#we don't get that our culture often denies that

[theghostofashton]

-

[batshit-auspol]

have we talked about the woolworths debacle yet?

Sigh.

Alright kids strap in, because the culture wars are back and stupider than ever.

So there are two characters you need to be familiar with in this story before we continue:

Woolies (i.e. Woolworths) - One of two supermarket chains in Australia. Not related to the giant Woolworths chain that used to exist overseas, other than the Aussie one swiped the name because the original forgot to trademark the name 'Woolworths' here. Biggest company in Aus, and also the biggest employer. Not a brand anyone with more than two braincells would pick a fight with.

Peter Dutton - Man with less than two braincells, and current leader of the political opposition in Australia. Best known for bearing a passing resemblance to a potato and once demanding that a homophobic song get played for balance when a football halftime show performed 'Same Love'. His reputation is so bad that if you told an Australian that Dutton's favorite pastime was drowning puppies, they probably would believe you.

And to prove our point, here's the best headline a friendly newspaper could come up with to try spin his image:

The third thing you need to know is that in Australia we have a national holiday called "Australia Day" which is basically a scheduled day for everyone to get into a giant argument.

This is because for the last 30ish years it has been held on the anniversary of the British claiming the land around Sydney as a colony which was:

a) More the founding of an English prison then the founding of Australia, and more importantly

b) from the perspective of the people who were already living here, kindof a very shit day

Now not everyone agrees on this, and even those that don't 'celebrate' will often still have a get together with friends, but it can't be denied that we've shifted a long way from the days when the country used to celebrate Australia Day by kitting ourselves out in Aussie flag budgie smugglers, drinking enough beer to drown Harold Holt, and partying like it's 1789.

(Now a brief break for a real photo of Peter Dutton at a press conference)

Good luck sleeping tonight. Anyway back to the story.

As a result of this shift away from the trend of showing your patriotism by wearing Australian flag underpants, this year Woolworths decided that they were no longer going to be rolling out their box of southern cross thongs - on the grounds that "this kitschy shit never sells" and they are far too busy with more important things like blaming price gouging on inflation and installing self-checkout machines that think your canvas bag is a crime against humanity.

Never a man to miss an opportunity to act like a massive twat, upon hearing that Woolies had dumped their flag merch, Peter Dutton rushed onto the airwaves to declare that Woolworths had "gone woke" (paging 4chan circa 2009) and called for the country to boycott the store, a story which Australia's media have gleefully put on loudhale for over a week now in order to drive outrage clicks.

We at this point remind you that Woolworths is a company which, as we previously mentioned, basically has a monopoly on selling food in this country. Not exactly something you can boycott.

(Another real Dutton photo break)

Needless to say Dutton's dumbass plan did not immediately put Woolies out of business, however the relentless media campaign by Rupert Murdoch's minions did result in a bunch of innocent low-wage floor staff being harrassed by The Dark Lord's fanboys and a few Woolies stores were graffitied.

Allegedly being the 'free market' guy, Dutton also kindof snookered himself by demanding the free market not decide the fate of Australia day, but logic was never one of his strong suits.

Anyway, in the end we're just going to keep having this dumb circular argument every year, fulled by a media who love fanning the flames, until a politician has the guts to shift the date to May 8 (pronounced m8), and everyone promptly forgets this was ever a thing.

All in all, that's the long and the short of it. As a final touch we'll leave you with this real tweet by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, in all its batshit glory.

We look forward to the absolute dumpster fire of comments this post is going to generate - as is the Australia Day tradition.

[inkskinned]

i. about 2 weeks ago, i was told there's a good chance that in 5 or so years, i'll need a wheelchair.

ii. okay. i loved harry potter as a kid. i have a hypothesis about this to be honest - why people still kind of like it. it's that she got very lucky. she managed to make a cross-generational hit. it was something shared for both parents and kids. it was right at the start of a huge cultural shift from pre to post-internet. i genuinely think many people were just seeking community; not her writing. it was a nice shorthand to create connection. which is a long way of saying - she didn't build this legacy, we built it for her. she got lucky, just once. that's all.

iii. to be real with you, i still struggle with identifying as someone with a disability, which is wild, especially given the ways my life has changed. i always come up against internalized ableism and shame - convinced even right now that i'm faking it for attention. i passed out in a grocery store recently. i hit my head on the shelves while i went down.

iv. he raises his eyebrows while he sends me a look. her most recent new book has POTS featured in it. okay, i say. i already don't like where this is going. we both take another bite of ramen. it is a trait of the villain, he says. we both roll our eyes about it.

v. so one of the things about being nonbinary but previously super into harry potter is that i super hate jk rowling. but it is also not good for my mental health to regret any form of joy i engaged with as a kid. i can't punish my young self for being so into the books - it was a passion, and it was how i made most of my friends. everyone knew about it. i felt like everyone had my same joy, my same fixation. as a "weird kid", this sense of belonging resonated with me so loudly that i would have done anything to protect it.

vi. as a present, my parents once took me out of school to go see the second movie. it is an incredibly precious memory: my mom straight-up lying about a dentist appointment. us snickering and sneaking into the weekday matinee. within seven years of this experience, the internet would be a necessity to get my homework finished. the world had permanently changed. harry potter was a relic, a way any of us could hold onto something of the analog.

vii. by sheer luck, the year that i started figuring out the whole gender fluid thing was also the first year people started to point out that she might have some internalized biases. i remember tumblr before that; how often her name was treated as godhood. how harry potter was kind of a word synonymous for "nerdy but cool." i would walk out of that year tasting he/him and they/them; she would walk out snarling and snapping about it.

viii. when i teach older kids creative writing, i usually tell them - so, she did change the face of young adult fiction, there's no denying that. she had a lot more opportunities than many of us will - there were more publishing houses, less push for "virally" popular content creators. but beyond reading another book, we need to write more books. we need to uplift the voices of those who remain unrepresented. we need to push for an exposure to the bigotry baked into the publishing system. and i promise you: you can write better than she ever did. nothing she did was what was magical - it was the way that the community responded to it.

ix. i get home from ramen. three other people have screenshotted the POTS thing and sent it to me. can you fucking believe we're still hearing this shit from her when it's almost twenty-fucking-twenty-three. the villain is notably also popular on tumblr. i just think that's funny. this woman is a billionaire and she's mad that she can't control the opinions of some people on a dying blue site that makes no money. lady, and i mean this - get a fucking life.

x. i am sorry to the kid i was. maybe the kid you were too. none of us deserved to see something like this ruined. that thing used to be precious to me. and now - all those good times; measured into dust.

/// 9.6.2022 // FUCKING AGAIN, JK? Are you fucking kidding me?

[lorkai]

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Wrote a lil something awhile back with this premise (link here) but as I'm catching up with the recent updates on diasomnia chapter, I thought "why not write this with them?", thus this idea was born. Though I haven't writed for the whole diasomnia before so lemme know if you think they're too ooc!

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Here in Brazil when we met someone new or just as a form of greeting, it's customary to give them a hug and a kiss, or a polite handshake. And in general we are really affectionate with our friends. So I was thinking how some of the characters would react.

Malleus is touch-starved, plus he doesn't know much about the world and the customs of humans. So when you, a little human, constantly greet him with warm hugs and ask him to lean in a little so you can kiss his forehead and cheeks? Mal-Mal here is over the moon, wanting more of that affection he doesn't get so often, he wants to hear you making that high pitched voice while you hold his face and while you pat his head and stroke his horns. By seven, you certainly don't know what fear is. And little by little he returns your affection, laughing at your surprised expression when he kisses your forehead and smiles full of mockery.

Always so mischievous Lilia tends to use his powers to levitate you next to him every time you hug him as a form of greeting, at this point this is already a little tradition of yours. He loves receiving your kisses, pink adorning his cheeks every time, but he prefers to cup your face and pepper it with slow kisses, and sometimes sway and twirl with you from side to side as if you two were dancing. Lilia loves your small gestures of affection, even if they are just deep-rooted customs from your culture, they still mean a lot to him. I also feel like he would be the type of friend to create a secret handshake, something unique just for the two of you.

Sebek feels his cheeks flush, he tries to lecture you but only low murmurs and strangled screams leave his lips with every kiss you leave on his cheek and every hug offered. He's like a child who received the gift he's been waiting for his whole life and now he's so excited that he can't express himself, although he doesn't need to shout how he feels when his eyes express to you how much each of your gestures means to him. He will deny everything and try to act like he always does, but he is much softer on you after receiving your daily kisses and hugs.

Silver smiles, imitating your greetings as a sign of respect for you and your culture. Every kiss, handshake and hug exchanged leaves him warm inside, the other students are not as warm as you and he finds this change interesting. He likes to wonder if everyone in your country is as warm and welcoming as you, and he would love to hear you talk about where you come from. He would love to ask you to hug him while he takes a nap, but the idea is embarrassing enough for him to put into words, but maybe one day it will come true.

[arowitharrows]

God how I wish there'd been articles like this years ago when people were tripping over themselves to deny any and all struggles asexual people face. The amount of times people demanded "proof" when we talked about our experiences. Well, there's certainly more research being published nowadays, if that counts as "proof". I hope they read it.

Today “asexuality is widely accepted as a sexual orientation in the literature,” Hille says, but cultural awareness remains in its infancy, especially compared with other orientations under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. Saying you don't experience sexual attraction is still like saying you don't eat, Hille explains, and “if you don't eat, there's something wrong with you, and you're hurting yourself.” Asexual people sometimes get this message not just from family and acquaintances but from their health-care providers. Shelby Wren, a health equity researcher at the University of Minnesota, published a study in 2020 in which 30 to 50 percent of respondents who had disclosed their asexuality in a medical setting said a therapist or doctor had attributed their asexuality to a health condition. The proposed diagnoses included anxiety, depression and, in one case, a personality disorder. “You don't know what's going to happen when you disclose your sexual orientation,” Wren says. “And for a lot of people, that stops them from talking about things that could be relevant to their health care.”

[...]

Refraining from disclosing one's asexuality to a mental health provider is often a “very rational decision,” Chasin says. “It's always much worse to be actively rejected and misunderstood.” For instance, asexual people are sometimes subjected to conversion therapy, a practice aimed at changing someone's sexuality or gender identity. It is banned for minors in 22 U.S. states because of its well-documented and extensive harms, including increased rates of suicide. A 2018 U.K. government survey of LGBTQIA+ people found that asexual respondents were the most likely to be offered conversion therapy and as likely as gay and lesbian people to receive it. A recent survey by the Trevor Project found that 4 percent of asexual youths in the U.S. were subjected to conversion therapy, on par with bisexual respondents. On the legislative level, bans on conversion therapy should explicitly reference asexuality, Benoit says. So, too, should professional associations of health-care practitioners, says Samantha Guz, a social work researcher at the University of Chicago. “Asexual people are made to be so invisible in our society that I don't think just having a broad call against conversion therapy is specific enough,” Guz says.

Even well-meaning doctors might unwittingly harm their patients. To a clinician, a patient who is worried that they should feel more sexual desire—and who does not know they are simply asexual—might initially look similar to patients who want sexual intimacy and could benefit from treatments aimed at increasing or restoring desire. Treatments for certain types of sexual dysfunction do help some people whose level of sexual desire leaves them distressed and unsatisfied, Brotto says. For some people, though, this distress may be coming not from an intrinsic desire to want sex but from external pressures such as partners or society as a whole. “I have worked with folks where it's taken us many, many months for the person to really understand how well asexuality fits with their identity,” as opposed to having an issue that is rooted in a health problem or a situational condition, Brotto says. Most doctors, though, don't know that such a distinction exists or is necessary, she adds.

[imaginebetterfutures]

I'm back with another sculpture! To be completely honest, this one was a real struggle for me to work out, idea wise. I love working abstractly (see earlier pieces!) but for this one our prompt in class was "objects and identity." We were asked to cast an object from life, and use it to speak to some aspect of ourselves that we want to explore. Not only am I an extremely closed book (pour one out for my therapist) but I'm also really not that interested in replicating objects?

So... I sort of cheated. This isn't *really* a cast of VHS tapes (although I did try to do that, and it failed miserably) but I'm still pleased with the outcome. Sound on for what I think is the best part — the pleasing and/or sinister snick snick snick sound of the tape unspooling and piling up.

If you like long, corny artist statements, boy howdy do I have one for you!

~~ GEODE ~~

My day job is as a journalist, and while I find a lot of the posturing that journalists do about our role as storytellers to be pretentious and often egotistical, I also can't deny that I got into this because I love to see into people's lives. Why do people do what they do? Why do we make the choices we make? How did we get here, as individuals and as a collective?

Much of journalism is about the big moments — wars and chaos and game changing plays. But those don't come out of nowhere. They come from a history, both personal and communal. We are products of our childhoods, our cultures, our teachers, our parents. We come from places that have smells and sounds and textures. And we document those things — and here I don't mean "we" journalists, I mean "we" as people. Humans have, for our entire history, recorded ourselves in one way or another. We write on walls, we tell each other stories, we come up with words that have deep meanings that stretch back into time.

Some journalists see their job as speaking truth to power. Or telling the important stories in the face of chaos and misinformation. Or staking a claim to truth, and defending it. All of that is true, of course. But when I think about my job I don't think about those things. I think about excavation. About telling the story in such a way that you can feel the texture of the people in it. I think of stories like geodes.

Do you know how a geode forms? They start with a volcanic eruption. Lava flows from a hot, angry vent, and mixes with the gases in the air. Most of the time, those gases don't stay put — they escape into the air and go off to become the wind in your hair, or carry pollen, or sweep under a bird's wing. But sometimes, bubbles of gas can't escape the boiling weight of the lava and become trapped. As the lava cools, those bubbles remain. It is only then — held tight and encased in cooling rock — that the crystals characteristic of geodes form.

There is something sad about opening a geode. It can reveal a great beauty, but it is also inherently destructive. You are taking a hammer to something hard and protected and asking it to open, to be seen, to be commented on. Not all geodes want to open. Not all geodes should be opened, perhaps. Not all geodes are beautiful inside. How do you know when to break one, and when to leave it be?

Once you break a geode, you open the crystals up to damage. UV light can bleach the colors inside and the oils on your skin can slowly eat away at the glittering growths.

I think a lot, as a journalist, about the stories that we lose when people die. The small things that they knew — the color of a lover's hair, the name of their neighborhood dog, the true identity of a soldier — that go to the ground with them. I have to stop myself from buying home movies when I see them at garage sales and thrift shops — each one, to me, a geode. Inside they might contain nothing, or everything. Wrapped tight in metallic film they recorded things people thought were important, things people wanted to remember. Trapped in plastic and now, broken open.

My piece is a VHS geode. I have broken it, and it is unspooling, and we are forgetting. It is beautiful and terrible all at once.

[johannestevans]

so bizarre when people are like "Oh the glorification of incest has real life consequences" and they mean like. someone who wrote wincest. like my grandfather didn't molest me because a completely different person wrote porn about 2 fictional brothers fucking in a tv show

incest is a problem in the home because like...

we live in a society that doesn't value the bodily autonomy or rights of the child, including rights to privacy

children are often not given suitable education about their body parts or their rights to them, so they cannot necessarily accurately describe sexual abuse

because children are taught that the satisfaction and contentment of adults around them is more important than anything else, and that disobedient is the worst thing they can be, children are often not empowered to criticise or even question authority figures who might be abusing them

when children do speak up about abuse, people either want to deny it as an invention because children cannot know what sex is, or they want to say it's a lie bc they don't want to believe that someone they care about or respect might abuse children

and then there's further issues w sexualisation + misogyny + homophobia, like esp when it comes to the acceptable sexualisation of teenage sisters / daughters / nieces especially, and it being a big pop culture thing, but like. that's also a v diff set of tropes in diff media - mainstream porn, mainstream cishet stuff, etc

the thing about wincest is that like. a lot of siblings who are isolated from society and become codependent do end up in incestuous relationships as a coping mechanism and a way of self-soothing/soothing one another, and while it's obviously an indicator of deep harm done and often does further harm to them the longer it goes on like that's... a real thing that happens to kids who were abused in the way that they are

like i understand being grossed out or disgusted by it in fanfic or on tv or whatever but like. incest is a really big problem in our society and it's largely extremely invisible?

but the idea that someone abuses a family member or becomes sexually codependent with a sibling or cousin etc because of fiction is just like... ? do you not understand what it's like to be a victim of incest? like, do you not get that there's far broader structures in place that lead to the disenfranchisement and institutional permissiveness to a culture of child abuse, including csa and incest?

it just seems like a fundamental mix-up of cause and effect

[hexagr]

Lately, I've been reading about Sumer, Egypt, Assyria, Asia, Greece, and various early human civilizations. In the past, the general notion of 'religion' once entwined art, science, and ethics. That is to say that religion has, by and large, been a quasi-unifying way of viewing nature as one dynamic, connected thing.

Modernity seems to have abstractly tried to separate these ideas and isolate them into their own realms, as if they exist independently of one another.

This is kind of ironic. Because today we know from both physics and plain observation that ideas and things are interconnected. Denying this is absurd.

Knowledge itself, like great art and science, is often forged through great adversity. This is counter-intuitively good. One can get an understanding of a culture from how its inhabitants view both its ancestors and the hard-earned knowledge that's been passed down from generation to generation. Or, failing that, inquiring about where, exactly, it gets its knowledge from.

And physical and spiritual traits tend to be entwined, too (medical issues aside). One tends to accompany the other. For example, traits at a spiritual and metaphysical level get reflected at the object level. Thus, we can observe that the morals or values of a culture are sometimes reflected in the outward appearances, behaviors, and artistic creations of the people. Many of these principles are surprisingly generalizable.

A culture is the sum of this and more. Categories of things like these can reveal how a culture organizes itself. How it reproduces itself—not just sexually but memetically. It's customs and practices. How it records itself, thinks of itself, and artistically expresses itself. And what it permits and forbids.

Religion is like culture. And culture is almost indistinguishable from religion.

The main difference, I think, is that religion is encompassing in the sense that it has functionally served as a container for science, art, and itself for much of history.

In this way, religion is like an overarching organic structure that has served various functions in structuring ideas as well as social order.

Furthermore, every culture and subculture is a sort of quasi-religion, even if it doesn't explicitly identify as one.

Some claim that we have transcended religion, that we have eclipsed the past, and that we have left even our primitive shadows behind. But I don't think this is true at all.

It's religion all the way down. We still worship; we still play primal games; and we still play with fire and blood, albeit in different ways. It's just today that we're a primitive culture of Simians with computers. Some might say we are savage robots.

Others assert we are more highly evolved and know more today than ever before. And maybe, in some ways, we do know more. But in some other ways, it seems we have forgotten many of the obvious things that we once knew.

*This post is not a claim that religion is intrinsically good. It's an observation that religion is organic—and that in the spirit of functionalism, it served a purpose—that it was once (and still is, to some extent) a container for many things. But knowledge, science, ethics, and so on are collectively dynamic and evolving things. And we can all agree that nobody would want to live in a universe where people are put to death for wearing the wrong clothes or some other frivolous triviality. To say that humanity was completely better off at some point in the ancient past is blasphemy against human progress.

[dyemelikeasunset]

Cannot explain how much the portrayal of Mor and her moms .... Complicated relationship is to me. I have often felt in lgbt spaces, being unable to express the complicated hurt and love for the people who raised me. Mor is very relatable to me in this aspect. I wish it was something we talked about more as a community.

I'm really happy and kinda relieved it resonates with you. I also wish we talked about it more, and it's exactly why I wanted to write her relationship with Delilah this way.

This is gonna get a little socio-political from here on

but I think for me personally too, it's also complicated by the fact the dominant white culture leans toward demonizing parents of color. As a qpoc, I often find it really hard to talk about my complicated family dynamics without microaggressive racism getting involved. For many diasporic poc, our families are our main ties to our culture, and to be denied that connection is denying part of our racial and cultural identity. Of course it's complicated!

I just get so tired of the polarizing ways that parental relationships are depicted. Our parents don't always have to be understanding, "progressive," immediately-accepting angels for us to want them in our lives still. PoC should never have to be perfect to be given the human right to make mistakes and given the grace to grow. People are always so ready to give up on the older generation and put parents of color in the same box as oppressive forces that hurt them too

Also, it's up to adult children to make our own choices when it comes to our families-- other people shouldn't assume to know better

Anyway, I got a little heated, but just know that I see you, and I also wish we got to talk about strained family dynamics in more nuanced ways

[foultastemusic]

Power of noises and vaginas - a thought

For two decades now, post-hardcore has been considered a sub-genre descended from hardcore, which in turn was considered a sub-genre descended from punk, and which in turn... well, it's not important to put musical genres and sub-genres into boxes purposely organized to fit people and their ways of dressing and other useless aesthetics promoted by media/digital cultures. But for two decades now, post-hardcore has been asserting itself as a well-defined genre, with well-defined textural characteristics, as well as certain types of chords and experimentalist riffs in the nostalgic-depressive world, heartfelt screams with a poetically sad story to tell in the most imperfect and dirty way possible, where D.I.Y. is valued in the various arts that embrace recorded and live music.

In 2003, music researcher Jessica Hopper wrote the review "Emo: Where the Girls Aren't" for a column in Punk Planet 56. It was already in the cradle of the emo thing at the beginning of the century that we noticed an absence of girls at concerts - at first there was no mention of them playing or making music, but even their absence from the public as listeners / active participants in this subculture and community. Girls began to enter this world in a very controversial and unrevolutionary way, but always with all the freedom.

Obviously, through the promotion that took place on the internet on the various platforms, the genre reached more stages, more people, more musical cultures and gained a large structure. Girls (like everyone else) start going to these places, often through an interest they already had in other genres such as indie, punk, metal, etc., and as soon as they buy a ticket to go to a concert, we have a group of 50 young men talking about love, depression, nature and other "weaknesses" seen through the eyes of toxic contemporary masculinity. And girls are welcome here. They will always be welcome until they start making music out of fear, because in punk they've already had the chance to revolutionize themselves and post-hardcore/screamo gives voice and space to boys who also suffer from prejudice.

Hopper talks about this band that dedicates a song (Strike Anywhere - Refusal, 2001) to the girls about their problems and lives, and claims that we need more of that: protection and respect. But this hasn't happened and girls still don't feel encouraged and empowered: they are an inspiration for the experiences and texts of this subculture, they are desired as artists and recreationists, and even though they aren't sexualized or repudiated in all cases, they feel obliged to get on the boys' knees to make it too, perhaps even better. A fight against meritocracy, male dependency in order to learn or be promoted and supported, where we are ALL programmed to think that we have a sex organ between our legs and that public reception is influenced by this: either in a positive or a negative way.

«And so I watch these girls at emo shows more than I ever do the band. I watch them sing along, see what parts they freak out over. I wonder if this does it for them, if seeing these bands, these dudes on stage resonates and inspires them to want to pick up a guitar or drum sticks. Or if they just see this as something dudes do, because there are no girls, there is no them up there. I wonder if they are being thwarted by the FACT that there is no presentation of girls as participants, but rather, only as consumers – or if we reference the songs directly – the consumed. I wonder if this is where music will begin and end for them. If they can be radicalized in spite of this. If being denied keys to the clubhouse or airtime will spur them into action».

- Jessica Hopper (2003)

Girls are not yet part of this music, or at least not in a direct or comfortable way. Perhaps through music promotion, the organization of concerts, photographs and poster designs, perhaps through their words adopted by these boys or the desires and utopias of an all-embracing subcultural milieu that, although they may all agree and share the same idea, refuses to accept that they are not welcome altogether, completely. Perhaps they are, but ever since men began to dominate this music or all music, they have needed reasons to pick up a guitar without the issue of sexual gender being brought into the listening experience or even to politics. Would it be better to ignore the gender issue at all costs (until this argument is normalized) or to promote the importance of giving girls a voice to help empower them, as has been happening in punk and hardcore (until this issue becomes part of the contemporary elements of screamo)? Maybe no one has the answers, but the reality is that girls continue to enjoy and consume this music without drumsticks in their hands.

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

I am not an English native speaker,I hope you apologize my poor ENGLISH,I love your blog and your opinion about OCTAGRIPPA,here's my question

I just wanna know if you notice suetoanius mention that Octavian met an Eagle at Campus Martius when he 76 years old,watching the bird flyed onto Agrippa's name and announced himself would be dead soon? I consider it a very strong evidence to prove the two truly loved each other.Anyway in my culture,we don't think anyone should loved a friend until death like this

Hello! It looks like you're referring to Suetonius, Divus Augustus, 97:

It is a bittersweet passage, isn't it? We don't know whether it really happened, because stories of omens like this often develop after the fact. But it does suggest that people in Suetonius' time still thought of Agrippa and Augustus' relationship as significant.

Speaking of cultural differences, I think you'd find this interesting: I'm part of the aromantic community. I know six people who married people they love as friends, not romantically. To them, these relationships are just as important as romance is for most people. But some folks think a relationship without romance isn't good enough, and that these marriages are not "real love." So aromantic people here are trying to teach others that our love is still real, just different. Sometimes the most important person in your life is a friend.

(And some aromantic folks, like me, don't want a platonic relationship either. But that's another topic.)

This has also influenced how I look at history. Like many queer people, I like to look for historical same-sex relationships, and people we might now consider "trans." Finding people like us in history is important. But the aromantic community has taught me that the love in friendships is important, too. If every very close partnership gets put in the "romantic" category, it denies people like me a chance to find others like ourselves.

So how are we supposed to interpret something like Octavian and Agrippa? Is it possible to know what category they're in? Do categories like "romantic" or "platonic" even mean the same thing in ancient Rome??

Here's another cool thing aromantic people taught me: sometimes, there is no clear line between romance and close friendship. One of my friends says the feelings are indistinguishable for her. She is also happily married, to a very romantic person. You might think, "Romantic relationships have sex, friendships don't," but surprise! Both of them are also asexual! So for my romantic asexual friend, and some other folks, romantic feelings can exist without sexual ones.

If your response to that is, "Well, how do you tell the difference, then?"...you've run into the same problem I did, when studying ancient relationships. And we haven't even touched on cultural or linguistic differences between us and the ancient Romans yet! But this post is getting very long, so I'll leave that for another time.

All this is why, for my masterpost about Octavian and Agrippa (currently unpublished), I decided to change my goal. Instead of trying to put a label to what their relationship was, I decided to just collect the information we do have, to help fiction writers portray them. Whether you then write it as romantic or platonic (or "???") is up to you.

[gemsofgreece]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJEygy6e/

Okay but it's an issue we should discuss when they post videos like this. Had for example a Turkish person get any other Balkan country they would laugh about it, but when they get Greek they throw a tantrum.

Also many deny that they may have Greek DNA after hundreds of years of marrying Greek slaves so why do they act surprised 😅

You linked this video:

Like... let me be totally honest... I am weirded out by young Greek (and sometimes Turkish) people who act like it's such a shock when it comes to their notice (finally) that some Greek and Turkish people do not like each other. A lot of young people claim that the hostility between the countries is purely politically motivated and does not represent the people at all but that's not entirely true. Because no matter all the political propaganda against each other, for it to work and spread, the everyday people have to actually be receptive of it, whether in full earnest or even by decriminalizing it as a joke. The reason Turkey politically holds an aggressive stance against Greece for decades or maybe since its foundation, the reason this political strategy works, is because a lot of people are receptive and approve of it or just don't mind it enough to not make jokes with it. Of course many many Turkish people say they love our cultural similarities and love their Greek friends and come here for holiday etc etc , but this doesn't change the fact that if you ask them, most of them will agree that Turkey must expand and Greece should shrink or that Greeks unfairly revolted against the perfect good Ottoman Empire or they will attempt to diminish the cultural and historical impact and imprint of the Greeks in Asia Minor. Similarly, Greek people might acknowledge that Erdogan does not represent all Turkish people and that we have many similarities between us and that Turkish culture is beautiful but that doesn't change the fact that all Greeks will pick Turkey as the number one military threat for Greece or that they don't all express bitterness and contempt for the Greek cultural progress stump during the Ottoman occupation or that they are not angry at the Ancient and Byzantine Greek cultural erasure that is taking place in Turkey now. Greeks and Turks can be great friends but it has to work through mutual agreement to never take a serious side in any of these issues in earnest because sooner or later there might be arguments. Again, this is not for every Greek or Turk, but it is really a big percentage unfortunately.

This Turkish girl who was turned off when she got the Greek flag, she commented that it was kind of a conscious joke and I don't think it was so serious. The Greek girl makes a fair point but there is indeed a point she is missing - Turkish school actively portrays Greeks as oppressors!!!!! Greeks are portrayed as a) ancient oppressors (Turks also follow the late Balkan trend of trying to claim heritage from extinct ancient cultures like the Hittites and the Luwians and a lot others who they absolutely have no connection to and try to portray themselves as the original victims and the Greeks as the aggressors (despite the teeny tiny detail that the ancient non-Greek Anatolian peoples fought and killed each other way more than they ever fought with Greeks), b) as medievally extinct (it is a BIG NO NO to admit that the Byzantines were mostly Greeks especially in the late period they got in touch with them or to refer to the largely Greek cultural identity of the Eastern Romans / Byzantines or sometimes to even consider that the Byzantine Empire had a great culture and history as they often claim Ottomans saved the Byzantines from themselves (???) by conquering them!!!!!!, c) the Modern Greeks as horrible and ungrateful traitors, as the Ottoman Empire was a utopia giving them countless rights and benefits and those rats dared to rebel against it, d) the current Greeks as unreliable potential aggressors, with the argument that Greece invaded "Turkey" in the early 20th century, which technically wasn't Turkey yet but the dissolving Ottoman Empire and with the excuse of World War I either the great powers or the neighbouring countries with nationals in these lands were making claims (while of course simultaneously they deny the Greek and Armenian and Assyrian Genocides, they deny the countless progroms against them and they deny that at the time Greece was making such claims the coasts of Asia Minor indeed still had Greek majorities in most areas and Turks were deeper inland but of course then they killed or kicked everyone out and Greek majority was no more, problem solved!). So they entirely paint Greeks as the bad guys and refuse all their widely ascknowledged war crimes. With this in mind, of course the youngsters make jokes such as "oh what my ancestors would think of me dating a Greek dude". Your ancestors were getting more Greek dudes than you, dear. And I am not saying it as an insult. It was mutual. Our Greek ancestors also were getting more Turkish dudes than us. But it was the Turks' choice to take these lands by force. Pretty sure they were not invited by the indigenous people.

However, this was NOTHING. Let me present you the real deal. You think that was problematic? Please! Watch this one. And honestly it is hilarious. I have watched it 100 times and I laugh every time. I just don't care. I don't know if this man is a troll acting as a nationalist or just unstable but he has a tiktok full of those and he's always screaming so I suppose it's parts comedy. I don't care either way, it's funny! No point in taking this seriously.

[the-firefly-jar-system]

Hi! I wanted ask abt a group in your DNI, if it's okay.

I don't really know much about this type of stuff, and it's a bit hard to find info about this on google, and i wanted to know your personal opinion, so who are endos and tulpas, and why you have them in your dni?

Of course if you don't feel comfortable answering this it's completely ok, i don't mind.

Thanks for asking! I’d be happy to talk about this /gen

Endos are endogenic systems, who are systems who claim to be formed from something other than trauma, and tulpas are supposedly alters that are created on purpose (usually by the host as something like an imaginary friend)

The reason these groups are on our DNI is because, based on current medical understanding, it is not possible to be plural or a system that is not formed from trauma (I’d be happy to get more into the technicalities of this if you’d like!). I do personally believe that a lot of them are actually systems, but are most likely misinformed or in denial of their trauma. While I do believe that most of them are actually systems, we would prefer for them not to interact due to the harm they do to the community. They often spread misinformation and harass other systems (I will not deny that both sides harass each other, I have seen a lot more coming from endos)

Tulpas are especially on our DNI due to the fact that using the phrase “tulpa” is cultural appropriation. Tulpamancy is a closed Buddhist practice, and the word has deep spiritual meanings that are being erased by the modern “tulpa” community

Sorry that this was kinda long winded and wordy, but I hope this explains things! Feel free to send in another ask if you want clarification on anything :) Have a nice day/night!

-Blurry❓

[tanadrin]

I almost exclusively have subby non-con fantasies. Even when doing consensual cuddles I will quietly pretend that I don't have a choice because it is more fun. When people say stuff like "non-con depictions are evil", it feels like they are trying to deprive me of my entire sexuality.

I often feel a bit frustrated at our pro-consent culture denying me of people forcing themselves on me. And this is a lot stupid because I am asexual so most sexually would be just be horrifying to me with no fun.

I do kinda still wish that my friends would grab at my breasts like we were in a horny anime, and that the norm that it was okay for them to do that was so strong that I wouldn't have to make sure that I look like I am enjoying it.

While a lot of non-con would be bad in real life like "oh if I get kidnapped my friends would worry about me and I don't want that", but lots of it is just that it requires some astounding coincidences, like the person forcing themselves on me is also someone I find attractive and that they also aren't interested in doing anything to me that I would find truly upsetting and icky.

The consent fans are right that consent is a good tool for avoiding the bad stuff and increasing tolerance, I just kinda feel like they took out the good part too. No idea how to keep the good part without adding a lot of horrifying stuff, but I remain vaguely grumpy at consent culture.

I mean, you could always say to your friends, "hey what if you grabbed my tits sometimes," I guess.

[maybebecomingms]

715-husband

January 29, 2024

I was thinking back to a church small group I was in over 10 years ago where the leader had unexpectedly become a close friend of mine. (People also sometimes got us confused for each other, too, which baffled me. I always thought she was way cooler and prettier than me, and I didn't understand why she liked me at all!)

Anyway, I was thinking about how we shared really personal stuff about our sex lives with each other at the time. She was a registered nurse (physician's assistant now!) and I remember my first post-nuptial pregnancy scare. I had an IUD, and she said "Sam, you know it's like a bowling alley in there, right? Nothing's gonna stick."

I remember talking her down off the ledge from at least one pregnancy scare, too (she did later go on to have one child). I remember talking about my frustration when my ex husband mistakenly assumed I was some wild, adventurous woman in the bedroom because of my "past," when I was mostly just terrified. "It's like... slow down, boy scout," she lamented. I remember her talking about how she underwent an entire physical therapy program in attempt to treat the chronic pain she had with sex. I often thought about doing something similar.

Anyway, she's divorced now, too.

I was thinking about how apparently evangelical folks experience vaginismus at a rate THREE TIMES higher than non-religious folks. I was thinking about how the Christian literature that was our church's bread and butter taught that women *might* enjoy sex, and that's cute and all, but men literally require it and will wither and die if you say no even once. You are defiling your marriage and denying Christ. Among this advice was that it's a woman's job to give hand jobs if she is postpartum and cannot safely have intercourse. As if she is somehow at fault for having pushed a whole 'nother human out of her body and owes him one?!

I was thinking about how viewing porn and masturbation are grave sins in those circles, and if you're going to utilize either, you might as well be cheating on your spouse. Don't get me wrong - I know both can be harmful under certain circumstances, and that porn especially can cause one's partner to feel betrayed. But to say that taking care of your own needs is sinful and forcing your exhausted wife to do it for you is godly seems more than a little fucked.

I was thinking about all of these things and sometimes I'm impressed that I found my way out as well as I did. That it wasn't a whole lot worse than it ended up being. I didn't need physical therapy, or any sort of special equipment. I just needed to feel safe and try things out on my own terms.

I hope my friend was or is able to do the same, if that is something she wants to do.

And I hope everyone influenced by purity culture is able to break free, whatever that looks like for them.

[theophagie]

Ppl who hate Bkg are either unhealed cishet guys or just a bunch of posers that follow "hated one of the week" for likes.

It's just not possible for a normal person to be THIS stupid and not be aware of it, they are 100% doing this on purpose.

Some people just enjoy riding the hate train and that's true (which is applicable to bnha hate in general), but I'm sure that there are ways in which we can talk about what dickheads Bakugou haters tend to be without joining them in ableism land

Often enough it's all a result of toxic masculinity and everything that comes with it 🤷‍♂️ Bakugou is "threatening" because much of his (male) character is intimately tied to the (male) protagonist in ways that go way beyond simple rivalry and friendship (without their bond ever being defined or alluded to as being familial ⚠️), something which has been acknowledged by multiple characters (All Might, Kirishima, Uraraka, AFO) + some of the roles he fulfils tend to be stereotypically associated with female characters (eg kidnapping victim to be rescued, person who worries for the mc the most, the mc's weakness) + through his growth he embodies the need to accept both other people's strengths and your own vulnerabilities + he doesn't have a (female) love interest to distance him from Midoriya with. All of this + the fact that most of his fans are queer and/or women + "bkdk bad but Midoriya has to be our self insert" = Bakugou is an incarnation of everything that a Man™ shouldn't be and is thus bad

Then add the general tendency to refuse to accept that bnha is very much a manga about Feelings And Emotions + the seemingly initially promised power fantasy of a bullied person overcoming their bully (a perfect hook for projection), and you get things like "Bakugou only stopped bullying Deku because of OFA" (literally untrue), "Bakugou never faced any consequences" (he very much did), "I was bullied and I would have never forgiven Bakugou" (you aren't Midoroya and Bakugou wasn't your bully), etc

I don't think that they're doing this on purpose simply because it's perfectly in line with these kinds of people to go to extreme lengths to deny reality simply because it collides with their cultural background/ideology. Certainly there are also people who just dislike or even hate Bakugou because of his personality alone, but even then disliking a character =/= being able to recognise the role that they play, the importance that they have. Eg with another super misinterpreted character, I don't have many strong feelings for Tomura, but understanding what he stands for is enriching regardless, especially because many other characters I love are tied to him (speaking of. geez I wonder who is the character that is also tied to Tomura who these people deny is tied to Tomura because they hate him). He's essential to the puzzle and to Midoriya's story, just like Bakugou is, and it literally costs me nothing to say this because I don't have a weird complex about it 🤷‍♂️