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Gamer guy: isn’t it weird that the richer a video game company gets the lower quality their products become? Like, every studio that made good high quality games when they were small now makes shitty boring soulless games only made to appeal to the lowest common denominator? I think feminism is causing this.

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why dont you take a slice of the giant omelette at the tyrannian plateau and maybe you’ll calm down.

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Rutger Bregman is the Dutch historian who became a global sensation after an appearance at this year’s Davos summit, where he accused attending billionaires of ignoring taxation. Now he has created another viral moment in an extremely uncomfortable interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson.

Bregman so riled Carson with his accusations of hypocrisy, critiques of Fox’s conservative agenda, and attacks on Donald Trump that the TV host called him a “moron” and angrily told him: “Go fuck yourself.”

Source

Lot more people around the world are going to watch this now than if it actually aired. Speaking truth to power is the best viral content!

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Renowned Feminist Philosopher Judith Butler Tears Transphobic Feminism Apart

Judith Butler says that J.K.Rowling and the transphobic TERFs do not speak for feminism at large.

If you haven’t heard about Judith Butler before, here is a short summary: She is one of the most important gender theorists in modern times.  

When right wing extremists despair about postmodern gender theory, she is probably one of the thinkers they are referring to (not that they have ever read her). 

She has shown how social structures, language,  the stories we tell and the roles we play strengthens the oppression and marginalization of women. In other words: For her gender is definitely a cultural and social phenomenon, and because of that she is on a collision course with the so-called “gender critical feminists” (TERFs) who want to reduce gender to biological sex.

I strongly recommend that you read the recent New Statement interview with Butler, where she addresses the thinking and the tactics of TERFs in very clear terms. The interview is behind a paywall, but you should be able to access a couple of articles for free.

Still – in case you are locked out – here are some important excerpts.

She refuses to think of transphobic TERFs as mainstream feminists.

I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. If you are right to identify the one with the other, then a feminist position opposing transphobia is a marginal position. I think this may be wrong. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia. 

So I find it worrisome that suddenly the trans-exclusionary radical feminist position is understood as commonly accepted or even mainstream. 

I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen. 

She dismisses J.K. Rowling’s idea that allowing people to identify as they want will be a threat to women in women’s bathrooms.

The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. 

This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. 

She dismisses the idea that the term “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” (TERF)  is a slur.

I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women’s spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? 

My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples. 

My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived.

She does not accept the idea that the term gender can be defined once and for all, for example in reference to biology.

We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings. 

It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women… Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. 

She also says:

It is painful to see that Trump’s position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge “gender” from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ return to biological essentialism. 

It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society.

So there you have it: One of our leading feminist philosophers are comparing TERFs to the transphobic extremists of the right. And she is right to do so.

It is important to stress this: TERFs are not representative of feminism. They represent a toxic fringe movement that at this point in time does more to help right wing misogynists than women. 

Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in “anti-intellectual times”

Pink News has also covered this interview.

Butler criticized TERFs back in 2014, as well, as reflected in this interview.

Judith Butler: the backlash against “gender ideology” must stop

Photo: Adorno Preis

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What are your thoughts and actions about this coup? I am not brave or strong, and I'm terrified of this insurrection in progress. All I hear is Trump's army and cynics who don't take this seriously. I feel I will need to stand alone and unarmed against this fascist tide. Any advice or reassurances?

Whew boy has that ever been on our minds!  So we’re going to re-post something a long-time anti-fascist wrote after the failed coup last week:  1. This was a major flex by the far-right. And since a successful coup was not ever really in the cards - this will be felt and claimed as a victory by the far-right and fash. I’ve been comparing it to how the 1999 Seattle WTO protests impacted the anarchist left. 2. It’s clear there was state collaboration with the far-right, in order to pull this off. It’s not yet clear (to me) on what level and to what extent. I think this is worth an in-depth investigation. 3. The ruling-class has consensus that this is an attack on the system and the state and there is near-unity on rejecting this attack and punishing Trump and the MAGA crowd. 4. While it was headed there already, this firmly establishes MAGA as an extra-legal oppositional street force - of the kind that’s not been seen in my lifetime. I think they will be a dangerous and constant factor in national and local organizing for the next few years. 5. I think it’s *possible* some significant state resources under Biden/Harris will go into repressing MAGA - this will damage the fascists but unfortunately also serve to help co-opt people into supporting Biden. The Biden regime will try and balance this effort with similar repression against Black, Native, antifa and other social movements of the so-called left. 6. For me this underlines the need to build an independent, revolutionary and anti-authoritarian mass direct action movement, oriented to the working-class and oppressed communities. We think that’s a pretty good assessment of the situation and we sincerely hope that antifascists everywhere but especially in the US are doubling-down in their efforts to protect themselves and their communities.  That could look like locking down your social media accounts and practicing good security both online and offline.  That could look like working with other antifascists to develop emergency procedures to defend and protect each other if needed.  That could mean training or equipping to physically defend yourself and others. On the reassurance side, we think this was a wake-up call for a lot of Americans about the fascism of its president and his followers.  We believe a huge majority of Americas were repulsed and enraged by what happened.  Our antifa collective and the projects we run (e.g. The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund) have seen a huge increase in support in terms of followers, contributions, and people interesting in joining/volunteering. People want to fight back against the fascism that is tearing the US apart; all antifascists need to do is lead by example and organize them. 

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Also: don’t stigmatize HIV+ individuals because they all have different circumstances and might’ve  gotten the virus from a variety of sources (sex, occupational, birth, blood transfusions in other countries). 

HIV-related stigma remains a huge barrier to preventing HIV, and is linked to a low level of people testing for HIV. 

The bad news is that Trump is cutting America’s spending on HIV year after year.  He has taken steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act since coming to power.

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Always keep your opponent guessing

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hm so psa bc i didn’t know this, it’s not common knowledge, and flu season is around:

apparently you aren’t supposed to take dextromethorphan (a common cough suppressant. it’s in stuff like cough syrup, mucinex dm, tylenol severe cold) with sertraline (aka zoloft, the antidepressant) bc it has the risk of causing Serotonin Syndrome, which is not as fun as the name suggests. i’m not a doctor but like, avoid drug interactions bc they can be serious.

remember to read labels guys aaa

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Sanrio Squad 

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These Tusken Raiders have cats. That is all.

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I couldn’t resist

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