#terfs don’t even think about getting near this one

[pineapple-coffee]

“remember when the rainbow was an innocent symbol 😡😡” karen you have green carnations in your yard. you stop and smell violets. you listen to freddie mercury sing love songs. you saw the matrix in theaters. your favorite barista is trans. your favorite actor probably has a husband. you come in contact with queerness every day of your life, and it’s innocuous. queerness isn’t inherently sexual, and neither is the rainbow; you impressed that “impurity” upon us.

#got a bit political at 5am yall oops #terfs don’t even think about getting near this one #inspired by the Instagram comment section #lgtbqia+ #lgbtqia #I hope my point makes sense #queer community

[flfverse]

I love reading your worldbuilding posts! It’s so fun to have that extra context for the story. Your recent post about sub-circling got me thinking about the issues trans-oriented subs might run into trying to join something that is designated Strictly For Subs in such a deeply-rooted biological and cultural way. I guess I wanted to poke you for your thoughts on like, HOW ingrained in biology and instincts that kind of thing is, bc I think it’d be kinda fun to examine the particular nuances of that kind of inter- and intrapersonal conflict 🤔 It also got me wondering if there would be any anti-trans orientation movements who see that as like a predatory endangerment to sub spaces? I guess I’m just recreating terfs tho lmao. Er sorry if that’s too heavy or invasive of a topic? You can feel free not to answer that one 😵‍💫

Also not related, but it was such a treat seeing Aizawa in your recent chapter and I love how you write him! I was curious if you were ever thinking about writing an erasermic fic in this verse, since their relationship is so unique for your au! 💓

ahhhh thank you!! i usually dislike worldbuilding bc it feels so overwhelming, but i’m having fun with it here so far

i….actually had not thought about trans rights vs the sub-circle tho, THAT’S a thought. i will say chapter 8 of Free Falling will have a little bit about sub circles in it, and i did include a line where someone asks twice (trans switch, bio dom in this au) if he’s going to stay. twice declines, but the offer is there. HOWEVER, that is the league and not society at large, so in a less trans-accepting space it would probably be different.

i haven’t written about it directly (and probably won’t, tbh? at least, i have no plans to rn, never say never), but i DO imagine there are both run of the mill transphobes and a terf-adjacent group in this ‘verse. hm. like actual terfs they’d probably be very “submissive rights” but be so transphobic that it loops back around to oppression.

i’ve done a fair amount of waffling on how biologically ingrained stuff is, because on the one hand it’s fun if the answer is “very,” but on the other hand, i’m trans and i’m wary of bioessentialism.

so my current stance is that it’s not as biologically ingrained as subspace/domspace itself, but it’s still important for things like social development. think of it as a kid growing up isolated from their peer group for whatever reason. they’re probably going to have trouble connecting with people their own age, they might pick up some strange habits, they’ll likely have gaps in their knowledge like not knowing pop culture. but overall (assuming nothing else bad happened), they’ll be okay, physically and mentally. not to trivialize that experience as i’m sure it’s very difficult, but there’s nothing life-threatening about it. and like i mentioned, a sub circle takes some level of intention; it’s not something you can trip into or be forced into against your will like subspace.

that said, it is Very culturally important. not something enforced, but if you told someone you never had a circle as an adult they’d probably give you a “wtf” look. a lot of the importance comes from the defensive aspect and how dangerous it can be to break a circle up. they’re respected because not respecting them is a good way to get attacked.

so anyway all of this is very long-winded and a bit stream-of-consciousness, but in conclusion i don’t think most people would welcome a trans sub/switch into a circle. like women’s bathrooms, except there’s no cultural expectation of politeness/not rocking the boat (also since when are women’s bathrooms some super culturally important place….but i digress). i feel like a trans sub would also have a lot of internalized Feelings about it even if they were allowed to join bc of all the messaging about how a dom near a sub circle is the Worst Thing Ever.

…..and now i’m thinking that would be fun to write. hm. back burner.

but!! yes!!! very cool questions defo a lot of food for thought. and to answer your last question about erasermic—i definitely want to write about them in this au!! i don’t have any specific ideas at the moment but i do adore their relationship and i very much want to delve into it. since they’ve adopted hitoshi i could also explore what raising a teenager in this world looks like….very fun

#asked and answered #worldbuilding #sub circle #aizawa shouta #transorientation #d/s au #bnha #i also want to write more of aizawa and class a #love a good dadzawa #im also 👀 at aizawa’s capture scarf hmmmm could do somethin with that ajshajsgjasg

[babyborderlinesworld]

about me✨🌈

hi!! you can call me lily. they/them. i have autism, adhd & bpd. im an advocate for positivity & good mental health. i’m also an age regressor. content will be sfw always. i will follow back any/all accounts who also regress or post positivity. my messages will always be open for new friends!

why im here 🎀

i rly want to make new friends that understand how i feel, what i experience. no irl would ever understand. also to find inspiration and ideas and look at posts to self-soothe. mostly to have a safe, comfortable place where i don’t have to be ashamed of my regressing.

little stuff 🍼🍪

little age: between 5 & 10. it fluctuates. she/her. favourite drink: strawberry milkshake🥛! favourite food(s): strawberry bon bons, chocolate (my fav are white buenos) i love desserts, pastries, poptarts, any & all things sweet 🍭 loves: naps! disney, animated films & cartoons, playing games, music & harry potter, all of my teddies but my favourite is my sloth! pet names: sweetie/sweetheart, baby, angel, lovely/love, bean. currently no caregiver but: special praise names/terms with context examples: (goodnight) princess/baby, good girl (eg for sipping water even though i REALLY dont wanna) good job little one (completing task) thinks that make me feel safe: being treated small as i feel, eg guided places, holding my hand while out, making sure traffic isn’t near to me, that i’m safe in public, letting me pick stuff out i like but not properly shopping or paying & doing other grown up stuff. forehead kisses and stroking my hair. platonic cuddles where im just held. dislikes: being told what to do, even if its whats best for me, may result in slight tantrum. vegetables that arent potatoes. deaths of fictional characters deeply upset me. change.

do not interact if:

fetishists/kink- this is a safe healthy way for me to process my trauma, not for you to get off on. also bigots of any kind. (homophobes, racist, terfs ect)

#agere thoughts #agere positivity #sfw age regression #age regressor #agere community #age regression #agere lifestyle #sfw agere #sfw caregiver #agere #positivity #healing #mentalwellness #mentalheathawareness #mentalhealthmatters #inner child #sfw little blog #sfw smolspace #agere little

[softceleste]

thank you for responding to my previous ask. you eased my mind a lot because we evidently have similar feelings about this. i dropped a lot people last year but i’ll be honest that with everyone else it was easy. when it comes to her, it isn’t easy. it has been a decade for me too. the story in the screenshot you linked is what set me on this train of thought in the first place. i saw a screenshot of it for the first time last month and devastated doesn’t even begin to cover how i felt. it doesn’t help that i know how horrible the person the post was shared from is.

thank you for bringing up the point about the lack of support for trans people. i did notice that but i thought it was just in my head. i didn’t know about her interactions with vocal transphobes until just now and i’m deeply hurt about that fact. i am trans and knowing that there’s a very real possibility someone i loved and supported for so long believes that my existence is some sort of aberration is just.. i don’t think i can even bear to think about it right now

Of course, love! But yeah honestly I get it, like when you follow someone's career for so long, watching / giffing literally everything they're in - with how parasocial relationships are sometimes, it genuinely feels like having to say goodbye to a friend. Like... god I got into Kat like right after a near successful suicide attempt, and giffing her has brought so much joy to me in periods of my life when I was at my absolute lowest, and I think a part of me will always still be a bit grateful for that, you know? But yeah... yeah, no that IG story and noticing that trend I mentioned in my last post were personally outside my comfort zone and personal limits. And tbh I know she's really close to the guy who played a werewolf on a very popular children's show from the 2000s about wizards (...I'm trying to keep this out of celebs searches to avoid distressing their fans okay, I think everyone knows who I'm on about though, I hope) and he's always been an extremely vocal zionist, I unfollowed him years ago because of it - and he's not the only questionable friend, and I get a huge part of that is "Hollywood politics" but... I dunno, her taste in friends definitely is... not who'd I pick to associate with if you asked me to pick a list of people from Hollywood to associate with. And like looking at this as a person who's never really been able to have friends with people who's values misalign that much from mine I do find it hard to disassociate friends behaviors from someone, personally. I know a lot of people who are able to do that, it's just not a skill I personally possess, so knowing her friends politics does make me uneasy. That's just a personal limit, you know? It wasn't easy to drop her, and I've definitely had really weird emotions about it, so I get it. I'm sorry you're going through it too, anon

And yeah, like I don't know if she's still doing it because I don't follow her on Twitter anymore (I definitely hope she isn't - I'd love the news she stopped tbh) but she was liking/supporting the woman who wrote a certain set of children books very often, none of her explicitly transphobic tweets from what I saw personally, but I can't imagine that's it's possible to not know her political views by now. And she's like extremely close to a certain dc actor who also is the voice of a beloved Disney character from 2010, like "calls him whenever she has issues and needs advice" close we know is very transphonic and republican leaning in general, etc etc etc like... I obviously want to think/hope for the best because she's always been vocally supportive of gay rights, but there are a lot of terfs who are pro-gay rights and anti-trans ones so it was hard to not be like "oh I don't like this pattern" personally, you know? The most trans-positive thing I've seen (I had this linked to me by a fan of hers after posting that ask), is this tweet. But yeah, my personal experience was noticing that trend - I'd love to be wrong and just have missed stuff, but that's just my experience and I think as a trans person myself that I have a right to feel uncomfortable with the trend, that's all I'm saying.

But also another general reminder to everyone reading this - please don't send her fans anon hate, or any messages about this for that matter. Like seriously, I'm not cool with being mean to fans of people whatsoever, and I don't think anyone who follows her is a bad person or anything (like a lot of my friends still are kat fans and they're all great people). I know you didn't do it, but someone who saw my answer did, and if they also need to talk about their feelings right now (they must be intense if you're sending hate), my anon is open to them as well to hash them out productively (and I think my dms are too, but if they're not please lemme know and I can open them fast <3). Like I'm not making any hard accusations, I don't have any solid evidence, it's all just... observations, you know? Take everything I'm saying about her tonight as speculation based off my gut instincts and what I've personally witnessed (unless it's like a screenshot or a linked tweet) because that's literally what it is.

#answered #suicide tw #sorry to have to tw tag this but I feel it's... important context i'm coming at this as a former fan #i don't hate her i don't think she's the worst person ever or anything I'm just... disappointed and sad you know? #i got quite a few messages about this so like anon if you're like “Katie pls I didn't say anything” I'm like addressing those a bit too <3 #edit: also source for how close she is with tangled man is her ig live with him - it’s been reuploaded onto YouTube

[fierytakeferdinand]

UK’s Political Landscape is not unlike a zombie apocalypse story.

What it says on the tin.

Let’s do a brief recap:

Tories have shit the bed, like all conservatives before them and how all of them after, they have stolen from the people and given to their corporate donors/handlers, protected their landlord/theft businesses and

Environmentalists are the only ones who seem to be doing anything but they’re basically single-issue grass simps so it’s hard to get excited about anything they do and most people still shit on them relentlessly massively missing the entire point of all the paint throwing and parliament occupying. Although at least they’re doing something so even if we disagree they have my undying respect.

GreenAndPleasant types are in a superposition of being stalin-apologist anti-Ukraine red-fascist tankie morons while also simultaneously rushing to defense of fucking landlords as long as there’s a sob story. I would say something witty here but the word “Gallery of Morons” is all I can think of so let’s leave it at that.

DemSocs/SuccDems don’t exist here, Labour party liberals are sizeable and had a chance to become a real opposition under Corbyn, but post-massacre by the media, the liberal leadership of Keir still feels like it’ll lose simply because of a boomer monolith voting tories despite the country being now the poorest in Western Europe thanks to Tories, but what can you or I do against them, they are somehow a completely different species, a horror truly beyond my understanding on every level, the kind of “people” who complain about Starbucks baristas not smiling(?) and being “gormless”(??) on Google Maps(???).

Pictured: Anti-Trans hate group. One foot in the grave, the other in other people’s business where it doesn’t belong. Probably the same kind of people who leave the kinds of reviews I posted above.

The Greens basically don’t do anything of note and lost their one exciting candidate for leadership (or rather a duo — Amelia Womack and Tamsin Omond), but at least not to the openly TERF candidate — Shahrar Ali. I’ll drink to that, he can die in a fire, but the fact he was anywhere near a progressive party is already incredibly concerning.

Anarchists are non-existent. LAF pretty much already existed only on Facebook with occasional events and meetups but haven’t done anything since August and their posts get no interactions other than a few random boomers talking about the biker gang sons of anarchy (fucking lol) or making nonsensical comments appended by obligatory elipses, so I doubt they got all that much attendance.

Most users on /r/unitedkingdom are either fence-sitters or pro-labour but they don’t matter compared to the tory monolith that made this country poorer than Poland. And these are the fucking internet using young progressives railing against the system??? What the fuck. Even those who support socialism seem to have this “oh it’ll happen eventually” attitude and just sit on their hands.

In a country known as TERF Island, most trans rights activists are sitting writing essays (and yes I realize the irony), and arranging piss bottles outside headquarters instead of breaking windows with them.

Why is it like this?

Well, because I think we’re past the saving-the-world stage and into the all-we-can-do-is-critique-it stage.

This feels like cyberpunk genuinely. Or a Zombie Apocalypse story. The two are alike in that they share a similar distinction of being set in a static, usually unmoving world, portrayed as a sort of endpoint of history and societal evolution rather than as an age of turmoil and transformation.

This is what separates cyberpunk fiction (and I’m using just a general average of cyberpunk worlds, of course there are outliers) — from other political fiction.

Star Trek is kind of anti-establishment in some ways because it’s effectively a different establishment critiquing our time, in episodes such as The Drumhead, witch hunts and well, “drumhead trials” are critiqued through a story taking place in a society that’s not invulnerable to it’s occasional reappearance, but has learned to spot it, and has learned to fight it. It critiques our society, which has not yet done so. The positive ending is a foregone conclusion because the portrayal is ultimately a utopia, but it’s moral lessons come from defeating challenges.

Cyberpunk fiction’s moral lessons then come from the exact opposite, the world is a dystopia, the bad conclusion to the story is a foregone one, but seeing it transpire allows us to critique it.

Similarly, zombie apocalypse stories allow us to examine human morality in close critique under extreme pressure, it does not provide solutions to complex moral dilemmas nearly as often as simply letting them play out.

The zombie apocalypse is often beyond comprehension, beyond resistance, it is simply an unstoppable force of nature, a world of “is” and that’s that, and all one can do is survive, a constant, like death.

Sure there’s some exceptions, like The Last Of Us or Children of Men (which isn’t a zombie story but basically is), but those stories rarely end with the apocalypse being un-done or fixed or the state of the world made better because that’s just a plot device more than not, something to get characters moving from situation to situation.

In Cyberpunk, similarly most characters either don’t resist the world order at all, or do so out of selfish, malformed reasons, being the products of the very world they resist, and even when they do resist the world, and do so for the right reasons, they very rarely succeed making even a dent in the monolithic power structures that govern their world with the power equal to that of the new natural laws of The Walking Dead.

There is dystopian fiction that does provide solutions of sorts, like idk, Total Recall for (not a great) example: is pretty anti-capitalist typical Paul Veerhoven action film that gives solutions, namely, get Arnold Schwarznegger to shoot the bad guy and at the end of the story like this, characters either solve the problems, or make the world better in some way, they make a difference towards a brighter future.

But it’s harder and harder to think we live in the latter type of dystopia than the former. Remember that monolith of boomer voters that feel like a static, unmoving thing seemingly unaffected by the actual reality of the country, behaving in ways incomprehensible to normal human beings? It’s kinda like that. Like zombies, that just keep coming and coming, with no end. All one can do is delay the inevitable end on a personal level.

It’s not about saving the world in those types of stories, it’s about saving yourself, and the world exists as an endpoint of social evolution, and it exists solely to take you from yourself, and when even holding onto that is a struggle, saving the world feels akin to curing death — an incomprehensibly complex task.

Still, at the very least I hope to make a positive difference somehow, do something more than just saving myself, preserving my mind only to comprehend fresh horrors of late stage capitalism.

Even if it’s just to know I tried, even if I don’t believe it will actually do something. Political morons might be endless, and fighting them feels hopeless, but helping someone get a meal, that’s at least one day they won’t starve as much for.

#politics

[harrypotterfuryroad]

honestly i think everyone has a different perception of gender BUT if your interpretation of gender is different from the norm proposed by trans activists you’re labeled a terf and accused of causing trans people dysphoria and making them suicidal even if you’re respectful to trans people, respect pronouns and all that.

tf is this thoughtcrime bullshit, why should i twist my brain in knots to think of you the way you want me to think of you? its a privilege, for someone to think of you the way you want them to, not something that should be taken for granted, and i only make such an effort for people i care about.

my opinion on gender is within one standard deviation of a lot of trans people i know personally. they can criticise trans activism, disagree with the popular progressive conception of gender and call them out on their bullshit, but i’m a terf for thinking and doing the same.

the thing is there is no "norm," it's constantly shifting with the explicit purpose of being able to get mad at people. whatever you think is wrong and whatever they think is right, which is why we have this rapid cycling of gender dogma every few years (remember how fast "trans* is more inclusive than transgender" turned into "trans* is a terf dogwhistle"?)

like oftentimes it's not "i agree with gender ideologues because they're right," it's closer to "gender ideologues are right because i agree with them" so there's no independent corrective factor that stops the whole thing from spinning into a parody of itself

any one person’s individual ideas or beliefs don’t matter anywhere near as much as that person’s group affiliation. this is how all religions work

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

I’ve been mostly in the sidelines the last few days regarding the Misha sexuality incident fallout and I have tried not to get involved too much because... eh.

But I just want to say something because I think it’s important. It’s not really about Misha. It doesn’t really matter if he’s straight, bi, if he’s tried multiple labels until he landed on straight, if he’s lying through his teeth to protect himself, or anything else.

I’m just sad that a major reaction after his alleged coming out as straight has been outrage and near disgust at the idea that a heterosexual man might have dared occupy a simbolic queer space over the years, “appropriated” queer jokes to blend in with a queer crowd, and in general been, you know, virtually hanging out with the queer community.

It’s terf logic. Everyone on here is always like “fuck terfs” but then regurgitate terf logic every time the concept of a heterosexual man comes up.

Regardless of how he identifies, Misha has proved over and over to be sympathetic and supportive to queer fans. His whole thing is being queer-friendly, he’s gathered a large queer fanbase and been comfortable about it and in fact been very vocal in his approval and backing of a queer cause.

That makes him someone who belongs in the queer community. This is non-negotiable or we have a problem. It doesn’t matter if he’s a man exclusively attracted to women (not even counting the fact that his heterosexuality, if that’s genuinely how he identifies, would absolutely seem the result of a journey of actually questioning it, not just taking it for granted, which would make him belong anyway). That is not relevant to community.

Dividing the world in “us” (the good ones) and “them” (the bad ones who do not belong in our sacred space in virtue of what they inherently are) is bad. It’s terf logic. Even (and especially given the context) if “them” is heterosexual cis men. Heterosexual cis men are not an enemy or something inherently distinct and separate on an ontological level from queer people.

The queer community is supposed to be a simbolic space that welcomes whoever feels at ease in it. I know it sounds counterproductive to say heterosexual cis people can fit in it, but if you bar the entrance to heterosexual cis people by default then you are excluding closeted people (including people who don’t know yet they’re queer, how many of us went through the “I’m very sympathetic to the queer cause for some reason” phase?) and people who might not find that any queer label applies to them but still feel at ease within the queer community because they don’t quite belong in standard heterosexual culture (they might not feel okay with heteronormative gender roles while not identifying as trans, they might be neurodivergent while being straight and cis, or more. Humanity comes in a lot of shapes and sizes).

It’s possible none of this applies to Misha, although I have my own opinion about the guy. But this goes beyond the guy. Please question yourself if your instinctive reaction to the idea of a cishet man “invading” a queer space or “appropriate” queer symbols is to be disgusted or offended.

Again, this is not strictly about Misha. It’s not a “protect the poor guy from the evil queer fans”, not at all. It’s an invite to think about this stuff, think whether your reaction to this incident might stem from ill-advised places. Thank you.

#queer things #blabbering me

[modernmagdalene]

Saint and Crystal Associations Part 2

Once again, I’m posting this as a potential resource for other Christian witches or Christian mystics (whatever you call yourself). These are my own personal associations, not official associations of any Christian denominations, so if they don’t feel right for you feel free to use different crystals with different saints. Thanks and enjoy.

Saint Francis of Assisi --> Amber

Francis is best associated with Amber. While not technically a crystal it still is used in a lot of crystal magic. Francis is a very complex saint who helps with a lot of different things: voluntary poverty, helping the poor, antiwar, and oneness with nature. Amber is very old and connected deeply to the earth. It helps with grounding, clarity, patience, wisdom, dissolves negativity, eliminates fear, and balances emotions. All things Francis needed to leave his life of privilege behind and follow God. I think it represents much of who Francis is and can help support the same virtues that Francis represents. 

Saint Brigid --> Opal

St. Brigid would be associated with Opal. Brigid is a saint that is very connected to the goddess Brigid. Their stories are extremely intertwined that you can’t really talk about without the other. Both are connected to fire, love, and hope and that’s all things Opal is connected with as well. I also personally tend to associate Opal with the divine feminine and Brigid connection to a goddess makes that work as well.

Saint Julian of Norwich --> Moonstone

Julian of Norwich I said in a comment that I associated with Lapis Lazuli but then relaized I was already using that crystal with St. Perpetua and Felicity. So I did some more research and decided that Moonstone would work really well for Saint Julian of Norwich. Moonstone is obviously associated with Lunar magick and the moon is also regularly associated with femimine energy. Which works wonders with St. Julian who often depicted God as femimine. One of the things that made her contraversal. St. Julian of Norwich had visions and was a prolific writer. Moonstone helps those seeking wisdom and strengthens psychic abilities. St. Julian of Norwich is also a known cat lover so have moonstone carved into the shape of a cat is even better. 

Saint Mary MacKillop --> Obsidian

(Trigger Warning Mentions of sexual abuse in this.)

Mary MacKillop is the first saint of Australia and one of my favorites! Mary MacKillop reported a priest who was abusing children and not longer after a friend of this priest used his connections to get her excommunicated. Her excommunication was eventually lifted. I have always admired her strength and resilience. That’s why I chose obsidian for her. Obsidian shines a light on the negativity and clears it away, helping us to choose the path leading towards light and love. It is also a protective stone as it used to be used for weapons. If you need to fight the devil obsidian is up there with tourmaline as an excellent crystal to clean house.     

Saint Raphael the Archangel --> Ametrine

St. Raphael the Archangel is another favorite of mine. If you use a Protestant Bible you might not have read about him. Raphael is featured in the Book of Tobit which is only in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. The Book of Tobit is an epic love story between Tobias and Sarah that also features thievery, exile, and fights with demons. Where Michael and Gabriel tend to appear to humans briefly then leave. Raphael, disguised as a human, travels with Tobias throughout the whole book. Raphael is most associated with healing and I connect him to the crystal ametrine. Ametrine is associated with healing, harmony, strength, balancing physical and spiritual life, and aids in contacting spirit guides. This works with Raphael’s connections to healing. Furthermore, Raphael’s role guiding Tobit and being a spiritual being working on earth makes ametrine perfect in helping to connect with him. Use this stone and ask him to help find balance in your practice and assist you with finding spiritual guides.

Saint Rita --> Smoky Quartz

St. Rita is the patron saint of impossible tasks. She is someone I rely on when I really need to overcome an obstacle or problem in my life. She is also prayed to when someone has a deadly illness or serious problem helping with things that seem impossible to deal with is just her jam. Because of this I associate her most with smoky quartz. This crystal is super powerful and is a great grounding and balancing stone. It absorbs negative energy like a sponge (because of this it should be cleansed often-ish use your best judgement). It’s so useful and can even cleanse other crystals. It keeps all the negativity away from you which is something that one really needs when dealing with impossible situations.

Saint Mary Magdalene --> Celestite

Mary Magdalene is one of my favorite witchy women in the Bible. She wasn’t scared away like the other disciples when Christ was crucified, she was the first to preach about the resurrection, and was active in preaching and teaching others about Christ. One of my favorite stories about her comes from the Orthodox tradition where she was preaching to Emperor Tiberius Caesar about Christ and turned an egg red to prove to the emperor that Christ’s story and power was true. I associate Mary Magdalene most with Celestite. Celestite raises spiritual vibrations, promotes spiritual growth, and aides in communication with the spiritual realm. This crystal also boosts self-worth and self-expression, all things Mary Magdalene had in abundance. Mary Magdalene also seems to be the most connected to the spiritual world out of all the apostles (with the exception of maybe John) so this crystal is perfect for her.

Saint Joan of Arc --> Bloodstone 

St. Joan is a warrior and protector. I also consider her a trans and/or genderfluid saint who will naturally protect trans and genderfluid peoples. Because of this I associate her most with bloodstone. Bloodstone promotes justice and strength, it is also good for healing and renewal, but bloodstone is probably best known for boosting spells and banishing spirits. Or as I prefer to use it, boosting protection spells and banishing TERFs.

Saint Francis de Sales --> Kyanite

St. Francis de Sales is one of my favorite saints purely because he is the patron saint of writers and I am someone who greatly enjoys writing. Kyanite is the crystal I use with this saint. It promotes creativity and also dispels negativity aka those negative thoughts that tell you that you can’t write. It’s also supposed to sharpen your focus which can be especially helpful with writing or any creative work, especially if you are easily distracted like me.

Saint Anthony of Padua --> Amazonite

St. Anthony was one of my grandmother’s favorite saints and probably the saint I use the most in day to day life. He is the patron saint of lost items. He was a devout priest and taught students from a book of psalms. He once tried to preach to people who refused to listen to him. He instead decided to preach to the fish who all started to gather near the shore to listen to him. When people saw this they decided they should listen too. So you know when in doubt preach to fish I guess. Anyway, I associate St. Anthony with amazonite. Amazonite helps sharpen the mind, aids communication and promotes good luck all of which are great attributes for learning and teaching, finding lost items (that’s the good luck bit), and aiding communication could help you talk to people or fish, your call. 

Saint Valentine --> Rose Quartz 

St. Valentine did a lot but he is most associated today with marrying couples in the Christian church during the height of Roman persecution. So naturally I associate him with rose quartz, a crystal that promotes love and fertility, dispels loneliness, opens the heart to compassion, and even strengthens faith. The perfect stone for this romantic saint. 

Saint Scholastica --> Citrine 

St. Scholastica was the twin sister of St. Benedict, and was the founder of the women’s benedictine order. As someone who went to a benedictine college I have a fondness for her. If you are a storm witch in particular I think this might be the saint for you. At one point Benedict and his monks visit Scholastica and her nuns. Scholastica didn’t think she would live long enough to see her brother again after this meeting so begged him to stay the night, but Benedict didn’t want to spend the night outside his monastery and told her he couldn’t. So Scholastica prayed and a massive thunderstorm suddenly came making it unsafe for Benedict and his monks to travel. And here is my favorite bit:

“Realizing what had happened, Benedict reproached her: "What have you done, my sister?” Scholastica answered simply, "I asked a favor of you, and you refused to listen to me. So I asked my God, and He, more generous than you, granted my request.” Once again Scholastica’s pleas won the favor she was seeking.” 

With Scholastica I associate the crystal citrine. Citrine is all about manifesting change, protection, creativity, and success all things she needed to live the life she did.

Saint Dymphna --> Blue Lace Agate

St. Dymphna is one of my favorite saints and she is one I utilize often. She is most associated with mental and emotional illnesses. If you are a spoonie witch this is the saint for you. Because of this I associate her most with Blue Lace Agate, which helps people express themselves (helpful when going to therapy or a doctor) and also helps with dealing with any sorts of fears or anxiety. (Reminder: That utilizing this saint and crystal is meant as a prayerful way to ask for help dealing with mental and emotional illness. It is not a replacement for therapy or meds.)

St. Sara-la-Kali --> Jasper

St. Sara-la-Kali is the patroness of the Romani people. She is said to have helped the Three Marys of the Bible arrive safely in Gaul after she had a vision of them arriving. She used her dress as a raft and helped the women get to shore despite the tumultuous waves. She was also extremely generous and often collected alms for the poor. I associate her most with jasper. A crystal native to Romania it aids in peace and wisdom and also is particularly helpful during times of transition by providing stability and protection. It also supports perseverance and acceptance, something we definitely need Sara's help with right now.

#christian witch #catholic witch #christian mysticism #crystals #saints #crystal witch #witchcraft

[a-room-of-my-own]

A while before the latest hoo-ha about Judith Butler, I had just been reading her again. Though she claims her critics have not read her, this simply isn’t the case. I read Gender Trouble when it first came out and it was important at the time . That time was long,long ago. She was just one of the many ‘post-structuralist’ thinkers I was into. I would trip off to see  Luce Irigaray or Derrida whenever they appeared.

I got an interview  with Baudrillard and tried to sell it to The Guardian but they  didn’t know who he was so its fair to say I was fairly immersed in that world of theory.  For a while, I had a part time lecturing job so I had to keep on top of it. Though Butler’s idea of gender as performance was not new , it was interesting.  RuPaul said it so much more clearly in a  quote nicked from  someone else “Honey ,we are born naked, the rest is drag”

What I was looking for again , I guess is not any clarity – her writing is famously and deliberately difficult-  but whether there was ever any sense of the material body. She wrote herself in 2004 “I confess however I am not a very good materialist. Every time I try to write about the body, the writing ends up being about language” . 

Butler from on high ,cannot really think about the body at all which is why they (Butler’s chosen pronoun) are now the high priestess of a particular kind of trans ideology.  The men who worship Butler are not versed in high theory. The fox botherer had a “brain swoon” at some very ordinary things Butler said. Mr Right Side of history nodded along in an interview. Clearly neither of these men are versed in any of this philosophy and would be better off sticking to tax law and the decline of the Labour Party. Butler is simply a totem for them.

Butler said in the Guardian interview for instance  “Gender is an assignment that does not just happen once: it is ongoing. We are assigned a sex at birth and then a slew of expectations follow which continue to “assign” gender to us.”

So yeah? That’s a fairly basic view of the social construction of gender though I take issue with the assigned at birth thing ,which I will come back to and why I started reading her again in the first place.

This phrase “Assigned sex at birth” is now common parlance but simply does not make sense  to me. I am living with someone who is pregnant. I have given birth three times and been a birthing  partner. I know where babies come from. There is a deep disconnect here between language and reality which no amount of academic jargon can obliterate. 

Babies  come from bodies. Not any bodies but bodies that have a uterus. They grew inside a woman’s body until they  get pushed out or dragged out into the world. 

The facts of life that we are now to be liberated from in the form of denial. Only one sex can have babies but we must now somehow not say that. The pregnant “people” of Texas will now be forced into giving birth to children they don’t want because they are simply “host bodies”. The language of patriarchal supremacy and that of some of the trans ideologues is remarkably close, as is their biological ignorance.

There is no foetal heatbeat at six weeks for instance. When a baby is born , doctors and midwives do not randomly assign a sex, they observe it and they do it though genitalia. 

There is a question over a tiny percentage of babies ,less that one percent with DSDs but even then they are sexed with doctors having  difficult conversations with parents about what may happen later.

Somehow, though when I read the way in which this is now all discussed it is clear to me that the people talking have never been pregnant, never had a foetal scan, never been near a birth , never miscarried, do not understand that even with a still birth babies are still sexed and often named. 

If you want to know the sex of your baby you can pay privately and know at 7 weeks ((*49-56 days from the first day of the mother’s last menstrual cycle). A 12 week scan will show it. That is why so many female foetuses are aborted . I have reported on this. 

Talking to paediatricians about this is interesting because they do indeed have to think through these things that we are being told are not real eg. that sex is just a by-product of colonialism for instance.  Sometimes pre-conception , geneticists will be looking at chromosomes because certain diseases are more likely in men or women. Males have a higher risk of haemophilia for instance.  

One doctor told me “When babies are premature, the survival advantage of females over males is well known throughout neonatology. This is sometimes something we talk about with parents when there is threatened premature labour around 23 weeks' gestation and options to discuss about resuscitation and medical interventions. In fertility treatment (or counselling around fertility in the context of medical treatments) it is pretty inherent to know whether we need to plan around sperm, or ova + pregnancy.”

She also said that if she involved in a birth that “assigning” isn’t the word she world use. “Observed genitals a highly reliable observation, just like measuring weight or head circumference which is also done at this time. “ Another doctor said that anyone involved with a trans man giving birth  would be doing the best for the patient in front  of them. 

Sex then is biological fact. A female baby will have all the eggs she will ever have when she is first born which is kind of amazing. It is not bio-essentialist to say that our sexed bodies are different nor is it transphobic to recognise it.

Except of course in my old newspaper ,The Guardian who are now so hamstrung by their  own ideology they have got their knickers in such a twist they can barely walk.  They completely misreported the WiSpa incident , basically ignored the Sonia  Appleby  judgement at the Tavistock. Appleby was a whistle blower ,a respected professional concerned with safe guarding. She won her case. The cherry on the cake this week was an interview with Butler, themselves (?) in which they went on about Terfs being fascists and needing to extend the category of women.

Does anyone EVER stop to think that most gender critical women are of the left, supporters of gay rights, often lesbian and that this is not America? We are not in bed with the far right. This is bollocks. Just another way to dismiss us.  

As we watch Afghanistan and Texas ,to say Butler’s words were tone deaf is to say the least. But they didn’t even have the guts to keep the most offensive stuff in the piece and overnight edited it out without really explaining why : the bits where Butler described gender critical people as fascist. Perhaps because the person their “reporters” had  defended against  transphobia at WiSpa turned out to be a known sex offender,  perhaps because someone pointed out that Butler was throwing around the word fascist rather like Rik Mayall used to do in the Young Ones. 

All of this is rather desperate and readers deserve better. When I left that newspaper I said that I thought and expected editors to stand up for their writers in public. Instead they go into some catatonic paralysis. I may have not liked this interview but it should never have been cut. Stand by what you publish or your credibility is shot.

But this is about more than Judith Butler and their refusal to support women . Butler is not really any kind of feminist at all. What this is about is the large edifice of trans ideology  crumbling when any real analysis is applied. Yes, I have read Shon Faye’s book and there are some interesting points in it and I totally agree that the lives of trans people should be easier and health care better . I have never said anything but that.

What Faye does in the book is say that there can be no trans liberation under capitalism so there will be a bit of a wait I suspect. 

Yet surely it is the other way round and what we are seeing is that trans ideology (not trans people – I am making a distinction here ) represent the apex of capitalism .

For it means that the individual decides their own gendered essence and then spends a fortune on surgery and a lifetime on medication to achieve the appearance of it. Of course lots of people spend a lifetime  on medication but not out of choice.  Marx understood very well that the abolition of our system of production would free up women.

Now it is all about freeing up men. Who say they are women. Quelle surprise.  

 Nussbaum’s famous take down of Butler is premised exactly on the sense of individual versus collective struggle “ The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment. In this sense, Butler’s self-involved feminism is extremely American, and it is not surprising that it has caught on here, where successful middle-class people prefer to focus on cultivating the self rather than thinking in a way that helps the material condition of others. “

Such thinking now dominates academia. There is simply an unquestioning  rehearsal of something most of know not to be true thus Amia Srinivasan writes in The Right to Sex  “At birth, bodies are sorted as ‘male’ or ‘female’, though many bodies must be mutilated to fit one category or the other, and many bodies will later protest against the decision that was made. This originary division determines what social purpose a body will be assigned.”

What does ‘sorted’ mean here? A tiny number of intersex babies are born. A tiny number of people are trans and decide to change their bodies. The feminist demand to challenge gender norms without mutilating any one’s body no longer matters. What matters now is this retrograde return  to some gendered soul. This is not something any decent Marxist would have any truck with . Of course one may change over a lifetime and of course gender is never ‘settled.’ We are complex people who inhabit bodies that often don’t work or appear as we want them to.

But not only is there a denial of basic Marxism going on here , what becomes ever more apparent is  that there is a denial of motherhood. Butler said “Yet gender is also what is made along the way – we can take over the power of assignment, make it into self-assignment, which can include sex reassignment at a legal and medical level.”

Self-assignment is key . One may birth oneself. No longer of woman born but self -made. This is a theoretical leap but it also one that has profound implications for women as a sex class. We are really then, just the  host bodies to a new breed of people who self-assign.

Maybe that is the future although look around the word and there isn’t a lot of self-assignment going on. There are simply women shot and beaten in the street, choked to death or having  their rights taken  away. There is no identifying out of this , there is no fluidity here . This is not discourse. It is brutality and do we not have some responsibility to other women to confront male violence ?

Instead the hatred is aided and abetted by so called philosophers describing  other women as Terfs. It is utterly depressing.

The sexed body. The pregnant body. The dying body. The body is in trouble when we can’t talk about it . I thought of Margaret Mary O’Hara’s  beautiful and  strange lyrics and what they might mean. I await my child’s return from the hospital as hers is a difficult pregnancy and thank god they are on the case. The sex of the child she carries does not matter to me at all .

It simply exists. Not in language but within a body. 

Why is that so difficult to acknowledge? 

#gender critical #feminism #transgender #judith butler #suzanne moore

[pineapple-coffee]

Unfit To Lead: Thoughts On Growing Up, Queer History, And Feeling Unprepared

A short essay, written by Elliott (@pineapple-coffee, aka me)

(As context, I am a bisexual, genderqueer/gender questioning individual. I use they/she pronouns.)

In every community, there are elders. These elders pave the pathway for the generations that come after them—creating literature, sharing stories verbally, and educating the new generations on history and culture. Elders are essential beings in all communities, and their presence cannot be understated. Without those who came before us, history is lost, and the new generations, who will one day teach others, will have nothing to go on.

So what do you do if your elders died in the AIDS epidemic of the 80s? What do you do when queer history is often so underrepresented, so rarely accessible without proper guidance? Where do you go from there?

That's not to imply that there aren't elders. I know a man online named Ian—early 20s, not quite "old"—who taught me about queer cowboy culture, both of the Old West and of the modern day. Through video essays and documentaries, I learned about the true lives of notable figures, such as Oscar Wilde and Eleanor Roosevelt, instead of their more sanitized media portrayals. Thanks to queer artists and educators on social media, I proudly display a sticker of a green carnation on my laptop, still using it as a queer signaling device even over 120 years after Wilde's death. But most of the elders that I've looked up to online have two things in common: they're younger—typically between 21 and 40—and I know them only online. Rarely in my life have I physically met a queer person over the age of fifty. Only one person immediately comes to mind.

This came to a panicky culmination a few weeks ago when I realized, "Oh, damn. I'm nearly old enough to be considered a 'queer elder.'"

This thought freaked me out. I'm a young adult. I have so much to learn. I don't have a lot of elders to teach me. I've only ever been to one Pride festival in my life. Yet, to the youngest pre-teens out there who are just coming into their identities, I might be perceived as someone older and wiser.

Let me be abundantly clear: queer rage is the most powerful emotion that I have ever experienced. My queer elders did not "fail" me or anyone else—the government did. It was the government who let my queer siblings die slowly, whilst they did nothing but spit in the faces of the queer community and take the chance to spread their visceral hatred. Every day, I am filled with rage that generations of queer people have been ripped away due to the neglect of the government. I mourn the artists, musicians, partners, siblings, and activists who passed away. Every single AIDS victim deserves to tell their stories.

In my melancholy, I turned to the Internet. And through the Internet blogs, decades-old archives, and unsanitized history books, I found community.

I am thankful. I am grateful to those who archive gay and trans magazines, newsletters, zines, and adult magazines. I am grateful to those who survived, who share their stories about queer culture in memoirs and blog posts. I am grateful to those who keep history documented and make detailed accounts of each subculture and pivotal moment. I am thankful for those who create queer and trans sex education, relationship advice blogs, and provide information for trans people who want to physically transition. I am grateful to the AIDS Memorial for keeping memories alive. I am thankful for queer lawyers who debunk the nitty gritty details of anti-queer and anti-trans legislation so that everyone can understand the letter of the law.

I’ve learned about the culture of gay and lesbian bars. I learned about the Hanky Code, Hays Code, and Flower Codes. I learned about pre-Internet queer dating, the ways that people lived, and the subcultures that exist within queer communities. I learned about the brave trans women of color who gave us our rights through protests and riots. I learned, and I learned, and I learned. And at some point during my learning, I found myself with tears streaming down my face.

Never before had I learned the other side of history. The sides that include the radical activism via art and music, subcultures full of passionate people who yearn to share their craft, and the history that wasn’t touched by the mainstream.

I may feel unprepared to lead future generations, but the communities I have found have filled me with nothing short of euphoria. I feel proud to say that I’m queer, that I’m a fag, that I will be the elder one day. I display my Keith Haring merchandise with glee, sing Freddie Mercury’s songs at the top of my lungs, and abide by the motto that a day without lesbians really is a day without sunshine.

And in the times of uncertainty, perhaps community is the drive we all need. Whether you’re young, old, or somewhere in between, the queer community is always there to rally behind you.

Maybe being the next generation to lead others won’t be so scary after all.

#here’s something a little different for yall lol #essay #my writing #terfs don’t even think about getting near this one #queer community #queer #lgbtq #lgbtqia #elliott’s ramblings #queer writers #bisexual #transgender #genderqueer

[lesbianchemicalplant]

I think a lot of cis allies genuinely do not realise just how bad is is/it's getting for trans people in the uk

so here's a little list:

- it's now impossible for under 16's to get blockers - waiting times for hormones on the NHS have doubled, some clinics being at 60+ months - self id is just not gonna fucking happen - the government is considering making non enrolled deed polls invalid, so there will be a public available list of every trans person (I don't have to tell you how fucking dangerous that is) - hate crimes have quadrupled - kier starmer has said he "doesn't want to get involved in trans issues" - not a single major political party supports trans rights - TERFs have now set their sights on adults access to hormones

some info about norther ireland:

- Northern Ireland has one gender clinic. For the WHOLE country - the waiting list is absurdly long and they're currently not even taking referrals - the adolescent gender identity service was disbanded because the one person in charge of it left - there are currently two doctors in the adult clinic, both of whom are at or nearing retirement age

i'd really appreciate it if you were to donate to the gender gp fund, it goes directly to providing healthcare to trans kids/teens

https://www.gendergp.com/the-gendergp-fund/

– posted on twitter by Ms Robin @ExtraSmallRobin, January 21st 2021 (see source link for the thread)

#trans #transphobia #uk #uk politics #lgbt #(posting as text instead of reblogging because I Hate twitter thread screencaps)

[athetos]

I hate the idea that a large number of terfs are struggling with internalized transphobia, because it’s often seen as a way to… I don’t know, find a way to empathize with them? Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s a small chunk of terfs who WOULD be transmasc if that was an option to them; if someone thinks womanhood = suffering, it’s possible that, well, they aren’t actually a woman. But I don’t think that’s anywhere near a large enough number to make any claims about.

It just reminds me way too much of the idea that most homophobes are secretly gay. Again, sure, there’s a small percentage of homophobes who are struggling with internalized homophobia. But that whole concept is frustrating, and imo it often even feels like it invalidates the oppression that gay ppl face, by claiming the greatest enemy of gay ppl is… other gay ppl.

And lastly, there’s a difference between telling a close friend “hey, I see you’ve been having a time with gender, have you considered that you might be x?” And labeling complete strangers (violent ones even!) as secretly queer.

#saving… do not turn off power #homophobia #transmisogyny #terf mention

[irrelevant13]

My unpopular LGBT opinions

since my blog is discourse/trans related I thought I would share some of my “hot takes” 

1. Neo pronouns are inherently transphobic and ablest: I'm just going to link my post about them because its a lot to get into right here. https://irrelevant13.tumblr.com/post/653907281869750272/neopronouns 

2. Demi genders are not real: you cannot be “partially one gender” thats not how that works

3. Nonbinary is a valid gender identity: as long as you have dysphoria and are not invading other peoples spaces (lesbians, trans mens, etc) you’re valid imo. 

4. Pronouns = Gender: If they don’t equal gender then why is it called “misgendering” when you call a transwoman “he” or a transman “her”? Pronouns are used as lazy nouns to describe people. If the average person is describing a man they’re going to say “he” 

5. Gender is not a social construct: male, female, nb, are genders. These are not social constructs. Gender roles, how you express your gender, etc, are social constructs. 

6. He/Him lesbians are not valid: Gender = pronouns. He/Him are male pronouns. Lesbians are women that like other women. By using a male pronoun and identifying as a lesbian you are contradicting yourself.

7. Nonbinary lesbians are not valid: lesbian = a woman who loves and is interested in women. There are labels for woman loving NB people. trans people do not need to be changing the definition of lesbian that is literally what TERFS are afraid of. And its completely unnecessary. 

8. Micro-lables are unnecessary

9. the LGBTQIA+ Wiki is trash and should be deleted: there's so much fucking misinformation on there

10. The acronym is LGBT 

11. Asexual is not a valid sexuality: its a preference and should not be included in the lgbt community because its not the same as being gay or trans. 

12. KINK DOES NOT BELONG AT PRIDE: I understand there's a history. But kink related things do not need to be ANYWHERE near minors and pride is an event for all LGBT people. INCLUDING minors. Im probably going to make a whole post about this as well because there's a lot more to discuss about it. 

13. dysphoria is NEEDED to be trans: this shouldn't even be a hot take or a fucking debate. saying dysphoria is not needed is transphobic and so fucking invalidating. saying dysphoria is not needed to be trans is implying being trans is a choice, which it is not. i'm going to make a whole blog post about why the “you need euphoria!!” argument is flawed because its a lot to get into here. 

14. pansexual is invalid, transphobic and biphobic: pansexual is the worst sexuality in my opinion. i’m going to have to make it its own post because there is WAY too much to get into that it wont fit here.  

15. genital preferences are not transphobic: and saying they are is weird. if a lesbian does not like male genital's she should not be forced to say she wouldn't mind dating a transwoman. same with gay men and straight people. people cannot help their preferences and they shouldn't be shamed or deemed evil for them (within reason of course)

16. if a lesbian does not want to date a transwoman, its not transphobic. and if a gay man does not want to date a transman, its not transphobic: this is really just repeating the last point but it really annoys me when people call other people “transphobic” for their preferences.  

17. the Q word is a slur: and cishets using it rubs me the wrong way. 

18. Intersex people should not be lumped into the LGBT community: Being intersex is not like being trans or gay. If you feel otherwise I’d love to hear your take on this. 

19. polyamorous should not be considered part of the lgbt community: being in a relationship with multiple people is different from being trans or gay. Poly in itself is not part of the community in my opinion but there can be lgbt people that are polyamorous. 

20. The “inclusive flag” is hideous and pointless: I’m talking about the one with the intersex flag in it. the normal inclusive flag is just plain unnecessary. Trans and POC were already included in the LGBT community we didn’t need a whole new flag to “include” us. (by us I mean trans people, I’m obviously not speaking about POC considering the fact I’m very white) I guess I’m open to hear arguments regarding the purpose of the inclusive flag though.

21: Calling the gay man flag “the toothpaste flag” is homophobic: I’ve ONLY seen people refer to the flag as the toothpaste flag in a negative way and I think its rather homophobic but I haven't seen many people talk about it. 

22: Biphobia is so normalized in the LGBT community and not enough people are talking about it: Seriously this also warrants its own blog post. 

23: transmedicalism is not harmful and is needed: this is going to be one of the more unpopular opinions but transmedicalism is not harmful. also cis transmeds are very cool. 

24: “experimenting” with hormones is harmful and is NOT the way to figure out your gender identity: this shouldn't have to be said but if you aren't sure if you want to transition don't take horomones to figure it out. the affects of testosterone are often irreversible. 

I’m sure i’m forgetting some but these are the big ones I guess. Also, when I make the blogs for the opinions I said I would make blogs for, I’ll make sure I link them. 

#lgbt discourse #lgbt #gay #bi #trans #lesbian #transgender #nonbinary #neopronouns #neopronoun discourse #trans discourse #discourse #transexual #hot takes #lgbt hot takes #pride #kink does not belong at pride #microlables #bisexual #pride discourse #transmedicalism #transmed #truscum #mogai discourse #q slur discourse #mogai identity #mogai #tucute #terf discourse #unpopular opinion

[azurowle]

So Lily Cade has written a pathetic, whining excuse on her blog in response to her abhorrent anti-trans screeds last week.

I’m not going to reblog it here, because I do not want that fucking mojo on my blog and I absolutely do not want to attract the attention of someone who has stated she would kill all trans women if she had a chance and stated she wanted to see Jazz Jennings’s mother gang-raped.

I am, however, going to respond to it bit-by-bit, because somebody has to:

Cut out the “Oopsy-doodle, I my persona did a fucky-wucky uwu” tone. After what you wrote you have no fucking right.

Does this read to anyone else as though she’s trying to excuse her actions? “See it wasn’t ME who wrote it, it was my porn persona! She should never have been allowed near a keyboard, when she thinks I’m in trouble she just can’t help herself ~!💕✨💕✨” girl shut the fuck up.

Like I have meltdowns too but I DO NOT FUCKING RANT ABOUT WANTING OTHER PEOPLE TO BE LYNCHED, SEXUALLY VIOLATED, AND KILLED PERSONALLY BY MY OWN HANDS.

I love how the TERFs/gender shittics are doing everything they can to say “no she’s not one of OURS we don’t CLAIM her” like. Look at her writing. Look at her rhetoric. Remove the name on the apology, do a little editing to remove the context (not MUCH editing), and slap it up on Tumblr. You know EXACTLY which blogs would be all over it like flies on shit, praising her. A cis woman who has raped other women.

Did I mention that Fallon Fox, one of the women Lily “joked” about wanting to lynch, is literally black? Like, you are a white woman Lily Cade SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH. Whether you were joking about lynching her “““persona””” or not, FALLON FOX IS BLACK. You DAMN WELL KNOW THE CONNOTATIONS OF THAT WORD.

As a matter of fact - you, Lily Cade, as a white woman, were picked up by concerned police officers who took you to a mental hospital. How do you think that would have gone for a black woman, let alone a black trans woman, in the same situation?

You can try all you want, but The Matrix is OUR ALLEGORY. Not yours.

You do NOT get to hide behind your cute uwu little “persona” to excuse what you did. You do not get to hide behind “but I was talking about trans women’s personas, not them!” as an excuse. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS LIKE A FUCKING ADULT.

“Lily Cade got very upset because the interview I gave, not in a dissociative fugue state, was shit all over so hard.” For fuck’s sake Lily you raped other women and then had the fucking AUDACITY to claim that all trans women were rapists and got an international platform over it over the trans women who warned the journalist that you were a predator.

Even then, there is something called “the consequences of your fucking actions.” That’s something you will have to live with for your entire life. If I would have had any pity for you, it’s gone now.

“Lol that’s just my sense of humor developed to protect me from - ” tell me - as a porn actress who is critical of the porn industry, what is so fucking funny about wanting a mother to be sexually assaulted for having the audacity to love her child?

“Sorry if I really hurt you for realsies I guess but If you’re oUtRaGeD - ” no I’m FUCKING SCARED. I am SCARED for the trans women who are my friends who have to get up every morning and see this shit! I am terrified for my trans women friends, ESPECIALLY my black friends, because some jackass will read that article, or hear about it from a friend, and think it is okay to be violent towards a trans woman because clearly she’s a predator, or trying to “trick” them, or some sort of sexual deviant it’s OKAY to be violent to!

And I’m scared that the people who are VERY MUCH ABLE to enforce legislation forcing trans people back into the closet and out of being able to exist in public spaces like a normal human being are going to use this article as a justification!

All in all this non-apology is…just pathetic. Her screeds were horrifying and disgusting, this is just her trying to weasel her way out of taking any sort of actual responsibility for her actions.

Don’t come back, Cade, and don’t let the doorknob hit you on the way out.

#Lily fucking cade #Lily Cade #the bbc #tw transphobia #racism tw #anti terf #anti gender criticial #fuck terfs

[frostfireft]

I would love to hear more about Southern Freed and British Laxus. Please, I beg of you, tell me more

Of course! this is combining the AU we made and bits of canon stuff so that it could be used in either context!

Freed:

-Freed has South Eastern southern accent because he grew up moving around the little area where Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina meet. (or in canon, whatever the closest equivalent may be. I honestly don’t know)

-He also talks really fucking fast, especially when he’s excited. This causes a lot of his words to turn themselves into weird contractions that can be hard to parse through if you don’t have experience with it. (Contrary to what you might think, if someone has a southern drawl, it doesn’t necessarily mean they speak slowly. It just means they elongate certain vowels and diphthongs sounds or even just the most prominent syllable of the word. (like how “going to” becomes “gonna” but is pronounces like “gun-na” with heavy stress on the first syllable) )

-example for the last one: y’ain’t gonna’lieve thi’shit (you are not going to believe this shit) 

-He has the ability, if he’s not sleep deprived, to completely neutralize his accent. He learned how to do this explicitly because people stereotype southerners as stupid, and he enjoys seeing people’s reactions when he gets done presenting his theses or linguistic findings. He’s using their reactions to them finding out he’s southern and has a deep accent to write another theses about why judging people by their first appearance or based on stereotypes is a terrible thing to do. 

-When he really sleep deprived his words slur so bad that his own momma wouldn’t be able to understand him. 

-He’s written a few books, but no English major would be surprised to learn he’s southern. This is because no matter how well you nuetralize an accent, the tendedency to use certain colloquialisms is usually very present in any author’s style. (examples: Bless your heart, I reckon, pot-kettle, fisticuffs, doohicky, hissy fit, fixin’, Sir/Ma’am, calling a shopping cart a “buggy”)

-has used southern colloquialisms in his runes. This is part of what makes them so hard to fight and decypher. No one fucking understand them on top of them being hard to change regardless.

-He has some of the best insults, be it the super southern ones(“Well that’s about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.” and “She’s a few green beans short of a casserole, but that’s all right”) or just straight up sassy ones (”you’re why the gene pool needs a life guard” and “the bar was low but you brought a shovel”)

-Definitely called Laxus “highfalutin” before they became friends. (pronounced high-fo-loo-tin, means that someone is uppity and thinks their hot shit when they’re not)

-Drinks sweet tea with so much sugar that it’s damn near molasses, but hot tea with very little. 

-Would punch a cop without hesitation, ducktape and wd40 can fix 90% of problems. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” “if it’s stupid and it works, then it ain’t stupid,” definitely knows how to make and/or owns illegal fireworks, definitely went to a horse camp as a kid and can ride. 

Laxus:

-Grew up in Westminster and has an RP/Queen’s English accent(b-are-th pronounciation. this is the accent that’s  most often mimicked by people and used in movies. once again, in canon he’d have grown up in whatever the most canon equivilent is. probably Crocus, and then he moves in with Makarov after Ivan(fucking cunt) gets arrested)

- He speaks so properly and it’s a drastic contrast to the way he looks.

-and by that I mean. This man has no fashion sense. None. This is because he doesn’t want to be seen as posh, and he decided that dressing like a blind man who ran through a thift store is the way to do it. 

-Tried so hard to get rid of his accent. So. fucking. hard. He hates it because it reminds him of his dad. 

-Insults people while trying to be “nice.” He doesn’t really realize he’s doing it until after he meets Freed and sees the way he intentionally insults assholes while being “kind.” He did not understand why everyone hated him until then. 

-Would punch any other person who sounds and acts posh without hesitation. Makarov is proud of him. 

-Used to drink a shocking about of black and milk tea, but Freed got him to try a bunch of other kinds. He still won’t touch the sweet tea though. 

-His words tend to drip with sarcasm. Most people just think he’s being an asshole, but the few who understand his humor get the biggest kick out of it (Makarov, Freed, Evergreen, Bickslow, and then a few other’s later in life) 

-Would also punch a cop without hesitation. 

-he can’t handle spicy food. Like at all. He feels like he’s dying one bite into anything with crushed red pepper in it. Not that he’ll let anyone know that. 

- Absolutely loves the rain, and not just because of his magic. It makes him remember what little of his childhood was actually nice and plesant. 

-he sunburns really easy because it wasn’t sunny very often where he grew up for the first 12 years of his life. He peels really bad as it heals too. 

Fraxus:

-the first time Laxus spoke to Freed while he was sleep deprived, he had no fucking idea what he was saying. Not a fucking clue. Freed tried four seperate times to seperate his words before just giving up. 

-They argue about what the proper word for something is all the time. All. The. Time. (fries vs chips, cart vs buggy, cookie vs bisciut. 

-Laxus once watched Freed mentally die inside when a waiter offered him sugar packets because there wasn’t actual sweet tea. 

-There aren’t many dishes that they’ll agree on. Especially if they’re arguing about who will do the cooking. 

-Freed has absolutely made the food “too spicy” just to get Laxus back for dumb things. watching his partner die inside from something that barely tingles will never cease to amuse him. 

-They eventually get to a point where parts of their vocabulary make it into the other’s, and soon they have theis weird mix-matched dialect that confuses the shit out of other people. 

-They use their hellish combination of sarcasm and insults disguised as compliments to subtly insult and cuss out homophobes, concervatives, TERFS, and basically any piece of shit they come across. 

-They also argue over whether or not to fix something or buy a new one when it breaks

Laxus: Are you sure it’s safe to fix that with duct tape? 

Freed: Duck tape is insulated enough for this-

Laxus: no it isn’t. It will catch fire if it gets hot enough.

Freed: Toaster’s worked fine with duck tape holdin’ the wire for the past decade. 

Laxus: You fixed the toaster with duct tape?

Freed: It worked, dinit?

-He doesn’t mention that he also added runes to it too explicitly because it’s funny. 

-There’s a lot of stuff like this: “You dumb mother fucker, how did I fall for you?” “Because you tripped.” 

-If you insult one of them, you better believe the other will roast you so thuroughly that a bonfire wouldn’t compare all while the one of them you insulted kicks your ass into the stratsophere. 

-They both have so much respect for each other. So. Much. Respect. They’re completely honest when alone, no sarcasm, no half insults, just them. 

- Even when not alone, they fully trust each other. There’s no one else they trust to have their back the same way, even if Ever and Bicks are close seconds. No one can pick apart their mind and thought process the same way, and it comes from the fact that they argued so much before they were in sync with each other. 

-Once they get to the point of being in sync with one another (let’s be real, it propbably only takes like a year) nothing can get in their way. 

-Freed’s captain of the Raijinshuu for a reason goddamn it, and it’s not just because he and Laxus are together. It’s because he’s strong as fuck, should have been fucking S class, and he’s one of the only people who can talk sense into Laxus. 

-is the last bit partially because they’re together? Yeah probably, but Freed and Laxus are equals damn it. He could at the very least, tie a fight with Laxus. 

#Fairy Tail headcanon #freed justine #laxus dreyar #fraxus #this got really long #and has a handful of general headcanons too #Frost speaks

[c-is-for-circinate]

Thinking today about viruses, allergies, oppression, and anti culture.

(under a cut because WHOOOPS this got long)

Racism is a virus. Homophobia, transphobia, sexism, antisemitism, ableism, etc etc etc, they are all viruses--a topic that many of us have learned a great deal about in the past year. They are ideas, yes, not literal physical diseases, but the analogy holds up. They are infectious, and often spread from person to person without anyone involved realizing they have it. They can sit latent for years, never showing up because the carrier never finds themselves in a situation where the issue comes up, only to flare up and take over when you least expect it. And they mutate, just like the flu, just like the common cold; they put on a new jacket every year and slide in undetected yet again, slip past our internal sensors and bury themselves in our brains until we go in and deal with them as best as we can.

One more thing we've learned about viruses this year is how we can fight them. The viruses of oppression are a little different because they tend to hurt the people around their carriers even more than the people they've infected (although let's talk about internalized anything-ism sometime), but in a lot of ways the attack is the same. You treat the symptoms even when you don't know how to cure the disease: we invest in respirators, antiviral treatments, hospitals; we create and sponsor programs to help those who've been hurt by various oppressions, we uplift our neighbors, we try to keep people safe from violences both big and small. You work to stop the spread: we wear our goddamn masks, we stay home when we can; we train ourselves not to say racist shit that might foster a culture of hate, we stop that guy in our office from making rape jokes, we make slurs unacceptable. You pay attention to your immune system: we seek medical attention when we experience symptoms, we get COVID tests, we talk to our doctors before the symptoms get deadly; we protest and we pay attention to the people who do, we take them seriously when they tell us that something is wrong.

You vaccinate. We train ourselves and our immune systems to recognize the thing that infects us, the thing that we fear. We try to teach our children about history, bit by little bit, on fragments of dead violence the same way we train our bodies on dead virus shells, so that someday they'll recognize the live disease when they see it. We learn about slavery and Jim Crow and the Holocaust. We tell kids bedtime stories about why hitting and bullying is bad, before we ever start teaching them the specific shapes that violence so often takes. As we get older, as we get stronger, we learn about the living stuff, all the new forms that same old virus has mutated into; we educate ourselves, we listen, we read. Just like vaccines, of course, there are anti-vaxxers and denialists shouting about how racism and sexism are already dead and they don't need any propoganda besides Fox News. Hell, just like anti-maskers, there are plenty of people screaming about how political correctness is ruining the world and they demand their right to spread their virus to anyone they can. Often these are the same people.

But we try. And make no mistake, we all of us are already infected, and just like a real virus, once you've caught it once it probably won't ever go away again--but we can prepare, and we can try to lessen the severity of our cases, and we can support our immune systems of activists and protesters and our own internal sense of this is wrong, and we can work, bit by bit, if not towards eradication (not yet, not in this world, but maybe someday in another), then at least towards control.

And then there's allergies.

An allergy is what happens when a human body's own immune system freaks out over an enemy that wasn't particularly harmful in the first place. All our immune defenses--those precious immune defenses, which work so hard to protect us against all those viral, deadly ideas--go screaming into high gear. All of that fear and fury and attack power gets brought to bear all at once, against a bit of pollen or bee venom or cat dander or peanuts, and your body is left itchy and runny-nosed and gasping--sometimes literally--as it tries to keep up. Allergies are miserable. Sometimes they're life-threatening. And the biggest danger isn't the foreign agent that triggers the allergic reaction; it's the immune system trying to fight it in the first place.

Which, yes, brings us to anti culture--but not JUST anti culture. It's a good example, a little internet-centric microcosm of the same force that drives progressives to tear bloody shreds out of moderate liberal politicians. Hell, it's the same force that enables both TERFs and the Capitol rioters. It's a combination of an immune system that points in the wrong direction, flagging the wrong thing as bad, terrifying, danger, NO, and a freaked-out response that can manifest as anything from mildly irritating to absolutely deadly.

To be clear, I am not by any means equating the scale or even the source of these things, any more than hayfever is the same as anaphylactic shock. Likewise, the sources are different. Sometimes, a disease can infect an immune system and point it in the wrong direction. (Terror of the other is the absolute cornerstone of white nationalism, and when that terror gets triggered by a harmless environmental condition like, god forbid, other people asking for rights, the allergy response can be deadly.) Other times, it's the other way around. Our internal immune systems, so well trained to protect ourselves and those around us from the insidious viral ravages of prejudice and oppression, start seeing traces of it everywhere.

And they freak out. And we suffer for it.

We talk a lot of well-deserved shit about TERFs, but it's useful to remember how much their nastiness feels to them like activism. Their immune system, trained and primed and sensitized over years of exposure to misogyny and sexism, catches the tiniest whiff of something that might seem at some point to have possibly been taken for male, and freaks out, because why is that trying to get into our system. Never mind that they're wrong. An immune system that flips out over penicillin is wrong, too. It's still trying to help, and it's still doing more harm than good trying it.

So bringing this back around to anti culture, which was absolutely where I started thinking about all of this this morning: anti culture, the terror of porn and the attempt by antis to protect themselves an other people from sexual content, is an immune response. It is a trained immune response, in people who have been taught and re-taught again and again that rape culture is a dangerous insidious virus that should be fought at all costs. And, right, there's more than a bit of 'the sexism virus infected this immune system and reprogrammed it to fight itself' involved here, but look, we are all of us infected with all of the viruses at least a little bit everywhere. If we tried to direct our immune systems to rip every last shred of -ism out of every last bit of us, we'd rip ourselves apart. Which is exactly the problem.

Porn, in and of itself, is natural. As natural as environmental pollen, and living near dogs and cats, and eating wheat or nuts or citrus fruit. It's even healthy, for a whole host of reasons that belong in another essay. And citric acid and nut-based proteins and whole grains are nutritious, and pets are physically and psychologically helpful, and being exposed to lots of different environmental substances as a child can actually help train your immune system in the first place. Porn can help us figure out what we like. It can help us figure out what we don't like. And while the processes that create it are sometimes unethical and awful, we don't condemn all dogs because puppy mills and dogfighting rings exist, even if we do have dog allergies.

What we see in anti culture is often a good-faith attempt on the part of antis to attack and subdue an environmental trigger that they read as dangerous. It's a panic attack over something that is by nature harmless or mildly harmful, blown out of proportion by the very instincts that are supposed to keep us safe. It's the response of an immune system that's been taught over years and years, by everyone from parents to school systems to the activists they look up to, that negative stimulus is to be feared, avoided, and fought. Of COURSE they're going to freak out.

And of course, early exposure to controlled amounts of allergens can help prevent later allergies from developing. Of course when kids are raised with abstinence-only education, sheltered from the very concept of sex, they're going to grow up allergic to it. (Of course they're going to try to protect other kids from the same, like worried mothers who refuse to let peanuts or wheat products or dirt near their precious babies, whose kids grow up with a whole suite of allergic triggers because their bodies never learned what was okay in the first place.) And no, that doesn't mean we hand pornography to ten-year-olds any more than we should give raw honey to an infant--but of course if our culture refuses to introduce kids to the fact that sex and desire and the inside of their own brain can be messy and silly and kinky and downright weird, we're going to have a higher rate of allergic reaction to the entire concept in adults.

I wish I had a better answer for what to do with understanding that this is what's going through so many people's brains. The best I have is a prescription for allergy-sufferers, who probably haven't read this far through this wordspew of an essay in the first place--but we all get a little hayfever once in a while, and we all sometimes run into content that makes us angry. So some thoughts on how to deal with metaphorical allergic reactions, inspired by the ways we deal with literal ones?

First: we recognize that what is happening is an allergy. The thing we're reacting to might be gross, or irritating, or even unpleasant, but the danger is not and never has been the thing itself. Whether it's triggering a response because of its similarity to an actively dangerous pathogen, or our immune system just doesn't like it, our aversion to one kind of story or another universally says more about us than about it. Luckily, we have a lot more control over our social responses than our biological ones!!! If vocal activism is our sociocultural immune system firing itself up to fight an infection that may or may not exist, then we get to tell our metaphorical white blood cells to stand down. We get to decide.

Second: we get some space. The funny thing about allergies is, while early exposure to allergens can help prevent them, re-exposing yourself to dangerous allergens after you've already developed a reaction to them can make them worse. Anaphylaxis is always more likely after someone's experienced it the first time. Repeated exposure to triggers, whether biological or psychological, can make the effects worse. So stop exposing yourself.

If something makes your throat itch every time you eat it, stop eating it. If something makes you mad every time you read it, stop reading it. Obviously this can be easier said than done in a world that's a lot worse about warning labels on stories than ingredients labels on foods, but that's why fic tags exist. And: sometimes, the croissant is delicious enough that we decide we're willing to suffer through the way the almonds make us feel, just this once. Sometimes the ship or the characterization or, hell, those other kinks that we really like are tasty enough that we'll put up with the trope we hate. We're allowed to do that. But we do it knowing there will be consequences, and we don't blame the baker when they hit.

We also don't have to blame ourselves. It sucks to be allergic to shellfish when all your friends are raving about the new seafood place. But that's not our fault any more than it's theirs.

Third: sometimes, if we need one, we go to the doctor. Or a therapist. Yes, really.

Not because there's anything really wrong with an aversion or even mild breakouts of hives, annoyance, and bitching in your friends' DMs--but it sure isn't pleasant, and sometimes your doctor might have a better solution than 'avoid it and take a Benadryl' that makes you feel a little better in the long run. And sometimes, it's not a mild breakout. Sometimes it's the kind of story that lingers with you for days, makes your skin crawl; sometimes your throat swells up and it gets hard to breathe. Sometimes we get angry enough about something we've read that we can't stand down our immune system, don't want to stop ourselves from writing that angry comment, that tumblr post, that abuse report to the mods for something that didn't actually break any rules. And that's dangerous, because when our immune response can flare out of control like that, we don't always know where and when it will happen next, and the risk of what we'll do if it happens gets way, way higher.

Sometimes it really is worth getting a second opinion. Sometimes you need somebody to tell you, "actually, it is not normal to get tingly and sweaty every time you eat potatoes." There are ways to train your brain and leash your white blood cells that I sure as heck am not expert enough to address. There are, it turns out, ways to feel better. There are ways to mitigate the damage your own well-meaning defense mechanisms might do to yourself or other people along the way.

And: we can take a deep breath when someone with an allergy to something we've baked, something we've written, something we like, is lashing out trying to protect themselves and everyone around them from something they've registered as a threat. Of course they're wrong. Yes, we told them there were tree nuts in the brownies ahead of time; yes, they chose to eat them anyway. But it can be worth reminding them and ourselves that there's a difference between "this thing is toxic" and "this harmless thing has driven my own system into a defensive response that sure makes it feel like I've been poisoned." And it can be worth reminding ourselves as well as them that sometimes, that difference can be really hard to spot.

#driveby meta attack #I guess #whoops I essay'ed #this was not meant to get this long #welp #anti discourse day