#well i guess it is called anti intellectualism?

[mask131]

On the one hand I am monstrously sad to be living in a time when the extreme-right and the extreme-left coexist as threats. On the other hand, I am kind of glad, because it allows me to see the exact workings of each of the extremes, and despise them both as much.

I mean, for the extreme-right it is very obvious why they're bad, ever since World War II we know what we're getting. But the extreme-left? It could be a bit harder to see, especially since the left defends the "good" principles like defending minorities, fighting against oppresors, equality for everyone, diversity everywhere... And yet we now have the extreme-left right in our face, showing how it can take those good principles and twist them, abandoning the "equality" and "diversiy" part for hypocritical ersatz.

The most revealing example - which was discussed about and evoked as a threat LONG BEFORE the whole Israel-Hamas conflict reignited itself - is how the extreme-left is known as antisemitic. You start thinking "Heck, why? It makes no sense! The extreme-left defends racial and religious minorities, and the Jews are known as one of the most persecuted and hated minorities in the world's history, so the left couldn't possibly be against them!".

But here's the twist... The left is against the "elite". Real or imaginary. The left is like a Robin Hood defending "the poor, the weak, the helpless", and will as such attack those that look wealthy or seem powerful, even when they're not. Comes in nice Lady Antisemitism, and the extreme-left starts shouting the same conspiracy theory and insane beliefs that the extreme-right used to shout. "There's too much Jews in the finances and the politics" ; "Jews are wealthier than regular folks, everybody knows that!", "Everybody knows the Jews control the media". And so, the extreme-left turns the persecuted minority into yet another elite of wealth and power who secretly controls the media - and decides they are an enemy to be taken down. Resulting in the exteme-left becoming a twin of the extreme-right.

This "We fight against the elite" mindset can explain a lot of what is wrong and awful with the extreme-left, and a lot of its dangers. For example how they actually "pick-and-choose" the minorities they want to defend and that are "worth" taking care of. I already talked about Jewish people, but there's a reason why the extreme-left keeps talking about Black people and Arab people... but almost never talks of Asian minorities and ethnicities. Because they're "too white", because they're "not persecuted enough", because they're too "well-implanted" or come from "too rich, too powerful, too Western countries". And as such, in this same blind and warped, out of reality logic, the extreme-left considers them to be too, part of the "elite" and thus rejects them as a "valid" minority.

And this dangerous anti-elite movement doesn't just have racist repercusions, but also terrible cultural ones. Everybody points out the anti-intellectualism of the extreme-left, but as a literature student who went to a university, I have to support this: yes, the extreme-left has a problem with traditional culture, classic literature, and simply higher-education that isn't about one of their personal topics. They deem that studying Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome for example is a proof of being colonialist, or that by being interested in any classical European author you are inherently racist. Again, it comes from a good and positive logic such as "One should be interested in many cultures, just not their own" or "It isn't because someone is uneducated that they are not a worthy person". But this is twisted into: "Since our candidate was not elected, we will attack the symbol of this hateful elite that obviously rigged the election - like universities, and we will especially destroy precious and rare books from ancient times, or degrade treasured pieces of art, to show that our rightful leaders have been denied their throne". From "You don't need to have an education to be worth something and a good person", we went to "You don't need an education, period. Culture is useless".

Again, the appeal to the masses that believe themselves to be the mass when in fact they are more of a minority. Fucking demagogues who rely on the "blind and mindless mob" to get in power - that's a technique found equally in both extreme-right and extreme-left, and the recent decade has proven us that. When a extreme politician is not elected by a vote, their supporters will start rebelling and rioting and shouting angrily the election is rigged, because "they" are the majority, "they" are the voice of te people, and as such it is impossible for them not to win... And in this blind senseless anger they refuse to admit that, simply, maybe they didn't win the vote because they are not the "majority" they like to think themselves as, but just a loud minority, or a mass of people not as big as the mass of people opposing them.

To return to the extreme-left, I can even extend the topic to genders! This was denounced heavily by the mockeries of the "wokism" movement and its ridiculus excesses, but I will forever recall this incident where someone tried to create a social and working group exclusively for women and "trans people" from which all men were banned - before realizing the problem that, by banning all men, they also banned trans men, and created the paradox of, by accepting trans people denying them any masculinity. It was at the time shared as a ridiculous story to be mocked at, but honestly it was very revealing of the entire warped "goodness" the extreme-left puts into place, and it shows how, as the saying goes, "Hell is paved with good intentions".

The right wants to maintain traditions, a culture, offer peace and security - leading to an extreme-right of xenophobe and racist fascists.

The left wants to put down the elite and care about minorities and open itself to diversity - it becomes an extreme-left of antisemitism, transphobia and book-burners.

I always knew all extremes were bad, but now I actually see in real time how good principles and ideas are warped up into dictatorial and hateful behaviors, and as I said before, it makes me both sad and glad. Sad for the monsters we will have to fight, but glad that I know how the monsters came to be and what their anatomy is.

[coldasyou]

I need new tv shows to watch but like I can’t look at lists of “best tv shows ever” bc I need to watch something a little bit mediocre …I need some flavor

[andromerot]

just remembered about the first time i saw the "his wife filled the house with chintz to keep it real i fuck him in the floor" post i was like this is so silly this isnt a poem at all! this is just a funny phrase! but now if im honest theres many times where i recall it and substitute its elements to understand a relationship between three people in a space. and the beautiful metric of it doesnt hurt at all

[bookalicent]

if i see another destiel meme about the debate or literally any big news...... just listen to npr

[olderthannetfic]

I always see people who have never been antis, talking about/questioning how some antis even ARE antis when you look at their taste in media - ie the ever famous joke of "Hannigram is #problematique" "but it's a show where he eats people" or whatever.

I thought I'd weigh in as someone who could, hypothetically, be called an ex-anti (which, thankfully, nothing ever really came out of it - it was just very 2014 keyboardwarrior-esque behavior of me being a chronically online young adult who would share posts in a group chat making fun of certain shippers, or reblog posts about how 50shades is The Most Problematic Media Ever to exist -- basically I was an anti with anti-lines of thoughts, but i never, like, a ran a Shipping Discourse Blog or whatever)

For me, personally, it was a few different things. I can now see how it's incredibly hypocritical that teenaged me shipped Light/L, while still thinking that Dramione was Bad And Abusive. It ultimately boiled down to a) being pretentious, and b) just not understanding media or what proshippers REALLY believed, with a side of c) not realizing that nuance exists. like i was pretty late to join tumblr, I think I immigrated here during PEAK "yourfaveisproblematic" era which definitely did have an impact on my opinions and my tastes.

to elaborate, a.) being pretentious. i mean this one just kinda goes without saying. "I engage in media in a way more intellectual way than you do, don't you know that? You're a filthy and disgusting person who writes Snape/Hermione because you're an actually disgusting pedophile IRL who would probably date your own student that you're abusing if you could. Meanwhile, I'm a very smart, good, and pure person. When I read Uncle Vernon/Harry, I'm doing it in a G-d honoring whump way that clearly condemns abuse, incest, and rape. Unlike YOU who only writes harmful stuff as a way to get people off :/"

(as an aside, i think this line of thinking will ALWAYS be present in fandom and popculture in some way, sadly. ie the recent trend of people hating on booktok bc the books are 'trashy' and how these porn addicts should read real classic literature instead.)

as for b.), not understanding media - i cannot emphasize enough that i was GENUINELY stupid and disconnected enough to think that proshippers REALLY WERE pro-All Of The Degenerate Dead Doves That They Wrote.

why did i feel this way? why did i understand that Lolita clearly isnt pro-pedophilia, but for some reason i thought that someone shipping weecest was? well, first of all, i think that fanfiction is (generally) seen as Less Serious than classic literature, and fandom is a fun place, so i guess i somehow thought that every fanfic/fanartist who wrote Problematic Things, especially Problematic Things that they portrayed as Sexy, really DID enjoy the thought of that Actually Happening To Real People.

and i think THIS is the bulk of why antis ARE antis. i'm not calling them all stupid - i do think BEING an anti is stupid, but at the same time, there are people who are truly smart and good-intended people who just have some really off color opinions about, like, homestuck ships or whatever. Lawlight is okay because notebooks that kill people don't exist so it's IMPOSSIBLE for the Harmful Aspects of Light/L to be romanticized! but schoolyard prejudiced bullies DO exist and are a REAL problem so Drarry is BAD (*truly completely unaware of the fact that there's 'realistic' aspects of the Light/L dynamic and 'unrealistic' aspects of Drarry - such as, for example, Hogwarts arguably being even MORE of a fantasy setting than DN is.*) I know that media literacy is the hot buzzword of the year to throw around in 2024, but, like, i really did not have media literacy.

as for c.), not realizing nuance exists - ok "nuance" might not be the best word here, but i dont know how else to describe it. like, each time ive typed the word "problematic" out in this ask, i've done so in a very tongue in cheek/ironic/retroactive way, but, like, those posts about how Everything Is Problematic, Including Your Fave ARE true. and i didn't like the fact that my favorite media or favorite person might've Made A Mistake! i need to Talk About Its Issues Because I'm So Betrayed That My Dear Sweet Comfort Media Would Do This To Me. I Need To Prove I Clearly Condemn It.

like, i legit morally could not justify reblogging a twilight post without adding in the tags '#this is my guilty pleasure it sucks that the books were so racist though' or whatever. Most people were lucky enough to avoid that line of thinking, but there was an actual group of people who felt a genuine need to virtue signal all the time, partly bc, hey, they WERE passionate about talking abt #issues in media, but also bc of a subconscious fear of If You Reblog A Singular Piece Of Hetalia Fanart, You're Literally A Nazi And Will Get A Callout Post Written About You.

and during all of this i was at the tail end of my high school experience (yes i know im younger than most of your audience, ha). i was going through A Lot emotionally, going through a lot of life changes, and lived in a very . . . interesting household/place where i couldn't do ACTUAL good in the world that i was passionate about. so to make up for the fact that i was genuinely in no place to do legit activism, clearly i had to save the gay community by arguing about johnlock queerbaiting or whatever.

^ and honestly i do think that is the position of most antis. theyre isolated and cant seem to do Enough in the Real Scary World so they have to resort to talking about how bad of a person someone is for "shipping abuse", bc theyre not in a situation where they could, for example, ACTUALLY fight the good fight to end abuse or raise awareness for it.

There was way more to it and way more that I could say, if I wanted to, but this post is long enough as it is and probably doesn't make much sense.

I feel bad for antis, honestly, or at least the ones who are antis in the way I used to be.

--

Oh yes, passionate young fools who think they can at least fix the internet if not their lives make up most of the cannon fodder. Some of the ringleaders are just mini dictators and wannabe cult leaders, but most anti-leaning types are just traumatized or clueless, even a lot of the ones who do serious damage and don't just mock shit in private with their friends.

[edwad]

holy fuck why do marxists (or whatever you call yourself) always interpret that criticism as calling people "stupid"? i do not think people who fail to understand extremely long and complex and abstract texts are stupid, that's your (rather crypto-ableist) labeling. i said i myself have trouble grasping it, are you calling me stupid for that? furthermore you are not a normie, i think you know very well you spend many orders of magnitude more time on this than "the masses" ever will (1/?)

also you guys love the "random guerrilas read marx so that means everyone can become a marx scholar" line which is implicitly (or sometimes explicitly, because people will add a "so they obviously know better than those ivory tower academics") anti-intellectual because i guess you think marx scholars who spend their entire lives studying marx are just jacking off most of that time since someone with high school literacy can do just as well as them on top of working a full time job (2/?)

finally, has it ever occurred to you that i'm speaking from experience? i know people who have tried reading capital and get overwhelmed by stuff that's routine to me (e.g. reading a primary text from two centuries ago) as someone who, i agree, doesn't have all that much training. yes, they can overcome that barrier, but as you demonstrate that takes an amount of time and dedication that few will elect. and i know these people, i don't think they're "stupid", you called them that (3/3)

also, i want to add, i think calling people who don't have the kind of knowledge or intellectual skills that are very rarely acquired outside of formal training "stupid" is what's elitist. i commend you on being one of those exceptions, but don't beat on people who haven't done the same (4/4)

you've just sent me all this simply because you made the claim that marxism can't mobilize the masses which it very obviously historically has. you're wrong and trying to move the goalposts now as if im the one claiming that being politically activated means having to engage with "extremely long and complex and abstract texts". but im not saying random guerrillas are all marx scholars. in fact i explicitly denied that this level of engagement is necessary (or even desireable!) for political actors in these movements. and now you're trying to spin this as if im somehow being both anti-intellectual and crypto-ableist and all sorts of other wild things just so you can try to land some sort of blow to avoid facing the fact that marxism has indeed mobilized lots of "average" people, many of them without access to formal education. i also never called anybody stupid but you've somehow managed to get extremely worked up about something i never said!

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Hello, Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️ here. Where is the “loudest anti-recast voice” from? This confession reminded me of something interesting (and makes me feel very old at the same time). There are a lot of aspects to the recast market (and yes, Econ Anon, I hear you! It’s a market thing! 👍 ) and part of it is geopolitical. I guess that’s where I come in.

Let me walk you back to the late 80’s when China first opened its doors to the world. At that time, because of Chairman Deng’s policy of “letting a small group of people get rich sooner”, the Eastern seaboard opened itself up to foreign investment. However, one should never forget that China is a totalitarian, Communist state. It meant that “the law” is prone to changing, the government owns most large industries and through the ways of loans, the government also has a backdoor to most businesses. I still remember the blatant accusations of what we used to call the “Chinese honeypot” scheme. The government (or some government-funded businesses) entice foreign investors to set up factories along the Eastern seaboard.

Part of the agreement to receive government subsidized benefits was to hire more than 50% local labour, and this included the managerial staff as well. In the beginning, a lot of the early investors reported that they were earning hand over fist because of the cheap labour. But after the first wave, investors were being expelled out of the country one way or another, after being stripped of their assets and their trade secrets. I still remember multiple family members (and business friends of these said family members) recounting stories of foreign bosses catching their Chinese managers stealing trade secrets and deliberately sabotaging equipment when their aims have been fulfilled. In some cases, actual honeypot traps were set up so the bosses would be set up with adultery (which was a severely punishable crime at the time) or saddled up with a Chinese wife. To cut the horror story down, China found itself where it is today through alleged systematic and government-sanctioned intellectual theft. It is no wonder that the Chinese boomers are not known as big sticklers to copyright law. In many ways, they are still the ones in charge. Folks like Luo, for example.

However, just as a coin has two sides, the closed-in totalitarian state also fostered an “ever-inward” culture. Children born to these boomers were taught on a steady diet of nationalism and extreme self-centredness. These are considered to be virtues. Their children, the Gen Z, have even more of the same cultural upbringing, bolstered by being the “only child” of “only child” parents. As a consequence, there is a lot of internal cohesion based off of nationalism, which translated into a specific type of cronyism that is hard to fathom. Most of us have heard of the term “rabid fans” – for an old fogey like me, I think of Deadheads caravanning across the country to catch the next concert. Folks these days are probably more familiar with the fans of famous singers such as BTS and BlackPink and the hijinks they were up to from time to time. In today’s China, on the other hand, pretty much every fandom can boast their own “rabid fans” – from Apple Fanatics to a self-professed fan groups for an actor/singer/artist to… well, BJDs. When I say “rabid fans”, it’s because I cannot come up with any other word for this behaviour. If you can think of a better descriptor, please let me know.

I lurk in Chinese “BJD Circle.” And this fanaticism has its highs and lows. The lows are plenty and serious – people will refuse to sell second-hand dolls to newbies because “they don’t speak the lingo”, for example. The faceup artists are known to smash heads if they are found to be recasts. Scammers and questionable behaviours are “hung” out in the Tucao bar for a public lynching - and because most people in the circle frequent this Tieba, it’s basically a court of public opinion. Thanks to the social credit system, if you are lynched through a virtual struggle session, your ability to be a part of this circle becomes so diminished that you are shunned. And due to the fact that you need your real name and information to set up an account for all transactional platforms, it’s easy to get doxed and cyberbullied. This self-righteous fervor expanded outside of China and was brought under the spotlight for the first time in 2020, during the “Milk Tea Alliance” incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_Tea_Alliance Note: in the spirit of full disclosure, I came from one of the Milk Tea Alliance countries. )

What about the highs? The “high” point in this self-contained lynching culture is internal self-policing. The Circle acknowledges that people who are just entering the hobby may accidentally buy a recast. But in order to be accepted into the circle, you have to prove that you have completely given up your recast dolls by “whitewashing” yourself here: http://c.tieba.baidu.com/p/6882408381 (Content Warning: very broken dolls, hammer, fire) If you get caught having a recast doll, you will be shunned. Your businesses (as a faceup artist, seamstress, wig maker, etc) will also be boycotted. In short, the self-policing is slowly squeezing Luo’s business out of China, for better or worse.

Which is why on Luo’s business website (https://chinabjd.en.alibaba.com/company_profile.html) China is no longer its biggest market, which we alluded to here: It took me a long time to try to hunt down why would North America be the second largest market while China itself makes up a small portion. It wasn’t until I came across this post http://c.tieba.baidu.com/p/7792470874?pn=1 that it made sense. It was first posted in the April of 2022, from a Chinese national studying abroad in Japan. This person was surprised that the international market was flooded with Shuga Fairy dolls while another person chimed in stating that a lot of “Westerners” asked if Shuga Fairy dolls were any good. Other folks chimed in that Shuga Fairy dolls were found in a lot of international platforms while another one mentioned that the same doll sold for a higher price overseas.

Then it made sense. For what it’s worth, the Chinese’s closed, cronyism “Circles” have managed to keep most of the recasts out of the hobby. Sure, recast-friendly/neutral circles still exist, but they are in the fringes and having some difficulty interacting with the rest of the hobby as a whole (to the point having difficulty buying doll items from Xianyu stores. Store owners will refuse to sell their wares to recast owners). But that’s not the same with North America. It’s a land where information is scarce(r ), the market is not nearly as saturated and there are a lot more folks who have simply never heard of a BJD before. It’s much easier to con a largely unsuspecting crowd (which explains why recast dealers really work hard on that SEO) into buying something that they thought was “just an expensive toy”.

So, for the folks who think “the US has the loudest anti-recast voice”… I am really, really sorry. You can’t argue with the numbers (or Econ Anon, for that matter). The US is the second largest mark for the recast market. And there are some really compelling reasons why this is so.

P.S. I am not familiar with the Russian market at all. So please, don’t ask me why Russia is the largest market for Luo and his company. Thanks in advance.

~Anonymous

[specialagentartemis]

#wait is there something wrong with the history hates lovers song? I read the linked post and now I'm worried D: (via @gardenofarson)

I thought I explained pretty straightforwardly in the linked post why I hate the "History Hates Lovers" song: It takes the explicit stance that you, ordinary citizen of the world with no special training, are actually smarter than the experts by virtue of being gay.  It assumes that historians are all old ivory-tower eggheads and homophobic clueless idiots and only they, youtube user Oublaire, know the REAL truth. It's smugly anti-intellectual in a meme way, rather than historically curious in any serious way. "Too afraid to call it what it is / It doesn't take a scholar to understand this" like oh Come On.

Other reasons I hate it:

"Who's gonna tell us the stories, that our textbooks don't?" Gosh I don't know, maybe Actual Historians? Believe it or not, "writing high school history textbooks" is not the sum total of what historians do. There are so many books about queer history written by queer historians out there. Aside from narratives about Stonewall, AIDS, and various worldwide rights movements in the 20th century, of which there are Lots, how about any of these books or these ones or these or this book about Sappho or these biographies of Oscar Wilde or this study of homosexuality in Ancient Greece - by a historian from the 1970s! Wow!!! Maybe historians have been thinking about this for a While! - and all the various articles written by academic historians about homosexuality in history. Untangling histories that were either treated as derogatory, hidden in shame, or ignored is important... and people are doing it. This is such a dismissal of the work that a lot of historians - especially queer historians - are doing these days!

Have you (Oublaire) ever read a biography. Even once. Historians and biographers LOVE to speculate about historical figures' sexualities. You can't get away from it. Especially when someone never married, biographers and writers looooove to speculate about the love affairs and heartbreaks they must have been having. Gay or straight. History loves lovers to the point where it's hard to find a discussion of a perpetual-bachelor-or-spinster figure that doesn't dip into trying to imagine them as Being A Lover. Yes I'm vaguing at American Bloomsbury's treatment of Thoreau (and Margaret Fuller, who she soooo wanted to be having torrid romances with both Hawthorne and Emerson) and The Fossil Hunter's insistence on imagining Mary Anning as secretly being in love with her male friend despite no evidence of this.

The haughty amatonormativity. "'Just friends' don't live like that / They don't look at each other / With love in their eyes" Deeply sorry to all Oublaire's supposed friends for learning via this song that Oublaire doesn't care about their friends, I Guess. The assumption that anyone who cares about each other has to be In Love. Fuck off.

"How many decades of hiding? Twenty-one centuries of hate Some things may not've been okay back then But it's sure all right today" This is what proves that Oublaire doesn't actually care about history. Back when? Are they implying that homophobia was invented with the birth of Christ? Was history just the same for 2,100 years, until a switch flipped in the 21st cenntury and now everyone is chill with gay people? What a narrow-sighted reduction! "It's a rhetorical flourish" well I hate it anyway. Get better rhetorical flourishes.

People who really like the song keep applying it to Achilles and Patroclus, who are, notably, fictional characters, and not historical figures.

The scansion and rhymes are terrible.

[femalefern]

After well over a decade on tumblr I guess it was time to make a terf sideblog, lol

I am a lesbian who was involved in the queer/trans community in my city for about a decade and entered into a serious (unfulfilling, primarily but not entirely sexless) long-term relationship with a trans woman (fully and blindly accepting that trans women are women, fully denying my own desires out of a need for love and acceptance). Years later, I am dealing with shame and regret now that I realize how much I let myself get brainwashed and robbed of my own sexuality. The person I dated wasn’t this evil manipulator, no one was forcing me to be there, but I still feel violated, still feel like I was deeply manipulated by a lot of the queer/trans stuff in my 20s that led me into this situation that I thankfully got myself out of. Even before I got out, I was growing skeptical of the cult-like way the queer groups ran my city (a fairly small but very liberal university town). I dared to speak up against a community organizer and was severely cancelled in 2014 before canceling was really a thing. My ex and I were both anti “sex work” and we ended up being harassed in the streets and had our apartment vandalized for helping someone avoid resorting to entering the industry. My relationship thankfully ended with Covid, but not before I had what I can only describe as a mental breakdown complete with my first manic episode that lost me my job, stability, and a lot of friends, and earned me several diagnoses. Luckily with Covid, I got away from any opportunity for in person social events and rediscovered fandom and non-queer lesbians online, which really saved me. Getting into the queer/trans community in my city was a mistake, there’s no other way to put it. As a teenager I didn’t have any great confusion about being a lesbian once I had my big realization, but a severe confusion developed as an adult. It was easy as a kid to figure out and somewhat easy to accept that I only liked women, and came out to various people when I was around 16. And then from like age 18 until Covid, I guess you could say I slowly but surely completely indoctrinated myself, completely and thoroughly went all in, with a lot of help from other people. 

This started I guess with the university lesbians around me telling me they’re queer because gender isn’t binary, which in 2010 was a pretty foreign concept to me, and the underlying message was that queerness was the morally and intellectually superior sexuality to lesbianism (so of course I fairly quickly called myself queer too because if not it was clear I was dumb and didn’t Get It.)

Next came my attraction to and dating a (now identifying) trans man, who began testosterone at the end of the relationship and insisted that being attracted to him meant I wasn’t a lesbian at all, but that I had to be bi/pan, which I did accept with some passive agreement.

Finally, there was a trans woman, who knew and validated I was really a lesbian (as long as I returned that validation), and pursued me (somewhat aggressively) in a way no one had before. But I was seeking any sort of validation and acceptance by this point, since I dealt with a lot of rejection and abandonment, both friend and relationship wise in my 20s. Out of so much detachment and confusion and now deep depression, (I think I also considered myself asexual for a time, as well as nonbinary of course), I went with it. It was serious, we planned on having kids together some day, I was miserable by the end. But I was so comfortable in my misery that I wanted it to continue, afraid of change, until my mental breakdown blew everything up and this person had the sense to end it for me, and I am thankful for that. 

It didn’t help that of all the lgbt people I know, I barely knew a single lesbian. Ultimately, bi people, gay men, and trans people will always greatly outnumber us. Not to mention I spent a huge amount of time studying this shit in grad school. A wasted education, lol (I am happily self employed now though, so it all works out.)

Today, for the first time in my almost 30 years, I am dating an actual lesbian, and it’s only with that and some distance from my past and all my processing that I can really understand how unhappy my life was and how detached I was from my sexuality. 

Despite coming out as a teenager, I find myself resonating more with late bloomer lesbians who only find their happiness after years of denying themselves and focusing on men. I wish I could find people who went through the same experience as me because I am still processing my mistakes years later. I don't want judgement or sympathy but I wish I could talk about this with someone who gets it. Please feel free to reach out if any of these resonated with you. 

tl;dr: lesbians DO get coerced into dating trans women, the queer/trans community fucked me up a bit (a lot), but i’m happier now 

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2023: #26

26. ITALY Marco Mengoni - "Due vite" 4th place

Decade ranking: 76/116 [Above The Black Mamba, below Rosa Linn]

Who the hell drinks coffee with lemon juice?! Do Italians disrespect tea as much as the Eurovision?

I dunno guys, what do you expect me to write? All my Italy posts operate under a strict policy of post-nut clarity, and 2023 marked yet another year of impressionables male-gazing the fuck out of a Sanremo Ballad and putting it on a pedestal for merely showing up. Moreso than usual because Marco actually is a handsome guy.

Anyway, is Due Vite good? Um, yeah I guess? I'm not the right person to ask. The things Due Vite and Marco excel at are things I don't value too much in (pop) music. I have developed coping mechanisms for romantic longing and intimacy without needing a Due Vite. If I want classiness, I just put on classical music track. if I want a hot guy, well, you know, other methods. What I do yearn for when I open YT or Spotify are upbeat distractions, anti-depression anthems, immersive experiences, or complex entries that provide an intellectual stimulus. Barring that funny gimmicks or remarkable journeys for the Eurovision Songs specifically. Due Vite is... well none of those lol. It's a plain and unpretentious romance ballad that floated its way to the top in a bad year based on Marco's looks and nationality. It's good in general, I think? Just not what I need in music.

That said, Marco was better than I initially gave him credit for. Unlike Andrew (who?), Marco embraced his inner queer-coded himbot self and that improved him in my eyes. L'essenziale does not actively linger in my mind, but I remember Marco as stilted and wooden, staring off-camera like a deer caught in headlights. Ten years later he supplely pranced onto the catwalk all ~*MaFiA d'eLL ArCoBALeNo*~ like a glamorous gayzelle, which was an unexpected and epic move we all appreciated. Shameless fanservice king lmfao <3 The vibe carried through into Due Vite as well, which Marco managed to turn somewhat camp with his presence.

So overal verdict: Italy was perfectly fine, I guess. Fourth place is an EXTREMELY generous result for what Due Vite truly was and the impressionables calling it ONE OF THE BEST EUROVISION BALLADS EVER is nothing short of insane to me. Otoh, things could have been so much worse? Liverpool2023 was not very good and Marco in fourth place is not even one of the ten worst results from it. Also, Fai Rusnore or Shitvidi would have scored the very same result if they had happened in 2023. So I am kind of pleased that the overrated Italian top fiver in this year was one that, well, I don't like, but can respect without too many reservations.

THE RANKING:

[liketwoswansinbalance]

What's your fashion sense and style like? How do you do your hair? How do you like to dress?

I'm really fond of classic styles, often with features like high collars, smooth textures, sharp structured forms, flouncy sleeves, tight shirt cuffs, and ribbing, sometimes. I own multiple pairs of dark, short and tall boots, most of them black. Also, I prefer earrings and rings over necklaces or bracelets. I like "static" jewelry over what I call "motion" jewelry, which dangles and clinks noisily—it doesn't stay put, and thus, can distract me.

I'm drawn toward the dark academia aesthetic, but I don't like beige or any browns in most cases, so I tend to wear colder black, white, greys, and blues, and some other colors. I'm not the most well-versed in fashion, but I've done a little research and apparently, I love "jewel tones."

And because I feel like I have to specify at this point: no, those decisions were (mostly) not because of Rafal. There is another, equally silly or improbable reason.

Blue was already my favorite color at some point, but that sort of cemented when, probably, in the seventh grade or so, I read the Divergent series. I will fully admit that I am a coward, so I related more to the Erudite, partly-corrupt academics that wore blue, than the Dauntless, daredevils in black, very similar archetype as the Nevers in SGE, but even more rollicking and hedonistic. There's even a trope that could be dangerous, if it were misinterpreted by audiences and carried over into their real life belief systems.

The main bone I have to pick with that series, even if I love(d) it, is why do the "smart ones" always have to be the villains? I'm thankful for byronic heroes and the modern anti-hero—thank you commercial fiction! It's given people who identify with archetypes like those a more variegated landscape of morally-grey characters to relate to. Regardless, I did a search and the answer to the villainy question is American anti-intellectualism. Which, to save us time, no comment... for now.

Back to the point—I looked up the "blue enhances intellectual performance" message in the trilogy and apparently, it was founded on real-world studies around test performance! And it turned out that red has the opposite effect on the mind. It is not calming, can raise your heart rate, and could make you more avoidant of easy questions while taking a test, and that's why I have very little red in my wardrobe. And I'm not particularly superstitious, and have largely grown out of it, but I did have a phase during which I refused to wear red if I had a test at school.

During everyday life, I dress much more casually, in regular, often solid-colored shirts, sweaters, or jackets with high collars. I tend to like leggings and slacks more than jeans. Though, I got a black trench coat because detective fashion inspired me, and someday, I want to get a Shakespearean era top, like an actual doublet or jerkin, and dress up on Halloween or World Poetry Day, if I ever get the appropriate opportunity.

My current favorite shirt is probably this solid, brocade/damask-patterned, long-sleeved shirt in deep royal and midnight blues, and I've yet to find others like it. It was a gift from my music teacher because a friend gave it to her, and I guess she didn't like it that much, and decided to give it to me because I once complimented it. Very nice of her.

I don't usually have the occasion to dress up. Yet, in my opinion, the coolest shirt I've bought to date is a black, not-quite-a-poet's-shirt shirt with translucent sleeves. The sleeves are frilled and drape a little down at the cuffs. So far, I've only gotten the chance to wear it once, when I went on a humanities field trip to the opera. That made me feel so cool.

Furthermore, while I like crisp, elegant, muted, sleek, angular things usually, the inverse is also true: I don't like anything that screams "modernity," bulbous or platform shoes, or baggy silhouettes, at least, not on myself. I'm not a fan of sweatshirts, probably because of the modernity and because I don't like drawstrings or pullovers in general. So, most of my sweaters have zippers, buttons, or other closures—like, how inefficient (or really just bothersome, to me, as I can find a reason to complain about anything being inconvenient or not ideal) is it to have to pull off an article of clothing and have it end up inside-out?

I've wanted to learn to do my own makeup, but I haven't had the time lately, and generally speaking, I believe I'd have time for more deliberate fashion aside from just having ideas, only if I gave up something else, and that's not happening. Or, if I were able to plug into the wall and charge, instead of going through the motions of sleeping or eating—alas, the human species lacks that ability. It would be less work and thought, not having to eat but being able to choose when to. Though, I usually almost never sense hunger or dehydration, so that already "helps."

Oh right, since we're still on the topic of fashion, that reminds me: I never mentioned that the Rafal-has-duplicate-pairs-of socks-for-efficiency headcanon I wrote the other day was inspired by how I shop, haha.

What's left to answer? Well, my hair is one of the "problems" I have. I have long hair because I don't really like short haircuts, and it's straight and insanely oily. I should wash it possibly everyday or every other day, but literally, I don't have the time or the will to do so, and mostly tie it into a ponytail. Very infrequently, I curl it, but I don't have time for that either.

This was an entertaining one. Thanks for the ask.

[hazardous-waste-containment]

Thoughts on the place of Count Gobineu in particular and the French Legitimists in general in the history of fascism? Espescially interested in those deeply reactionary forces that were a pure defense of pre-modernity and the way that they relate to such a modern phenomenon as Fascism.

I don’t know that I would call them a ‘pure defense of pre-modernity’ since I’ve increasingly realized, as Roger Griffin puts it,

In a sense, then, every ideological and spiritual product of a society affected by modernisation cannot help but be a manifestation of modernity: they are not to be seen as ‘pro-’ or ‘anti-modern’, but as resulting from the interaction of specific forces of modernity with specific forms of traditional society within a unique and dynamically changing configuration of historical forces.

And especially Gobineau’s biological racism was hardly pre-modern. I get what you’re saying though, that his unabashed aristocratic elitism and royalism differs from fascism fundamentally; so does his pessimism about racial decline of course. In that sense he was vaguely similar to Spengler, both diagnosing syndromes of decadence in society that they thought were inexorable and could be at most managed or held off temporarily, for their intellectual descendants to go “Actually, through [eugenics, revolution, etc] all things are possible.” Gobineau’s monarchism and fusion of racial and class elitism could maybe be compared to proto- or quasi-fascists like List, Lanz von Liebenfels, and Evola, but again the pessimism thing: the latter three were all millenarian reactionary-revolutionaries aspiring to a new utopian world order.

Action française would I guess be the closest thing to a direct link between legitimist thought and the origins of fascism (well and there was a Carlist workers’ union in Spain that developed a fascist tendency) even though AF wasn’t formally legitimist. The maurrasistes are sometimes considered anti-modern reactionaries, and I sometimes present them that way to people because it’s simpler, but they especially drive home Griffin’s point and Stanley Payne has suggested the word ‘reactionary’ doesn’t really fit Action française because of the amount of modern social and political thought they inevitably incorporated, above all the ultra-nationalism which Maurras anachronistically projected back onto the ancien régime. In turn AF thought was partially anticipated by Louis de Bonald, who was ahead of his time but reflective of the fact that even shortly after the Revolution, Counter-Revolutionary thinkers had realized that the old order in the strictest sense was permanently lost.

In the injection of an updated corporatism and organic nationalism or proto-nationalism into traditionalist monarchism, these types remind me of Ivan Ilyin who was in much the same position, like de Bonald an aristocrat grappling with the destruction of the traditional social order by a revolution, in the world of the twentieth century rather than the nineteenth. Stephen Shenfield has a short discussion of Ilyin in Russian Fascism that I mostly like (note that Shenfield’s concept of modernity is basically a value judgment and by “premodern values” he just means illiberal ones):

Ilyin described fascism as “a complex and multi-sided phenomenon [that] arose as a healthy and necessary reaction to bolshevism, as a concentration of state-preserving forces on the right.” Other praiseworthy features of fascism were its patriotic feeling and its search for just social reforms. However, fascism was marred by six “deep and serious errors”—namely hostility to Christianity and to religion in general; totalitarianism; one-party monopoly, leading to corruption and demoralization; nationalist extremism, belligerent chauvinism, and a mania for national grandeur; a tendency toward state socialism; and “idolatrous caesarism, with its demogogy, slavishness, and despotism”.

The first of Ilyin’s objections does not serve to separate him from fascism in the generic sense, which, as was demonstrated in the last chapter, is compatible with a variety of religious orientations. Nevertheless, a person who rejects totalitarianism, chauvinism, and caesarism can hardly be considered a fascist. We might also note his reference to the traditionalist conservative regimes of Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal as positive alternatives to “fascism”. Ilyin sensed that he shared many of his premodern values with the fascists—hence his perception of them as basically well-intentioned people who had made unfortunate “errors”—but he could not bring himself to accept the new order.

[ms-hells-bells]

why should humans be morally obligated to radically restructure their lives in order to promote animal welfare when we don't even require that for human welfare? do you ensure that *literally* everything you buy is slavery-free, or do you only care about exploitation if it's not of a human being?

fallacy. 'if you can't perfectly do something, you may as well not try at all and be as morally abhorrent as you want'. by that logic, because i can never live my life completely cruelty free, why not actively buy slave labour? why not engage in products from trafficking? why not go to the saudi fifa cup? why not buy blood diamonds? it would be easiest to do whatever i like and not care about anything else, right? and i'm sure it's much more expensive and troublesome for corporations to adhere to morals, how much have they paid to legally stay with the changed labour and safety and ethics laws implemented since the industrial revolution. child labour was way easier, you barely had to pay them!

not to mention radical feminism, not wearing makeup, not shaving, not dating horrible men, not using the word bitch, engaging in female separatism? WAY too hard, and way too much change, why should we have moral obligation to change our behaviours to benefit others? it's almost like this is a completely shit argument called moral psychopathy, and is so intellectually lazy and dishonest, that the second you apply it to any hypotheticals, it falls apart.

but if it for some reason matters to you, i only buy clothes and most other stuff second hand, i buy new zealand brand, ethically made house and care products (soaps, shampoos, moisturisers, sunscreen, toilet cleaner, room spray, dish soap, etc.), i don't buy unnecessary excess, i use devices until they break and fall apart (i still use a second hand ipad i was given back in 2015 for stuff, my laptop is second hand and falling apart, my phone was bought for me by my mother because i had no phone, and i will use nothing but it until it completely breaks in however many years), i don't drive, so i don't buy petrol and engage in oil issues, and i constantly advocate for others to do the same, and give people advice on how to do it. i vote, and petition for policies that help humans, i am anti climate change, which very much affects humans (and the number one cause is animal agriculture).

how much of that do you do? i'm guessing little to none of it, because you don't actually care about slaves and human rights, you just want to not feel bad about sitting on your ass and not putting your money where your mouth is.

[vergess]

i'm sorry that you're having such a bad time wrt another tumblr book club :(

I was going to put on a tough face, but actually I'm really not handling it well at all. I keep having violent panics in between dissociative fits.

But more than anything, I'm so fucking mad at myself for having allowed myself the foolishness of vulnerability. For the audacious imbecility of hope.

Because I knew this was coming.

Sherlock Holmes attracts only the worst kind of Literary Intellectual (TM). But I still hoped.

And when I saw that post this morning, do you know what I thought actually? "Oh, finally! I've been waiting for someone to bring it up. It seemed overdue. I'm glad we're going to talk about it now!"

That's why I dared to bare my dumb stupid fucking soul like that, like a moron. Like an idiot. To fucking show my weak spot and say, "go ahead, goyim, here's the target!"

Because I really thought the fandom was going to talk about it.

I trusted us.

Them.

I thought about them as an us that could be trusted to talk to as peers about a difficult subject.

You know. The way the Dracula Daily fandom talked about the anti-Romani bigotry, phrenology, xenophobia.

The way the 80 days fandom talked about the various forms of racist and colonialist messaging pervasive throughout.

The way the Whale Weekly fandom continues to talk about. Ooof. Allll of that.

I thought we were going to talk.

In the way that had been established as the norm for these books.

But instead, just. Just an avalanche of some of the most obscene shit. A lot of it gleefully posted in public, masks fully off.

People calling jews too stupid too read. Calling us censors. Saying we're attacking and harassing gentiles by acknowledging that the fucking source material is antisemitic, a fact the goddamned gentiles themselves also openly acknowledge.

But we're hurt by it. And we're expressing that pain. So I guess that makes us the villains.

You know, Shakespeare wrote plenty of antisemitic stereotypes himself, but uh. He had this tendency to, see, also make his characters very fully realized and give them elegantly spoken motivations. So elegant, in fact, that many people forget the first lines are ours.

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

Oh, but I forget my place in the hierarchy of this noble English Literary Canon.

#little baby birds expecting already digested literature to be vomited in their mouths

Jews are just dumb animals.

My bad, y'all. My bad.

[cleverthylacine]

I swear some people do not understand the difference between “not forbidden” and “mandatory”.

There’s a post going around about the Harkness Test.

The Harkness Test (named after Jack Harkness, natch) is a series of questions to help you figure out whether it is possible to have ethical, consensual sex with a member of another species.

Basically, for interspecies sex to be ethical, the following criteria have to be met:

1) All parties concerned must be sapient--capable of thinking the question through.  I am not sure “of human intelligence” is the right wording because humans vary widely in intelligence, and many people with intellectual disabilities enjoy sex--but everyone has to be smart enough to know and understand what’s going on and the risks they might be taking.

2) All parties must be able to communicate with each other, so that they can give affirmative consent and revoke consent if they want to stop.

3) All parties must be adults.

(I would also add personally that for consent to be freely given, neither party should be holding the other party captive: all parties must be able to take their stuff and go home without penalty because otherwise that’s ‘consent’ under duress, which isn’t consent.)

If these criteria are met, all parties are willing, they all know what they’re doing, and they have the ability to revoke consent and/or safeword if needed. No bestiality (that’s fucking someone who is not of human intelligence), no child molestation, just consenting adults.

Anyhow, several people in the discussion believe that Scooby-Doo, or Perry the Platypus, would pass the Harkness test, because they don’t talk like humans do, but they are capable of clear communication regarding their emotional state and willingness to continue with the activity.

I do not really know enough about Scooby-Doo to have an informed opinion. I think you’d have to understand how Perry does communicate for it to be ethical with Perry, and that you’d have to be able to understand it well enough to understand that you are being asked to stop when your brain is flooded with sex chemicals.  But probably some people do. I’m not attracted to Perry.

Or Scooby-Doo.

I don’t think anyone in that conversation actually wants to fuck Scooby-Doo, except for the one person who actually said they want to fuck Scooby-Doo, which may or may not have been a case of “taking the piss”.

But suddenly all these people started complaining that we were calling them puritans or antis or whatever for...

not wanting to fuck Scooby-Doo.

Brain go splodey.

The #1 rule of consent is to not make people do things you know they don’t want to do. It would not be ethical for Scooby-Doo to fuck you if you don’t want to fuck Scooby-Doo, and my guess is that most of the people who are reading this do not want to fuck Scooby-Doo. (If you do, you do you, and do Scooby-Doo--I don’t care. That is not my circus and you are not my flying monkeys.)

Where does this come from?

When did we lose the distinction between “permissible”, “encouraged” and “obligatory?”

Most of us are not sexually attracted to everyone we know who is of an acceptable age, species or gender presentation. I am pansexual but there are plenty of people I don’t want to fuck. Nobody HAS to fuck anyone.

[nothing0fnothing]

Ok, one of quitblamingnarcissism's flying monkeys just compared narc abuse victims to fascists.

Do you ever wish these people would get doxxed by someone so they could get in trouble for their bullshit IRL?

That's wild and I'd love you to dm me a link so I can actually see wtf he's talking about, but I see this kind of narrative on quit blaming narcissism too so I can field a guess.

Quit blaming narcissism argues that abuse survivors are ableists based on the (ableist) misconception that narcissist is the word for a person with NPD all the time. Their recent thing has been baslessly claiming that narcissistic abuse survivors are thin blue line, blue lives matter copaganda guzzlers who decry the abuse in our homes but celebrate abuse when the police do it... no idea where he's getting that from, but I guess (misinformation + vaguely leftist talking point - facts or evidence) has been a formula working for him so far so why would be stop now?

So yeah, it doesn't surprise me that one of his fanboys is jumping about this app saying that people who are traumatised and know the name of the abuse we experienced are actually all overt eugenics supporters who hate on disabled people and the poor, while comparing our matching swastika belt buckles or whatever his argument was. It's the next illogical step on the slippery slope of misinformation and anti intellectualism seeded by his fave.

Doxxed so they can face consequences irl? I don't think I'd go that far.

For one in my experience the world outside the Internet just doesn't give a shit about abuse survivors. A glance at what happened to Amber Heard or 86% of other domestic violence cases that go to court for that matter will show you that. How many child abuse survivors sue our parents and win? Not many.

I think if his name became publicly tied to his online presence he might get some hate mail or swatted or something, but the repercussions that actually matter wouldn't happen. He'd keep his job, his friends won't care because they probably all think the same, ditto his family considering they raised him, he's not committed any crimes so there will be no criminal action. He will move and his life will go on as normal.

To me the purpose of doxxing someone is to make their online footprint traceable. I'm not above calling for a well deserved doxx, if he was commiting crimes or doing stuff that would have real social repercussions I wouldn't be opposed, but all that will happen is someone will order 100 pizzas in his name or falsely tell the police he's building bombs in his attic, whats really the point?

So yeah, in case you were asking for my permission, don't doxx him.