.4bn. In 2019-20 taxpayers reported total rental losses of $10.2bn, delivering them a $3.6bn negative gearing tax benefit.” - (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/01/albanese-rejects-changes-to-capital-gains-tax-on-the-family-home-full-stop-exclamation-mark) Peter Dutton spends his time in parliament aggressively attacking the Albanese government over emotive issues like race, refugees, and war in Gaza and Israel. The Opposition under Dutton refuses all bipartisan entreaties and says No to everything proposed by the government. You would think that after 10 years in government the Coalition would find some grace. Most of the economic policies which have put Australia where it is are from their time in office. It takes at least 18 months to several years for government policies to bear macroeconomic fruit.

Toxic Masculinity LNP Politics Not Serving The Care Sector The toxic masculinity of the LNP in Australia – see Peter Dutton – is in large part to blame for the underinvestment in the care sector. This predominantly feminised workforce has been treated with indifference and disdain by Coalition governments. They consider them to be babysitters and women with free time on their hands to look after kids and oldies. The LNP do not have many women members in their ranks – they are underrepresented. Those that they have in parliament are working within a toxic masculine framework. The LNP see politics as a brutal arena where bullies and strongmen prevail. Dutton thinks he can bully Anthony Albanese out of office. Child Care Rip Off Merchants The early education rip off in Australia has private providers charging what they like. “Australia's consumer watchdog has lifted the lid on the burden of childcare costs, revealing families are paying some of the highest costs in the world for their children's education. An ACCC report found Aussie parents are paying nearly 80 per cent more than families overseas, with calls for education providers who are "ripping off" families with unreasonable price increases to be named and shamed. "Australian parents are actually paying 16 per cent of their income towards childcare compared to other countries where it is just nine per cent," mother-of-two and Working Mummas founder, Carina O'Brien told Today.” - (https://9now.nine.com.au/today/early-education-rip-off-consumer-report-finds-aussie-families-paying-80-per-cent-more-than-other-countries/c0569fbb-4d12-4436-80c5-78bcb5d4d7ba)

It is time that the Albanese government grows some courage and gets its hands dirty when it comes to leading this country. ALP lite is no longer going to work in the current economic climate. Start paying early educators proper wages, so that the sector can attract and maintain quality staff. Intervene in rural areas by operating national early education centres where they are required. Use existing crown land, where schools are already located in regional areas. The private sector neoliberal approach does not work in too many instances, when it comes to the child care early education sector. “At The Parenthood, our vision is clear: every child, irrespective of background or location, deserves the chance to flourish through access to top-tier early childhood education. It’s not merely about education; it’s about building the bedrock of a just and prosperous society,” Ms Rudd said. ​ Addressing the political and economic landscape, in her speech Ms Rudd will acknowledge the government’s commitment to universal ECEC while also raising concerns about potential challenges and stressed the importance of staying true to this vision. ​ “Reforming early childhood education is legacy material. It’s a reform that will deliver immediate benefits for families on cost of living, but it is also a reform that will build our future capability. It’s an investment in the leaders of tomorrow,” she notes.  ​ “Australia should be the best place in the world to be a parent and raise a child. We are the country of Bluey, for goodness sake. We have mangoes and verandahs, the oldest continuing cultures in the world. We are resilient and diverse; vast and bold.”  ​ Highlighting last week’s report from the Productivity Commission, Ms Rudd will also speak on the flaws in the current activity test – which requires parents to work or study for at least 30 hours a week in order to get the Child Care Subsidy – and the urgent need for workforce reforms in the early childhood education sector. “ - (https://thesector.com.au/2023/11/29/parenthood-ceo-will-address-national-press-club-today-speaking-on-ecec-reform/) Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt, and Financial Freedom.  ©MidasWord Read the full article

[cacmsinsitute]

The Impact of Bias in Machine Learning Algorithms

The ability to automate decision-making processes across a variety of disciplines has shown great promise for machine learning algorithms. However, biases can still affect them and have a significant impact on society. In-depth discussion of bias in machine learning algorithms, its causes, effects, and mitigation techniques is provided in this article.

Making decisions in fields as varied as banking, healthcare, criminal justice, and employment is now impossible without the use of machine learning algorithms. These algorithms have received praise for their effectiveness and efficiency, although they do have some drawbacks. Bias is one of the most urgent issues since it can support and even exacerbate inequality in our society.

Data Bias: When training data is biased or unrepresentative, the algorithm learns and perpetuates those biases. A hiring algorithm trained on historical data, for example, may prefer certain demographics over others.

Algorithm Bias: Because of their design or feature selection, algorithms can introduce bias. This can occur if the algorithm prioritizes one factor over another without adequate justification.

The Consequences of Bias:

Bias in machine learning algorithms can have a significant and negative impact in several ways:

Discrimination: Certain groups may be discriminated against by biased algorithms, resulting in unequal treatment. Biassed credit scoring models, for example, can deny loans to deserving applicants based on their demographic background.

Stereotype Reinforcement: Biassed algorithms can perpetuate harmful stereotypes, deepening societal prejudices. This can have long-term consequences for marginalized communities.

Lack of Fairness and Accountability: Biassed algorithms erode decision-making processes' principles of fairness and accountability. When an algorithm makes a biased decision, it becomes difficult to assign blame or correct the situation.

Mitigating Bias in Machine Learning Algorithms:

Addressing bias in machine learning is a difficult and ongoing task. Several strategies, however, can help to mitigate its impact:

Diverse and Representative Data: It is critical to ensure that training data is diverse and representative of the population. This could entail actively seeking out underrepresented groups or employing data augmentation techniques.

Fairness Metrics: During algorithm development, define and measure fairness metrics to identify and correct biased outcomes. Metrics such as demographic parity and equality of opportunity can be used.

Regular Auditing: Audit and re-evaluate algorithms for bias on a regular basis, especially in high-stakes applications such as healthcare and criminal justice. A continuous feedback loop is used to improve model fairness.

Transparency and Explainability: Improve the transparency and explainability of algorithms so that their decision-making processes can be scrutinized and understood. This encourages accountability.

Conclusion: Bias in machine learning algorithms is a critical issue that requires our attention and action. While these algorithms have enormous potential, they also have the potential to reinforce societal inequalities and discrimination. To reap the benefits of machine learning while minimizing its negative consequences, we must all work together to identify, understand, and mitigate bias in algorithmic decision-making. Only then can we ensure that these tools help to create a more just and equitable society.

Do you want to learn about machine learning and how to deal with bias in algorithms? Look no further than CACMS Institute for the best machine learning courses in Amritsar. Join us on a journey that combines cutting-edge technology with ethical responsibility. Enroll now to help Amritsar shape an unbiased AI landscape!

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[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Michael Shermer

Published: Mar 22, 2016

The French political journalist and supporter of the Royalist cause in the French Revolution, Jacques Mallet du Pan, famously summarized what often happens to extremists: “the Revolution devours its children.” I was thinking about this idiom—and its doppelgänger “what goes around comes around”—while writing a lecture for a talk I was invited to give at my alma mater California State University, Fullerton on the topic: “Is freedom of speech harmful for college students?” The short answer is an unflinching and unequivocal “No.”

Why is this question even being asked? When I was in college free speech was the sine qua non of the academy. It is what tenure was designed to protect! The answer may be found in the recent eruptions of student protests at numerous American colleges and universities, including Amherst, Brandeis, Brown, Claremont McKenna, Oberlin, Occidental, Princeton, Rutgers, University of California, University of Missouri, Williams, Yale, and others. Most of these paroxysms were under the guise of protecting students from allegedly offensive speech and disagreeable ideas—defined differently by different interest groups—with demands for everything from trigger warnings and safe spaces to microaggressions and speaker disinvitations.

Between the 1960s and the 2010s, what went wrong?

[ Students at Rutgers University protest a talk by Milo Yiannopoulos by smearing red on their faces and shouting “hate” when he challenged them to hear other points of view. ]

The Problem

Trigger warnings are supposed to be issued to students before readings, classroom lectures, film screenings, or public speeches on such topics as sex, addiction, bullying, suicide, eating disorders, and the like, involving such supposed prejudices as ableism, homophobia, sizeism, slut shaming, transphobia, victim-blaming, and who-knows-what-else, thereby infantilizing students instead of preparing them for the real world where they most assuredly will not be so shielded. At Oberlin College, for example, students leveled accusations against the administration of imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, and the ne plus ultra in gender politics, cissexist heteropatriarchy, the enforcement of “gender binary and gender essentialism” against those who are “gender variant (non-binary) and trans identities.” The number of such categories has expanded into an alphabet string, LGBTQIA, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual and any other underrepresented sexual, gender, and/or romantic identities.1 This is not your parents’ protest against Victorian sexual mores, and the list of demands by Oberlin students would be unrecognizable to even the most radical 60’s hippies:

The creation of a school busing system for Oberlin, Ohio’s K–12 schools, paid for by the college.

The establishment of special, segregated black-only “safe spaces” across campus.

A more inclusive audition process in the Conservatory that does not privilege Western European theoretical knowledge over playing ability.

The creation of a bridge program that will recruit recently-released prisoners to enroll at Oberlin for undergraduate courses.

The most audacious demand was “an $8.20/hour stipend for black student leaders who are organizing protest efforts.” These students wanted to be paid for protesting!

As often happens in moral movements, a reasonable idea with some evidentiary backing gets carried to extremes by engaged moralists eager for attention, sympathy, and the social standing that being a victim or victim sympathizer can bring. Soldiers suffering from PTSD, for example, may be “triggered” by the backfire of a nearby automobile, but no one has proposed that automobile manufacturers put “trigger warnings” on cars to accommodate soldiers. As well, the Harvard psychologist Richard McNally points out that trigger warnings may have the opposite effect for which they are intended, because “systematic exposure to triggers and the memories they provoke is the most effective means of overcoming the disorder.” McNally sites an analysis by the Institute of Medicine, which found that “exposure therapy is the most efficacious treatment for PTSD, especially in civilians who have suffered trauma such as sexual assault.” In other words, face your problems head-on and deal with them. An additional problem with trigger warnings is that the number of triggers has expanded to the point where nearly every speech and lecture could contain triggering words, turning communication into a moral hazard. Finally, who determines what is “triggering” anyway? The very concept is a recipe for censorship.

Safe space, according to the organization Advocates for Youth, is “A place where anyone can relax and be fully self-expressed, without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome or challenged on account of biological sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, cultural background, age, or physical or mental ability; a place where the rules guard each person’s self-respect, dignity and feelings and strongly encourage everyone to respect others.” Some such places even contain pillows, soothing music, milk and cookies, and videos of puppies.

In addition to infantilizing adults, this practice often means protecting students from opinions that they don’t happen to agree with, or shielding them from ideas that challenge their beliefs, which has always been one of the most valuable benefits of a college education. In any case, college campuses, along with the cities and states they’re in, are already designed to be safe from violence and discrimination based on the rule of law enforced by the police and courts. In point of fact, most of these colleges nestled in American cities are among the safest places on earth. If you want to build a safe space for people who really need it, go to Syria or Somalia. And if this opinion triggers you or makes you feel unsafe then you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on in the world.

Microaggressions are comments or questions that slight, snub, or insult someone, intentionally or unintentionally, in anything from casual conversation to formal discourse. According to the University of California publication Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send, examples include:

Asking, “Where are you from or where were you born?” or “What are you?” This implies someone is not a true American.

Inquiring, “How did you become so good in math?” (to people of color) or suggesting “You must be good in math” (to an Asian), which is stereotyping.

Proclaiming, “There is only one race, the human race” or “I don’t believe in race.” This denies the significance of a person of color’s racial/ethnic experience and history.

Opining, “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” or “America is the land of opportunity.” This suggests that the playing field is level, so if women or people of color do not fill all jobs and careers in precise proportion to their population percentages, it must mean that the problem is with them, or that they are lazy or incompetent and just need to work harder.

[ Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send (click image to enlarge) ]

Yes, language matters, and some comments that people make are cringe worthy (e.g., saying “you people” to a group of African Americans, or “you’re a girl, you don’t have to be good at math”). But do we really need a list of DOs and DON’Ts handed out to students and reviewed like they were five-year olds being taught how to play nice with the other kids in the sandbox? Can’t adults work out these issues themselves without administrators stepping in as surrogate parents? And who determines what constitutes “hate,” “racist” or “sexist” speech? Who it happens to bother or offend? Students? Faculty? Administration? And as with the problem of trigger words, the list of microaggressions grows, turning normal conversation into a cauldron of potential violations that further restricts speech, encourages divisiveness rather than inclusiveness, and forces people to censor themselves, dissemble, withhold opinion, or outright lie about what they believe.

An incident at Brandeis University in 2015 is instructive: when Asian American students installed an exhibition on microaggressions, other Asian American students claimed that the exhibit was itself a microaggression that triggered negative feelings, leading the president to issue an apology to anyone “triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions.” Agreed, blurting out “Why do you Asians always hang out together” is lame, but at this point in history it just makes the communicant sound more like a bore than a bigot, and more deserving of eye rolls than public humiliation.

[ Brandeis University microagression display, later declared a microagression (click image to enlarge) ]

Speaker disinvitations—cancellations of invited speakers—have been accelerating over the past decade. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), 257 such incidents have occurred since 2000, 111 of which were successful in preventing the invited guests from giving their talks. In 2014, for example, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was invited to give the commencement speech at Brandies University, where she was to also receive an honorary doctorate. After students protested, citing her criticism of Islam for its mistreatment of women, the administration caved into their demands and Ali was no-platformed (as it is called in England). Worse, in this theater of the absurd, students from U.C. Berkeley attempted to no-platform the comedian and social commentator Bill Maher for his alleged “Islamophobia,” code for anyone who criticizes Islam for any reason. Maher delivered his commencement oration nonetheless, telling the very liberal student body that “Liberals should own the First Amendment the way conservatives own the Second Amendment,” pointing out that apparently irony is no longer taught at this birthplace of the 1960’s free speech movement. This was topped by students at Williams College who, in October 2015, succeeded in disinviting Suzanne Venker, author of The Flipside of Feminism. Venker was invited to participate in the college’s “Uncomfortable Learning” lecture series but, well, she made some students feel too uncomfortable. “When you bring a misogynistic, white supremacist men’s rights activist to campus in the name of ‘dialogue’ and ‘the other side,’” whined one student on Facebook, it causes “actual mental, social, psychological, and physical harm to students.” Physically harm?

[ Banner from the website of Ayaan Hirsi Ali ]

The effects of such protests are often the opposite of what the protesters sought. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s speech, for example, was printed in the Wall Street Journal where it was seen by that paper’s 2.37 million readers, many orders of magnitude more than would have heard it on campus. Bill Maher turned his Berkeley brouhaha into a bit for his HBO television show Real Time, which carries over four million viewers. More irony.

What may have started out as well intentioned actions at curbing prejudices and attenuating bigotry with the goal of making people more tolerant, has now metamorphosed into thought police attempting to impose totalitarian measures that result in silencing dissent of any kind. The result is the very opposite of what free speech and a college education is all about.

Why such unrest in the academy—among the most liberal institutions in the country—surrounded as these students are by so many liberal professors and administrators? Here I will offer five proximate (immediate) causes, one ultimate (deeper) cause, and some solutions.

Proximate Causes

1. Moral Progress

As I document in The Moral Arc, we have made so much moral progress since the Enlightenment—particularly since the civil rights and women’s rights movements that launched the modern campus protest movement in the first place—that our standards of what is tolerable have been ratcheted ever upward to the point where students are hypersensitive to things that, by comparison, didn’t even appear on the cultural radar half a century ago. This progress has happened gradually enough on the news cycle measure of days and weeks to be beneath the awareness of most observers, but fast enough that it can be tracked on time scales ranging from years to decades. For example, remember when interracial marriage was a divisive debate? Me neither. But recall the now-jarring words of the trial judge Leon M. Bazile, who convicted Richard and Mildred Loving in the case (Loving v. Virginia) that ultimately made its way to the Supreme Court in 1967 and overturned laws banning interracial marriage: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” Same-sex marriage went through a similar evolution as interracial marriage, culminating in the 5–4 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2015 to make same-sex marriage the law of the land, another data point in the long-term trend toward granting more rights to more people.

Interracial marriage and same-sex marriage are themselves the legacy of the rights revolutions that first took off in the late 1700s when the idea of rights was invented and then demanded, first in the American Revolution (starting with the Declaration of Independence in 1776), then in the French Revolution (with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789), inspiring subsequent rights revolutions and documents (for example, Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791). The result, two and a half centuries later, has been the abolition of slavery, the eradication of torture, the elimination of the death penalty in all modern democracies save America, the franchise for all adult citizens, children’s rights, women’s rights, gay rights, animal rights, and even the rights of future generations to inhabit a livable planet. Who knows, perhaps one day soon we’ll even grant rights to Artificially Intelligent robots. In other words, most of the big moral movements have been fought and won, leaving today’s students with comparatively smaller causes to promote and evils to protest, but with moral emotions just as powerful as those of previous generations, so their outrage seems disproportionate.

2. Transition from a Culture of Honor to a Culture of Victimhood

In a culture of honor one settles minor disputes oneself and leaves the big crimes to the criminal justice system. Over the past two decades this has been eroded and is being replaced by a culture of victimhood in which one turns to parent-like authorities (faculty and college administrators, but not the law) to settle minor disputes over insults and slights.2 The culture of honor leads to autonomy, independence, self-reliance, and self-esteem, whereas the culture of victimhood leads to dependence and puerile reliance on parental figures to solve ones’ problems. In this victimhood culture the primary way to gain status is to either be a victim or to condemn alleged perpetrators against victims, leading to an accelerating search for both.3 A student at the University of Oxford named Eleanor Sharman explained how it happened to her after she joined a campus feminist group named Cuntry Living and started reading their literature on misogyny and patriarchy:

Along with all of this, my view of women changed. I stopped thinking about empowerment and started to see women as vulnerable, mistreated victims. I came to see women as physically fragile, delicate, butterfly-like creatures struggling in the cruel net of patriarchy. I began to see male entitlement everywhere.

As a result she became fearful and timid, afraid even to go out to socialize:

Feminism had not empowered me to take on the world—it had not made me stronger, fiercer or tougher. Even leaving the house became a minefield. What if a man whistled at me? What if someone looked me up and down? How was I supposed to deal with that? This fearmongering had turned me into a timid, stay-at-home, emotionally fragile bore.

It is not that there are no longer real victims of actual crimes, but it is a disservice to them to equate the trivial peccadillos of microaggressions or triggering words with brutal rapes and murders. A feminist named Melody Hensley, for example, who was once the Executive Director of the Center for Inquiry in Washington DC. claims that years of online stalking and social media trolls gave her PTSD on par with that of combat soldiers, disabling her from being able to work. Not surprisingly, war vets were not sympathetic.

3. From Anti-Fragile to Fragile Children

One response to the 1970s and 1980s crime wave was a shift toward “helicopter parenting” in which children were no longer allowed to be, well, children. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains why through the concept of anti-fragility: “Bone is anti-fragile. If you treat it gently, it will get brittle and break. Bone actually needs to get banged around to toughen up. And so do children. I’m not saying they need to be spanked or beaten, but they need to have a lot of unsupervised time, to get in over their heads and get themselves out. And that greatly decreased in the 1980s. Anxiety, fragility and psychological weakness have skyrocketed in the last 15–20 years.” Those kids are today’s college students, and as a consequence they have brittle bones and thin skins. An example of an anti-fragile person with strong bones and thick skin is the model Isabelle Boemeke, who tweeted what she does when verbally harassed on the streets by ogling men:

Here’s what I do when catcalled: roll my eyes, if he’s Hispanic say “chinga tú madre!”, put earphones on, continue with life. — Isabelle Boemeke (@isaboemeke) February 10, 2016

4. Puritanical Purging

Social movements tend to turn on themselves in puritanical purging of anyone who falls short of moral perfection, leading to preemptive denunciations of others before one is so denounced. The witch crazes of the 17th century degenerated into such anticipatory condemnations, resulting in a veritable plethora of nonexistent sorceresses being strapped to faggots and torched. The 20th century witnessed Marxist and feminist groups undergoing similar purges as members competed for who was the purist and defenestrated those who fell below the unrealizable standard. On the other side of the political spectrum, Ayn Rand’s objectivist movement took off in a frenzied build up after the publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1959, but by the time the philosopher-novelist died in 1982 most of the insider “collective” had been expunged for various sins against the philosophy, from listening to the wrong music to challenging the founder on any point of substance or minutia. Such purification purges are among the worst things that can happen to a social movement.

[ Pre-emptive denunciations lead to witch hunts. ]

5. Virtue Signaling

Related to puritanical purging is virtue signaling, in which members of a movement compete to signal who is the most righteous by (A) recounting all the moral acts one has performed and (B) identifying all the immoral acts others have committed. This leads to an arms-race to signal moral outrage over increasingly diminishing transgressions, such as unapproved Halloween costumes at Yale University, which led to a student paroxysm against a faculty member, a cell-phone video of which went viral and nearly brought the campus to a stand still. This is an example of what Maajid Nawaz means by “regressive liberalism,” where freedom of speech and expression are sacrificed in the name of tolerance, which is actually intolerance. One of the first acts of totalitarian regimes is to restrict dissent and free speech, so perhaps it should be called totalitarian liberalism.

[ Yale college master Nicholas Christakis (in blue shirt) is verbally assaulted by a student who accused him of not doing enough to censor the wearing of Halloween costumes that could be seen as offensive. “Who the fuck hired you?” the girl with the backpack screamed at the professor. ]

An Ultimate Cause

A deeper reason behind the campus problem is a lack of diversity. Not ethnic, race, or gender diversity, but viewpoint diversity, specifically, political viewpoint. The asymmetry is startling. A 2014 study conducted by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute found that 59.8 percent of all undergraduate faculty nationwide identify as far left or liberal, compared with only 12.8 percent as far right or conservative. In a 2015 study published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences Arizona State University psychologist José Duarte and his colleagues reported that 58–66 percent of social science professors identify as liberals, compared to only 5-8 percent as conservatives. Given the power of beliefs to drive actions, college students today stand next to no chance of receiving a balanced education on the most important topics of our time and for which social science is best equipped to study.

[ This graph captures the political bias problem well. From: Klein, Daniel B. and Charlotte Stern. “Professors and Their Politics: The Policy Views of Social Scientists.” Critical Review, 17, p. 264. (click image to enlarge) ]

What goes around comes around. Today’s liberal college professors were radical college students in the 1960s and 1970s, protesting “the man” and bucking authority. One reason faculty and administrators are failing to stand up to student demands today is that they once wore those shoes. Raising children and students to be dismissive of law and order and mores and manners leads to a crisis in consciousness and the rejection of the very freedoms so hard won by their parents and teachers. A generation in rebellion gave birth to a generation in crisis. Thus it is that the revolution devours its children.

Solutions

There is no magic bullet solution to the problems the academy faces today, but as liberals have known for some time it takes decades—even generations—to right the wrongs of the past, so solutions are likely to be incremental and gradual, which is almost always a good thing when it comes to social change, as it leads to less violent and more peaceful actions on the part of both activists and their opponents. Contra Barry Goldwater, extremism in the defense of liberty is no virtue; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no vice.4

Hiring practices fall under this rubric. If the academy is already comfortable with and active in seeking to diversify its faculty by ethnicity, race, and gender, why not viewpoint as well? Given the entrenchment of tenure this will take time, but as that scribe of moral progress Victor Hugo observed, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”5

In the meantime, viewpoint diversity can be increased almost overnight by inviting speakers from a wide range of perspectives—political, economic, and ideological—even if (or especially) if they are offensive to faculty and students. And no more disinvitations! If you invite someone to speak, honor your word, own your decision, and stand up to the cry bullies (as they’re called in this neologism). The assignment of books and papers for students to read—especially for courses in history, English literature, the humanities, and the social sciences—can and should include authors whose positions are at odds with those of most academicians and student bodies. And professors: in addition to assigning students articles and opinion editorials from the New York Times, give them a few from the Wall Street Journal. Balance The Nation magazine with Reason magazine, The American Prospect with The American Spectator, National Public Radio with Conservative Talk Radio, PBS with Fox News.

Viewpoint diversity, however, is subservient to the deeper principle of free speech, which should be applied indiscriminately across the academy, as it should across society and, ideally, the world. What does free speech mean? First, it does not mean that you can lie about someone. Libel laws are in place to protect people from defamation that causes reputational and financial harm. Second, free speech does not mean that the government, public institutions, or private persons, businesses, or publications are required to promote or publish the opinions of others. As the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, for example, it is not incumbent on me to publish articles or accept advertisements just because we’re in the business of publishing. Institutions should have the freedom to restrict the speech of anyone who utilizes resources within the jurisdiction of its own institution, such as a school newspaper. The government, however, cannot restrict citizens’ speech just because it finds their opinions distasteful, offensive, or critical of its policies. (Exceptions have been made for treason and the passing on of national secrets to enemies, but crying “fire” in a crowded theater was most likely an exception that proves the rule.)

Holocaust deniers, creationists, and 9/11 truthers, for example, should have the right to publish their own journals and books, and to attempt to have their views aired in other publications and media venues, as in college newspapers and web sites, but no one is obligated to publish them. Alex Grobman and I wrestled with the free speech issue in our 2004 book Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? As we opined: “Being in favor of someone’s right to freedom of speech is quite different from enabling that speech.” But we chose to write a book about their movement and arguments, quoting them extensively because, we believe, “In the bright light of open discussion the truth will emerge.”6 And although I declined to publish an ad submitted by a Holocaust denier in Skeptic (running an advertisement in our magazines carries the imprimatur of endorsement), I did debate Mark Weber, the director of the Institute for Historical Review (the leading Holocaust denier organization) in a public forum they hosted.

The freedom of speech has been one of the driving forces behind moral progress because it enables the search for truth. How? There are at least five reasons:7

We might be completely right but still learn something new.

We might be partially wrong and by listening to other viewpoints we might stand corrected and refine and improve our beliefs. No one is omniscient.

We might be completely wrong, so hearing criticism or counterpoint gives us the opportunity to change our minds and improve our thinking. No one is infallible. The only way to find out if you’ve gone off the rails is to get feedback on your beliefs, opinions, and even your facts.

Whether right or wrong, by listening to the opinions of others we have the opportunity to develop stronger arguments and build better facts for our positions. You know that the world is round and goes around the sun, that evolution is real, and that the Holocaust happened. But can you explain how you know these facts? What are the best arguments and evidences for these facts? Could you articulate them clearly and succinctly in a debate or conversation? As John Stuart Mill noted in his classic 1859 work On Liberty: “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”

My freedom to speak and dissent is inextricably tied to your freedom to speak and dissent. Once customs and laws are in place to silence someone on one topic, what’s to stop people from silencing anyone on any topic that deviates from the accepted canon? The justification of censorship laws in the consequentialist argument that people might be incited to discrimination, hate, or violence if exposed to such ideas fails the moment you turn the argument around and ask: What happens when it is you and your ideas that are determined to be dangerous? It is the Principle of Interchangeable Perspectives that I introduced in The Moral Arc: For me to expect you to listen to me I must be willing to hear you. If I censor you, why shouldn’t you censor me? If you silence me, why shouldn’t I silence you?

This argument against censorship was well articulated in Robert Bolt’s 1960 play, A Man for All Seasons, based on the true story of the 16th century Chancellor of England, Sir Thomas More, and his collision with King Henry VIII over the monarch’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. In the play a dialogue unfolds between More and his future son-in-law Roper, who urges him to arrest a man whose testimony could condemn More to death, even though no laws were broken. “And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!” More entices.

Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law! More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that. More: Oh? And when the law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast…and if you cut them down…do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.8

For our own safety’s sake we must grant our devils their due. 

[yoursecretmuse]

My Perception On No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

🥀 This year has brought me many joys, that have left me with melancholy victories. I have been venturing out of my usual book genres and I've found a selection of well to do books that I simply cannot live without. How I've existed this far without them, I will never know. There are many different types of literature out there and of course I only focus on English and European Literature. Not because I'm bias  in some way. But I've always found American and European culture very interesting. Despite ignoring my very own culture. It had never occurred to me, that until now, I have never heard of Asian Literature. It's like an unknown phenomenon that no one speaks of. When I think back of my studies in school, I've never even heard of my teachers mentioning Asian writers at all. It was like they didn't exist or people found Asian culture not important enough to read about. Which is odd because in Asian countries they have liberties filled with European novel and American novels. Is it safe to say that Asian people find European and American culture interesting, though we do not share the same feelings toward them. Nevertheless, I stumbled upon Osamu Dazai after reading a mutual friends post about Vincent Van Gogh. It was a silly meme that consisted of Van Gogh and Osamu talking over their depression. Which is not something to joke about but I must confess I found it humorous. Through that humor, I decided to research Osamu and the rest is history. So, here is my thoughts on the exceptional book, No Longer Human. I want to give an in-depth review without giving the book away too much (if at all). But I must warn you that spoilers may become a possibility. No Longer Human is broken into three parts, including an introduction in the beginning by Donald Keene, as well as a Prologue & Epilogue by Osamu Dazai himself. So, to make things easier to understand, I'm going to review each part individually.

The Introduction Normally, I would skip this part of the book because at times it can be very boring and bland. But after reading The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johaan Wolfgang Von Goethe, I found it important to read book introductions because they can have valuable information about the writer. In this section, Donald Keene noted how under appreciated Asian writer are in literature. For some odd reason, American & Europeans cultures specifically seem to feel like we cannot learn anything from Asian culture. Perhaps it has something to do with our history with going to battle with certain Asian countries. Yet, that did not stop countries like Japan and China from filling their liberties with American & European literature. Which upsets me. Had it not been for Van Gogh, I would have missed out on an extremely talented writer. I'm not sure who is to blame for this but I find the idea of not representing Asian writers outside of manga is shameful and sad. There is more to their culture than just that. However, as a whole our world only views Asian people in a small and certain light, that barely gives them any kind of positive recognition outside of the obvious stereotypes. In short, I really urge everyone to take time and read the introduction and share your thoughts on Keene's and my views. What do you think and why is Asian literature so lost and underrepresented? Why do Asian writers rather be on the bottom of American top writing lists, than the top of Asian writer lists? It is very interesting.

🥀

The Prologue In this section, you learn of how Ōba Yōzō (aka Dazai himself) feels alienated and very much of a misfit. He tells you how all of his life he has worn a mask to hid his true sensitive and self destructive self. He harshly criticizes himself and informs you of how he feels about the nature of "humans" and how he never felt like one, thus making him believe that he is not. I like this part of the novel because I can relate to it in so many ways. Many things he explained and said is how I felt (and still very much feel) about myself. Not only of my appearance and state of being but also without people. We both share the same reflection on our confidence or lack there of as a child. I shared his thoughts on normality being ugly and being bland and not standing out is worse than being ugly or beautiful. He even goes on to explain that death has more of a soul or an expression than him. The ugly/void he felt as a child (as well as his whole life) has manifested into a visible void, that crept from his inner darkness and it carries a bland look. Which to me speaks volumes. 🥀

The First Notebook Unable to cope with the world around him, Ōba begins to become a jokester and class clown, in order to mask away the alienation that he feels. He engages in planned fails and acts as if he has no clue as to what he does. He tells us of his environment at home. His father always being gone on business and his mother he did not mention much. He speaks of his maids/servants mistreating him, but he never reported them because he sees it as pointless. We also learn he views a "human" as someone who is happy and hopeful. Perhaps, attractive in some way and could possibly have a great deal or comfortable amount of money. Which is strange because his family were quite wealthy and well known. He speaks of how he feels his life is a shame and the life of a "human" was not cut out for him. There is much more to be said here but I do not wish to spoil everything. I still want readers to get a wow factor from this book, without knowing every details and topic. 🥀

The Second Notebook A very key factor in this part is that Ōba is caught by another student named Takeichi who suspects and confronts him on faking his fall during "gym" class. This sends Ōba into a manic behavior and he somewhat becomes obsessed with Takeichi and fears that he will expose him for being a fraud. I found this interesting given Takeichi had no intention on exposing Ōba or telling anyone about his opinions on his stunts. Certain things happens and the two become somewhat of friends and Takeichi began to mention things to Ōba that were predicting and in a way life changing for Ōba. Ōba also finds an strong interest in art, which leads him to start painting. Ōba also becomes apart of a communist group and becomes a respectable member. Though, he does not share their same views and is only there because he views them as misfits. In this section, a young man now, Ōba meets someone by the name of Horiki. Horiki is also a college student but exposes Ōba into an unfortunate and dreadful life cycles, that pleasures and destroys him further. He also tries to commit suicide with a woman named Tsuneko, who dies but he does not. This even tears him apart and causes his family to the verge of disowning him. 🥀

The Third Notebook: Part One Ōba begans to have multiple affairs with different women, from different walks of life. He becomes a heavy drinker and is expelled from college. He becomes too focus on self destruction, he was not able to create or focus on his artwork. He tries to quite smoking and drinking. But struggles terribly. He marries a young girl, who tries to encourage him to stop drinking and for awhile it works. And for a moment Ōba is happy. The two both marry and move in together. 🥀

The Third Notebook: Part Two Working as a cartoon and sober, Ōba feels somber toward marriage life. He thinks of his wife as native and innocent. But he falls into bad habits once he is visited by an old friend named Horiki, who (with Ōba) witnesses Ōba's wife being sexually assaulted by an associate friend. Ōba begins to blame himself, as well as his wife and becomes manic and fills himself with alcohol and is committed into a mental hospital. After leaving his wife for another woman. This parts ends with him being brought to a home that his brother purchased for him and given the money he needed for living and personal interest. Ōba is left feeling empty and recounts his choices and views of hisself. 🥀

Epilogue We are then given the prospective of an outsider, who wanted to meet Ōba but fails. He then meets a friend of Ōba and she gives him the three notebooks. The man is intrigued by the notebooks and decides to publish them. We are left with a reflects of Ōba's friend telling us that he was a kind and gentle soul, who made everyone laugh and smile. 🥀

My Final Thoughts I believe this is one of the greatest books that I have read. I love the rawness of this book and I adore how the events were true. I feel that Osamu Dazai was a great writer and his death is very unfortunate. I find the way he told his life very interesting and beautiful and poetic. I wish I was able to meet him and praise him for being an amazing artist and writer. But the result would probably remain the same. There is so much that we can learn from Osamu and his life. His perception on life and people is very interesting and a very rare viewpoint on life. I highly suggest that everyone checkout this novel and spread the works of Asian Literature. Thanks For Listening. -𝓒

[thedreadvampy]

it's really unfortunate how one of the most overtly evil people in the British Government is a woman of colour, a group which is sorely underrepresented in government and particularly in the Tories

I call it the Margaret Thatcher effect. it really fucking sucks in the same way it sucks how the only two women to ever be PM have both been Tory cunts who oversaw the active destruction of social welfare and a massive rise in racism, violence and poverty.

(I mean one thing we should consider here is: how has the Tory party has multiple female leaders but there has never been a woman leading Labour? because one (1) woman in contention for PM who isn't the Toriest Tory available might slightly redress the balance of Our Historical Female PMs are Evil.)

Anyway Priti Patel isn't party leader but I do think she speaks to the Margaret Thatcher Effect, which is to say in a party built on callousness and greed-is-good mentality and which is absolutely full of misogynists, to get anywhere as a woman you absolutely have to be the most callous and the most focused on the politics of power and the least kind. And, generally, pretty misogynistic - from Thatcher's hatred of feminism to Rudd's opinions on motherhood to May's government's treatment of rape victims.

(the same is true of immigrants and people of colour in the Tory party, who are often leading the charge on racist and anti-immigrant policy making. Again, especially Priti Patel, who takes active, spoken and visible glee in leading deportations and detentions and ramping up the Hostile Environment)

There's three things at play I think in the Maggie Thatcher Effect.

One is that Tories are unilaterally evil cunts and being a woman or a person of colour or gay or an immigrant doesn't cancel out the level of cunt you need to be to think it's a good idea to advance the policies and goals of the Conservative Party.

The second is that in spaces dominated by white men there's a constant pressure to kill any 'weakness' that they might assume of you on the basis of your race or gender so you have to be as unsympathetic as possible, as prepared for cruelty as possible, as hardline as possible, and you can't be seen to be soft or have a ~bias~ towards protecting women/people of colour.

The third is that to get to the point as a woman/immigrant/person of colour where you truly think that Tory supremacy is the right choice despite their policies actively targeting women/immigrants/people of colour, you have to be someone who is able to truly convince yourself of your own exceptionalism. You're One Of The Good Ones who bootstrapped your way up, unlike the whiny losers who blame "systemic racism and misogyny across politics". You can take a joke. Your family immigrated The Right Way, or if they didn't then their experience was exceptional and therefore justified. You aren't weak like them and if they can't get to where you are they deserve to suffer (again, Thatcher's utter disdain for feminism).

And the effect of this is that in a party like the Tories, by the time you, as a woman, are in the like 10-20 top ministers who everyone knows about, someone with a major policy portfolio, power and influence, it means that a) you were probably a cunt to start with, b) your rise to the top depended very heavily on being more of a cunt and c) your position depends on you continuing to be. a total cunt.

And this is also a party issue. It looks great, especially for a party like the Tories whose track record on women's rights, race, immigration and so on is brutal to say the least, to have the person signing off on deportations be the child of immigrants, to have the person speaking on Women's Issues be a woman, to have the person in control of expanding police profiling and racist policing policies be a person of colour. but they also need that person to not argue back or try to defend their communities. (That's why Sajid Javid fell from grace a bit)

Priti Patel, like Margaret Thatcher before her, is the perfect Tory woman for her generation, crueler than the men but still a Vulnerable Woman; she's also a woman of colour and a child of immigrants so criticising her racist immigration and policing policies must just be The Woke Left Revealing Is Hypocrisy; she can #girlboss her way through dawn raids and increasing police powers in a Diverse Way. I am very very afraid that Priti Patel might be our third female PM and the only thing that I think might stop her is that she wears her glee on her sleeve a bit too much (and also. racism in the Tory voter base)

[leviathangourmet]

Progressives have a visceral hatred for America, its Judeo-Christian values, its free market system, its freedoms, opportunities, and material comforts. They want to change it fundamentally -- or destroy it. Our founding documents guarantee the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” with a functioning, limited government that serves the people. But such a milieu of healthy competition is an anathema to the Left, which thinks it offensive that Americans are free to work hard and pursue their dreams with minimal government intervention. Instead of letting such a meritocracy prevail and deliver the best to the nation, the Left wants to impose a system that obsesses over race, gender, sexuality, and perceived inequities associated with these identities. Leftists seek proportional quotas to reward targeted minorities for arbitrary criteria of identity and dismiss effort and talent as “privilege.”

This dumbing down of America in the service of equity is occurring everywhere -- in schools, universities, the workplace, and beyond. Paramount to this effort is the idea of diversity uber alles trumping merit, competence, or exceptional effort. This tyranny doesn’t spare members of minority groups who, out of experience and conviction, may believe in rising through merit and effort: deemed “unwoke,” they are reclassified as “multiracial white.” This misguided ideology peremptorily negates the multifarious influences that shape each individual’s unique perspective; it assumes a person is branded for life with the stereotypical characteristics of a particular race, gender, or sexual identity. Thus, the Left denies the heterogeneity of individuals and the influences on them even as it clamors for diversity.  It prejudicially assumes and demands ideological uniformity.

Here’s how the Left’s nefarious design is playing out. Schools and universities are forcing Leftist diversity standards on students, parents, and faculty at the expense of excellence. At the nation’s top high schools, the most represented race (by a significant margin) is Asian, followed by whites.  Blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented. But is this evidence of racism? No, for it turns out that the admissions process at these institutions is blind to gender and ethnicity and based solely on the highest grades and test scores. In fact, these schools are forbidden to consider race and income as acceptance criteria. Attempts to coach black and Hispanic applicants for the admission tests and encourage more of them to apply have been unsuccessful in improving their representation in the student body. So the question is: Should academic standards be sacrificed, hard work penalized, and meritocracy substituted for mediocrity in order to achieve diversity?

To give minority students a leg up, San Diego, America’s second largest school district with about 106,000 students, has dispensed with grading. The policy was apparently launched to “combat racism.” Since more minority students than white students have failed, grades will no longer depend on class participation or annual average. Deadlines to submit assignments will be suspended.  Surely, minority students’ failure to measure up to standards cannot be blamed primarily on racism in the educational system. Besides, by abolishing grades and not holding students responsible for their performance, excellence is stifled.

A 2009 Princeton study showed that to be admitted to top universities, Asian students had to score 140 points more than whites; 270 points more than Hispanics; and 450 points more than blacks.  After Harvard University instituted a quota for Asian-American admissions, a lawsuit was filed by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a nonprofit that seeks to eliminate the use of race in college admission. Last November, an appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision against SFFA, clearing the college of racial discrimination charges. In February, SFFA petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari on the same issue. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will let meritocracy prevail, ignoring the Leftists’ credo of equality of outcome for groups they deem victims.

Most Americans believe that diversity should not be attained at the expense of merit. A 2019 Pew Research Center report on race found 75% of respondents believed that employers should only consider a candidate’s qualifications -- even if the result is less diversity. Despite this, the diversity delusion -- that “diversity is our strength” -- is omnipresent in the corporate world and in government. Even vital domains like defense, political appointments, and air traffic control haven’t been spared.

After the Congressional Black Caucus demanded a black secretary of defense, the Biden administration selected retired General Lloyd Austin for the position. This necessitated waiving the requirement that a nominee be out of active duty for at least seven years. Critics faulted the appointment on three grounds.  While at Centcom, Austin had downplayed intelligence on the rise of ISIS and was responsible for a less-than-stellar outcome in the Syrian civil war.  Additionally, they felt he lacked knowledge and experience of the rising China-Russia threat. In the end, Austin’s skin color won out and was a major determinant in his securing the position. More identity drama followed.  Feminist groups were upset at his nomination and lobbied for a female secretary of defense. Their dissent centered on identity politics rather than a candidate’s ability to handle military threats.

Yet another example of the pernicious pursuit of diversity is under way in California. After Kamala Harris vacated her position as senator, California governor Gavin Newsom gratuitously affirmed his plans not to name a white man to the seat. Although an election would be the fairest way to choose the best among qualified candidates, activist groups have been lobbying Newsom to appoint a black woman, a Latino, or a member of the LGBTQ community.  Rather than California’s real concerns -- like skyrocketing homelessness and the highest tax rates in the country -- Harris’s replacement will be decided by the irrelevant ‘optics’ of race, gender, and sexual preference.

The sidelining of merit and competence is already endangering lives in the air nationwide. In 2015, the Obama administration ordered changes to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) rigorous, longstanding admission standards for air traffic controllers. This was solely in the interest of raising minority representation after the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees complained that the workforce was “too white.” The new standards gave preference to those who were unemployed and those who fared poorly in high school science over licensed pilots and those with post-high school ATC training. Racial parity won over public safety.

Corporate America, too, is in the grip of the diversity delusion. NASDAQ has proposed that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandate new securities listing criteria, requiring that corporate boards have at least two members representing diversity: either a woman and a member of a minority group, or a woman and someone from the LGBTQ community. The objective is “inclusive growth and prosperity to power stronger economies.” NASDAQ makes the fallacious, risible claim of a correlation between diversity and better company performance. But if diversity per se were good for business, mandating it would be unnecessary, corporations would have embraced race and gender parity long ago.

Former President Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ ideology focused on strengthening the economy with pro-American, pro-business, and free market policies. But the new administration is influenced by the Left’s “woke” policies and kowtows to its diversity quotas, which seek to impose burdensome requirements that militate against effort and excellence.

From a meritocracy, America is declining into mediocrity.

[the-worlds-between-pages]

A Song Below water by: Bethany C. Morrow

Right off the bat I will say this book is a five star read and a necessary one. A book that Black girls can see themselves in is rarer than it should be. The two girls, Tavia and Effie are best friends, play-sisters (family not related by blood but as Tavia says “Real doesn’t matter when it comes to family”.)

The story takes place in Portland. The world is populated with mythical creatures, Elokos, universally loved, naturally charming with an otherworldly melody that is all their own. Any race can have an Eloko child. There are sprites, mischievous creatures that nothing can be done against so when things go missing like keys are when hair gets tugged, it’s blamed on the sprites and laughed off. 

Then there are the sirens. Sirens are always Black women it seems. The intersectionality between hatred against Black women and Sirens is a theme that cannot be escaped. Sirens are said to be controlling, manipulative, dangerous, loud, all things that are applied to Black women. Racism isn’t shied away from because how could it be? The characters are Black living in America. 

Gargoyles also exist and there’s hardly any information known about them. 

When the story starts, Tavia learns about the murder of yet another Black woman by her boyfriend. The defense claims it was a siren. As if that should excuse it. There is no positivity around Sirens. There’s even a show about one siren who chose to wear a silencing collar, a piece of equipment that silences the siren’s calls. 

It’s disturbing to say the least. 

Tavia’s desire to get rid of her voice is what sent her family to Portland in the first place. Her father’s hatred of sirens is obvious and she feels like he hates her as a result, even though, in her words, it’s his fault she’s a siren because his mother was one. She says her parents took that chance when they had her and she was the only one with no say in it. 

The steps she took to get rid of her voice left her with a keloid scar and her father moving the family back to his hometown because of the Network, a group that knows who are the sirens, who knew his mother, and will protect them. 

Tavia met Effie because of the move and now the girl lives with her because Effie’s grandmother thinks it’s good for her. Both girls gained a sister and it’s the strongest and realist bond I’ve ever read. 

Effie has “sort of eczema” and to her it’s worse than it is to anyone else. She never feels free and hides behind her twists. I’m just going to say that seeing your life represented in fiction is something that cannot be understated and for those of us who rarely get it, it’s amazing. 

Effie’s life hasn’t been easy even though she’s not a siren. When she was a young child playing with her friends in the park something happened. Every child but her was turned to stone. She was the only one left unscathed. And that event has followed her and molded her into the shy anxious girl we see. 

Her mother has passed and she’s begged her mother and her grandmother for information about her father. Her mother refused to give it but was kind but when it comes to her grandmother she’s harsh in the way that the people that love us the most don’t see hurts us. She belittles Effie’s questions, makes them out to seem childish and tries to get her to quit the Ren Fair, the one thing in the world Effie loves aside from Tavia. 

Her mother was part of the Fair as a mermaid and now Effie is too, and this year is supposed to be big. In her tank with her tail on, Effie feels free, like she’s who she’s meant to be. 

Due to the tank, Effie knows sign language. Tavia learned it because when her emotions get high, her siren call burns her throat and opening her mouth is dangerous. It’s one thing that makes their bond stronger as Effie translates for her and it’s also how they have conversations when Tavia just can’t talk and vice versa. Just because Effie isn’t a siren doesn’t mean it isn’t difficult to get the words she needs out. Sometimes it’s just difficult. 

Tavia wants to find her grandmother so she can ask her to take her voice because she just can’t handle it. She wants to be “normal”. And the Network isn’t as trustworthy as it’s supposed to be thanks to the eloko girl dating Tavia’s ex boyfriend--also an eloko and the son of a police officer. 

A mild spoiler, Tavia gets pulled over driving her father’s sports car. My heart hammered the entire time reading that scene because her fear was palpable and real and that fear is the exact reason I don’t drive. Who knows what could happen. 

As Effie isn’t there, Tavia can’t sign. What makes it worse is that her ex’s dad is one of the cops to stop her. The stop goes the way a lot of us fear it will, with us being treated as criminals already and Tavia can’t stop herself from using her call to get herself home safe. Unfortunately her ex’s father wasn’t affected by it and now he knows her secret. 

It’s difficult not to spoil the rest of the book, it’s a must read. By the end of it, I was teary eyed to say goodbye but also because it was just so good a book and a book that actually spoke to the experiences I’ve had, that many Black women and men and children have had. 

There’s a protest due to the police killing another young Black child, just like there are now. Nothing is shied away from because it’s a lived experience and the girls feel like they could leap from the pages.  

Tavia, who learned to take care of her hair from natural hair youtube videos and Effie who had to unlearn truth Black children grow up with like Black hair doesn’t grow and that it’s only “good” if you’re mixed. It speaks to being Black and the way that feels can’t be put into words. 

I’m thankful for this book. I’ll be recommending it to everyone I know. I’m thankful to Bethany C. Morrow for writing it. The world between those pages is fully fleshed out, there’s not a bit of magic out of place and the girls; stories are incredible. Solid worldbuilding, beautiful characters and real families. People that are painfully underrepresented in fiction today. Stories that never get a chance to be told are finally getting read. 

I’ve never been moved by a book the way this one moved me. It’s a beautiful blend of magic and reality and everyone should read it. 

Five Stars. 

[politicalsci]

In future history classrooms, students will likely be told the tale of the tag-team assault on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn by the mainstream media and MPs.  It will be taught as a harbinger of what is erupting into the most pivotal crisis facing Western politics in half a century: the chasm between ordinary people and the elites.  We are seeing it with the Republican establishment’s failed efforts to derail the Trump train and the Democratic establishment’s more successful efforts to extinguish the Bern. This is an emerging contest in which the opposing sides are defined by an ever-growing wealth gap.  The two groups are now viewing each other as adversaries thanks in part to an internet and social media that exposes the disconnect between the mainstream media (MsM) narrative and what the masses feel.  

Corbyn, the self-effacing, mild-mannered veteran activist who was elected with a larger mandate than any party leader in British history, and had pleaded for a ‘kinder, gentler politics’, has become the most media-persecuted politician since George Galloway protested the Iraq War.  While the right-wing press is expected to be harsh on a Labour leader, biased coverage of Corbyn crosses traditional boundaries, infecting centre-left papers as well. The MsM’s seeming contempt for the people’s decision gives pause to anyone who values democracy, whatever one’s ideological persuasion, whether you agree with Corbyn’s policies or not. The unrelenting bullying of the ordinary Party members’ choice of leader may even represent the death-throes of a ‘politico-media complex’ in futile denial that it has lost the hearts and minds of the masses. We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of what Noam Chomsky eloquently deconstructed in his Manufacturing Consent.  

Since Jeremy’s historic victory, the MsM, seemingly in coordination with some MPs, have carried out hit and run attacks. Trawling the bottom of the barrel, they find what might otherwise be un-newsworthy statements or incidents and in unison, twist events to suit the prior agreed upon talking point: Corbyn is a bad leader. Defamation lawsuits are avoided by inserting phrases like ‘Corbyn seemed to’ or ‘appeared to’ before each outlandish accusation. Like any dishonest or poor debater, once the scurrilous claim, outright lie or flimsy argument is disproved by their opponents, they hastily move on to the next attack, creeping under the hitherto reliable darkness of public amnesia. The cynical objective of this approach is to sully the victim’s image by planting vague, amorphous negative associations in the public mind. 

A recent London School of Economics study provided academic evidence of what many of us had observed since Corbyn’s election.  It found that 74% of newspaper articles on Corbyn did not include his views, or represented his views out of context, with media coverage generally de-legitimizing him as a political actor.

These techniques have been supported from inside the Party by McCarthyist witch-hunts which provide the MsM machine with an endless stream of victims being expelled, banned and suspended for crimes you never hear the full details of, that have been presided over by internal bureaucrats who have unclear authority and less clear mandates.

The techniques have paid off to some extent, reflecting a reality of the last half century described in Manufacturing Consent. As an Australian expat, I lived in Oxford, and up and down demographically diverse London suburbs, from Hampstead to Essex, from Kensington to Kilburn. I spoke to people of all walks of life and differing party loyalties.  Almost all liked Corbyn as a human being.  The few negative comments about him pre-referendum included ‘weak leader’ or ‘incompetent’. When pressed as to why, there was usually silence. When informed of his policies on the economy, foreign policy and social issues, there was often agreement, and if not, there was at least a repeating of the concession that ‘he’s a decent guy’. While their positive views toward Corbyn were due to his policies, record or values, negative associations seemed based on nothing more than the media’s assiduously repeated talking points.

After the referendum chaos, there was something more solid to hang on the embattled man, gleefully provided by Media Inc. People said either ‘he was weak/lazy in his campaigning for Remain’ or ‘he disingenuous as he was a secret Leave supporter’. When it is offered that, in the long line of politicians upon whom to heap Brexit blame, perhaps the guy who campaigned against it should be after those who made calculated political decisions to support it, my fellow converser usually remembers that people like Nigel Farage also exist. 

On the inside, 172 MPs voted no confidence in Corbyn in a secret ballot, avoiding accountability to local party members. The puzzling arrogance and flippant dismissal of the public will was on full display when Ian Austin MP, who opposed an inquiry into the Iraq War at least three times, told Corbyn - who had protested against Saddam in the 80s when he gassed the Kurds and opposed the 2003 invasion (right side of history on both counts) - to “sit down and shut-up“ during his parliamentary apology following Chilcot. Politicians’ antipathy to Corbyn has been as consistent as JC’s record on Iraq. When he began his journey as leader New Labour stalwarts were wheeled out to express their dismay at an ‘unelectable’ being permitted to occupy such a hallowed seat.  

However, in a shocking act of impertinence, Labour members chose someone who actually held the same views as them.  Corbyn won with a thumping majority of 59.5%, annihilating his closest rivals who received 19% and 17%, with the Blairite candidate bringing up the rear with 4.5%, suggesting a repudiation of New Labour.  Who would have predicted that members of a party built on a workers’ movement would have rejected an ideology that Margaret Thatcher referred to as her greatest achievement? Labour membership swelled to vote in Corbyn as old school ‘true believers’ returned to the fold, joining hands with millennials filled with indignation nourished through a bypassing of the MsM and reliance upon the internet which had exposed to them unjustness of the present reality.  In just the final 24 hours before the deadline, the Party received over 160,000 applications to vote. There were three surges in membership in 2015: one after the election, one after Corbyn entered the leadership race and another when he became leader. 

100,000 people joined the Labour Party in the days after the coup was launched, most of them to support Jeremy.  Within hours’ notice, 10,000 people turned up to a pro-Corbyn Momentum rally next to the very Parliament inside which their deepest beliefs now seemed to occupy such low regard; a massive display of passion and sacrifice by people who can’t afford to take time off work, have families to look after and most likely live nowhere near Westminster.  Membership is set to reach 600,000, making British Labour the biggest social democratic party in the Western world.  This is what democracy looks like.

It’s not only Party members whose views are being studiously ignored by the MsM.  The actual electorate’s opinions are also seemingly irrelevant to media assessments of Corbyn’s electability.  In Jeremy’s tenure, Labour has won all four by-elections, including with increased majorities, performed better in local elections than under predecessor Ed Miliband and won the London and Bristol mayoralties.  Overall, polls show Labour trailing the Conservatives by a smaller margin, 4%, pre and post-referendum under Corbyn’s leadership than in the final months of Miliband’s tenure where it trailed by between 6 and 14%.

Additionally, Corbyn’s monumental popularity amongst Labour members and the explosion of membership numbers provides a key advantage in a country without compulsory voting: an enormous, enthusiastic army of volunteers to execute the all-important ground-game that carried Obama to victory twice. With the poor being underrepresented in voter turnout in Britain, this presents a significant electoral opportunity that can be tapped not through centrist pragmatism but via passionate supporters.  People, more than advertising, can convince people to get out and vote. And as the referendum’s colossal turnout proved, when they’re mad at the establishment, they’ll turn out in droves.

Given this and the example set by Bernie Sanders, you could only honestly describe Corbyn as definitively unelectable if you’d stumbled into the Large Hadron Collider and entered a parallel universe which combines Orwell’s 1984 and Seinfeld’s Bizzaro World. That or you obtain all your ‘news’ from the mainstream media, which has created its own Orwellian bubble.  Black is white, up is down. Victims of racism, and veterans sporting battle scars from a lifetime of fighting racism, are labelled bigots. Supporters of the elected leader are castigated for dividing the Party.  Politicians most in touch with the current popular anti-establishment mood are lampooned as relics of the past.

The MsM, reassured within its echo-chamber, has mistakenly continued to assume each one of us believes that all our neighbours buy this, that everyone else supports the officially sanctioned line and you’d be a tinfoil-hat-crackpot not to.  Instead, a thing called the internet and its social media component have empowered ordinary people to, at least to some extent, see what their fellow citizens really think and connect with them. 

When thousands of indignant ordinary people launch criticisms of MsM and political elites on social media, they are dismissed as bullying trolls.  Those nakedly conspiring to destroy Corbyn maintain such a self-entitled mentality that they seem to expect him to drop to his knees and apologise to them for every tiny scratch they incur in the course of jamming knives into his back.

Like Bernie, Jeremy is an outsider in both policy and style: genuine, slightly scruffy, even being castigated to “put on a proper suit” during Prime Minister’s Questions.  He abjures the ruthless, focus-group talking points-led tactics of more polished operators; his mere existence enraging some because it shines light on their own vacuity.  He speaks openly about big issues that impact people’s daily lives. Corbyn’s rise signifies that the game has changed, that values and principles are now political capital, not political baggage. The baby-boomer almost stands out as a festering indictment of some of his colleagues who, through no fault of their own, came of political age in the post-historical 1990s when careerism filled the void left by idealism.

Like with Bernie in America and across the Western world, the people are not fighting for one man.  They are fighting for themselves, for each other and for those overseas who have even less say in the policies that may impact them most.  They are fighting for change.  Defaming, bullying, interrogating and tearing asunder the humble, elderly Jeremy Corbyn amounts to spitting in the face of the alienated masses he represents.  The manufacturing of consent is no longer consensual.  Now, what you do to Corbyn, you do to them. 

[FULL ARTICLE LINK]