#thedreadvampy adiscourse

[thedreadvampy]

Ok so like I don't really want to kick off another round of Mondays argument but

having had a bit of time to step back I feel pretty confident in saying that there's a real struggle in a lot of communities to understand and accept the concept of conflicting access needs

Like it isn't fundamentally an act of bigotry against Person A when Person B says 'this thing that helps you harms others', nor is it implying that A or B is 'less oppressed' or that their oppression doesn't matter. But these kinds of access conflicts need to be talked about in order to be addressed.

Like in a sphere I spend more time taking about, disability and neurodivergence, where this comes up a Lot - say wheelchair users need the entrance to be a ramp, but somebody with balance issues finds walking up a ramp difficult and often fall. Saying 'it's a problem for me that there are only ramps in this building' doesn't mean you think that it's unimportant that wheelchair users can get in, or that your needs matter more.

Or like, here's an example that's come up a lot for me lately - automated subtitles. Some people find automated subtitles on Zoom calls make meetings possible (people with hearing or audio processing issues particularly) but others find them distracting and find it impossible to focus. Those two things are incompatible needs - you can't both have subtitles and not have subtitles in this context - but that doesn't mean one of them is Real and Important and the other is Fake and Irrelevant just because that would make it easier.

One last example of this in material terms - I am autistic and have real problems with audio processing when I'm tired. I went to a workshop in a smallish space, so the workshop was quite near the crèche. Having a crèche is a vital access need for a lot of people; lone parents and working class mothers in general are often very left out of activist and social spaces because of a lack of childcare. But for me, it created an insurmountable problem - the noise from the crèche meant I couldn't take in any information, I was exhausted and stressed and in pain the whole time, you know? It wouldn't be fair to ask the crèche to shut or to silence the children, who need and deserve the right to play, but equally it wouldn't be fair to tell me I'm selfish or lying for having trouble following the session.

Anyway so that's access clash. Different people have different needs that may be fundamentally incompatible, but they're equally valid needs.

But access clash isn't just personal, it's also political, social and linguistic. And this kind of feeds into a recurrent issue in groups of marginalised people where there's a persistent desire to decide in any given argument Whose Marginalisation Matters More and to accuse the other of lying/arguing in bad faith/ignoring erasing The Struggle.

Some recent examples of that phenomenon in the TMA fandom (pokes bear pokes bear) might be:

1. It's aphobic to say that there's any problem at all with framing fat, traumatised MLM as virginal or naive or inexperienced or non-sexual, because he could be ace and that's important to ace people. But fat, traumatised and gay people have a history of being desexualised, given less sexual and romantic agency, and infantilised or objectified as cute and pure in a way that thin, non-survivor or straight people don't. One way to approach this is to say One Of These Issues Is Important And Valid And That Means The Other Is Being Homophobic/Fatphobic/Ableist/Aphobic and Targeting Marginalised People With Invalid Criticism. That's a very easy task to fall into but it's important imo to make space for the access clash.

2. Bisexual people want an event that focuses on bisexuality. Non-bisexual people want an event that focuses on their own sexuality. Everyone's desire in this situation is to see their own experience reflected.

There's this kind of hierarchy of truth idea where anything that conflicts with what you know to be true must necessarily be false, but the fact is that human experience is infinitely complex and variable so actually something that's undeniably true for some people will always run into some friction with what's undeniably true for others.

And there's such a strong impulse towards assuming that the other is lying or arguing in bad faith, because you KNOW your need is real and important and it conflicts with their needs and that MUST mean they're doing it At You, or in the extreme that they're actively lying to hurt and belittle you. And that's a really natural and understandable impulse, especially among marginalised people who ARE often hurt, manipulated and belittled in bad faith. But I really think that as a community we need to actively work to undercut the idea that oppression is a zero sum game; that if you having the space you need treads on my toes, I can say "you're on my foot and it hurts" without Secretly Meaning "you don't deserve space and shouldn't be given it." Like I do authentically need an untrodden-on foot and you do authentically need enough space to stand in and it's not undermining the truth of either of those statements to acknowledge the other.

idk I just think. Understanding that the other person may have an authentic need being intent/overridden (even though the need may not be what they think it is!) is a pretty important part of conflict management. and believing that if I say "ow you trod on my foot" means I'm actively trying to undermine your need for space is a pretty important part of how conflict escalates into oblivion until I'm yelling YOU DON'T DESERVE STANDING SPACE GO GET CRUSHED and you're yelling I'M GOING TO STAMP ON YOUR FOOT UNTIL IT BREAKS

idk if that makes sense but 🤷‍♀️

#thedreadvampy adiscourse #IT'S DISCOURSE THURSDAY LADIES AND GERMS

[thedreadvampy]

As an aroace person (also a fat person) im sorry ur having to deal with all this. I dont think what you said came off as infantalizing (though i did have to read it through more than once to get what u were trying to say from it, i assumed that was my issues with word processing though). People are going way overboard with this in both directions of demanding silence/answers when the issue itself seems to just be people misinterpreting a post, which is an unfortunate staple of internet “drama” take care of urself and its your blog to respond how you want. Sending you support cause wow this is whack.

I don't think that's on you tbh I have never in my life read back anything I have written with any degree of stringency, it's all pretty much unfiltered stream of consciousness so sometimes it uhhhhhhhhhhhhh lacks clarity and makes some very wild jumps.

#thedreadvampy adiscourse

[thedreadvampy]

You seem surprised at the reactions your getting, but it's to be expected. Aphobia is usually quiet, insidious and slow to reveal itself, so the moment someone is asked about aspecs and the answer isn't a concise "Yes I accept and support them" type thing, it's a red flag. Why would anyone who wasn't aphobic not feel comfortable saying they support aspecs? it's not uncommon for a blog we admire to turn out to be aphobic and we're pretty antsy about this stuff because it's usually brushed off.

Ok I mean I'm getting to that eventually in the Question List but like. With the best possible will in the world I think some of you have misread the post where someone asked "do you support aspecs," because to my recollection what I said was that I am fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea that I'm in any position to judge whether I support or harm anyone, and I think that the point at which someone says as a point of identity 'I Am An Ally To X Group' or 'I Support X Group' that. makes them substantially less likely to recognise or accept the ways in which they fail.

Also like. I absolutely understand the antsiness. I do. People can be really shitty to and about aspec people. But what I've said before and will say again is that you have to understand that while it's totally understandable that that would put you on edge, it's not inherent proof of ill-intent.

Ok. Here's the thing. I'm thinking of my own experience here. There is a subset of men who really give me The Fear. It's often hard to define why they give me The Fear, but I can identify some signs - they're probably really into video games, they have a specific way of getting into my personal space and a specific way of talking and type of intonation. they talk a lot about how much they like that they can trust me and talk to me like one of the guys. and the vast majority of the time, when I've ignored The Fear I have got hurt. it's entirely reasonable for me to be suspicious of those people based on my experiences, to pull back from them, and to listen out for reports that they have a history of abuse. If somebody says, "you're not like other girls I really feel like I can talk to you" I'm probably going to get up and walk away, or try and get it of the conversation, or try and get out ahead of the way I expect the conversation to go so that he can't lead the conversation.

But it wouldn't be reasonable if, the moment I heard someone say "you're not like the other girls, I really feel like I can talk to you," I grabbed him by the collar and yelled YOU MISOGYNIST DICKHEAD I NEED YOU TO PROVE RIGHT HERE AND NOW THAT YOU'VE NEVER ASSAULTED ANYONE. PROVE IT NOW. HE CAN'T PROVE IT GUYS HE DID IT. THIS MAN ASSAULTS WOMEN. HE SAID THE BAD WORDS.

People have different experiences and different associations with phrases. I very rarely answer a question about my beliefs with a simple yes or no because I don't trust certainty, particularly within myself, I find myself really anxious that we mean different things and that if I'm not specific enough then I'll be lying. So I very rarely say yes or no without explaining what I mean by yes or no.

And also. Just for the record, since apparently there's no means of avoiding pissing people off today. Aphobia can be a serious, genuine problem and also an area where not everyone agrees. I'm not talking about my own opinions here, I'm talking about how many different opinions have come up from ace/aro people just in this conversation. And I think it's really weird how often queer discourse conflates disagreement with minimisation. Like ok we can all, within the bi community, pretty much agreed that biphobia is, to a greater or lesser degree, a problem, and that bisexuality is stigmatised and comes with particular challenges. But that doesn't mean that when two bi people disagree on whether X trope is biphobic, one of them is The Biphobe and one is The Oppressed. like. oppression and social dynamics aren't clean, they're fuzzy-edged, overlapping and interweaving, highly subjective and highly personal but also totally depersonalised, and everybody is going to draw those lines differently. And it's wild to act like treating it as anything but a simple yes/no question is inherently bigoted because nothing is a simple yes/no question. That's not really how any social question works. We're all bringing our own stuff to the table, we're all trying to communicate concepts that we don't have the verbal or emotional language for, and when somebody says "are you against aphobia" like, that contains a lot of questions, primarily "what does that mean?"

like am I against dehumanisation of and aggression towards of ace/aro people? am I against systemic assumptions and incentives and expectations that everyone wants/needs sex/romance/a life partner? do I think it's fucked up the degree to which sex and romance are centred in culture to the degree that people are told and made to feel explicitly broken if they don't feel a draw to it? yeah, obviously, no shit. but I don't feel comfortable saying unilaterally 'are you for or against X,' when X has no clearly boundaried definition and isn't something most people would in good faith say FUCK YEAH I LOVE X. like if you ask any person 'are you against homophobia,' most of them would probably say 'yes,' and some of them would mean 'I think it's unfair and cruel to treat queer and same-gender attracted people differently because of their sexuality, and I will go to the wall to defend them and to fight heteronormativity' and some of them mean 'I don't hate the sinner I hate the sin and they can be gay as long as they do it far away from me and also never have sex or relationships' and like. What does the answer yes actually tell you in that instance? Like if I wanted to know if someone held bigoted beliefs, I wouldn't go up to them and say 'do you hate X' bc like. They're gonna say no. They may very well believe that they don't. If you actually wanted to guage their responses, it would make more sense to ask "what do you think of X issue" or "do you think Y idea is homophobic" bc like. bigotry is a pattern not a clear line in the sand. God this is just pure waffle now, sorry.

#thedreadvampy adiscourse

[thedreadvampy]

well now I'm caught in a Scylla and Charybdis of spite

where half of me is like FUCK YOU I DON'T HAVE TO REWARD YOUR CONSTANT INSISTENCE THAT I ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT OPINIONS I CHOOSE TO KEEP TO MYSELF BECAUSE I DON'T THINK THEY'RE RELEVANT. I WILL NOT FINISH ANSWERING THESE QUESTIONS

and half of me is like FUCK YOU I DON'T HAVE TO KEEP SILENT WHILE I'M BEING PRESSURED TO ANSWER QUESTIONS I DIDN'T WANT TO GET INTO IN THE FIRST PLACE. I AM GOING TO ANSWER ALL THE QUESTIONS

and what we take from this, friends, is that it's probably sensible to develop a motivating factor beyond spite

#perhaps.......some form of internal decision making skills that isn't entirely reliant on what others want from you? #.....? #nah sounds fake. pretty sure they made that up for tv. #it's a cocktail of spite shame and people pleasing. those are the only possible ways to make decisions #it's a sort of half hedonic calculus half fuckyouculus #thedreadvampy adiscourse #I'm mostly joking #but only mostly #my other motivating factor is in fairness i did ask that if i was going to be quizzed i be quizzed in a clear and specific manner #and they did follow through on that #so i feel a certain obligation to hold up my end

[thedreadvampy]

this is kind of a Hot Take (and rlly long) so don't feel pressured to post this

also no one cancel thedreadvampy over posting this ask if she does these are my beliefs and not necessarily hers kthx

I'm honestly really uncertain why people are so militant about aphobia on this site. like obviously aphobes are Not Nice People and it's good to be against their shitty beliefs. But I've been on this site for ~5 years and I have never, in my memory, seen an aphobe (with the few exception of like. literal nazis but their main label isn't aphobe). I have seen a lot of people who were then harassed/cancelled being called aphobes in addition to a lot of other things like (homophobic, racist, abusive, etc) but as far as I bothered to figure out, the label of aphobe came from one specific phrase they used or one post they reblogged (though I can't be bothered to Deep Research so I genuinely don't know on this one).

(I have seen casual acephobia in my own personal life. however, that is not Tumblr.)

I have seen scores of posts along the lines of "aphobes are bad" "aphobes dni" etc etc.

Maybe it's just who I follow, but it seems like there's a lot more anti-aphobe sentiment than aphobes. Which is good! It's the goal! However, I think it's possible that that anti-aphobe sentiment has not become "look how few aphobes there are! yay!" it's "there are hidden aphobes all around us and you have to interrogate everyone to know who to ostracize"

You're a fairly popular figure in the mechs/tma fandoms and the thing about Tumblr is that it hates popular figures. And more than that, you're visible, so a) people will see if you answer a bunch of questions about ace things, and b) you exist in everyone's brains more than little blogs.

to be clear. to be absolutely crystal 100% clear: I am not saying that people got together and went "let's interrogate all the popular blogs so we can pretend theyre acephobic and have fun bullying people," I'm saying it's possible that what was once a positive emotion, "we don't tolerate intolerant people" has possibly, in some people, morphed into a fear that intolerant people are hiding all around them. And frankly, that fear can be understandable (not right, not kind, but understandable), especially if they face hate irl and their only outlet for emotion is tumblr. shit, Tumblr is one of my emotional outlets.

I don't think it's bad to engage with these people in good faith, or to answer questions, but I think it's possible that some of them are coming from the "intolerant people are hiding all around us and must be ferreted out" kind of perspective instead of a "hey I wanna check that this person isn't an intolerant asshole before following/supporting them" or "I want to engage with a person who may be ignorant" (I'm not attempting to imply that you're ignorant). Im not saying "not answer their questions" this is just, like, my opinion. I'm not making a lot of actionable statements here.

that's my whole Hot Take, hopefully I made some kind of sense, I just honestly feel kind of mad on your behalf that you have to go thru an interrogation to be Not Tumblr Cancelled. If people were generally having a nuanced discussion then that would be fine but you've already stated several times that ace/aspec people are valid and deserve love and respect etc etc. which as an aspec person makes me feel that your blog is safe for me, and I don't feel the need to play 20 Questions Are You Sure You Aren't An Aphobe

I don't know how much of this I entirely agree with and I refuse to think

(not about this. just in general. today I refuse to think)

my main response to this is:

a) I think my confusion is I have less than 1500 followers I think I always assumed the You Are Now A Public Figure People Have Opinions On mark had to be higher than that but this appears to have been a totally incorrect assumption

b) I don't feel like. a threat of Cancellation except inasmuch as I don't want Kofi to eventually get any kind of kickback if I turn out to be or people understand me to be a shitty person. I didn't ask for a platform or do anything to deserve it, if I get distressed it's largely just that I don't want to be a shitty person! and I have a whole thing about. I don't ever feel secure in my ability to say I'm NOT being shitty so like if enough people start saying AH RUTH THEDREADVAMPY IS A GARBAGE PERSON I definitely do stay wondering if they're right even if I think my position is morally defensible. like I'm very easy to get into a spiral of I think that's highly defensible but maybe I'm just in denial/trying to cover my ass/self-justifying so I can avoid accountability/etc. like this is a thing and it's why I'm very uncomfortable with absolutism, a lot of my family in my experience have a phenomenal capacity for denial and for rewriting reality into something they Fully Believe despite all the evidence, and so I'm really conscious of the possibility that I'm doing that and I wouldn't. know about it. it's a really really powerful subconscious force and that's been like. a big fear point for me my whole life. that I could be being a cunt and be obviously being a cunt and be so deep in denial that it just doesn't register at all. this is like. the thing I fear most. So I DO want people to tell me if I'm being a dick because the only way I can 100% know I'm not just in denial is if I can trust people to call me in, but I really, really, really struggle with when people say I'm being a dick and I disagree, not because they're harassing me necessarily but just because it really sends me into a spiral of doubting my own ability to be sure about like, anything. at all. it's a whole unreality thing which is, uh, it's MINE to deal with, it's not something I would want to put on other people, but it very much does affect my responses and I didn't mean to write this but hey, no therapy last week and it shows.

oh also c) on reflection I don't agree that there's very little aphobia on Tumblr (although as I've said I'm not ace or aro so my opinion should hold little weight) but I do think that there's a lack of give and take, not just in aphobia stuff but also in general, in these kinds of conversations, like sometimes yeah people are actively hateful but I don't think there's any room for misunderstanding, poor phrasing, or questioning, and I understand that that's coming from a really genuine place of pain and devaluation of aro/ace experiences but I also think people jump straight to assuming active malice very fast, and often explicitly consider "actively not stating an opinion" to be an offence on the level of "actively staying a harmful opinion," which I think is unhelpful. like. we learn by listening, there are times in my life where I would have been lying at the time to agree unconditionally with something like "I think we should believe survivors" (I was a 2000s teen who hung out with 4channers) but I also was conscious of the harm that it would do to publicly debate from the perspective that No We Shouldn't Believe Survivors, so you know I waited and I listened and I thought about it and ultimately I came to a position I could say with my chest. but like. The online social more that you Have to have an opinion and I Have to hear it to prove that you have the Right opinion is. uncomfortable to me to say the least. I don't think it gives you much room to learn and improve, especially given that everything on the internet is permanent and often treated as if it forever reflects your current beliefs. like I have changed my opinions So Much since I was 16 and if someone went back through a tag on my blog to Prove My Bad Opinions they could paint pretty much any picture they wanted with 12 years of changing opinions.

anyway yeah like. no I don't fully agree with this ask but I appreciate the alternate perspective. I also did not mean to write another wall of text I'm just very much In A Brain Hole today and sometimes words Just Happen.

#i don't want this to pop up in Discourse tags that will double ruin my brain off scrolling experience #but i do want people to be able to filter this stuff out #I'm gonna go wiiiiiiith #thedreadvampy adiscourse #so I'll try to tag everything surrounding the question of aphobia and me with that #no gonnae tag my general depression posting with it though that's just What This Blog Exists For

[thedreadvampy]

I posted 3,161 times in 2021

1102 posts created (35%)

2059 posts reblogged (65%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 1.9 posts.

I added 189 tags in 2021

#riverdaleposting - 136 posts

#tma spoilers - 13 posts

#thedreadvampy adiscourse - 7 posts

#lady lamp - 7 posts

#rivedaleposting - 6 posts

#discourse - 5 posts

#sweet summer losers - 4 posts

#g slur - 4 posts

#the mechanisms - 4 posts

#g slur tw - 3 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#told my dad that i'm happy to talk to him if he wanted to talk to me about fixing some of the problems in our relationship then i'll be here

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

'Sex is a really important part of a lot of people's identity that is often complex and stigmatised and therefore vital and healing for many people to reclaim and express' and 'sex is not something everyone wants or a wanted part of everyone's life' can uhhhh. They can coexist as ideas. like. the fact that sex and sexuality is important to some people's queer expression isn't a personal attack on other people for whom it's not. please for the love of god can we all try to understand that People Are Different.

767 notes • Posted 2021-05-22 00:19:13 GMT

#4

you don't need the girlboss, the girlboss needs you

Unionize!

858 notes • Posted 2021-02-14 03:56:48 GMT

#3

just for the record things looking just fuckin fantastic here on a Rainy Fascist Island

the Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill passed through Commons this week and it includes:

a ban on protests that are 'too noisy' or 'alarm the public' (as judged by the police)

defacing statues or monuments is punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment

preventing protests near enough Parliament to disrupt the free access of minister's cars in any way

Police can start to disperse any protests that 'disrupt the activities of an organisation'

Police have the power to impose and enforce start and finish times on any protest

The Home Secretary, Priti Fucking Patel, will have the power to create new laws on the fly without parliamentary consent to define what counts as "serious disruption" and what protests and public actions are illegal (which is. unhinged)

Stop and search powers are widened

(this is a different bill, but also there's another law in the works which will make it impossible to convict police for any crimes committed while undercover)

It also contains a raft of "anti-trespassing laws" that specifically target GRT (Gypsy, Roma and Traveller) families, including:

Police will have the power to stop, seize and destroy any vehicle stopped by the road "with intent to reside" (meaning in practise that if you have no fixed address then you're at risk anywhere you stop even if, as roadsidemum pointed out on Twitter, you just pull over to eat a sandwich or stretch your legs)

"Trespassing" on any land, including public or unowned land, with "intent to reside" is, again, a crime which gives police the right to arrest you and confiscate and destroy tents, caravans, mobile homes, cars etc.

This means it's only legal to camp on registered pitch sites, which the GRT Alliance says there are 1,700 families on the waiting list for and only 59 of

Offenders under this trespassing clause can be fined (heavily) on the spot or imprisoned and have their families taken into care

Previously in order for trespass and public camping to be illegal you had to be committing a crime or creating an active disruption or damage to the land (which certainly has been misused to target GRT people, bc people tend to pin any crimes in the area on GRT encampments even though in my experience as someone living on a major Traveler route it's mostly that local people commit more crime when Travelers are paying through then try to frame the Travelers) - now the police will be able to raid a camp without any prior complaint just for being on the land

In short, #KillTheBill and fuck every MP complicit in allowing this authoritarian bullshit to reach the Lords despite massive and sustained public protest for the past year.

2333 notes • Posted 2021-07-08 07:42:00 GMT

#2

there are two key questions to gauge what sort of Weird Girl someone was as a preteen.

a) horses, dolphins or dragons?

b) Vikings, Ancient Egyptians or dinosaurs?

tell me in the tags please. if you were allowed to pick your own room decor between 7 and 13 the answer to A should be self evident bc every Weird Girl I knew who was allowed to pick had one of those three themes.

26099 notes • Posted 2021-08-15 23:34:10 GMT

#1

hey girl uhhhh did you know that

blobbyland

28219 notes • Posted 2021-01-11 15:22:26 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#I HAVE POSTED TOO MUCH THIS YEAR #OVER ONE THOUSAND ORIGINAL POSTS #you would not think I was an adult with a job a life and an activist community #BUT HERE WE ARE #Also really exposing the degree to which I do not use tags to organise things At All