#you have to understand up until that time every time a trans person was on TV they were psychotic criminals

[tuttle-did-it]

First time you felt seen by Star Trek?

The episode: DS9-- ‘Rejoined’

What I knew: I knew I was queer, had since I was four years old.

What I saw: A trans person! Who wasn’t a psychotic criminal! who had a lover of the same current gender. And her friends were fine with both of these things!! They loved her anyway!! On tv!!!! On my favourite Star Trek show, with the character I understood the most. I’d never seen that before!! I’d never seen someone talk about gender so fluidly as Jadzia. I’d always felt represented by Dax, but seeing her wlw relationship accepted by everyone around her blew my mind. Many things clicked into place for me the night of 30 October 1995. I cried. Teenager me was in puddles. Adult me puddles every time.

Director: Avery Brooks

Writers: Ronald D. Moore, René Echevarria

Story by: René Echevarria

Thank you for that moment, DS9. You made me felt seen for the first time, possibly ever.

[trans-axolotl]

one of the reasons it's really hard for a lot of intersex people when intersex topics are on the news cycle is because the public's reaction reveals how little anyone knows or cares about intersex people, including people who call themselves our allies. almost every time intersex topics are trending, the discourse surrounding them is filled with misinformation. people who only learned today what the word intersex means jump into conversations and act like an authority. endosex/dyadic/perisex people get tripped up over things that are basically intersex 101, with tons of endosex people incorrectly arguing about the definition of intersex, who "counts," DSD terminology, and so much more. i've seen multiple endosex people say today that they've been "warning intersex people" and that we should have known that transphobia would catch up with us eventually, which is an absolutely absurd thing to say given the fact that consistently over the past ten years, it has often been intersex people sounding the alarm on sex-testing policies and also the fact that many, many intersex people are also trans, and already are facing the impacts of transphobia. there is an absolute failure from the general public to take intersex identity seriously; people seem not even able to fathom that intersex people have a community, history, and our own political resources. instead, endosex people somehow seem to think they're helping by bringing up half-remembered information from their high school biology class which usually isn't even relevant at all.

and this frustrates me so fucking much. not because i want to deny the impacts of transphobic oppression--i'm a trans intersex person, trust me when i say i am intimately aware of transphobia. this frustrates me because there is no way we can achieve collective liberation if our "allies" fail to even engage with basic intersex topics and are seemingly unaware of the many forms of intersex oppression that we are already facing every fucking day. if you are not aware of compulsory dyadism, if you are not aware of interphobia, if you are not aware of the many different ways that intersex people are directly and often violently targeted--how the fuck do you think we're going to dismantle all of these systems of oppression?

if you were truly an intersex ally, you would already KNOW that this is not new, and would not be surprised--interphobia in sports has been going on for decades. you would know that we do have a community, an identity, a history--you would have already read/listened/watched to intersex resources that give you the background information you need for allyship. you would know that although there is a really distinct lack of resources and political education, that intersex people ARE developing a political understanding of ourselves and our oppression--Cripping Intersex by Celeste Orr and their framework of compulsory dyadism is one example of how we're theorizing our oppression. It's absolutely fucking wild to me how few people I've seen actually use words like "interphobia" "intersexism" "compulsory dyadism" or "intersex oppression"--endosex people are seemingly incapable of recognizing that there is already an entrenched system of oppression towards intersex people that violently reshapes our bodies, restricts our autonomy, and attempts to eradicate intersex through a variety of medical and legal means.

you cannot treat intersex people like an afterthought. not just because we're meaningful parts of your community and deserving of solidarity, but also because intersex oppression impacts everyone!!! especially trans community--trans people will not be free until intersex people are free, so much of transphobia is shaped by compulsory dyadism, the mythical sex binary, all these ideas of enforced "biological sex" that are just as fake as the gender binary.

it makes me absolutely fucking livid every time this shit happens because it becomes so abundantly clear to me how little the average endosex person knows about intersex issues and also how little the average endosex person cares about changing that. i don't know what to say to get you to care, to get you to change that, but we fucking need it to happen and i, personally, am tired of constantly being grateful when i meet an endosex person who knows the bare minimum. i think we have a right to expect better and to demand that if you're going to call yourself our ally, you actually fucking listen to us when we tell you what that means.

okay for endosex people to reblog.

[iam93percentstardust]

one of the things that i loved about barbie (2023) that i think a lot of the posts making fun of male-written reviews miss is that, though the movie presents itself as a commentary on the patriarchy and sexism, the message at the core of the film isn't actually limited to being about (cis) women. it's about anyone who is Other.

i went to go see the movie on thursday afternoon before all the big midnight premieres, and the theater was still packed. there wasn't an empty seat in the entire theater. i had a seat at the end of the row, which i had picked out in a faint (futile) hope that no one would sit next to me. thirty seconds before the trailers started, a family of about 10 black people walked in and split up, presumably because they'd only just bought their tickets and there were no longer 10 seats together. the dad and the son, who was maybe a few years younger than me in his early-20s, a good foot and a half taller than me, and who i recognized as one of the football players at the local university, ended up taking the two empty seats next to me with the linebacker in the seat right next to me. and that was pretty much the last time i thought of them until the last twenty minutes of the movie.

see, in the last twenty minutes of the movie, america ferrera makes an impassioned speech about not just the limitations that male-dominated society puts on women but the limitations that women put on themselves in order to survive in said male-dominated society. it's about the contradictions that we're subjected to--you can't be too much, but you can't be too little either. you have to lift each other up but you're also in constant competition with other women for the shredded dregs of respect that men have left over for us. you can't say yes to a man because then you're a whore but you can't say no because then you're a prude. it was passionate and bitter and furious and it had every woman in the theater, myself included, in tears.

and in the silence of the theater following america ferrera's plea for barbie not to make herself less just so that society isn't threatened by her, the linebacker sitting next to me said fervently, "i feel that."

it brought everything to a screeching halt. now i'm a white woman, and though i'm fat and nowhere near as gorgeous as margot robbie, from the very first trailer, it was obvious that this was going to be a movie for me. and if done right, it was going to be a movie for all women (and i would argue that it was). but the thing that it also did right was that though the surface of the message was about women making themselves lesser, the core was that it was for anyone who makes themselves lesser to fit in. yeah, it's for women who are trying to fit into a male-dominated society, but it's also for bipoc who are trying to fit into a white-dominated society. it's for trans people trying to fit into a cis-dominated society. it's for gay people trying to fit into a heterosexual-dominated society. it's for anyone who's been Othered and has to shrink themselves in a desperate attempt to survive.

i love the posts making fun of male-written reviews that are butthurt that this movie isn't for them just as much as the next person. but i think it's important that we don't forget that those are representative of the people in power, the people that could never understand this message. barbie is for me, yeah, but it isn't just for me. it's for my trans friend who is six feet tall and has a beard and wears pink dresses every single day because they make her feel pretty. it's for my labmate who could practically be a barbie herself and irritates me every time she talks about thinphobia but also can't find someone who wants to be with her because she's brilliant and not because she's beautiful.

it's for the black linebacker who sat next to me in the theater and felt heard when a fictional character in a movie told him not to make himself smaller just to fit society's standards.

[genderkoolaid]

I feel like you would get this, seeing this comment section kinda hurt. The OP they are responding to is a non-binary trans man who was talking about feeling uncomfortable because they still feel attraction to lesbians and have felt very excluded. He’s wary around certain lesbians because they center their ideology around hating men regardless of gender identity and has faced a lot of anti-transmasculinity and transmisogyny. While most lesbians are wonderful amazing people there’s no denying that some do hold an innate hatred for men, not saying they need to like men. I fully understand lesbians and predatory cis men but there’s definitely lesbians who would date trans men. It can be scary for a trans man to come out or start transitioning because at what point do they become too masculine or too much of a man for their friends. There were even people in the comments saying the same anti-man statements who identify as a he/him nonbinary lesbian. This topic is very hard to hear for me as a closeted genderfluid person because my best friend is a man hating lesbian and I dread the day I can actually begin transitioning and she turns her back on me like these people. Queer spaces in general can be hard to occupy as a multi gendered person because of those people as well as mlm/nblm spaces that say ‘fem aligned dni’. In general I don’t think we should police labels and everyone has their own interpretation and I think labels are just a suggestion anyway but I suppose that makes sense for a genderfluid bisexual person.

These people just straight up do not understand the gender diversity that has always existed in lesbian spaces (by which I mean spaces built & catering to queer women & those seen as women).

There have always been trans men in lesbian spaces. You aren't obligated to fuck them, but they have always been there. There are pages and pages of writing out there not only by trans male dykes, but by the lesbian cis women who love them and still identify as lesbians while in relationships with them. There are trans guys at dyke bars right now as we speak having a great time.

Its not surprising to me that there are he/him NB lesbians supporting this. There are a lot of people out there who, because they don't identify As Men, mentally distance themselves from those who do despite any similarities. It's okay for THEM to be lesbians, and it's transphobic to erase THEIR lesbianism because they are Non-Men™! but once you cross that line you become the enemy. It's very "no you gyns I'm TOTALLY different than those gross tbros i promise im not a man at all and i will never want to be one so im allowed in the club!" The same people also throw multigender people under the bus. Trying to figure out your nonbinary in this environment is hellish (I speak from experience) because people pretend like they are super accepting of nonbinary people, until you realize that if you ever think of yourself as even slightly male people will start seeing you as a predatory invader trying to Force Lesbians To Date Men! Very "complex gender for me but not for thee"

Anyways. Twitter is not a good place. Anon, I hope you find better friends. Not every queer space is this hostile to us, I promise. There are people out there who genuinely work to make our community better and I hope you find them.

[papercranesandpride]

It’s very funny to me when TERFs and transphobes talk about how fake and ugly neovaginas are because I know exactly how full of shit they are. I’m a certified nursing aide. If you’re not familiar, 90% of our job is toileting. We also help with feeding, dressing, cleaning, and transferring, but if you think of how many times a day you need to pee versus the rest of that, you can understand just how much time your average CNA spends looking at genitalia. I haven’t even been doing this for two years and I’ve seen way more vaginas than I could count. 

Anyway, when I was doing some training, I overheard two CNAs from a different facility saying this:

CNA 1: Did you know that [patient] is transgender?

CNA 2: Wait really? 

CNA 1: Yeah, she was telling me about it. I never would have guessed.

CNA 2: Oh yeah I definitely couldn’t tell.

These people look at vaginas for God only knows how many hours a week with the amount that most CNAs pick up shifts. Plus they work in a nursing home, so this was an elderly woman. She could have gotten her bottom surgery 40 years ago when surgical techniques weren’t as advanced as they are now. These people who professionally work with genitalia still had no clue she wasn’t born with hers until she told them. 

So next time you see someone talking about how neovaginas are don’t look real or are just open wounds or whatever, please know they’re just wrong. If a CNA can’t tell a neovagina from before current advances in vaginoplasty apart from the cis ones they look at every day, neither can they. 

(Obvious disclaimer that a) with absolutely any surgery, some people will get bad results, so not every single neovagina is impossible to tell apart from a cis one, and b) being indistinguishable from a cis person is not every trans person’s goal, we shouldn’t have to pass to be valid, and some surgical techniques like zero-depth or phallus-preserving vaginoplasty won't be identical to a cis vagina by design. Neither of those detract from my point)

[thepepsislvt]

nobody asked for this but im gonna give you my top 5 baby girls and their pros and cons

in order even bc im insane

this also turned out to be more of a drabbles so yall still getting fed

number 5: Sanji

Pros:

literally such a sweetheart

traumatized just like me

always coming with the best insults

best cuddles cant tell me im wrong

so fucking kind <3

supports my nic addiction

also doesnt smoke around you if you dont like it

Cons:

probably wouldnt even look at me until i show him my tits (im a trans guy)

probably smokes a pack a day

thinks he can out smoke me when im literally a feind for nic

on the off chance he gets in a relationship with me he still would flirt with other women and i have abandonment issues

Number 4: Ace

Pros:

Also very much a sweetheart

hes silly and knows how to always make you laugh

personal heater for the winter

will let you trace his freckles

best kisses ong

make cute little shapes with his flames

Cons:

probably wont let you wear his hat

will fake punch you like a brother

too damn sexy

also way too hot during the summer like do not cuddle me i will not go to sleep in the heat

Number 3: Bartolomeo

Pros:

his hair is green meaning hes gotta be a walking green flag

will let you wear his clothes

especially his jacket

wants to kiss you every chance he can

fanboys over anything

hypes you up for anything you want to do

Cons:

doesnt clean his piercings so you have to force him

doesnt understand personal space

Number 2: Rosinante

Pros:

another man that will let you wear his clothes

theyre gonna be huge since hes 9 foot 7

big friendly giant

when he trips bc hes clumsy he requires your kisses to feel better

will pick you up and carry you around if you let him

lets you help him with his makeup

always makes time for you no matter what hes doing

smile brighter than my future

Cons:

Number 1: Izou

Pros:

bro is damn gorgeous

will ask your opinion on everything when shopping for makeup

will even do your makeup if you want him to

self care king

even when youre not feeling it he will at least help you do the most basic things

very patient with only you

big on protecting you

smooches your forehead or temple a ton

has you help with his nightly routine

Cons:

has you ALWAYS help with his nightly routine

“oh im too tired can you do it yourself tonight?”

“Thats too damn bad my hair needs to shine brighter than the sun”

always looks more stunning than you (when is it my turn buddy >:( )

doing his makeup last over an hour

(this one is personal but i wanna cosplay him so bad but hes so feminine im scared i might get mad dysphoria)

thats all :)

[cl0ckworkqueerness]

in the wake of the reveal of the "pills that make you green" comic's creator revealing her true colours (something I've been aware of for a while but haven't had much specifically to speak about until now), i think it's important to take a step back and look at some of her claims about transandrophobia, as well as many anti-transandrophobia (or transandrophobic) talking points, and analyze them critically without, in any way, demeaning transmisogyny as a concept. let's start with some of the things i've seen on her blog and go from there

first of all, there's a lot of talk about how activists who are vocal about transandrophobia are "derailing" conversations about transmisogyny. while i'm certain there are some legitimate examples, many of the examples i have seen that i presume she is referring to are speaking about her comics that specifically strawman the stick figure who is an allegory of a trans man or transmasculine individual.

in these comics, this stick figure is often unjustly cruel and even oppressive of the lime stick figure, an allegory for trans women or transfeminine individuals, while simultaneously whining about how they also experience oppression and should be focused on instead. this frames trans men and transmasculine individuals as loud, taking up space, oppressing transfeminine people (who are More Oppressed), and simply cannot understand that they do not face as terrible of treatment as the other.

the problem that most people, myself included, take with this is that the author seems to be living in an alternate world where trans men, somehow, are a legitimate, strong, oppressive force over trans women, and want to take up all the space in the trans community's discussion to ourselves. there are definitely people who abuse the term transandrophobia to say transmisogynistic things, without a doubt, but in my experience most of us simply want to say that we, too, experience terrible types of oppression as a result of intersectionality that a trans woman, transfeminine, or trans person who's perceived as either of those things may not experience. transandrophobia is not meant to overtake transmisogyny, it is meant to stand beside transmisogyny and further prove that different trans people can experience different types of oppression, and thus should unite against both.

another thing i've seen on the comic author's account is how the idea of androphobia is anti-feminist and comes from MRAs or something, which... uh, again, i don't know what planet you're living on, but here on earth, there are men who are discriminated against and even treated with violence because of their ties to masculinity, femininity, both, or neither. and again, it is not our problem if MRAs decide to appropriate actual, useful terms in order to spread misogyny. we should not have to keep changing our language every time a bad person uses it. if we did, we would have no language, and thus once again be silenced.

since i don't have the time or the spoons to go through everything she's ever said or reblogged on her account, i'll just go over one more thing. no, the discussion and desired visibility of transandrophobia is not some kind of psyop or massive conspiracy to kill the idea of transmisogyny. if we didn't believe in transmisogyny, we'd have no reason to believe in transandrophobia either, after all. for me, at least, talking about transandrophobia is equally as important because trans men, like myself, have been forced into silence for so long and erased from most of history. trans men weren't even well documented until much, much later in history.

additionally, i doubt this needs to be said, but if any of you are actually intentionally ignoring transmisogyny in your discussion of intersectionality, you have no place in this discussion

and finally, to the author of these comics, i doubt you're reading this, but if you are, please reconsider your hostility. framing the discussion around transandrophobia in the way you are is not only equating trans people who face detrimental oppression to the people who are trying to oppress us and force us into silence, but you too are actively advocating for the silencing and erasure of, and subsequently the lack of resources for, trans men, transmasculine individuals, trans people who are perceived as either of these things, or anyone who primarily faces transandrophobia. i don't blame you for being defensive, and i will absolutely take your side should anyone be transmisogynistic towards you or anyone else, but you don't have to drag trans men who just want to talk about our shared experiences through the mud in order to support your point of transmisogyny's danger, especially within the trans community. if you want to have a genuine, mature discussion about transandrophobia and its dangers, and transmisogyny within the trans community, i'm sure someone would be happy to discuss that with you. but with the way you're treating and talking about trans men, it is unlikely that you will take anyone up on that offer

idk man. i feel like it's important to talk about transmisogyny and transandrophobia at the same time, as well as all other forms of intersectionality. we should be turning transphobes into couches instead of whatever the hell this is

[paper-mario-wiki]

hey, can I ask you for some advice? sorry if this is uncalled for or you just can't answer this, I understand if so

how did you work up the courage to actually get to HRT so fast? I've found out I was a trans woman around when I was 15 and im about to have my 23rd birthday, and due to my financial/working/academic/housing (I live w my fairly conservative parents) situation it does not look like it's in the cards for me any time soon. but also I feel like I should just try to find a way and try to start out ASAP, for the sake of my own happiness. but also im afraid of whatll happen if things go Topsy turvy and I need housing from a family that thinks I'm a freak. how did you do it? again, apologies if this ask feels unwarranted or to big to ask to "Funny lady play tf2 dot blog", but I'm fine if this doesn't see an answer

First of all, I don't have insurance, so keep in mind that I did it out of pocket (note: I am broke).

I used Zocdoc (America only, sorry) to find a hormone therapy consultation, went to that appointment, and they referred me to an endocrinologist. After I got some blood tests done, I got prescribed a 30 day supply of sublingual Estradiol for about $16, again, without insurance. Now, this is of course in Biden's Seattle so it might not be as easy where you are. But at least for me, the process from booking the first appointment, all the way to taking the first pill was about half a month, because I got lucky finding a doctor. During covid, according to my endocrinologist, there was a HUGE explosion of people wanting to medically transition, so a very common thing I've heard is that a lot of doctors are booked out for months. I was lucky enough to get this appointment on Sep 1st, because the next person available in my area wouldnt have gotten me in until November.

Critically, here's my main piece of advice: You can't start until you take the first real action towards accomplishing it outside of your head. You can think, and plan, and crystalize how great it would be if it happened, but you have to actually make the first step and google "HRT doctors in my area", and schedule an appointment. To do it, you must first do it. This goes for many things in life. Simply starting the processes instead of keeping them in my head had me accomplishing many things I never thought I actually would, like starting HRT, going to university in Japan, and moving to Seattle.

Many people like me, including maybe you, are really good at getting in your own head and thinking of every possible way something could go wrong, or could be denied to you. And you get so tied up in the reasoning that you forget about the Doing. To the best of your ability, try to stop thinking, and just start doing. Anything. Choose to do something that you have wanted to for a while. Just one thing. Doesn't have to be buying a plane ticket to France, or confessing a huge secret, maybe start with that thought you had the other day of "ya know I bet pottery on those big goofy wheels is fun" and google 'pottery wheels near me' and see where it takes you. It's easier than you'd think to try. And who knows, at the end of this process maybe you'll have a beautiful vase. Or, even better, a vase with a personality, flaws, and a new hobby that you're excited to get better at.

[femmefatalevibe]

Femme Fatale Guide: Pleasure-Centric Sex Ed. Facts Every Woman Should Know

Some basic sex education: Decentralized from men and heteronormative perceptions of sexual pleasure.

Important for everyone AFAB with any sexual orientation: heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, asexual, trans, non-binary, etc. Here are some ways to reclaim your sexuality from the patriarchy and heteronormative gaze.

Understand your anatomy, seriously. The clitoris is the female sex organ responsible for pleasure, not the vagina. While you may think of the bean as an isolated love button, it is actually anatomically analogous to an inverted penis and extends internally through the inside of your vaginal wall and the inner lips of your vulva. If you want to more aptly gauge your state of physical arousal, evaluate for hardness in addition to wetness (yes, it looks like a mini boner, lol).

All female (genital-induced) orgasms are clitoral orgasms. Whether they're external, internal, or both. Like its male anatomical equivalent, every clitoris has its own unique shape and size, which can be best stimulated in different ways externally and internally depending on your personal anatomy. Common pleasure zones include the external head "the clit," the "G-spot" (around 2-3 inches deep on the front of the vaginal wall), the "A-spot" (around 4-6 inches deep on the front of the vaginal wall), and anal region (stimulates clitoral legs for some AFABs).

Remember your brain is one of the most important sex organs. Sex is as (or more) mental as it is physical. According to Dr. Emily Nagoski, it is more common for AFABs to have a responsive desire style (aroused by their external environment/erotic cues that stimulate the 5 senses) versus a spontaneous desire style ("heat of the moment" sexual desire that requires minimal foreplay/build-up for pleasure and gratification).

The cervix height and density changes (and can affect how you experience sexual pleasure) throughout your cycle. If a certain position hurts sometimes and is pleasurable at others – whether alone or partnered, know this is normal. Your cervix tends to sit lower with a firmer texture from the end of your cycle and progressively raises/gets softer (thanks to rising estrogen levels) until it reaches its peak height & softness around ovulation. The cervix opens slightly during ovulation and right before/during menstruation (haven't seen a study researching the correlation between cervix opening and higher libido, but I would love to see one on this due to the correlation here for so many women). Learn what positions and techniques are most enjoyable for you during different times of the month (consider this practice as cycle syncing for your sex life).

[maxknightley]

confession: i still don't understand what tme/tma js and i dont understand the google definitions because im kinda dumb, so i dont understand the arguments ): i feel like its too late to ask. it means transmysongony exempt right? i just. i dont get what that meabs!!

broadly speaking, TMA - or "transmisogyny affected" - means "amab transgender and nonbinary people." i.e., people who are the "intended target" of transmisogyny in the same way that Jewish people are targeted by antisemitism or gay people writ large are targeted by homophobia.

TME - "transmisogyny exempt" - is basically Everyone Else, including cis people as well as AFAB trans/nonbinary people.

the idea of the construction is to describe the ways in which transfems are harmed by cis people & "TME" trans people as well. but I have a few problems with this language:

I think it's absurd to describe cis men as "exempt from transmisogyny" because a major purpose of transmisogyny is to socially discipline GNC cis boys and men. as a thought exercise, I like to point out that I could have had the exact same experiences as a child/teenager, but if I hadn't transitioned, I would have magically ceased to be "affected by transmisogyny". I think this is Fucking Stupid because a large part of my childhood was defined by transmisogyny I didn't even know was transmisogyny yet.

we already had perfectly good language for what "tma" is intended to represent. namely, transfem. idiots and jerks misusing that language, describing themselves as "afab transfem" or whatever the hell, doesn't matter to me when 1. people are going to play silly little word games with literally any terminology marginalized people use to describe our experiences, and 2. the replacement terminology is actively worse at describing things.

whenever people use "TME" they're usually referring specifically to other people in the trans community, making it a transparent - and, imo, Worse - replacement for "afab." just say "afab" or "transmasc." let's be honest with ourselves.

while I think the ability to describe transmisogyny is necessary in order to express what it's like to be transfem, I feel that people often treat transmisogyny as if it's a separate construct that happens to intersect with other forms of transphobia and sexism. and I think this is silly, because transmisogyny is sexism is homophobia. they're all parts of a self-reinforcing structure and cannot be properly understood until we accept that you don't slay the hydra by continually cutting off its heads

I'm an extremely spiteful person. Every time I see a post that's based on the idea that Everyone Who Dislikes This Is Transmasc, or that Transgender Women Aren't "Allowed" To Be Butch And Therefore Don't Exist At All, my anger gauge fills up a little more. someday it will hit its maximum and I will be able to unleash my ultimate. that or I'll have a stress-induced heart attack

[queen-esther]

I’m struggling to understand why secular leftism has become so appealing for people my age. The average leftist I stumble across has a variety of self-admitted mental health problems and is absolutely miserable, probably because their entire worldview revolves around hyper focusing on an ever-changing standard of “problems” within society and lamenting about how the world will never get better until everyone’s entire way of life is completely dismantled and rebuilt to fit, again, a standard of morality and living that changes every five minutes at the whims of whatever protest group is getting the most coverage at any given point.

You’re ostracized from your friend groups if you don’t performatively show your support for the latest “movement,” you’re expected to tirelessly keep up to date on every single tragedy in the world or else you’re “privileged,” you’re by default a worthless and evil piece of shit if you aren’t a POC and/or some form of LGBT+, and even then, certain members of those groups get ostracized if they’re not “dark enough” or not “gay enough” or not trans. You’re encouraged to start shit with family members and even cut them off completely if they don’t support every little pet protest your friends have rallied behind. What’s more, there’s no greater purpose in life beyond Supporting The Cause. The dogma of your religion is contributing to the latest hashtag about BLM or COVID or Palestine or trans rights. You’re discouraged from finding purpose in faith or family or patriotism, and you’re not a “good person” unless you’re over-the-edge angry and distraught all the time.

Idk, I just don’t see the appeal of any of this, lol. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[eyesxxyou]

(rq, ftm!reader) maybe something w all the diff variants of hobie? them all spoiling you, being all touchy and needy, maybe something about how much they need this, how in their universe you're still in the friendzone

-🕸

💿 ꩜ ❝ favor ❞ hobie brown x ftm trans!reader ꩜ 💿

❝ contents ❞ dilf!Hobie, loser!Hobie, mean!Hobie, kissing, palming, sharing between them, dry humping, implied foursome

Hands. So many hands. Pulling at your clothes, grappling at your flesh. Fingers press and knead supple skin to bruise under the weight of their desire. Lips pass you around like a joint, each maintaining the same shape you almost thought you were kissing the same person. You were kissing the same person technically. There were just so many of him.

Hobies, all spawning from universes slightly different than the next. Their lips all tasted the same but it was no difficult feat differentiating one from the other based on how they loved you. Despite their hands, fiending for a feel, a sliver, a taste of you, they take turns with you.

You’re passed between the 3 of them, so similar yet so different it leaves you delirious.

The first one is visibly older than the rest of them by about 10 years, settled nicely in his early to mid 30s. Hobie was handsome, aged like fine wine. Smile lines etched into his dark skin by the sands of time, a few stray hairs slowly turning more gray by the day. He lived a happy life, presumably with a child. You wondered if in his universe, they were yours; that child.

He kissed you deeply, like he missed you, like it’s been so long. His hand settled against your neck, between the peppered kisses of the others against your tender pulse points. Thumb stroking against the rhythmic beat of your pulse.

This Hobie held an air of maturity around him, a responsibility that the other have yet to understand. His tongue lapped at the seam of your lips and with each stroke he coaxed your lips apart. “Are ya ‘kay wit’ this?” The sweet baritone of his voice hummed against your lips, hand holding your waist to keep your body flushed with his. You nodded, sighing just enough to let him slip his tongue into your mouth and explore steadily cautiously.

He took his time exploring you. Lavishing in every shiver and moan you offered up to him like a sacrifice to a god. “It's okay,” he cooed into your mouth, “yer such a good boy f’me. ‘m gonna pass ya off but I’ll be righ’ here if ya need me.”

He offered you up to the next Hobie and you cried softly at the feeling of his lips leaving yours but just as quickly as his lips parted, another pair found yours, identical to his.

His hands were far more timid, his kisses less experienced than those that preceded him. It was almost cute how hard he tried to kiss you with some semblance of authority. It was an act and you knew it. It was easy to overpower him, your tongue dragged over his bottom one, teeth nipping til he moaned.

This Hobie almost trembled under your touch, stammering over his few words. “Fuck, yer— God…” he let out in baded breaths “Yer so-” he choked. “Pretty.” He panted into your mouth, hands squeezing softly at the pudge of your body. Your hands guided his from place to place, letting him find purchase on your ass where he kneaded the flesh almost respectfully.

“He doesn't know how to handle you.” Another Hobie whispered in your ear, his hands grasping your waist and pulling you out of the weak grasp of one Hobie and into the next.

This one, this one was aggressive, demanding. His hands grasped so hard that you were sure there’d be bruises in their shape later on. Despite all their holding, caressing, grabbing, and pulling. Hands sliding under your shirt, brushing over your swollen, perky nipples. This one held you the tightest.

His hand held a firm place around your tender throat, squeezing until you felt you could hardly draw air into your lungs. You liked his roughness, the way he bit your lip and drew just the smallest bit of blood until your kiss held the smallest twing of a metallic aftertaste.

This Hobie was the possessive type, his eyes flickered to the others and his lips curled into a snarl at them. He had look in his golden gaze, feral, mean, unyielding. Not in the mood to share. His tongue parted your lips forcefully, stroking your tongue and pressing it back to give himself full access to your hot, wet mouth. His hand reached between your thighs and cupped your sweet cunt in his large palm, claiming it as his.

“The tings I’d do t’ya if I had ya alone.” He murmured.

“Don't hog ‘im. He’s ours too.” The second Hobie whined, his hands tugging at you to pull you back into his arms. His lips were against the side of your throat, the thick of his clothed cock pressed against the round of your ass.

“We agreed to share.” The older Hobie commented. He grabbed your chin gently and turned your pretty little head towards him. His eyes were softer than the other two, wiser as well.

“Ya don' know how much we need this, luv. Yer doin’ is a favor. Be a good boy f’me and le’ is ‘ave our way wit’cha, yeah?”

You found yourself nodding, a choked whimper escaping your lips as the last Hobie, the mean one grasped your face, nimble yet strong fingers turning your face to kiss you while the quiet Hobie kept thrusting his hips into you, whining all the while into the nape of your neck.

You told yourself you were doing them a favor.

taglist: @hobs-kiss, @hoe-bie

[vpgoldenrod]

Aziraphale's Haunted Look: On Being Forcibly Outed and Exiled From The Garden

While we're all talking about Aziraphale's reaction to the kiss, I'm surprised by those who thought Aziraphale looked disgusted because that's not an emotion I'd seen in him at all. There's sadness, and confusion, and anger, but I couldn't remember seeing disgust. When I watched the scene again I realized there's something else going on that really struck a chord with me. It's an uncomfortably familiar look.

He feels exposed. And I know what it feels like to be exposed in such a violent and intimate way.

Stay with me, I promise this is relevant to my analysis.

I didn't know what being transgender meant when I was a kid. Being raised in a fundamentalist Christian house meant that I wasn't exposed to those ideas, so I lived my life feeling like something was always just kind of broken. It was like I was looking right through the problem at other things, trying to alleviate symptoms without understanding why they existed in the first place. I eventually met other trans people, who gently nudged me in the direction of my truth. I even became aware that I had experienced some minor dysphoria. Every time I came close to acknowledging the truth however, my eyes would once again begin to glaze over the problem. I always managed to subconsciously shove it back into a little box and move on with my life. It was like I accidentally “did a big miracle” and hid this truth from myself so well that I continually forgot it was there.

Til one day I had an encounter that changed everything.

We're friends now but oddly enough, it was only meant to be a fling. I won't go into too many details because it's not just my story, but it was a lovely time that culminated with us meeting and doing what adults do. The person I was with, a cis man, silently clocked me the minute we were face to face. For reasons I now understand, without warning and in the middle of our shared intimate experience, he decided to talk dirty to me as if I were a gay man.

No one had ever spoken to me like that before. It had never occurred to me to ask anyone to do that, or that anyone would want to. I was in an intimate space and filled with the typical emotions and endorphins one has during sex, but it was a fling. I had walls up. So for the first time in my life, in this incredibly vulnerable position, someone grabbed me by my lapels and forced me to face a deep truth about myself that I'd spent decades silently dancing around. It was a blunt, irrefutable truth and it hit like a sucker punch to the solar plexus. He saw me when I was very much not trying to be seen, and there's few things more terrifying than that.

Even now, years later, I have such a hard time putting into words the overwhelming emotions I felt that night. There were so many, and yet somehow I can see every single one of the emotions I felt in Aziraphale's face when Crowley lets him go. My heart breaks all over again seeing how exposed he felt. He can barely make eye contact until he stumbles onto the one emotion that gives him his agency back: anger.

Gabriel shows up to the bookshop completely naked. When a bewildered Aziraphale points it out Gabriel says, “Who told you I was naked?”

But that's not how the story goes.

God looks for Adam in the garden, but he hides from her. He eventually tells God, “I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.”

Then God asks Adam, “Who told you you were naked?” And of course Adam knows he is naked because he ate the apple.

I've made jokes about Crowley being the apple that bit Aziraphale, but I forgot the bit that happens afterwards. He is aware of his own nakedness. He is exposed. To God, to Crowley, and to himself. As a result he is exiled from the safety of his Eden. Man, if this isn't the perfect analogy for being forcibly outed I don't know what is.

This show is so gay you guys.

[velvetvexations]

my transfem girlfriend and i shared our most impactful experience together talking about the ways in witch people view us as men and how we are treated as dangerous because of it. she was autistic in a special needs environment that became the "lost cause" space for "behavior problems" for simply being tall and nerodivergent. she grew a beard very early and is entirely covered in hair, she is emotionally extremely submissive soft spoken and gentle. they attacked her in school for being seen inherently as a predator. they hurt her and held her down and had staff restrain her because they where scared of her for being tall and what she MIGHT do, not ever from what she DID do. we had this conversation together before i found how people on the internet talked about trans issues because in this single beautiful moment she was the only person to understand me and the trauma of being the scapegoat. the trauma of being seen as dangerous so the systemic effect of that forever pushes you into the margins with "sloppy language" thanks to no practice talking and "weird vibes" because of never being directly confronted with what people dont like about you until its to permanently cut you off so if not a hedgehog delema its a naivete of what even could be read as a problem to people. but when you are trans the ""problem"" is a gender signifyer. my girlfriend with her tall stature and body hair has always read as masculine. she feels these two traits in particular are a prison. its something she had carried with her throughout every traumatic encounter and is why her problems are "male problems" in how she describes them herself she cried to me for what she said was the first time she ever was allowed to cry because she thought as a man she COULDNT cry. i talked about how when i stand up for myself my posture is read as posturing and my limp hands are seen as a fist, and in that moment i am the closest to a man i ever get with cis people and it is never for the right reasons. and she cried for me. and since then she has never felt a difficulty in crying because that single conversation made her realize what gender was as a social construct and that to me she will always ever only be seen as a woman even when she is tall and hairy. and i will never fear her the way others have feared both of us. nobody deserves such bigoted fear of a person simply existing harmlessly....

Yes! This is so, so good anon! I love this ask, I want to frame it! This is EXACTLY what I've been talking about and I'm so happy that it's landing and encouraging others to talk about it too! I'm putting this in both tags.

[tartarusknight]

Eddie Munson was pissed off. He was annoyed by the little sheep he brought into his group. It was just that after spring break... well, they didn't see him as an authority figure anymore. Which, fine, whatever. But they never listened to him, and suddenly, he was getting shit from them. Not mean shit or anything. It just wasn't... it wasn't what he was used to. They gave him shit and became basically family.

However, he didn't sign up for kids to just pop up all the time without warning and give him shit about what he does in his spare time. He used to be cool and mysterious. Now he gets shit that his van is a mess, and he likes to sleep in after staying up late painting mini figures. THEY'RE NERDS!!!! Yet he's the uncool older guy.

Sure, they don't make fun of him repeating school or his appearance. Nothing that hurts, but it's annoying. However, it's less annoying after he realizes that they started doing the same to Steve after they got to know him. And well, he knows they think Steve is cool. They just don't say it to his face. So he holds onto that. They probably won't ever say he's cool to his face anymore but he's not, not to them.

It's like he went from the cool older teen to older brother figure in one week. One near death experience. And well... he understands in some way. Doesn't mean he likes that they don't respect him anymore. He knows that it gets on Steve's nerves too. The kids would be over for movie night of just decided to have a sleep over at Steve's and Steve would just have to go with it.

So, Eddie did what could be considered stupid. He fought back. Sure, he liked being around them and hanging out with them. But some boundaries needed to be returned. He'd like warnings or heads up. So he started small. He started to invite an old friend of his around. Veronica. She and him have been friends for years, but when she came out to her parents as trans, she moved away. Well, she ran away.

Her parents moved not long after, the "shame" of having a daughter now instead of the son they so desperately tried to hold onto. The son that never truly was alive until he wasn't a he anymore.

So, Veronica did stop in Hawkins every once in a while since her parents left. After all, her and Eddie, they had been close. She was his first friend in Hawkins, and he was the first person she came out to. It didn't help that they both had crushes on each other. But Eddie and Veronica grew past the old crushes, and sometimes, when they met up, they'd hook up, but only when they wanted a sweet release. Nothing romantic. All that was gone.

So, Eddie asked Veronica for a favor as she was passing through, stopping to visit everyone. He always invited her to stay at the trailer for the few days, and this time, he did have an alterior motive. And well... Veronica thought it was pathetic of him but also hilarious, so she was in. Because Eddie decided that if the kids were going to be assholes he was going to scar them for life. In the way that was ~sex~

The first night she's there, they spend catching up as usual. But Eddie's not really up for anything more than that. His big gay heart stolen by the goddamn babysitter. So when they head to bed, curled up on Eddie's full sized mattress, they just sleep.

However, that doesn't mean when his trailer door is swung open that next morning with Dustin, Mike, and Max all barging in, that that's all they see. No, the minute the kids open his door, Dustin shrieks, and Mike yells an incredibly loud and disgusted "ew."

Veronica pops her head up, and her eyes narrow. "Teddy, your kids are here," She groands before flopping back down. However, she pauses and looks back at them. "Wait, aren't you Harrington's kids?" She questioned, and Eddie tossed the blanket over her head.

He can feel his cheeks warming and grunts, "for your modesty." It makes Veronica laugh, and he knows that she's going to quickly figure out his big fat crush.

But before he can dwell on it the boys are running out and Max is just standing there with her arms crossed. He raises an eyebrow at her and she huffs. "I can't believe you. Honestly," she spits and actually sounds mad. Like fully pissed off.

"Max?" He questioned but she's fleeing too. The kids gone, like he had hoped but Max... that felt wrong. Like he actually did something wrong. Which... what even could it be. He's not doing anythign wrong.

However, then Veronica's teasing him and he snaps out of it. He's got her for two more days and he'll take them. After she's gone, he'll figure out what went wrong. So, they get dressed before they drive over to Gareth's too meet up with everyone. Maybe it's there in the back of his head the whole time. But he tries not to think too hard about it.

It's just that, the next day happens and when Eddie goes out for a smoke in the morning Max stomps up to him. Rightous fiery and looking ready to actually kill him. "She's still here." She snaps and Eddie raises an eyebrow.

He slowly blows out the smoke, "yeah, Red. She is. Who pissed in your cheerios?" He asked and she had the gull to roll her eyes at him. Like he was a moron for not understanding.

She shoved her finger into his chest. "I wasn't bothering you and him about okay. I was staying out of the way but- but Eddie what you're doing is wrong. He- he's already been cheated on. It shouldn't happen again." She snapped before marching off. Leaving Eddie shocked. He only snaps out of it when his finger burns from his cigarette.

He heads back inside, and Veronica's chilling on his couch and painting her nails. "We should get a good movie to watch. I need some of Teddy Munson's comentary." She says, and he gives her a grin that's not all happy. But she's not focused on him at the moment. Her eyes elsewhere.

Instead, he shakes the words from his shoulders and gets out a small laugh. "You haven't heard commentary until you've watched a movie with Robin Buckley." He assures her. And then the plan is set into action.

He messed around until she finished painting her nails, and then they were off to Family Video. Max's words got louder and louder as they got to the building. But it didn't make sense. He wasn't cheating on anyone. Even if Max thought otherwise.

"Eddie!" Steve grinned, and Robin poked her head around a shelf. They both had big smiles on their faces. Although they dimmed slightly at the sight of Veronica.

Eddie sauntered up to the desk where Steve had been previously flicking through a magazine. "Busy at work, Stevie?" He questioned and Steve rolled his eyes. Before his eyes once again strayed to Veronic.

Eddie straightened, "Oh, this is Veronica. She and I have been friends since ever." He waved his hand, and Veronica moved over. She was slightly taller than him in her tall boots, and she grinned at Steve.

Steve nodded slowly, "I did - uh- nice to meet you. I'm Steve," he held out his hand, and Veronica took it slowly. She gave him a once over, probably seeing the matching scars over their throats.

She shrugged, "I know who you are." Is all she says before she looks at Eddie. Her face reads we have to talk about that, with a look to his throat. And well... she saw most of the other scars already. After all, he didn't care if she looked at him when he changed. She knocked on the counter, "Any who. I'm going to go find a movie, Teds. Oh, you guys should join us. Teddy said you had the best comentary, Robin." She grinned before slipping back into the shelves.

Eddie watched her for a moment before sighing and looking back at Steve. Steve who looked like someone just was told that their dog was hit by a car. "Whoa, Steve, what's wrong? Hey, are you alright?" He questions and Steve seems to shift and refocus instantly.

He nods, a fake smile covering the emotions swirling. Max's words ring in his head. "All good, man. Just sad I can't today. Busy," he says, and Eddie's sure it's a lie.

Eddie looks over at Veronica who's asking Robin for recommendations. Likely trying to give Eddie some one-on-one time with Steve. "You know, Max said the weirdest thing to me this morning. She and the other gremlins barged in and saw me and Veronica sleeping together- in the same bed. We were passed out in the same bed. Not actually- well we were just literally sleeping together. But not like, you know. Sleeping together. Fucking. Making love. Snoodiling. Whatever you want to call it."

And suddenly Eddie couldn't stop talking. "She came up to me and started telling me how unfair it was of me. That cheating was wrong and all that shit. But I couldn't figure it out. Because I haven't dated anyone in ages. Like- a really fucking long time. But she told me how he had already been cheated on and it wasn't fair of me. But once again I was confused. Until Veronica mentioned coming here. And right now. Right now you look like I just killed your dog in front of you. All by bringing my friend in with me."

Steve was blinking at him, looking shocked. And Eddie gave him a tight smile. "I've slept with Veronica before. On and off for a few years now. She was my first crush, and I know that it might be weird, but honestly, it's nice to have someone to just let out steam with every once in a while. But when she stopped by, I told her I couldn't. Sometimes, that happens. The last time she was in town, she was head over heals for some girl in her history lecture. This time, I was totally gone for this guy I've been hanging out with recently."

And now Eddie can't even look at him. "I thought it was impossible. Like obviously you couldn't like me back. Even when you told me your bisexual. That didn't mean shit. Just because you like guys doesn't mean you like me. But with Max and now just seeing your face. I couldn't- I mean I just had to say-"

Steve looks around the store before pulling him into a kiss. Eddie's stunned for a moment before he grabs Steve's face, and it's awkward over the counter, but he doesn't care. He's kissing Steve and it's perfect.

He hears whooping and breaks away to see Veronica leaning on the top of the shelves with Robin leaning back on the same one. Both of them with proud smiles on their faces.

And yeah, maybe this was for the kids and their annoying habit of just breaking into his trailer. But getting Steve was also good. And well... if the kids get annoyed, he can just really gross them out by making out with their babysitter in front of them. Yeah, that will work, too.

[pleasecallmealsip]

the so-called Terror: a dialogue

or: Why some concerns about the concept of revolution aren't worth your concern.

Frev happened 235 years ago. Rusrev happened 107 years ago. Chrev happened — do people still care when and how Chrev happened, or how Chrev was precisely inspired by the violent and popular aspects of Frev? No. Nein. Pas du tout. In all possibility, all that you hear is "Here is Why You Must Not Do Any More Revolutions".

That each of the Frev, Rusrev, and Chrev happened many years ago is a fact now misused and abused by those with no introspection in history or politics, only to show how "we are no longer living in the age of revolutions".

Against the Logic of the Guillotine. Because, as we all know, Louis Capet certainly survived by finding good talking points, and he loved facts and logic, and he facted so factually and he logiced so logically, that he won the rap battle against every member of the Third Estate and every petit bourgeois in each city and every peasant in each village and every enslaved person of Saint-Domingue, and therefore retained an absolute monarchy through the power of open reformist liberal discussion marketplace free-speech... (mumble jumble) ... both sides can have a point ideas opinions scientific human nature requires permissive modern enlightenment.

Enlightenment. It was philosophy that started the frev, and whether or not a person thinks highly of the frev, they cannot but admit: making sense of the frev is definitely very brain-consuming. This is where troll questions come in, and they are extremely brain-consuming if you, like me, sometimes get tempted to answer in good faith.

Most of the time, though, we on the left would brush away these troll questions. We'd respond... by not responding, because it's a waste of your time and energy to serve nuance, context, empathy, and primary sources, when, to the person who trolls you, if you know too much then you're an elitist, and if you know too little then you're a fake leftist, and if you know just the correct amount of things, then you're an elitist-fake-leftist. There's not even a sense of victory if you manage to fact-and-logic your way out.

But then, you log off, you do your twenty-five-hour-per-day paid shift, you eat, you shower, and you lie awake at night thinking: what if that person who comes off as a troll could unlearn what was certainly only a social condition? What if most trolls can become my leftist comrades?

Leftism. The title of a "leftist" is indeed a broad and vague one, and I totally understand that, for some of my fellow Marxists, it can be extremely annoying to debate a person who criticises capitalism as much as you do, but who, unlike you, does not take inspiration from any historical attempt at making a sustainable alternative. I mean, even Steve Bannon tries to brand himself as following Lenin, and he's already more specific in his wording than the liberal whose reason for calling themselves a "leftist" is that they would welcome trans people to become cops.

So what happens when the lines between Marxists and liberals constantly get blurred? And what if, in the night of the world, in the sombre stretch through each trembling horizon, all the way up into your own shadow, you hear what might as well be guns?

Well... To paraphrase Slavoj Žižek, himself paraphrasing someone whomst must not be mentioned: when I hear guns, I reach for my pop culture. I reach for my cultural osmosis, and I reach, and I reach, until I realise that the culture has not really osmosed upon me yet, because I never watched superhero films as a child, and cannot really name the so-called evil revolutionary villains in Gotham, and even without meaning to side-eye, I already am looking askew. The only problem, is how I, as someone who cannot have enough of Žižek's works, should be doing this looking-askew thing ...

Let's watch an instructional video to learn more.

(Alsip turns on the telly and shows the following.)

Trudy: Welcome to the Historic Hinterland, the show where we make the history that you've never heard of still feel as comfortable as home. I'm Trudy Mainstream. On this show, we don't ask for sources, we don't require history degrees, and we've only got one rule: we don't take "it's complicated" for an answer.

(Alice and Bob stare at each other from either side of Trudy, both waiting for Trudy to finish their introduction)

Trudy: Victor Hugo's Les Mis: can we finally de-politicise it? Jorjor Well's 90-84: why does it perfectly illustrate how the bourgeois intellectual is always the only sane man? Revolutionary Girl Utena: seriously, can she just calm down and be a pretty prince instead? Revolutions: can they be stopped at the right point in time? Today we’re talking about revolutions, and we’re leaving neither stone nor barrel-of-the-gun unturned.

(Both Alice and Bob already look tired.)

Trudy: My guests are Alice Kalandro, author of "From a Shakespearean Reading of Marx to a Marxist Reading of Shakespeare", and Bob Kinbote, beloved novelist, screenwriter, director, actor, whose 1992 debut "To Drown Next to You" about the tragic martyrdom of Olympe de Gouges, the feminist forerunner French revolutionary, has recently gotten a theatre adaptation. Bob, why is it so difficult to connect with all these self-proclaimed soon-to-be revolutionaries?

Bob: It's all about human nature, Trudy. That's the catch. If you start a revolution, and then it fails, you basically end up with a system much worse than the one you started with, all while ruining the reputation of your country among its neighbours. And human nature ensures that you shall go down as the most notorious of tyrants, monsters, beasts, and repressed queers.

Trudy: Ooh, I’d keep that last one off the list, really. I mean, I don’t know about her, but I’m not up for this language: I'm literally a they/them.

Alice: Well nice to meet you, Trudy, I'm Alice, and I’m also non-binary. You would have known that already, had you taken a glance at the About the Author paragraph on the front flap of my book.

Bob: And I don’t mean this as disparaging our queer audience in general. As an ally, I’m very aware of my optics, you see.

Trudy: But you don’t want any of our repressed queer viewers getting any ideas. Law and order, darling!

Bob: Not at all. Dare I say that the threat of totalitarianism is always one that worsens the lives of everyone, queer or trans or otherwise. And I don’t mean this as part of the community, but I know that wherever they oppress women, the queer people and the trans people would suffer simultaneously, at exactly the same rate and to exactly the same degree. The chevalier d’Éon, blessed be their soul, would have also perished on the scaffold had they decided to stay in France… Alice, you’ve written about Coriolanus and how he’s basically both gay and a rebel against his own mother, his own Rome. The archetypal restless youth. Would you say that Coriolanus ended up being a pathetic pawn of the totalitarian Volsci?

Alice: I’m not here to define things, and you’re not going to trick me into defining totalitarianism for you. But pray tell: How would a revolution fail, and how would a failed revolution worsen lives? Who gets disproportionately hit by this worsening you seem to be warning us about?

Bob: Trudy, you’ve got yourself a real sham rebel here. I mean, you've all heard about that lady whose great granddad used to own and sell all the eggs in China, right?

Alice: The source of her family’s case was a single thread that she tweeted half a century after it allegedly happened. Oh, we’re onto quite the great (!) example.

Bob: And she’s not the only example. Throughout the twentieth century, Hungarian mobs were raging through Cuban pagoda gardens, easily tearing apart like paper the precious Burkinabe musical boxes that used to entertain many an innocent young Haitian boyar.

Trudy: And why so much violence?

Alice: I must interrupt. What kind of violence are we talking about?

Bob: Long story short, it all started with the Guillotine, and the quick and painful executions thereby…

Alice: the probability that someone is an expert about the French Revolution is inversely correlated with the frequency at which they wax lyrical about how painful an execution by the guillotine was. And why am I, an amateur literary critic, and you, a historical novelist, the ones invited for this particular topic? Where are Jean-Clément Martin and Florence Gauthier and Peter McPhee and Clifford D Conner? Where is that tumblr user who’s been studying the so-called Terror of 1792-94, as well as the historiography thereof, for nearly two decades, and who can recount every love-language that the Duplays have shown to Robespierre? Alice: (Now looking straight at you, the reader) Frankly, this is not my area of expertise. I won't tell you which particular British commonwealthmen influenced Jean-Paul Marat while he was a young physician practicing in England, and therefore imply that even the British were not and are not ontologically counterrevolutionary... because I am not a historian. All I can tell you, is why most of the conservatives and lower-l liberals are asking the wrong questions.

Trudy: Alice, this is a fun show about fun history for the average audience, we’ve got no time for this smug little elitism of yours.

Bob: Oh, but let her… I’m sorry, let Them carry on. Alice, you don’t want to talk about the Guillotine, so what type of violence are you referring to here? Struggle sessions?

Alice: I mean, are we talking about law-making violence or law-preserving violence, and are we touching upon the difference between mythic violence and divine violence at all?

Trudy: Alice, those are some jargons that will take eternity to explain. And our average audience don’t have eternity. I mean, are we categorising violences the way some very careful environmentalists would categorise their bins?

Alice: I can explain, and it's incredibly fun and unfortunately average, and I'm sure that after I explain, the average audience will keep my explanation safe in their hands, warm in their arms, and other types of comfortable in their various other bodily orifices.

(Alice makes sure that Trudy and Bob are not going to interrupt.)

Alice: When we hear about violence in the news, who is usually represented as the perpetrators of that violence? The answer is “mobs”. Protestors are framed as mobs with banners and war-cries. The armies of certain countries are framed as foreign mobs. Even workers on a strike — and for the majority of workers, being on a strike in the 2010s and early 2020s in the UK basically means taking the day off — are framed as mobs who want to cause a fuss instead of doing their job.

Bob: So that's what you call law-making violence? Come on, violence is violence, and all violence is always bad.

Alice: Bad for whom?

Bob: So your point is that some violence is good then?

Alice: My point is that, whenever violence makes the news, they are usually represented as done by mobs to the so-called normal and average person. What doesn't make the news, however, are the...

Bob: authors of children's books about talking owls and hats that decide your fate, the last instalment of which is now almost old enough to be a university student?

Trudy: Excuse me, that one author you must not name is still selling books, is still tweeting, and those tweets are still hitting the headlines. That doesn't sound like being silenced, because that is the opposite of being silenced. Remember, Bob, we are talking about hypothetical revolutions, and so far one has not happened to target that one author. Now, let Alice finish.

Alice: Thanks a lot, Trudy. What doesn't make the news are why such outbursts of so-called “mob violence” became necessary in the first place. When you hear that a workers' strike is going on, you think to yourself, these lazy people want a pay rise while they don't do their job, and they're coercing their employers. But behind their visible, short-term coercion is subtle and long-term coercion, done by their employers to them, by asking them to endure inhumane working conditions, decreasing pay when adjusted for inflation, and systematically high rate of burnout. And when those workers are public transport staff, are NHS staff, or are teachers in public schools, it is this government who has already been coercing all of them for years on end.

Bob: And the protests among university students?

Alice: Behind every protest is a genocide that both the Tory party and the Labour party actively do, all day, every day, using taxpayers' money while actively ignoring how the majority of this country would like the genocide to end, forever. And I agree with you on one point: all violence is always bad for somebody, so, would you say that the violence that you do not personally get to see are necessarily less horrifying?

Bob: So you call what is done by this government "law-preserving violence"?

Alice: Precisely. Whereas workers' strikes, as well as the making of new work contracts by the employers, are law-making violence. Even the signing of a contract can be violent. Any of you who unfortunately have to pay high subscription fees for our techno-feudal masters, because you want to read papers, watch anime, play games, even simply to keep in touch with friends, would certainly confirm.

Trudy: But you've always got the right not to use google or amazon or microsoft or apple or ex-twitter or any one of the other privatised commons without which your livelihood can and will be affected severely.

Bob: And workers do have the right to strike if they are willing to let their livelihood be affected severely.

Alice: And why do you think the livelihoods of striking workers are always affected? It's because even those workers who simply decide to not clock in for the day and spend their time chilling out in the sun are, in the eyes of the law, already violent subjects. If you live in the UK and there's a strike, but the striking workers are under a different employer than yours, then you're not allowed to join them in striking. If that doesn't imply a negative attitude to the exercising of your legal rights in the realm of habits, I don't know what does. And as soon as you can be framed as violent, any harm that you subsequently receive gets trivialised and ignored. Sure, why care about these striking workers' livelihood, why care about the cops shutting them down in the most cowardly of outbursts, when these workers, though they do not act visibly, are already seen as mobs, already the part-of-no-part?

Trudy: Ooh, watch out, everybody! Here comes another jargon.

Bob: I recognise that one. Rancière. And as long as I can beautifully pronounce the names of the French philosophers, I shall never worry about their thoughts.

Trudy: And you're off topic now, Alice. How could strikes compare to revolutions? I mean, strikes usually don't last very long. I have heard of peasants' uprisings that last a year or several years. And so peasants' uprisings cause more violence than strikes. And revolutions usually last longer than peasants' uprisings. Ergo, revolutions are even more violent than peasants' uprisings.

Bob: Precisely. When does a revolt become a revolution? When does your 21st-century well-organised and voted-for strike become another Big Swamp Village, and your rebellion against the Qin Dynasty is quickly quashed and only becomes slogan fodder for some radically strange people whom you shall never see or hear from, who lives millennia down the line?

(Alice looks at Bob as if through the looking-glass).

Bob: As you asked in the beginning, Trudy, you do need to stop before the revolution begins. Let's cut the branch that might have grown full straight, and burn we must Apollo's laurel-bough.

(Trudy is not really getting the reference here, and falls into awkward silence. Alice is, finally, almost amused.)

Bob: Indeed, and the historian's task is to draw the objective line between those time-stretches and those levels of violence. As an Artist, though, I would like to entertain ambiguities. Maybe there's a bit of Jacobin in every one of us, everywhere, all the time. And that's what's horrifying about the French Revolution. I'm going to explore that in the sequel to my novel, "To Wobble Away from You", where Robespierre's friend, like the one in Henri Béraud's sentimental novel, discovers that he's secretly just like Robespierre, or intend to possess him, or maybe even to be possessed by this bloodthirsty dictator, and so this friend, he falls into an identity crisis ...

Alice: I see that neither of you are listening to me. The Russian Revolution was sparked by the strike of women working in the textile industry. Bob — Dr Kinbote — you clearly do your own research in preparation for your creative output, you know that the revolutionaries in every revolution knew when they were doing a revolution. You don't need to draw the line after the events. That is the one thing that we as non-historians can still very responsibly do. And no, there is no such thing as historians being objective. But, again, this show is not exactly concerned with objectivity, is it?

Trudy: How do you know that it's not just an uprising? Surely, by the time you've guillotined, say, the ten-thousandth aristocrat, you would want to question yourself regarding what you're doing?

(Trudy takes out a lean slice of cake and starts eating.)

Alice: I would indeed question myself, but not in the way you seem to be suggesting that I do. You have a point, Trudy, in that most revolutions have longer-lasting effects than uprisings do. As indeed, in actually-existing socialisms, it was always revolutions, and not uprisings, that could, and indeed managed to, uproot old regimes forever. My question is therefore about the planning of the new regime. Take the French Revolution.

Bob: Have you never heard of the Bourbon Restoration? Napoleon was the most ingenious emperor since Alexander met Hephaistion, but Napoleon lost eventually. He died a prisoner.

Alice: Toussaint l'Ouverture also died while extralegally arrested and kept in solitary confinement by Bonaparte's marshals. Exactly one of these two deserved to die a prisoner. Exactly one of them deserved to die at all, and he's not called Toussaint. If you had sincerely believed the Corsican who lost land and principles, the Tsar-kisser who was capable of neither virtue nor terror, to somehow still be a revolutionary, you would have definitely hated him, you would have been disgusted by him, and you would have titled him a bloodthirsty dictator. And yet you put his ingenuity out of all context, and therefore insult even this ingenuity.

Bob: You're avoiding the question. I'm saying that old regimes can, in fact, come back.

Alice: Anything "can" happen. The entire universe "can" suddenly turn into piles of porous cheese, and nobody would be left to give the good news to the ghost of G.K. Chesterton. Well, except me, I guess. I'll remain while everyone else spends the rest of eternity swimming in their long-owed nutrition. Why, I'm too bitter, too pedantic, to dissolve even among the richest of bacterial cultures.

(Trudy is now choking on their cake.)

Alice: As long as your vision is one that centres threats from without, anything could be seen as the beginning of a butterfly effect. But the effect of the revolution was profoundly felt when the restored monarchy, far from the normative status it used to have pre-revolution, is largely seen as a subversion, as supposed to an extension of the norm. And you can always find your counter-examples, but in both the Russian Revolution where the Tsar abdicated and was later killed out of emergency, and the Chinese Revolution where the last Emperor survived and tried to become a puppet emperor under imperial Japan, you never have a restoration that spans the entire land of the country. The point is exactly to reach for the theories that make such a reversal impossible to even imagine.

Trudy: Are you saying that history has a definitive direction of progress, and that the Bourbons were simply unfortunate in that they happened to be travelling against the tide of the times?

Alice: Nobody is travelling against the tide of times. And there is no tide separate from each of us; every individual is already part of such a tide. As much as no one person can, without the help of entire classes of people — and yes, "classes" plural, for Mao was notable for his emphasis on the collaboration between peasants and proletariat factory-workers and even part of the petit-bourgeoisie — build an entire revolution from scratch, we must also be aware: no one person can be so unfortunate as to be completely independent from the revolution, as someone passively observing the revolution, as someone whom the revolution happens "to". This is what universal equality looks like: from the nobles who had privilege own to lands they barely visited to those enslaved since childhood, nobody could say they had no agency, rights, or responsibilities in a revolution.

Bob: Well tell me what agencies Antoinette had then. She was only a depressed mother —

Alice: A depressed mother who chose to ask the troops of her father's country to quash the army and citizens of her husband's country. She wanted to ensure that she survived and maintained her right as the queen no matter which side won.

Trudy: But surely Robespierre was wrong to demand the arrests of Danton and Camille Desmoulins, who were his friends to start with? I mean, the revolutionary tribunal was not controlled by Robespierre, and the tribunal had the choice to acquit the Dantonists, but even with that possibility in mind, you still wouldn't in your sane mind cause trouble for your friends to have to defend themselves in front of the jury, would you?

Alice: Now you are asking an interesting question! What do you think separates Robespierre's actions from the two of them?

Bob: That Danton sold himself to the British (as if to clean his mouth, he spits right after saying the word "British"), and Desmoulins wrote his newspaper without fact-checking, but Robespierre did neither of those two things — that Robespierre was the "Incorruptible", and he always presented to the National Convention what was evidenced as the truth?

Alice: That is the least of Robespierre's concern. You only need to read Robespierre's speech after the arrest of the Dantonists to say that it wasn't any good action on Robespierre's part that made him think of himself as less gullible, as, indeed, "incorruptible".

Bob: Ah, you admit it then? You admit that Robespierre thought of himself as ontologically untouchable by the law, whatever actual position he occupied within the Convention?

Alice: No. Quite the opposite. Robespierre, at the time of the fall of the Dantonists, was already thinking of himself as equally involved, and equally active in the revolution, as the Dantonists were. And so as long as the Dantonists could be condemned at any moment, so could Robespierre. Neither his past friendship with them, nor his difference in opinion, nor his abstinence from indulgence was focused on, because if there was one thing Robespierre avoided, it was being a hero of the revolution, being a hero atop the Convention, atop all citizens active and passive.

Trudy: Wait, I saw in a film that Robespierre personally asked his men to go to the printers' workshop, where they were publishing Desmoulins's Le Vieux Cordelier, and those men wrecked the workshop, confiscated their copies of Desmoulins's newspaper, and then threatened to arrest the printers...

Bob: Wajda's Danton. The masterpiece of 1983. It makes me fall in love with Polish cinema all over again. One of the most brilliantly threatening Robespierre I have the fortune to have seen in media.

Alice: Ok, watch out for the word "threatening", because I'm about to use it. Robespierre never threatened physical violence against the printers working alongside Desmoulins. That was one of the many factual errors of that film. I'm not a film critic, and besides, Florence Gauthier has already thoroughly sick-burnt the ever-loving sick-burn out of Wajda. But even in such a biased film, one thing was done right: Danton was indeed represented as a nouveau-riche, who was somehow remembered as a hero of the true proletarians. And I think we can all agree on the certain harms — not even the dangers that lurk, but the harms that already is — of hero-worshipping. (Suddenly becoming quieter in voice and less formal in tone) i shall not advice anybody to spit at andrej wajda's plaque, located at the intersection of józefa hauke-bosaka and śmiała streets in warsaw's żoliborz oficerski. i give this address so that our entirely apolitical audience can know they shall not forcefully eject their saliva at wajda's plaque. moving on: I am not here to tell you about what good things Robespierre did. If he was adamant that he did not want to become separated from the people, from the revolution, and seen as someone independent from the people, from the revolution, then I am also adamant that we move on from him. You don't really care about his personal life, do you? You don't have any stakes over whether or not he secretly wanted to retire early and spend the rest of his life learning to cook for his found family and write poems for Saint-Just and Le-Bas to make into operetta-like songs.

Trudy: Indeed I'm getting bored of him.

Bob: So would you say that Robespierre was a successful person, then? As an Artist, I'm of course open to all kinds of definition of the word "successful", even if it's a success at making himself condemnable, and indeed, eventually extralegally condemned.

Alice: Ok, quick-fire then. When you hear the word "successful", Trudy, what is the first image that you see in your mind's eye?

Trudy: Oh, he was a gentleman with the fashion sense of the ancien régime, wasn't he? He had a powdered wig, and wore sunglasses, and had intricate white lace cuffs that surround his wrists ...

Alice: He couldn't afford lace. He wore fine linen. Ugh, this isn't about Robespierre the person though, is it?

Trudy: (ignoring Alice) ... and wore the neatest of breeches, and even his Adam's apple was especially perfumed to have the taste of ...

Bob: The bourgeoisie aesthetic. There it is. Robespierre managed to learn to be a professional lawyer, and he found the support of a well-to-do carpenter, and the ladies who heard his speeches live in the Convention's galleries found him attractive, all because the French Revolution did nothing but make the rich white men who weren't born into noble families gain the rights and privileges of ancien-régime nobles. Whereas everybody else, from the women to the people of colour to the gays to the lesbians to the bis...

Trudy: Why are you saying lesbians as if they are not also women? And gay men being women? Excuse me?

Alice: Ok, the carpet value judgement that the French Revolution was "bourgeois", and therefore unremarkable, is often rather insidious, since... — Bob, would I be correct if I call you a leftist?

Bob: Absolutely. Eat the Rich, and so on and so on.

Alice: So you're a leftist, and from what you have said about the queer and trans community so far, I gather that you sincerely believe in the leftist cause in a broad sense. And yet, you are still not immune to reactionary propaganda.

(Bob almost jumps out of his chair.)

Alice: To claim the French Revolution was, and aimed to only be, a bourgeois revolution, your central argument would have to be that the revolutionaries disposed of one set of hierarchy, only for the purpose of ushering another in. What you've done here, is that you've represented the revolution as a noisy crime that destroyed another crime, and so was flawed in the best case, and meaningless in the worst, insofar as it did not in one swift step go from the ancien régime to fully automated luxury gay space communism.

Trudy: But what if I've wanted just that? What if, here's an idea, jumping immediately into Fullo-auto-Luxo-gay-spa-Commo is good actually? If you are so confident that your platonic vision is going to succeed, then down with the terror! Just bring on the good results already!

Alice: (somehow managing to ignore Trudy) ... And this argument, this "bourgeois revolution" judgement, it depends as much on what the French Revolution was not as on what it was, and so it is as ideological as it is historical. Finally, a good use for the non-historian that I am. it's possible that one gains access to all primary sources and insight to none, and so comes to this very wrong conclusion. And this is where I must warn you, Bob: as much as you've been clever enough to recognise French philosophers, you still need to watch out for the done-your-own-research-and-indeed-accessed-many-primary-sources-but-doing-so-very-poorly pitfall, that writers of historical novels are always tempted to fall into. Because the question is not simply "why did the terror happen" but also "why was the terror a necessary step between the ancien régime and any vision of utopia".

Trudy: And why was it?

Alice: The shortest answer is that for a revolution to succeed you need everybody's participation. You need every citizen to agree on a set of new rights and new principles. Universality, basically. Now here's the difficult part: universality doesn't fall from the sky. It appears like an intrusion. It surprises even the people doing it. So you cannot simply programme an entire country by hitting a button. Those who get hit, I am afraid to say, might as well include yourself.

Trudy: What if revolutionaries cut off the supply line of my local supermarket? Or the electricity to a children's hospital?

Bob: My research has told me that this didn't happen very often in history. Things like a flood or an earthquake might end up doing those things, but revolutionaries have the agency that natural phenomena lack.

Alice: That it is, Dr Kinbote. If your idea of a revolution involves a disruption to the supply line of the most basic of goods and services, you need to ask yourself: why are those supply lines so risky to maintain in the first place? If any temporary flood could claim the electricity of an entire hospital, then the hospitalised patients' lives and livelihoods are being artificially devalued already. Basically though, detractors of revolution-as-a-concept tend to do this: if they see a revolutionary from a peasant or worker background, they dismiss them as jealous losers; if they see a revolutionary from a bourgeois-proper or noble-family background, they dismiss them as people with hypocritical morals; if they see a revolutionary who's not exactly rich and not exactly poor, then they dismiss them as jealous losers with hypocritical morals.

Bob: I don't think this is the show where we analyse why things happen in real life, Alice. Real life is messy and illogical.

Alice: (somehow managing to also ignore Bob) While we could, in a now-clichéd Žižekian move, assert that "robespierre's problem was not that he was too radical, but that he wasn't radical enough", we must not lose sight of how the new-left (derogatory) formula of either "robespierre was an anti-liberal bourgeois" or "robespierre was an anti-bourgeois liberal", both of which Yannick Bosc has already dispelled, necessarily implies reductive identity politics. And the problem with identity politics is that it supposes that a person cannot care about a social issue that does not immediately affect their material livelihood.

Bob: these new-leftists that you speak of, Alice, are they in the room with us right now?

(Alice casts a glance at you, the reader)

Alice: They might as well be. A psychological inconsistence on the part of these new-leftists is that, if the French Revolution really was, as they claim, an unimportant bump near the beginning of the long road of capitalism, and an unworthy prequel to the various revolutions in the 20th century, then these new-leftists themselves would never spend so much time and energy arguing against its memory. In doing this, they basically admit that they're incapable of writing a history of international leftism, without having the French Revolution as a flawed and hopeful first.

Bob: But isn't that just the founding of the version of France as we know it today? I mean, in feudal times you found a state by conquering and looting. Just because the state being founded is a king-less state, doesn't make that conquering and looting any less necessary. Even if you imagine a timeline where Napoleon never lost the last Coalition wars, he'd had to constantly threaten the rest of the crowned heads of Europe not to start the Eighth and the Ninth and the Umpteenth Coalition war.

Alice: Ok, I've already answered earlier why Bonaparte doesn't count as a revolutionary, and now you've also said the word "threaten" one too many times.

Trudy: What's wrong with threatening people?

Alice: Ha, what is wrong with threatening? I'm glad you asked. If you want to threaten some people, you'd have to maintain that those people are guilty, and you'd have to sustain that sense of guilt. You'd have to hang the metaphorical sword above their heads, and ensure that no matter how they repent, how they apologise, how they do their reparations, that guilt shall remain. Even if you want to be extra wholesome, and always forgive your enemies no matter what they've done — and this is not about me, I don't want to tell you whether or not to forgive your enemies — even if forgiveness is granted from your side, the threatening stance remains. You forgive out of your own decision to leave things behind in their flawed status, and not because enough reparations have been paid. Because, let's face it: as long as we see time as linear, a person who is already your enemy is unlikely to ever do enough reparations for you to stop calling them your enemy. If you forgive them, good for you: now they are the enemy that you've forgiven. Forgiven, but still the enemy.

Bob: Forgive but never forget, as the saying goes.

Alice: And this is not just for personal conflicts and whether or not they end in forgiveness. In most cases, the death penalty is exactly such a threatening violence. When a criminal is led to execution, that doesn't really do anything to this one criminal. Because death is something that doesn't happen to you; you're always only observing others die. And if no reparation is ever enough, then paying one's own life for one's crimes would also not be enough. No, executions serve to warn other criminals, whether they're already arrested, or still avoiding arrest: this is your fate, these gallows, and you shall spend the rest of your waking hours fleeing from this. Of course, the death penalty is only one of the more obvious ways through which a state gains monopoly to violence. Prisons aren’t inherently any less threatening. They’re literally there as boundaries to be indefinitely maintained. In the UK, when a person is persecuted, their case says “R versus [their name]”. They’re literally the nobody being reminded of their guilt, because they are framed as enemies of the monarch. Everybody will be able to name the king or the queen, but nobody will ever be able to name every one of the condemned. Such violence, done by the state to the individual person, is precisely the opposite of Terror. It quashes any individual agency, any possibility at clearing one’s name. Hence we can say that the violence that founds a state necessarily threatens, even if that threatening is empty, and even if the person being threatened is already dead. You need only recall the outrage from conservative and not-so-conservative Americans (both Trudy and Bob recoil at hearing “Americans”) when you dare to commemorate _ _ _ _ _ Bushnell.

Bob: I'm against the death penalty. As for prisons, I cannot see an effective way towards reform yet...But that’s not the point. My point is, prisons and executions featured heavily in the vast majority of revolutions, and that’s against my principles. I’d like you to name me one successful revolution where purges and political prosecution didn't happen, where nobody died. Go on, I'll wait.

Alice: I kinda wanted to say that death is a certainty no matter which historical period you look at, but you know, I’m not a historian, so why listen to me? But no, what I really wanted to say is, revolution doesn’t only change whether the king is in charge or a convention is in charge, it changes literally how the enemies of the state are treated. To use the example of criminal prosecution again, those that are executed — and for the records, I do not believe anybody ever deserves to be executed either, I’m just talking about people like the Dantonists — when they perished on the scaffold, it was their guilt that stopped existing.

Bob: So, forget, but never forgive?

Alice: That is the aim. Well, what is forgotten is the hubris of the individual. You remember the names of Danton and Desmoulins and Philippeaux and Lacroix d’Eure-et-Loir, but you don’t remember what kind of self-important embezzlement and fabrications they were up to, and more crucially than that, you don't remember the name of the president over the Convention on the day they were first suspected, on the day they were arrested, on the day they were tried, and on the day they were executed. Take an even more extreme example: everybody has heard about Antoinette, and many have heard of her friend, Madame de Lamballe, who died in the September 1792, when the sans-culottes of Paris executed those whom they believed could collaborate with the very-quickly-approaching Prussian troops. Very few people can remember the names of the people who killed Madame de Lamballe. It’s always how the noble ladies and the gentlemen and the non-binary highborns were cute and cultured and well-mannered and soft-spoken, and they’re contrasted against this nameless mob, and we as modern-day readers are told, again and again, that these nobles knew not why the mob even was there.

Trudy: Could nobles themselves join the revolution?

Alice: Why they could. They had the imperative to. If you're relatively rich and have more spare time, you're likely to be among the first people in your country to be literate. And if you manage to be literate, you can manage to become literary. And then you'd be the first readers of Rousseau and of Voltaire. You could even argue that, since nobles were significant proponents of calling the Estates General, it was the nobles who started the French Revolution. Even though their personal goals ranged from “wanting to do a job outside of their duties as nobles” to “wanting to not pay taxes” to “sincerely believe that the king’s powers should be limited” to “willing to give up their own privileges and commit to the republican cause”, the noble status on its own did not limit anybody from having the agency to act. Literally, there is no such thing as the "target audience of a revolution", because nobody is simply the audience of a revolution. I encourage you to read more about Michel Lepeletier, his younger brother Félix, and the maybe-Dantonist-maybe-Hébertist that was Hérault-Séchelles. As for those nobles who neglect to act, well, they don’t have to repay anything. They just need to be thrown into the void. It’s the individual’s violence against the state that produces this effect.

Trudy: Ok, in the beginning you talked about mythic violence and divine violence. Would it be accurate to say that mythic violence is when threatening, and divine violence is when hitting the target directly?

Alice: Basically, mythic violence = the violence that founds a state. You've got roughly two types of theory of how any state comes to be: the social contract theory, and the theory where you think of the state as the protection of the interest of a particular class. The latter basically states that every state started off by being illegitimate.

Bob: Conquering and looting?

Alice: Precisely. If you apply this to the modern history of France, then the way we talk about Bonaparte largely reflects what we think of illegitimate violence. In short, Bonaparte was more similar to Louis XVI — or, if you're being generous, Louis IX — than he was to the Jacobins he professed to have inherited his politics from. And even if your only measure is body-count, Bonaparte still costed the lives of more French people per year than any pre-thermidor conventionnel ever did.

Bob: But why "divine" violence? What's divine about the (horrifying word ahead) Reign of Terror?

Alice: I'd avoid saying the "Reign of Terror" because, as I have said just now about Bonaparte, 1792 to 1794 was not the height of political persecution. The thermidorians gave way to unprincipled threatening-by-death of the remaining montagnards. The directoire was even less self-organised, and that paved way for Bonaparte.

Bob: Ok, Robespierre didn't want to personally gain supernatural powers, I can concede that point. Even his harshest detractors wouldn't go near that trope. As an Artist, I must be moderate in my criticism, so I won't go near that trope either. What is it that made you, a champion of the Robespierrist cause, use that particular word?

Alice: Ok, you have a point, the name is a confusing one. Out of curiosity, are either one of you religious?

Trudy: Nah.

Bob: Not even spiritual, only high-spirited.

Alice: Great. While I suspect that we are three different types of atheists, what concerns the word "divine" here is not "actually gaining powers beyond the human scope". No, the transition from mythic to divine is like the transition from paganism to monotheism, from powers that reference each other to one power that has no reference for its own power, from powers that be to a power that only emerges at instances where it surprises even itself. The Old Testament is full of examples of laws being used as guidance and not as commands for exactly this reason: you decide without anyone, not even the Supreme Being, guaranteeing your moral purity. Purity itself is already a myth. And I'm afraid that the very concept of democracy is now being used as if it was a synonym of purity, as if was a pagan belief. You hear those twitter users with marble statues as profile pictures singing their praises to "their" Western philosophy. You see the first-past-the-post system being maintained as if it was some ancient tradition. You see the Labour Party quickly devolving into Tory-lite, and somehow by being the lesser-of-two-evils they consistently pat their own backs, scratch their own armpits, and do various other self-inflicted vulgarly pleasurable things.

Bob: I'm aware that we tend to avoid this question, but: How is the storming of the Capitol different from the storming of the Bastille?

Alice: Ok, do you know many names of the people who physically filmed themselves trespassing into the Capitol Building? Do you know the name or pseudonym of the persons who inspired them?

Trudy: I think everybody does now.

Alice: Alright, then, do you know the name of anybody who personally fired glass bottles at the Bastille guards? What about the women who used their femininity as decoy to bypass the guards? Who were personally responsible for ending Jourdan de Launay's whole career, and then his life as well?

Trudy: I don't think anybody knows that.

Alice: This was why I mentioned the part-of-no-part right there. The point of a revolution is not for one person to become a Robespierre, a Lenin, a Mao, a Castro, or anyone else whose black legends we on the left still have to keep dispelling. The point is for us to become the stormers of Bastille, to become the sans-culottes in September 1792. Of course, it's understandable that you have your favourite historical politicians or soldiers or poets, and it's admirable to learn lessons from them. I cannot have enough of Kropotkin, and I'm not even an anarchist. But revolutions are specifically about how the anonymous proletariat rebels against that situation — and this next part is important — by tearing down both the bourgeoisie and themselves.

Trudy: I thought the proles only rebel to get more handouts.

Bob: Or, failing that, we can ask the bourgeoisie to be gentle with us.

Alice: Asking another class to be gentle with your class is nonsensical, because class conflict precedes class distinction. You're at odds with the bourgeoisie even before a dictatorship-of-the-bourgeoisie came into being with the directoire. And indeed, the principle of fascism...

Trudy: Scary word spotted!

Alice: The principle of fascism is not really "eliminating an enemy within" à la antisemitism. No, fascism starts when someone thinks that a strong enough political leader can effectively let the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to coexist while being gentle to each other. In that sense, the number of people subscribing to such a principle is already frighteningly large. You simply cannot treat the class struggle the way you treat the struggle against queer-phobia or against transphobia. The day you end queer- or trans- phobia is the day where we in the queer community shall live in peace and harmony, and the people outside of this community shall also live in peace and harmony. But the day you end class struggle is the day where everybody still is, still lives, but not as their former class anymore. The day you end class struggle is the day where you neither need to have alongside you a revolutionary leader like Robespierre or like Lenin, nor need to become such a leader yourself. Of course, you would still have leadership to ensure that, for example, that power plants and railways can function.

Bob: So why is it that nobody is doing a revolution right now?

Alice: You have not been following the news in Burkina Faso, have you? Also, technically the Chinese Revolution is still continuing. You've also got revolutionary parties everywhere in the Third World...

Trudy: Ugh, I don't want to hear about the Third World. It's against my well-balanced principles to over-intrude into issues of countries that are not my own. Unless it's the US of A. Intercourse that stupid baka country. We're talking about revolution, the fashionable subject, and not the Third World. Your dream of a day of rupture in the form of popular uprising is going to land you in a cultish environment, Alice.

Alice: And I don't want to get into the differences between those who believe in a day of rupture versus those who do not, even though I can talk about how none of the French, the Russian, or the Chinese, at the time of their respective revolutions, predominantly believed in a day of rupture. They had no idea what you're talking about. Nonetheless, let's remember that those three countries are not the only examples. You only need to look at how many countries in the world have done a revolution in the past two hundred years to know that a revolution does not necessarily require any one particular type of religious belief.

(This is where Alsip turns off the telly. The following is Alsip speaking directly to you, the reader.)

Belief. It's easier to define yourself as what you positively believe in, than as what you do not believe in. To say "I don't believe in the ancien régime" is easy. To say "I believe in universal suffrage and the granting of citizenship to all formerly enslaved people" is much more difficult. To say "I don't believe that there was such a thing as the Reign of Terror" is easy. It's much more difficult, and much more effective, to say "I do believe that the anonymous proletariat can and should fight the few who defend a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and in this process befriend any petit-bourgeois who are willing and capable to systematically abolish their own privileges".

This is also why simply stating that you are anti-capitalist, if it used to work as practice, now no longer works as a theory. This is also why I take issue with the slogan "Eat the Rich", because such a goal presumes the existence of a certain class that you construct as "the Rich". And as much as I may pride myself on offending individual capitalists, I'd argue that, for me and my fellow Marxists, this cannot be the only tactic. A more radical slogan would concern the much less dramatic, and seemingly much more mundane action of feeding the poor, of doing the simplest thing that is the most difficult to do: establishing order from within the chaos of late-stage whatever-ism. To relish in the excess of destroying capitalism is not the thing that differentiate us from fascists. To go from the liberation from the system to a system of liberation, on the other hand, sets us firmly against the fascists, whose liberation from the system stops at a system of artificially-maintained harmony between classes, a system so brittle it constantly requires war with other countries to obfuscate its internal contradictions.

The liberals (derogatory) who say that the French Revolution was good in theory but bad in practice, who hail the storming of the Bastille but abhor anything that happened between 1792 and 1794, they simply overestimate the power of habits. They deem habits as above all laws. They could even agree that every person has the legal right to unionise, to strike, to revolt, and to demand a change to the constitution of their country. But, they would ask, are we really used to going to such lengths and measures? Are we really allowing the possibility that someone as beautiful as Hérault-Séchelles could be guillotined wrongfully? Are we ready to face something like the war in the Vendée, with such a both-are-worse situation as that of Carrier versus Charette (i.e. the unprincipled Left versus the populist Right)? A Marxist who wants to recognise all history of revolutions (with all the flaws that have been persisting) as their own shall, with much grief in their heart, answer Yes and Yes and Yes.

These very liberals often admire the Dantonists: they want a revolution that can be walked back on. They actively want to cut the branch that might have grown full straight. They want Apollo's laurel-bough to be burnt. To paraphrase No. 33 from Kafka's Zürau Aphorisms: anti-capitalist liberals do not underestimate habits, for they allow their own habits of limiting subjective violence to be violated by their own negligence towards systemic violence, and in so doing, they are like the capitalists that they have been anti-ing.

I would like to say a very Happy Birthday to Louis-Antoine Saint-Just. The time is already 25th August 2024 where I am. This is now the 257th of the Many Happy Returns. This piece is supposed to be all about how Saint-Just resembles a painting by Paul Klee, a painting that Walter Benjamin admired and wrote a significant comment about, Benjamin, whose Critique of Violence much influences my current analysis of the French Revolution and of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. It turns out that, since my degree was in maths and not in history, such a Benjaminian reading-of-Saint-Just is not yet clear to me.

I must note that Benjamin himself actually saw the French Revolution as the violence that founds a state. It was in Žižek's Violence (2007) that the clear equations of "French Revolution = aiming at (though didn't manage to achieve) a dictatorship of the proletariat = the abolishing of the classes of proletariat and of bourgeoisie at once = the boundless destruction of guilt = divine violence" were established.

As I have said before, if I could hypothetically talk to Saint-Just for only a day, I would be sure to say that his Constitution and his strategies and his principled personality are all continuously admired and influential to this day, and yet I would still be very hesitant to describe to him the world that we currently live in. And that was why I came to the realisation that commemorating Saint-Just cannot stop at making memes about him, translating papers about him, or telling those who have been duped by his black legend about How Saint-Just Was Good, Actually. No, I need to start with my own theory-reading.

I've basically put into this piece all the research and thoughts that I'd had since I started regularly reading about the French Revolution in 2023, and even some since earlier. I'll obviously still be wrong about a lot of things, and so for those of you who spent time reading all the way through this piece: I welcome any and all criticisms. Please, just tell me and I'll either edit this piece or do better in the next long post of this kind. and

if I persist while knowing I am wrong, the Archangel of Terror strike me down.

I would like to thank, in no particular order, my mutuals Lin @enlitment, Aes @aedesluminis, Adam @czerwonykasztelanic, Nesi @nesiacha, Kes @sparvverius, Maki @makiitabaki, Claude @18thcenturythirsttrap, Jefflion @frevandrest, Lazare-Petit, and Citizencard @citizen-card, for their patience and encouragement as I write my various frev-related posts and translations. Die Partei hat immer recht.