#violence against disabled people

[majaurukalo]

One of the (many) things that makes disabled people the most marginalised community is that there will always be some kind of degree to which a good number of people will think that discrimination against us is okay. That it’s even “healthy”.

Think of separated entrances for disabled people into buildings. You’d never have separated entrances for black people today because history taught us well.

But it’s okay to have a different entrance for disabled people because a ramp looks ugly in the front or it “can’t be build”. So we have to go to the back, slalom through garbage bins, get lost in some corridor.

People justify this.

People justify institutionalisation of disabled people because “that’s the best way to take care of them” (breaking news, no it’s not).

People justify keeping disabled people outside of certain places, venues, fields, experiences because “it’s too dangerous”, “we can’t think of everybody”, “it’s too hard” yada yada.

And many don’t the see the real problem.

People justify the sterilisation of disabled people “because they can’t take care of children/their periods/whatever”.’

Like, we are not even considered enough for our own bodily autonomy.

Even when a disabled person is murdered by a family member the killing is justified and the family member who killed is “the poor thing who couldn’t bear with it anymore” and the murdered disabled person becomes “the angel who is now free from the life’s pains”. But no one asked them if they enjoyed their life, if they wanted to live.

Because a disabled life is not supposed to be good, right?

It’s always “for the sake of us”, “for our safety”, “to protect us” as if we can’t take decisions, as if we aren’t human beings with feelings, dreams, choices, desires, needs.

Nothing done against us can be intended for our best interest or our own good. It’s for the good of the abled-bodied society.

Period.

[rjalker]

yeah I think I'm done trying to figure out if anyone else has already made a cane user pride flag when one of the results is people claiming "white afab young women" are self-diagnosting with EDS and POTS for attention at Pride...............................

here's....one disgusting fucking quote of many.

I've said I really want to kick their canes away from them so they can fall on the ground (and bounce) and start throwing a toddler shitfit but sadly it is just a fantasy and can't tell who actually needs it

Holy fucking shit.

[anomalousmancunt]

"fakeclaiming isn't even a real issue, some of us have deeper issues, like being ignored by doctors" do y'all... realize what fakeclaiming is?

and most importantly, if you have more important issues than "people whining about being fakeclaimed", then by god why are you wasting your precious time fakeclaiming them?

[xxlovelynovaxx]

Something I've noticed but only just now been able to put into words, is that a lot of the people who are like "I could never fall for cult shit, I'm too smart", and "I would never be bigoted against marginalized people, I do all the Right Social Justice Things" also seem to be incredibly convinced that if they ever listen to what anyone they believe is harmful is saying to really try and understand it, not even to agree with it but literally just to understand it, that they'll be "brainwashed" into believing the harmful shit is good and being a harmful bigot.

That cognitive dissonance there, that "I'm immune to propaganda because I never ever ever look at propaganda of any kind, not even to learn to recognize how it works" - radicalization relies on that.

Long post about this below the cut.

It's how people fall down the te/rf, the incel, the far-right pipelines. It's how people who consider themselves "leftist" become anti-porn, anti-sex-work, pro-censorship. It's how people who are otherwise progressive go from a baseline level of ableism, antisemitism, intersexism, radi/cal feminism, etc, that hasn't been unlearned, to spewing violent bigotry against these groups thinly veiled as "justified resistance" against "fakers" and "able-bodied" people, against "zionazis" and "genocide apologists", against "tmes" and "TMRAs", all while the people they're attacking are none of these things.

No one is immune to doing this is some way. There is no axis of marginalization that makes you harmless, in part because there will always be people in your own marginalized group that you have privilege and power over along another axis of marginalization. There is no identity that makes you only a "victim" and never the one doing the harm.

But radicalization, bigotry, oppressive systems, they rely on this doublethink of "I can't do harm" and "if I listen to those who are Categorically Harmful, they will Seduce and Turn me into being One of Them and Doing Harm". Because then all anyone has to do is convince you that the Other is inherently a Harmer, and that therefore fighting them makes you inherently Harmless.

This is especially true when the victims (not necessarily victims of the alleged aggressors, but inarguably actual victims of horrific acts), have very little power to speak for themselves about who is really doing the harm.

Sexual assault victims and especially CSA victims are a rhetorical tool in arguments about censorship and queer people, despite many of us being anti-censorship and either queer or allies. Victims of foreign wars and oppression, particularly with limited access to communication, are used for racism, antisemitism, and xenophobia - despite often actively telling people that those bigotries make things worse for them too and don't help. Disabled people have the symptoms of our disabilities used to excuse the behavior of people who are liked and condemn the behavior of those who are not - disabilities are only genuinely disabling to others for as long as its convenient for them to be.

I don't really know what drives it? Is there at some level a recognition of a fear that maybe, actually, the moral cause you've championed for so long actually made you one of the Bad Guys, because of puritanical culturally christian thinking that is only worsened by the punitive, bloodthirsty mindset of social media nowadays? Everyone likes to watch whoever's been assigned Main Character of the Week get "justice" fighting in the coliseum, always aware of the eyes on us waiting to shove us in too.

It would make sense - it's not just a fear of hurting people, but that if you admit to doing so, "both sides" will descend on you like ravenous wolves. It's a fear of Being Hurt, from people who have already been hurt far too much. I've endured many types of trauma, and can say with confidence that online harassment and dogpiling is as horrific as any of them.

Is it just basic fascist ideals that haven't been unlearned, that the "enemy" is both weak and strong? That they can't get to you because you're not reading all that, because you know better than to try and understand your enemy, but that if you ever did they'd immediately corrupt you completely?

I don't know. But the reason it works is because if you think the people you're fighting will convince you if you listen, once you're convinced you should be fighting them, you'll see every last drop of blood spilled as righteous. This, all while radical groups and bigots rely on you not knowing or examining how propaganda of any kind - helpful, neutral, or harmful - actually functions.

I don't know what to do about this. I know I've unpacked harmful beliefs a dozen times because I actually listened to people. I know another dozen times, actually listening to people has only further shores up my own beliefs - but critically analyzing what they are saying, weighing it against my own knowledge and experience, giving it a space where yes, I genuinely evaluate it's validity.

I think that's what scares people the most. It's "well but then, aren't I saying that [bigotry] could be valid?"

The thing is, that's not really what you're evaluating. You've been successfully tricked, indoctrinated into believing that if you question "is this actually bigoted against that group", you're actually questioning "is it okay to BE bigoted against this group".

This, too, I believe is coming from a place of cultural christianity. Questioning whether something is "sinful" is itself "sinful". Critically analyzing the way you apply your beliefs is conflated with critically analyzing the underlying beliefs themselves.

And of course, there are times when critically analyzing beliefs themselves is important, also something tantamount to being seduced by the "devil". That is how the "enemy" is treated in secular spaces - an all powerful force waiting to corrupt you at every turn and steer you away from the Good Progressive/Leftist Path. Generally though, these questions are not "is bigotry actually okay", so I'll leave a wider discussion of these for a different post.

I will say, though, that I do think not having devoted any analysis to the above is part of what makes that conflation possible. Disabled people arguing against other disabled people for exercising their right to bodily autonomy in a way that affects no one else because it's "unhealthy" despite disability itself being based around abled standards of health, trans people treating other trans people as dangerous and/or oppressors on the basis of bioessentialism and/or gender essentialism, plurals arguing in support of the historically violently pluralmisic psychiatric institution and using it first and foremost to support their right to self-determination, rather than said right being inherent...

How much of this is simply based in, rather than valuing autonomy, rejecting bio and gender essentialism, and prioritizing self-determination, simply relying on things like "the logic of disgust" and what "feels" right, despite those "feelings" and "instincts" being largely guided by the bigoted socialization we all grew up with?

Of course, some people might genuinely have chosen to explicitly prioritize an oppositional value - conformity over autonomy, authority over self-determination, assigning inherent moral value to identity over decoupling morality from inherent traits.

But given the inconsistency I've seen, these people seem to be rather few, and those that do exist are almost refreshingly honest even when fundamentally opposed to my very existence. They typically don't make convoluted justifications for their actions, nor contradict the very values and beliefs they claim to uphold, nor undercut the causes they claim to stand for.

But everyone else... it goes back to something that I've seen talked a lot about in discussions about censorship.

It is important to read and analyze things you disagree with, and listen to people you believe are harmful. Even if you're right a hundred percent of the time - a true rarity especially nowadays when there's so many "ins" for indoctrination into bigoted and oppressive systems - doing so will only make you better able to fight bigotry. It'll also serve to make you able to either deradicalize, help deradicalize, or minimally avoid hindering deradicalization of, bigots and other radicalized people.

And it's also important because yeah, some of the Harmful people you think you Can't Harm in your Moral Crusade to Protect Innocents, you're harming. Full stop. No one escapes socialization in our societies unscathed. No one enters the wider world as a blank slate, sure, but no one enters the world without ignoring systems we benefit from and the harms that maintain those systems.

You have to be willing to be wrong. You have to be willing to admit you've hurt people. As someone with moral OCD, yeah, it fucking SUCKS. As someone with BPD and depression, we've split on ourselves (in the BPD sense, but also sometimes the DID sense) and been suicidal over it.

So we're not saying you have to be examining this and yourself every moment of every day. There's times where you won't be able to and that's okay. Those are generally the times it's important and healthy for a good portion of people to step back from social justice movements and activism anyway and rest - but in cases where it's not helpful, it seems that often people will still narrow their focus to issues which most directly impact them anyway, which does help reduce harm.

But people justifying lateral aggression and oppression by utterly rejecting the material reality and oppression of marginalized people, because of that depersoning and positioning of said people as ontologically Harmful? If you're viewing any identity as inherently, categorically, Dangerous and Bad before anything else, ironically, that framework makes you significantly more likely to do harm.

This gets complicated, of course, with nonmarginalized identities. But people don't exist on only one axis - and if we're actually using intersectionality theory as it was intended, acknowledging that each identity interacts with each other identity to form a complex, multifaceted, cohesive whole, well... even people with many axes of privilege may still be marginalized, sometimes significantly. There are severely disabled nonqueer people who have essentially no power over queer people, abled children who have little to no power over disabled adults, white trans people who hold power over all nonwhite trans people - and drive transphobia even as they uphold colonial gender standards and white supremacy.

And of course, this all gets even more complicated with rhetorical tricks used to obscure that identity is the actual thing being attacked.

People are convinced that it's not antisemitism to attack "zionists" while making the one and only criteria for whether someone is a "zionist" whether they are Jewish, all while weaponizing "antizionism isn't antisemitism" as a shield. If what you're attacking is the privilege of "being transmisogyny exempt"* it doesn't matter if you're basing that on someone's identity regardless of their actual experiences with transmisogyny or even whether their identity matches your idea of what that identity entails (for example, intersex people who were assigned female or male at birth).

*Obligatory disclaimer that we are not blaming any specific gender for doing this. We have seen this from everyone from multigender to transmasc to transfem to maverique people to plenty of other people.

Heck, if you attack a "non-marginalized identity", whether or not said identity is actually non-marginalized or has any power over you, that obfuscation isn't even necessary. If neurodisabled people are all able-bodied and always have physical access everywhere and are basically not even really disabled anyway, then how could it be lateral ableism to attack them for pushing back against those false and ableist narratives of their experiences?

If Jewish people are all genocidal Israeli oppressors, then you can go straight into "actually jewish people aren't oppressed and are basically powerful - and controlling the media - and the US government - and are babykillers anyway - and are stealing organs from Palestinians - and you've dove headfirst into blatant antisemitism. But wait! According to you, it's not, because you don't hate theoretical Jewish people, only any Jewish person that doesn't kowtow to you and sycophantically uphold literal blood libel and conspiracy theories.

And if you stopped listening as soon as I said something that you thought conflicted with your existing beliefs - about the tma/tme dichotomy, about Jewish people and zionism, about neurodisabilities being disabling and not all neurodisabled people being able-bodied, etc etc ad nauseum - then this post is about you.

Because you heard someone say "this harms people, you are harming people if you do this" and went "nuh uh I'm not listening actually you're the harmful ones", if you "interrogated" your beliefs without actually listening to what people who are calling them harmful are saying, or at most by decontextualizing and maliciously misinterpreting their arguments to reaffirm your own biases and cognitive dissonance...

You're who I started writing this post about in the first place.

I have laid out, frequently and extensively, the interrogations I have done of myself and my beliefs to come to the conclusions that the things I claim are harmful, are. I've actively looked for logical fallacies and ethical violations. In some places, I've found them, and been forced to re-examine my views. When this has happened, sometimes it's changed those views, and sometimes I simply shored up the foundation by removing the bits that were themselves not supportive or dangerous.

I've apologized and owned my mistakes. I've had the privilege to not just apologize, but undo the harm I did. I've gotten to work to repair not just my relationship with people and their trust in me, but the wounds - and work against the larger structures that I had acted as a single finger of.

And more than anything, I'm sure there's still harm I'm doing or will do that I'm not yet aware of. Out of over seven billion people, there might be several dozen who are not currently, passively or actively, participating in some kind of harm at some level. I can basically guarantee that if you're reading this you're not one of them. This is not because we are inherently harmful, but because we exist within harmful systems that make it impossible to exist without doing so.

"No ethical consumption under capitalism" as an example. Many of the things you might have zero control over right now.

The point of this is not "you are bad" - quite the opposite, in fact. It's "you are complex, and doing harm doesn't make you bad". It's "attempting to never do harm will often make you more likely to do so, and will certainly hinder or outright prohibit attempts at effective harm reduction". It's "the sooner you accept that you will do harm and evaluate that from a neutral standpoint, the sooner you can focus on doing less harm where it IS possible".

But to do this, the very first step is - you have to be willing to listen. You have to understand that you're not going to suddenly be brainwashed into being a hateful bigot because you critically analyze whether something is bigoted or harmful. You have to understand that if you're not willing to try and understand even the most truly harmful, awful people, that you ironically WILL be susceptible to being turned into a bigot by anyone who convinces you that someone else isn't worth listening to.

You have to understand that not listening - is actually just listening to the people who have a vested interest in telling you what others are saying. Who really benefits from controlling the flow of information that way - because it's not you or other marginalized people, I guarantee it.

...

One addition: Yeah, I'm literally the person that has my partner screening my notifs for harassment and hate rn. So this all might seem ironic.

The thing is, you don't have to respond directly to someone who you feel is harmful. In fact, especially if you're triggered or otherwise in a heightened state, I'd say it's often better not to. When triggered especially, you're literally less able to process and integrate information and critically analyze stuff.

It's actually usually better to do this in your own space and time. Privately or with trusted people is best, though yes this sentence alone makes me a hypocrite because I absolutely do this shit publicly and that's absolutely something I should be working on that I'm... not, really.

Anyway yes there's always exceptions, yes there's times where it becomes important to actively seek out people to talk with and find recommendations for reputable educational sources and ask good faith questions of people, yes, even regardless of who is actually doing harm. Sometimes asking those questions is key to deradicalizing them and sometimes it's key to your own deradicalization and sometimes is just makes you able to realize that you all are crab bucketing and you can start helping each other instead.

But while I'll admit to hypocrisy on the "public vs private processing" front, I very much am not on the "listening to people" front. I've had to put some trust in my partner to help me with this because of trauma lately, but as she's documenting any harassment anyway, I can go back to reference it later. And if there's literally anything other than literal slurs or fakeclaiming or similar, she is good about letting me know. So... yeah, I might miss something on the individual level, but I am still doing the work of listening to - seeking out, if I have to - people opposed to our beliefs and such.

[dayurno]

first of yeah i hate when people try to use any sort of disability as punishment for characters in stories as for most attractive ppl 1. Jean Moreau sad boy tall sad and French he would match my crazy and my mental state and i mean this in the unhinged tumblr way 2. literary any character that is strong and beffy as fuck so might as well just put riko here i am very attracted to strong and athletic individuals so really anyone woudl fit here but this is kings spot now 3. Jeremy Knox fake blondes with tan, it's very unusual look at least in my city/environment and tbh considered bit "trashy" but i personally love people who don't match 100% to fashion/beauty standards 4. Renee i don;t need to explain just Renee 5. Probably some raven I am really NOT PICKY tbh like appearance is such miniscule thing? I more care about someone's choices of fashion and how they carry themselves .... no kevin on this list because he is such basic ass white boy even with all the queer diva aesthetic this fandom puts on him sorry he is way too normie

BAHAHA kevin is a glossy two page magazine spread he cannot run from this hes very conventional and classic….. but i do love that about him 🫡 between him and jeremy we can make a fashion magazine for aspiring boys next door

ALSO CRAZY THAT YOUD WANT JEAN i am genuinely like. after having read into jeans mind i can understand the deliciousness of him as a concept but we could not coexist i do not think he is just too pathetic i cant do it… famously the only man ive ever considered being with was meek and submissive which i guess is a point on jeans part but i dont know. hes really crazy. i wouldnt get on this ride at all knowing how loose the screws are

[the-peruvian-whovian]

There's no coming back from this. There is no justification. This will always be their legacy. The world will never forget this and I won't let it.

[disabled-tolkien]

Uhhhhh was anyone going to tell me that there was a confirmed case of a hobbit wheelchair user, Lalia Took, but she was murdered by Pippin's sister on behalf of the wider Took family

or was I just supposed to find that out for myself???

(Source below the cut due to sensitive content - cw for violence against disabled people, fatphobia)

From Letter 214, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

A well-known case, also, was that of Lalia the Great (or less courteously the Fat). Fortinbras II, one time head of the Tooks and Thain, married Lalia of the Clayhangers in 1314, when he was 36 and she was 31. He died in 1380 at the age of 102, but she long outlived him, coming to an unfortunate end in 1402 at the age of 119. So she ruled the Tooks and the Great Smials for 22 years, a great and memorable, if not universally beloved, 'matriarch'. She was not at the famous Party (SY 1401), but was prevented from attending rather by her great size and immobility than by her age.

Her son, Ferumbras, had no wife, being unable (it was alleged) to find anyone willing to occupy apartments in the Great Smials, under the rule of Lalia. Lalia, in her last and fattest years, had the custom of being wheeled to the Great Door, to take the air on a fine morning. In the spring of SY 1402 her clumsy attendant let the heavy chair run over the threshold and tipped Lalia down the flight of steps into the garden. So ended a reign and life that might well have rivalled that of the Great Took.

It was widely rumoured that the attendant was Pearl (Pippin's sister), though the Tooks tried to keep the matter within the family. At the celebration of Ferumbras' accession the displeasure and regret of the family was formally expressed by the exclusion of Pearl from the ceremony and feast; but it did not escape notice that later (after a decent interval) she appeared in a splendid necklace of her name-jewels that had long lain in the hoard of the Thains.

[spacecores]

i've been on hold with the dshs for an asinine interview so i can get SNAP since my income is technically 0$

it has been over 2 hours.

if they don't let me do this stupid thing bc "interviews end at 3pm" (it was an hour and a half at that point that i'd been on hold) i'm going to stab a republican and eat them in the town square

[intersectionalpraxis]

Imagine cutting humanitarian aid to any country around the world without batting an eyelash. People at their most vulnerable -who are being massively ethnically cleansed and displaced -who are being permanently disabled because of destructive bombings and with whom will probably have little to no resources to help them manage these disabilities their entire lives, who have been and are at the brink of starvation and death... this is what these western/European countries are doing instead of the bare minimum which is a ceasefire.

Albeit it's not a surprise to me (or most of us) since settler-colonial and imperial countries like the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK have notorious histories of genocides against Indigenous people and have been (and currently are) perpetrators of imperial violence.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency provides basic assistance for people -and to deny that life-saving help to Palestinian people (because we know what this is about) is aligning with IOF terrorism -and it undeniably makes these governments all equally complicit.

My MP's office is closed on weekends but I'll be calling and emailing her, and then emailing genocidal apologist Trudeau. Call and/or email your representatives. This is beyond heinous. I truly don't think these governments could sink any lower -be any more evil, and then they do and it's beyond disgraceful.

[palms-upturned]

Frustrates me to no end seeing people say “what’s your alternative to voting blue? Stage a revolution right now? This second? Get real, you’re posting on your computer instead of firebombing walmarts.” I don’t think that you understand what people are actually doing. I know for myself, I’ve been reading more history and theory than I ever have before. I’ve been marching. I’ve been getting involved with labor activism. I’ve been doing strategic research. I’ve tried to archive and share resources. I’ve watched other people do WAY more than I ever have or probably could. I’ve seen people occupy arms manufacturing sites and hold wildcat strikes and disrupt daily life as much as possible. We’ve all seen this happening at unprecedented levels for months now. And most of all, I’ve seen Palestinians telling us, rightfully full of anger, do not ever go back to how things were before. Do not turn away from what’s happening and your own complicity in it.

This is not something that we can vote our way out of. Our state is built on the same violence being inflicted on the people of Palestine. We helped to build Israel. We are still arming it and funding the “war” right now. Even the most half hearted measures from international bodies like the UN to take the bare minimum of a stance against genocide are quashed by the US. As they always have been, our power and resources are used to reinforce imperial and colonial hegemony. That remains the same no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office. And so does our own struggle for liberation. Meaningful change is never, ever going to come from within. We force the change to happen, as we always have.

If you can understand intersectionality, then surely you can understand this: we are not going to free ourselves by sacrificing colonized people. You may vote blue, and for you it could be a matter of life and death. Believe me, as a poor disabled person in a red state who almost killed myself over medical debt, I know the stakes. But I think you have to own the fact that you are empowering perpetrators of genocide and breaking solidarity with colonized people, not even to liberate yourself, but just to bargain with the oppressor for your life. That Palestinians and everyone else who we have harmed are going to be angry and they are more than within their rights. Instead of deflecting by just assuming that no one else is capable of putting their money where their mouth is and actually trying to lay groundwork for change, just do whatever you feel you have to do and sit with the reality of the situation.

Palestine will be free, we will be free, the whole world will someday be free. But for now, this is where we are, and we won’t free ourselves by operating like crabs in a bucket. Get organized, take care of each other, commit to solidarity. Empower yourself and each other rather than the state.

[majaurukalo]

everytime a major social protest happens disabled people are somehow excluded from it. it happens with protests against violence against women and gay prides especially and on a regular basis. look, if you are not going to include us in the equation, then you can’t deem yourself inclusive. i don’t know how many times i’ve read accounts of disabled people being excluded from these events or being dismissed when they would ask for accessibility information. sometimes they would even be discriminated during the protest or the march or whatever. it’s horrible. rarely are disabled women and their issues included in mainstream feminism and feminist platforms, although disabled women and girls are the ones being mostly abused by partners or family members (don’t let me start on the topic of forced sterilisation). lgbtq+ spaces are also very dismissive of our existence but we are also gay or bi or transgenre. We suffer both from ableism and homo-transphobia. but again, disabled queer people are forgotten and/or dismissed. there’s no fight for equality if you don’t include everyone. especially if you welcome all minorities and vulnerable members of society. the disabled community is one of the most vulnerable and discriminated communities we have today. i get it, it’s not easy to always make your spaces 100% accessible, especially since these spaces are voluntarily based and made on DIY style. but we are not asking for perfection. we ask you to try, to listen to us and to allow us to build those spaces with you. we are very resourceful and creative people because we often find ourselves navigating inaccessible spaces. we know how to do it and we are willing to collaborate. but you have to be willing to listen and care. ty.

[brandyschillace]

I turned in the book manuscript for INTERMEDIARIES, the forgotten history of the first transgender clinic 1918-1933.

It follows the story of Dora Richter, the first transgender woman to undergo complete MTF surgery (not Lili Elbe; she was third!) It’s taken me two years of blood, sweat, and tears. A lot of tears, actually.

The Nazis raided the Institute for Sexual Science; they burned the library. They banned the books that remained. They attacked, arrested, and ultimately killed trans and homosexual people along with disabled people, minority groups like the Roma people, political opponents, and 6 million Jews. (One commenter suggested 11 million people over all, and really, that estimate may still be conservative).

The news today, 2023, reads a lot like news in 1923 with the rise of hatred against LGBTQ, attacks on reproductive rights, and increasing racism and antisemitism. The Nazis rose throughout the 1920s, coming into power 1930-1933.

The world said never again; we must now be the ones to stop a slide into hatred and violence. Before it’s too late.

Here is a preview of the book; it will be available for pre-order this winter (I hope), coming out in 2024.

[hbmmaster]

edit: disabled reblogs because this timeline is missing some important events. see the notes for corrections

so okay my current best understanding of what happened here is

a trans woman is the victim of mass harassment

she attempts to report the harassment to tumblr and tumblr does nothing

she posts about her frustration with tumblr staff in a way that directly provokes the ceo of automattic (but not in a way that's actually a credible threat or a bannable offense)

[speculation! this is not confirmed] the ceo is so offended that someone who dares to use the platform he owns would joke about him suffering looney tunes violence that he wants to ban her for this, but since she hasn't done anything wrong he can't do that. but since he's the ceo he can do whatever he wants so he goes through her account(s) showing stuff he doesn't like to the moderation team until he eventually stumbles upon something that actually does technically violate the community guidelines

the trans woman's blog is, for reasons that haven't been officially stated, superbanned in a way that had been previously used when a bunch of black activists were accused of being russian bots. every image she's ever posted is "removed for violating community guidelines" including images that in no way violate community guidelines

tumblr users notice that these innocent images have been removed and make the reasonable assumption that the reason it says these images were removed for violating community guidelines is that something in these images violated community guidelines. people are, understandably, appalled by the implication that a trans woman posting completely normal selfies would be a bannable offense

the ceo, in a move that literally any PR person ever would advise against, personally singles out the woman who was banned, giving explanations of why exactly she was banned that members of tumblr staff would go on to clarify were not the actual reasons. he is technically on vacation while this is happening so nobody is physically there to tell him this is a bad move

miscellaneous other users who posted about this situation are banned for unstated reasons

after getting some backlash to this, the ceo doubles down and digs himself deeper, even following the banned user to another website to harass her

some trans members of tumblr staff release an official statement condemning their ceo's actions, saying in particular that the reasons he gave for why the user had been banned were not the actual reasons, but without specifying why she actually was banned

[comradekatara]

yesterday I was explaining the intricacies of lok to my friend who has only seen atla, and he (like the rest of us) just couldn’t get over the fact that they made toph a cop. he was trying to figure out what about toph’s personality (you know, considering that it’s entirely antithetical to becoming someone who acts as an agent of the state to enforce systemic violence) would lead the writers to this conclusion. and it occurred to me that I do think many people, even those who vehemently denounce toph’s copness, do sort of assume that toph loves violence for the sake of violence. she is introduced as saying “I love fighting, and im really really good at it,” and she is shown committing various acts of violence against others (including her friends) with a grin on her face. but I still wouldn’t characterize toph as someone who employs violence for violence’s sake.

toph is, externally, defined by her limits. she is small, she is blind, she is young, she is a girl; she was raised to be soft and delicate and helpless. toph’s first true expression of freedom is when she learns to use her disability as a boon and uses her earthbending not as a weapon, but as an extension of herself. to toph, earthbending is a form of self-expression. it is an artform. I think people tend to forget that when toph says that she loves fighting, she’s not just saying that she loves the thrill of beating arrogant, gigantic, muscled men thrice her size (although of course there is also that), but she’s also saying that she loves practicing a martial art for artistry’s sake.

unlike the boulder, who only listens to his big muscles, toph waits, listens, innovates, creates, hones her craft. and while her earthbending is indeed a martial art, it is also a site of innovation, a visual art, and most importantly, a disability aid. the earth is an extension of herself; it is her artistic medium. yes, of course toph does love being able to exert power over others as a ragefilled tiny twelve year old blind girl who has been denied agency her entire life, but power is not her primary motivation when honing her earthbending. she cares about craft, about innovation, about being one with the earth. unlike all the other earth rumblers and dai li agents and earth kingdom soldiers, toph is a deliberate, thoughtful, considerate earthbender. fighting is an art, and toph is an artist.

[qweerhet]

really gets my goat when people weaponize gender politics against disabled people. every time someone blames a disabled man (or person read as a man) for lashing out violently against their female caretaker and refers to it as "male violence" i lose 200 years off my life.

we live in a society where "caretaker" is a role that gives you absolute power over the disabled person in your care; quite frankly i think it's actively malicious to try to apply the concept of gendered violence in a way that posits the disabled person as the agent of violence and oppression in that situation. someone who has 100% control over you is, factually, in a position of absolute power over you; lashing out violently against people in absolute power over you is an inevitability.

i don't think there's a rhetorical way for me to get through to these people; they operate on the idea that maintaining the disabled as a powerless underclass is righteous and necessary, and that their powerlessness is inherent to their existence, not a socially constructed hierarchy. that's why they believe this is a robust feminist analysis of the power dynamics here--in this lens, the patriarchy is a socially constructed hierarchy that must be abolished (correct, tbc), but the caretaker-disabled relationship is just and inherent to the existence of disabled people, and thus cannot be a relevant axis of oppression.

but like. damn. really sucks to see feminism weaponized in such a directly dangerous, violent manner.

[genderkoolaid]

also, if y'all have any extra money, consider donating to the woman behind PGH Lesbian Correspondents. she is the one who broke the news on Nex Benedict's death properly, and she has done a lot of work tracking violence against queer & trans people over the years. she's a disabled lesbian currently struggling with being kicked out of her home after being involuntarily institutionalized. her blog has been around since 2005 and has praised by multiple queer orgs for her journalistic efforts. she also does interviews with politicians in Philadelphia, which is a really good resource for anyone living in that area to learn more about which politicians they should vote for.

Trans deaths so often go inaccurately reported, if reported at all. And queer people often do a ton of labor for extremely little recognition or payment. Sue's blog is an invaluable resource & she deserves whatever you can give her.