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I wanna go deeper into this actually.

What can make this conversation dangerous is that it's very easy to accidentally reinforce one element of Ramencel's implications by attempting to undermine the other.

If we say "actually no it's not porn" we can further entrench the idea that porn is bad. This gives more credence to the idea that it should be hidden or done away with.

If we say "porn is good actually" we can imply that we're accepting that those books are porn. And regardless of the morality of porn, Stillorangecrushed was right when they said that slapping the porn label on stuff is how it gets banned, and it's a phenomenon that hits marginalized people the hardest.

The solution here is, to the extent available, call out both assumptions, and handle them as a pair.

To be clear, this is stuff that the people above me got into in some way or another. It's decidedly not a callout post. I'm jumping on it because it's also a really important case study. This way of sneaking hidden assumptions through into common acceptance is pretty common.

The pattern you need to look out for is:

Someone identifies an action that a marginalized or adjacent group partakes in (reading, done by women)

That action is re-labeled to be something else (porn-consumption)

This is (often) done with an air of disdain, disgust, or condescension (I have a degree so I have the right to tell you...)

The things to handle as a pair are:

The moral weight of the new label, which can take a negative cast either by the way it's being invoked negatively, or because its nuanced and has some genuinely negative elements within it

The consequences to the marginalized group if the new label gets a foothold

Let's look at another common example: "Those immigrants aren't asylum seekers, they're criminals."

The marginalized group: immigrants

The action: seeking asylum

The new label: criminal activity

The negative affect: distancing invoked by the phrase "those immigrants"

The morality of the new label: criminality covers things ranging from extreme violence to simply not owning a home. while some crimes are choices, others are simply circumstance and bad luck

The consequence of this label: calls to deport people who may look like they're immigrants, increased justification of incarceration or harassment

It's all fun and games and laughing at BookTok until you can't get on AO3 anymore, as someone who likes both romance and fanfic.

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for some reason today i decided i wanted to do some Fantasy Cartography again but this time its the city edition. please send vibes because i dont know how im gonna do this without going crazy

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Not to mention a core idiology of fascism is that those who act should lead and that thinking is for cowards. The cutesy little problem with this is that you have people blindly following those who don't think.

So this is definitely a case of "we did not expect Harvard to fight back and we forgot they have billions of dollars and the best lawyers"

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This is your reminder to clean your emotional support water bottle.

Check the o rings for mold.

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the inevitable conclusion

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So the "don't call trans women dude" discourse is back on my dash, and I just read something that might explain why it's such a frustrating argument for everyone involved.

TLDR: There's gender-cultural differences that explain why people are arguing about this- and a reason it hurts trans women more than you might think if you were raised on the other side of the cultural divide.

I'll admit, I used to be very much on team "I won't call you 'dude' if it feels like misgendering, but also I don't really grok why it feels like I'm misgendering you, especially if I'm not addressing you directly." But then I read an academic paper that really unpicked how people used the word 'dude' (it's Kiesling (2004) if you're curious) and I realized that the way I was taught to use the word was different from the way most trans women were taught.

... So the thing about the word 'dude' that's really interesting is that it's used differently a) by people of different genders and b) across gender lines. This study is, obviously, 20 years old, but a lot of the conclusions hold up. The gist is, there's ~5 different ways that people use the word "dude":

marking discourse structure- AKA separating thoughts. You can use the word 'dude' to signal that you're changing the subject or going on a different train of thought.

exclamation. You can use the word "dude" the way you'd use another interjection like "oh my god" or "god damn".

confrontational stance mitigation. When you're getting in an argument with someone, you can address them as 'dude' to de-escalate. If you're both the same gender, it's homosocial bonding. If you're different genders, it's an attempt to weaken the gender-related power dynamic.

marking affiliation and connection. Kiesling calls this 'cool solidarity'- the idea is, "I'm a dude, you're a dude. We're just guys being dudes." This is often a greeting or a form of address (aka directly calling someone dude).

signaling agreement. "Dude, you are soooo right", kind of deal.

Now, here's the important part.

When [cis] men use the word 'dude', they are overwhelmingly using it as a form of address to mark affiliation and connection- "hey, we're all bros here, dude"- to mitigate a confrontational stance, or to signal agreement.

When [cis] women use the word 'dude', they're often commiserating about something bad (and marking affiliation/connection), mitigating a confrontational stance, or giving someone a direct order. (Anecdotally, I'd guess cis women also use it as an exclamation - this is how I most often use it.)

Cis men use the word 'dude' to say 'we're all guys here'. It is a direct form of male bonding. If a cis man uses the word 'dude' in your presence, he is generally calling you one of the guys.

Cis women use the word 'dude' to say 'we're on the same level as you; we're peers'- especially to de-escalate an argument with a cis man. Between women, it's an expression of ~cool solidarity~; when a woman's addressing a man, it's a way to say 'I'm as good as you, knock it off'.

So you've got this cultural difference, depending on how you were raised and where you spent time in your formative years. If you were assigned female at birth, you're probably used to thinking of the word 'dude' as something that isn't a direct form of address- and, if you're addressing it to someone you see as a girl, you're probably thinking of it as 'cool solidarity'! You're not trying to tell the person you're talking to that they're a man- you're trying to convey that they're a cool person that you relate to as a peer.

Meanwhile, if you were assigned male at birth and spent your teens surrounded by cis guys, you're used to thinking of 'dude' as an expression of "we're all guys here", and specifically as homosocial male bonding. Someone using the word 'dude' extensively in your presence, even if they're not calling you 'dude' directly, feels like they're trying to put you in the Man Box, regardless of how they mean it.*

So what you get is this horrible, neverending argument, where everyone's lightly triggered and no one's happy.

The takeaway here: Obviously, don't call people things they don't want to be called, regardless of gender! But no one in this argument is coming to it in bad faith.

If you were raised as a cis woman and you're using the word the way a cis woman is, it is a gender-neutral term for you (with some subconscious gendered connotations you might not have realized). But if you were raised as a cis man and you're using the word the way a cis man uses it, the word dude is inherently gendered.

Don't pick this fight; it's as pointless as a French person and an American person arguing whether cheek kisses are an acceptable greeting. To one person, they might be. To another person, they aren't. Accept that your worldview is different, move on, and again, don't call people things they don't want to be called.

*(There is, of course, also the secret third thing, where someone who is trying to misgender a trans woman uses the word 'dude' to a trans woman the way they'd use it to a man. This absolutely happens. But I think the other dynamic is the reason we keep having this argument.)

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I miss when I would get Tumblr asks that actually said things and weren't just digital panhandling scams.

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Today is 📚Indie Bookstore Day!! 📚

If you don’t have a shop near you, Bookshop.org lets you buy from indie bookstores and they have free shipping all weekend!

If you don’t have the money to buy anything, follow your local shop on social media and spread the word about Indie Bookstore Day! Maybe your local shop has free events coming up soon, or offers mutual aid of some kind! They’re far more entrenched in the community than your nearest B&N, that’s for sure.

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Just wanted to share some shockingly good news in these difficult times. The full article is really worth reading. [Find it here]

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40% y'all...

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My fish army. I need you.

If you are a fanfiction author who posts to AO3. Your work has probably been scraped into these datasets.

Send them a copyright takedown notice if you think your work is in this. Escalate to a DMCA report if you need to: https://www.copyright.gov/512/sample-notice.pdf (and send it to: dmca@huggingface.co)

Make sure to grab all your work IDs from Ao3.

Restrict your work to the archive.

Glaze your art.

So many of us are affected. You aren't alone. Maybe together we can take down this theft.

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I've been getting a number of these too, in regards to an FFN account I haven't touched since like. 2018. Basically verbatim too. I'd say unless they can say something that proves that they actually read your story (ie: particular lines that spoke to them, and why, etc -- not just that "it was super deep and vivid" or smth), don't touch these messages.

I've been getting spammy/probably extortionist PMs on fanfiction dot net for a while now, but they're actually getting kind of convincing.

These are legitimate emails from fanfiction, regarding a private message sent to me. Usually they're more specific and mention one of my fics by name. I figure next to no one is falling for this since ff net is mostly oldies/more experienced adults at this point, but the fact that I'm still getting them and they've evolved to be more convincing is...not good lmao.

So if you get one of these messages: do not reply, do not open links, do not bite. These are scammers and they're probably trying to either get your money or hack some account. Thank you for attending my ted talk

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I love characters that are completely harmless until they finally unleash their power and then they’re TERRIFYING

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why would you ever outsource fun to chatgpt? are you stupid? you can make mediocre shit by yourself too.

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maladaptive daydreaming is a disorder the way other disorders meet criteria: it is a normal phenomenon that is taking to such an extreme it interferes with normal life in a way that's abnormal. In this case, that's where the "mal" in "maladaptive" comes from. It's not the daydreaming that's the problem, its the extent to it that can be disruptive.

if someone has an issue with maladaptive daydreaming it means that it literally stops them from functioning properly. Can't do errands because they can't leave their head. Can't maintain friendships or work dynamics. Can't get homework/job work done. That kind of thing. It's people who went into their imagination to cope with something but now it's consumed their life.

The problem with this term is much like the problem with lots of other popular psychology terms. It starts out as something that describes serious and distressing phenomena but then gets turned into a cutesy quirk.

Imagination is fantastic. I would suggest that we mayhaps should stop calling any and all make belief play "maladaptive" and only use it in the case that it actually meets that criteria. Otherwise, it pathologizes and villanizes a very normal process and experience, and it takes the vocabulary away from the people who genuinely have an issue that is causing distress in their lives.

a lot of life can be persevered thru by secretly playing pretend in your mind the whole time

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bat at hornets nest maybe but "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" refers to low income communities needing to choose between survival vs being eco friendly. not you continuing to watch the harry potter movies

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Imagine being JD Vance, who makes such a huge part of his personality being catholic. The pope himself takes time to lecture you on compassion then promptly DIES. The pope uses one of his last hours on earth to tell you that you suck at your religion on EASTER. And then DIES. Anyway RIP Pope Francis