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palipunk · 6 months

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do you know anything about native wildlife or plant life in palestine? particularly interested in primates because that's always what i'm most interested in but i'd really like to know more about what the animals and plants native to the land are like. what they were like pre israeli occupation and what sort of animal and plant life will need repairing when palestine is free. i hear a lot about the people and the human palestinian culture and it's wonderful but it's difficult for me to find anything regarding nonhuman life and i would like to learn more about it.

Honestly, the topic of Palestinian wildlife and its intersection with colonialism has been something that has increased a lot over the past couple of years. I can't offer anything about primate species (Palestine doesn't have any) but we do have lots and lots of very cool native animals like Gazelle and Caracal and Sand foxes and lots of bats and gerbils and snakes.

The Palestine Wildlife Society actually has a website with lists of all the animals found in Palestine and what level of conservation status they are at (plus the Arabic names): https://www.wildlife-pal.org/en

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics also reported back in 2012 that:

There are about 51,000 living species (flora and fauna) in historical Palestine, constituting approximately 3% of global biodiversity. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip there are an estimated 30,904 animal species, consisting of an estimated 30,000 invertebrates, 373 birds, 297 fish, 92 mammals, 82 reptiles, and 5 amphibians. Recent studies on birds in Palestine indicated that there are 373 species, which represent 23 Orders, 69 families, 21 Subfamilies, and 172 genera. The country also hosts 2,850 species of plants from 138 families.

And also added in 2014:

Israeli Violations are the main causes of Biodiversity deterioration Based on 2012 data from ARIJ Research Institute, the Expansion and Annexation Wall has a total length of about 780 kilometers, of which 61% has been completed. The route of the Wall has isolated 680 km2 of Palestinian land between the Wall and the Green Line, comprising approximately 12.0% of the West Bank. This land comprises about 454 km2 of agricultural, pasture land and open areas, 117 km2 that were confiscated for Israeli settlements and military bases, 89 km2 of forest and 20 km2 Palestinian built-up land. During 2013, more than eight thousand dunums of land were confiscated from Palestinians and more than 15 thousand horticultural trees were destroyed, causing considerable damage to the Palestinian environment and biodiversity.

The Israeli settlements and military bases also contribute in the biodiversity deterioration since there were 482 Israeli settlements and military bases in the West Bank at the end of 2013 contained around 563,546 settlers at the end of 2012. Climate change is the most important natural factor that contributes to biodiversity degradation in Palestine. More animal and plant species have become under serious threat of becoming rare due to low rainfall, high temperatures, and the changing characteristics of the four seasons, in which drought is creeping into winter and spring.

The mountain Gazelle is currently endangered and this is due mostly to the building of roads and fences as well as predation and collisions with cars (the article also references the building of housing units in Mitzpeh Nafto'ah, which one of the areas where, in 2012, Israeli developers wanted to 'build up Jerusalem'). As of 2015, there were around 2,000 identified Gazelles within the Palestinian territories and historic Palestine. The mountain Gazelle look like this:

There have also been efforts for plant conservation in Palestine like the Iris Atrofusca, which has an extremely fragile population and is found almost exclusively within Palestine - a botanical garden was established for this particular Iris in the North Eastern Slopes of Palestine and in 2021, 120 clones of Iris Atrofusca were planted. Here is what they look like:

(also very interesting, sheep do not eat it!)

Probably most famous is the extinction of the Palestinian Crocodile, the last rhetorical circulation to 1935. Elizabeth Bentley wrote a great piece on it, you can read the full PDF on the Institute of Palestine Studies website or the edited (with permission) one published to Science for the People Magazine, I copied a segment from the latter here:

Colonial zoologists and collectors saw and appreciated Palestine’s bountiful plants and animals as objects of scientific inquiry. This scientific appreciation was inextricable from imperialist ambitions and the drive for profit. There were no wildlife protection laws in Palestine until 1924, which was after crocodiles’ likely regional extinction, and even then, the laws were loosely enforced. Colonial zoologists not only observed and wrote about Palestinian animals in their natural habitat. These zoological works were one of extraction and commodification. Euphemistically termed processes of “collection” involved a network of human and nonhuman actors, whereby colonial zoologists hunted and killed Palestinian animals, studied them, and transported their remains overseas. Disemboweled, stuffed with wire and flax, and then displayed in glass cases, Palestinian animals were reanimated as spectacles for the viewing pleasure of museumgoers in London and Berlin. While aligned with the broader trends in colonial zoology, the allure of the last Palestinian crocodile surpassed the confines of scientific inquiry; it adapted a symbolic, even mythical quality. Colonial zoologists’ ongoing speculation about Palestinian crocodile extinction necessitated a degree of willful (or internalized) unknowing about Palestine and Palestinians. Colonial zoologists were heavily dependent on Palestinians’ ecological expertise. Despite this, their writings convey mistrust and condescension toward Palestinians, along with a detachment from how local populations lived alongside Palestinian ecology. Colonial scientific literature on Palestinian animals frequently perpetuated the racist, historically inaccurate outlook of “science for the West, myth for the rest.” Yet colonialist writings on the last Palestinian crocodile reflected their own symbolic attachments and investment in mythical thinking.

So there is a lot of work to do in regard to animal and plant conservation and several extinct animals I didn't bring up here but It is a deep dive and goes a lot farther than a lot of people consider. The Palestine Wildlife Society has a massive catalog and I hope you look through it!

#palestine #free palestine #wildlife #plants #animals #gorillawithautism

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tanadrin · 6 months

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This series of four videos on Ukraine and the Russia-Ukraine conflict is very interesting. The first is basically just a narrative political history of Ukraine from about 2000 to 2014, talking about different political factions that were relevant in the country in the period, and how different internal and external pressures shaped politics. It's very helpful for understanding the Ukrainian political context, including just how recent and just how shallow the supposed tensions between monolingual Russian and bilingual Ukrainian-Russian speakers was in 2014.

The second video is an overview of the Donbass war from 2014-2022, which you might have been vaguely paying attention to at the time. But it's very helpful to have it all laid out in chronological order with the benefit of hindsight, especially due to the obfuscation of Russian operations at the time that made it hard to work out what, exactly, was going on. It's a combination of a good old 19th century-style filibuster (the military expedition, not the parliamentary maneuver), Fox News-style propaganda, and some (rather badly failed) attempts at astroturfing civil unrest--why Russia thought that would work becomes important in Part 4.

Part 3 is just an extended argument that NATO expansion is not relevant to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and while I already agreed with that assessment, it's nice to have it laid out in detail. The very very short version is that by NATO's own public criteria, Ukraine was simply not a candidate to join NATO, and had given up on joining NATO, and that had been painfully obvious since at least the Obama administration. Even more frustratingly, there were multiple points where Russia had an offramp to escalation, where it had gotten everything it could have possibly wanted from the conflict in Donbass, and it refused them all.

Part 4 is the author's attempt to explain why it refused them. The very short explanation is that Russia's government is led by idiots, who are very enamored of a flavor of conspiracy theory that has its origins in the LaRouche movement, and which has been bubbling in both left-wing and right-wing circles since 2000. In this worldview, the US government acting through the CIA (or the British royal family, or George Soros, or Jewish bankers, or whoever your bogeyman of choice is) has an almost supernatural ability to overthrow any government on earth by funding performance art groups (seriously), civil society NGOs, and protestors, and that almost every revolution, actual or so-called, since 1989 has been their direct work, from the post-Soviet revolutions, to Euromaidan, to the Arab Spring.

This belief, in its more overt or fragmentary forms, is incredibly popular, spurred on no doubt by historical instances of CIA malfeasance and actual aggressive wars waged by the Bush administration. But the problem is, it's bunk. During Russia's initial moves against Ukraine in 2014, they tried essentially the same playbook in the Donbass, and of course it failed miserably--you cannot actually astroturf a popular uprising. (The CIA has preferred to stage coups and assassinations, which are a different animal from color revolutions.) The separatists in the Donbass eventually had to be supported by a few thousand Russian troops and direct military aid.

But Putin, driven by his own paranoid misunderstanding of world events, the clique of yes-men he has embedded himself in, and his fear of gay Nazi Jewish CIA agents, simply got Russia in over its head. There is no offramp because Russia cannot articulate what its goals are, and because "stop trying to use George Soros to overthrow the Russian government" is not something the US can agree to, since they are not doing it. The only thing that might have prevented Putin fucking with Ukraine in the first place was maybe if rigging the parliamentary election in 2011 hadn't resulted in protests, in which Putin saw the specter of the hand of the CIA--but of course the US and NATO and the EU had nothing to do with that!

And to cap it all off, since the 2010s the LaRouche movement and its theory of color revolutions has been making inroads in China, so we have that to look forward to in coming decades.

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lurking-latinist · 1 year

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I just saw this awesome post about including mobility aids in fantasy writing, and I do not want to create a tangent but I *do* want to share some things I learned about disability in ancient Greece when I was researching that paper I wrote on the Philoctetes, so I am making my own post.

Philoctetes is a mythical figure who was one of the Greek heroes going to the Trojan war. Before they got there, he suffered a wound in the foot which would not heal. The other Greek leaders were unwilling to have the noise of his screams and the stench of the infected wound in their camp, so they abandoned him on a deserted island with only his famous weapon, the Bow of Heracles. He survived there for ten years. Now the war is almost over, Troy has almost fallen, but the Greeks have heard a prophecy: they cannot win until they have the Bow of Heracles. So wily Odysseus and young Neoptolemus (the son of the recently dead Achilles) go to the island where Philoctetes is still living, still dealing with his injury. Philoctetes is eager to escape the island, but can he trust the community that abandoned him ten years ago? Can they ever make right what they did to him?

Now that’s the type of story that someone might very well point to who was arguing that disabled people have to be neglected and excluded in a “historically accurate” story. And it’s definitely not an example of casual inclusion. But what that person would be missing is that Philoctetes’ abandonment and isolation in this play was intended to be shocking to its Athenian audience. The audience is invited to identify with Philoctetes and to be horrified at how he does not receive the support from his community that real-world people with similar disabilities did receive, as we can tell from both textual and archaeological evidence.

Martha L. Rose’s book The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece emphasizes this. Look, here’s what I wrote in my paper, why should I rewrite it:

Rose approaches her material “though the lens of disability studies, which approaches the phenomenon of disability by assuming that there is nothing inherently wrong with the disabled body and that the reaction of a society to the disabled body is neither predictable nor immutable” (1). In other words, it is necessary to see what attitudes and assumptions about disabilities are actually recorded, rather than projecting any of our own assumptions. ...

Also unlike today, Greek concepts of disability were not medicalized. “Permanent physical disability,” writes Rose, “was not the concern of doctors in antiquity beyond recognition of incurability” (11). This does not mean that disabled people had no resources or were simply left to perish, of course. Rather, they were often cared for within their households and their communities (28), which means that both Philoctetes’ abandonment and isolation form a shocking exception to the norm. The importance of community support suggests that Philoctetes’ joy at being reunited with humanity comes from practical as well as emotional needs. At the same time, the wide range of tasks and trades in the Greek economy meant that many disabled people were far from economically dependent (think of [the god] Hephaestus the lame smith), so that “[a] physically handicapped person earning a living would not have been a remarkable sight” (39). People unable to walk at all rode donkeys or were carried in litters, while those who walked with difficulty used a staff or a crutch (24-26).

So for writers: the ancient Greeks didn’t invent the wheelchair--but they had the wheel technology (I suspect the issue may have been with roads and pavements instead), so your Greek-inspired fantasy world totally can (which was the point of that earlier post). Or maybe your protagonist goes on their adventures with a faithful donkey sidekick that helps them get around. Maybe they are respected for their skill in a craft, making their home and workshop a lively meeting-place for customers. If you’re writing fantasy, you could be inspired by one of the myths of Hephaestus, in which he creates metal automatons--basically, magic robots--that not only support him as he walks, they also act as assistants in his workshop!

Anyway, the point of this post is basically just that I agree with the other post about including mobility aids in fantasy and I had some relevant knowledge in the back of my head. And also that you should read the Philoctetes. Look, here’s a recent free modern English verse translation: https://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/sophocles/philocteteshtml.html

Oh, and if you would like to see my term paper or the relevant section from The Staff of Oedipus, message me, I will share them.

#philoctetes #writing #I should add that Rose also has information about things like blindness and deafness in her book #I just happened to be writing a paper about mobility

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intersexbookclub · 3 months

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Summary: Chapter 4 of Critical Intersex

For many of us, Chapter 4 of Critical Intersex (2009) turned out to be a particularly rich source of information about intersex history. So I (Elizabeth) have decided to give a fairly detailed summary of the chapter because I think it’s important to get that info out there. I’m gonna give a little bit of commentary as I go, and then a summary of our book club discussion of the chapter.

The chapter is titled “(Un)Queering identity: the biosocial production of intersex/DSD” by Alyson K. Spurgas. It is a history of ISNA, the Intersex Society of North America, and how it went from being a force for intersex liberation to selling out the movement in favour of medicalization. (See here for summary of the other chapters we read of the book!)

Our high level reactions:

Elizabeth (@ipso-faculty): Until I read chapter 4, I didn't really realise how reactionary “DSD” was. It hadn't been clear to me how much it was a response to the beginning of an organized intersex advocacy movement in the United States.

Michelle (@scifimagpie): I could feel the fury in the writer's tone. It was a real barn burner.

Also Michelle: the fuckin' respectability politics of DSD really got under my skin, as a term! I know the importance, as a queer person, of not forcing people to ID as queer, but this was a lot.

Introducing the chapter

The introduction sets the tone by talking about how in the Victorian era there was a historical shift from intersex being a religious/juridical issue to a pathology, and how this was intensified in the 1950s with John Money’s invention of the optimal gender rearing model.

Spurgas briefly discusses how the OGR model is harmful to intersex people, and how it iatrogenically produces sexual dysfunction and gender dysphoria. “Iatrogenic” means caused by medicine; iatrogenesis is the production of disease or other side-effects as a result of medical intervention.

This sets scene for why in the early 1990s, Cheryl Chase and other intersex activists founded the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). It had started as a support group, and morphed significantly over its lifetime. ISNA closed up shop in 2008.

Initially, ISNA was what we’d now call interliberationist. They were anti-pathologization. Their stance was that intersexuality is not itself pathological and the wellbeing of intersex people is endangered by medical intervention. They organized around the abolition of surgical intervention. They also created fora like Hermaphrodites With Attitude for the deconstruction of bodies/sexes/genders and development of an intersex identity that was inherently queer.

The early ISNA activists explicitly aligned intersexuality in solidarity with LGB and transgender organizing. There was a belief that similar to LGBT organizing, once intersex people got enough visibility and consciousness-raising, people would “come out” in greater numbers (p100).

By the end of the 90s, however, many intersex people were actively rejecting being seen as queer and as political subjects/actors. The organization had become instead aligned with surgeons and clinicians, had replaced “intersex” with “DSD” in their language.

By the time ISNA disbanded in 2008 they had leaned in hard on a so-called “pragmatic” / “harm reduction” model / “children’s rights perspective”. The view was that since infants in Western countries are “born medical subjects as it is” (p100)

Where did DSD come from?

In 2005, the term “disorders of sexual differentiation” had been recently coined in an article by Alice Dreger, Cheryl Chase, “and three other clinicians associated with the ISNA… [so as] to ‘label the condition rather than the person’” (p101). Dreger et al thought that intersex was “not medically accurate” (p101) and that the goal should be effective nomenclature to “sort patients into diagnostically meaningful groups” (p101).

Dreger et al argued that the term intersex “attracts the interest of a large number of people whose interest is based on a sexual fetish and people who suffer from delusions about their own medical histories” (Dreger et al quoted on p101)

Per Spurgas, Dreger et al had an explicit agenda of “distancing intersex activism from queer and transgressive sex/gender politics and instead in supporting Western medical productions of intersexuality” (p102). In other words: they were intermedicalists.

According to Dreger et al, an alignment with medicine is strategically important because intersex people often require medical attention, and hence need to be legible to clinicians. “For those in favor of the transition to DSD, intersex is first and foremost a disorder requiring medical treatment” (p102)

Later in 2005 there was a ��Intersex Consensus Meeting” organized by a society of paediatricians and endocrinologists. Fifty “experts” were assembled from ten countries (p101)... with a grand total of two actually intersex people in attendance (Cheryl Chase and Barbara Thomas, from XY-Frauen).

At the meeting, they agreed to adopt the term DSD along with a “‘patient-centred’ and ‘evidence-based’ treatment protocol” to replace the OGR treatment model (p101)

In 2006, a consortium of American clinicians and bioethicists was formed and created clinical guidelines for treating DSDs. They defined DSD quite narrowly: if your gonads or genitals don’t match your gender, or you have a sex chromosome anomaly. So no hormonal variations like hyperandrogenism allowed.

The pro-DSD movement: it was mostly doctors

Spurgas quotes the consortium: “note that the term ‘intersex’ is avoided here because of its imprecision” (p102) - our highlight. There’s a lot of doctors hating on intersex for being a category of political organizing that gets encoded as the category is “imprecise” 👀

Spurgas gets into how the doctors dressed up their re-pathologization of intersex as “patient centred” (p103) - remember this is being led by doctors, not patients, and any intersex inclusion was tokenistic. (Elizabeth: it was amazing how much bs this was.)

As Spurgas puts it, the pro-DSD movement “represents an abandonment of the desire for a pan-intersexual/queer identity and an embrace of the complete medicalization of intersex… the intersex individual is now to be understood fundamentally as a patient” (p103)

Around the same time some paediatricians almost came close to publicly advocating against infant genital mutilation by denouoncing some infant surgeries. Spurgas notes they recommended “that intersex individuals be subjected (or self-subject) to extensive psychological/psychiatric, hormonal, steroidal and other medical” interventions for the rest of their lives (p103).

This call to instead focus on non-surgical medical interventions then got amplified by other clinicians and intermedicalist intersex advocacy organizations.

The push for non-surgical pathologization hence wound up as a sort of “compromise” path - it satisfied the intermedicalists and anti-queer intersex activists, and had the allure of collaborating with doctors to end infant surgeries. (Note: It is 2024 and infant surgeries are still a thing 😡.)

The pro-DSD camp within the intersex community

Spurgas then goes on to get into the discursive politics of DSD. There’s some definite transphobia in the push for “people with DSDs are simply men and women who happen to have congenital birth conditions” (p104). (Summarizer’s note: this language is still employed by anti-trans activists.)

The pro-DSD camp claimed that it was “a logical step in the ‘evolution in thinking’” 💩 and that it would be a more “humane” treatment model (p105) 💩

Also that “parents and doctors are not going to want to give a child a label with a politicized meaning” (p104) which really gives the game away doesn’t it? Intersex people have started raising consciousness, demanding their rights, and asserting they are not broken, so now the poor doctors can’t use the label as a diagnosis. 🤮

Spurgas quotes Emi Koyama, an intermedicalist who emphasized how “most intersex people identify as ‘perfectly ordinary, heterosexual, non-trans men and women’” (p104) along with a whole bunch of other quotes that are obviously queerphobic. Note from Elizabeth: I’m not gonna repeat it all because it’s gross. In my kindest reading of this section, it reads like gender dysphoria for being mistaken as genderqueer, but instead of that being a source of solidarity with genderqueers it is used as a form of dual closure (when a minority group goes out of its way to oppress a more marginalized group in order to try and get acceptance with the majority group).

Koyama and Dreger were explicitly anti-trans, and viewed intergender type stuff as “a ‘trans co-optation’ of intersex identity” (p105) 🤮

Most intersex people resisted “DSD” from its creation

On page 106, Spurgas shifts to talking about how a lot intersex people were resistant to the DSD shift. Organization Intersex International (OII) and Bodies Like Ours (BLO) were highly critical of the shift! 💛 BLO in particular noted that 80-90% of their website users were against the DSD term. Note from Elizabeth: indeed, every survey I’ve seen on the subject has been overwhelmingly against DSD - a 2015 IHRA survey found only 3% of intersex Australians favoured the DSD term.

Proponents of “intersex” over “DSD” testified to it being depathologizing. They called out the medicalization as such: that it serves to reinforce that “intersex people don’t exist” (David Cameron, p107), that it is damaging to be “told they have a disorder” (Esther Leidolf, p107), that there is “a purposeful conflation of treatment for ‘health reasons’ and ‘cosmetic reasons’ (Curtis Hinkle, p107), and that it’s being pushed mainly by perisex people as a reactionary, assimilationist endeavour (ibid).

Interliberationism never went away - intersex people kept pushing for 🌈 queer solidarity 🌈 and depathologization - even though ISNA, the largest intersex advocacy organization, had abandoned this position.

Spurgas describes how a lot of criticism of DSD came from non-Anglophone intersex groups, that the term is even worse in a lot of languages - it connotes “disturbed” in German and has an ambiguity with pedophilia and fetishism in French (p111).

The DSD push was basically entirely USA-based, with little international consultation (p111). Spurgas briefly addresses the imperialism inherent in the “DSD” term on pages 118/119.

Other noteworthy positions in the DSD debate

Spurgas gives a well-deserved shout out to the doctors who opposed the push to DSD, who mostly came from psychiatry and opposed it on the grounds that the pathologization would be psychologically damaging and that intersex patients “have taken comfort (and in many cases, pride) in their (pan-)intersex identity” (p108) 🌈 - Elizabeth: yay, psychiatrists doing their job!

Interestingly, both sides of the DSD issue apparently have invoked disability studies/rights for their side: Koyama claimed DSD would herald the beginning of a disability rights based era of intersex activism (p109) while anti-DSDers noted the importance in disability rights in moving away from pathologization (p109).

Those who didn’t like DSD but who saw a strategic purpose for it argued it would “preser[ve] the psychic comfort of parents”, that there is basically a necessity to coddle the parents of intersex children in order to protect the children from their parents. (p110)

Some proposed less pathologizing alternatives like “variations of sex development” and “divergence of sex development” (p110)

The DSD treatment model and the intersex treadmill

Remember all intersex groups were united that sex assignment surgery on infants needs to be abolished. The DSD framework that was sold as a shift away from surgical intervention, but it never actually eradicated it as an option (p112). Indeed, it keeps ambiguous the difference between medically necessary surgical intervention and culturally desired cosmetic surgery (p112). (Note from Elizabeth: funny how *this* ambiguity is acceptable to doctors.)

What DSD really changed was a shift from “fixing” the child with surgery to instead providing “lifelong ‘management’ to continue passing” (p112), resulting in more medical intervention, such as through hormonal and behavioural therapies to “[keep] it in remission” (p113).

Cheryl Chase coined the “intersex treadmill’: the never-ending drive to fit within a normative sex category (p113), which Spurgas deploys to talk about the proliferation of “lifelong treatments” and how it creates the need for constant surveillance of intersex bodies (p114). Medical specialization adds to the proliferation, as one needs increasingly more specialists who have increasingly narrow specialties.

There’s a cruel irony in how the DSD model pushes for lifelong psychiatric and psychological care of intersex patients so as to attend to the PTSD that is caused by medical intervention. (p115) It pushes a capitalistic model where as much money can be milked as possible out of intersex patients (p116).

The DSD treatment model, if it encourages patients to find community at all, hence pushes condition-specific medical support groups rather than pan-intersex advocacy groups (p115)

Other stuff in the chapter

Spurgas does more Foucault-ing at the end of the chapter. Highlight: “The intersex/DSD body is a site of biosocial contestation over which ways of knowing not only truth of sex, but the truth of the self, are fought. Both intelligibility and tangible resources are the prizes accorded to the winner(s) of the battle over truth of sex” (p117)

There’s some stuff on the patient-as-consumer that didn’t really land with anybody at the book club meeting - we’re mostly Canadians and the idea of patient-as-consumer isn’t relatable. Ei noted it isn’t even that relatable from their position as an American.

***

Having now summarized the chapter, here's a summary of our discussion at book club...

Opening reactions

Michelle (M): the way the main lady involved became medicalized really made my heart sink, reading that.

Elizabeth (E): I do remember some discussion of intersex people in the 90s, and it never really grew in the way that other queer identities did! This has kind of helped for me to understand what the fuck happened here.

E: It was definitely a very insightful reading on that part, while being absolutely outraging. I didn't know, but I guess I wasn't surprised at how pivotal US-centrism was. The author was talking about "North American centric" though but always meant the United States!!! Canada was just not part of this! They even make mention of Quebec as separate and one of the opposing regions. I was like, What are you doing here, America? You are not the entirety of our continent!!!

E: The feedback from non-Anglophone intersex advocates that DSD does not translate was something that I was like, "Yes!" For me, when I read the French term - that sounded like something that would include vaginismus, erectile dysfunction - it sounds far more general and negative.

M: the fuckin' respectability politics of DSD really got under my skin, as a term! I know the importance, as a queer person, of not forcing people to ID as queer, but this was a lot.

E: it was very assimilationist in a way that was very upsetting. I knew intellectually that this was going on. There was such a distinct advocacy push for that. The coddling of parents and doctors at the expense of intersex people was such a theme of this chapter, in a way that was very upsetting. They started out with this goal of intersex liberation, and instead, wound up coddling parents and doctors.

Solidarities

M: I feel like there's a real ableist parallel to the autism movement here… It dovetails with how the autism movement was like, "Aww, we're sorry about your emotionless monster baby! This must be so hard for you [parents]!" And it felt like "aw, it's okay, we'll fix your baby so they can interface with heterosexuality!" [Note: both of us are neurodivergent]

E: A lot of intersexism is a fear that you're going to have a queer child, both in terms of orientation and gender.

E: You cannot have intersex liberation without putting an end to homophobia and transphobia.

M: We're such natural allies there!

E: I understand that there are these very dysphoric ipsogender or cisgender people, who don't want to be mistaken as trans, but like it or not, their rights are linked to trans people! When I encounter these people, I don't know how to convey, "whether you like it or not, you're not going to get more rights by doing everything you can to be as distant as possible."

M: it reminds me of the movements by some younger queers to adhere to respectability politics.

E: Oh no. There are younger queers who want respectability politics????

M: well, some younger queers are very reactionary about neopronouns and kink at pride. they don't always know the difference between representation and "imposing" kinks on others. In a way, it reminds me of the more intentional rejection of queer weirdos, or queerdos, if you will, by republican gays.

E: I feel like a lot of anti-queerdom that comes out of the ipso and cisgender intersex community reads as very dysphoric to me. That needs to be acknowledged as gender dysphoria.

M: That resonates to me. When I heard about my own androgen imbalance, I was like, "does that mean I'm not a real woman?" And now I would happily say "fuck that question," but we do need an empathy and sensitivity for that experience. Though not tolerance for people who invalidate others, to be honest.

E: The term "iatrogensis" was new to me. The term refers to a disease caused or aggravated by medical intervention.

M: So like a surgical complication, or gender dysphoria caused by improper medical counselling!

The DSD debate

ei: i think the "disorder" discussion is really interesting. in my opinion, if someone feels their intersex condition is a disorder they have every right to label it that way, but if someone does not feel the same they have every right to reject the disorder label. personally i use the label "condition". i don't agree with forcing labels on anyone or stripping them away from anyone either.

M: for me, it felt like a cautionary tale about which labels to accept.

ei: i'm all around very tired of people label policing others and making blanket statements such as "all people who are this have to use this label”... i also use variation sometimes, i tend to go back and forth between variation and condition. I think it's a delicate balance between being sensitive to people's label preferences vs making space for other definitions/communities.

We then spoke about language for a bunch of communities (Black people, non-binary people) for a while

E: one thing that was very harrowing for me about this chapter is that while there was this push to end coercive infant surgery, they basically ceded all of the ground on "interventions" happening from puberty onward. And as someone who has had to fight off coercive medical interventions in puberty, I have a lot of trauma about violent enforcement of femininity and the medical establishment.

ei: i completely agree that it's psychologically harmful tbh…. i was assigned male at birth and my doctors want me to start testosterone to make me more like a perisex male. which is extremely counterproductive because i'm literally transfem and have expressed this many times

Doctors Doing Harm

M: for me, the validation of how doctors can be harmful in this chapter meant a lot.

E: something that surprised me and made me happy was that there were some psychiatrists who spoke out against the DSD label. As someone who routinely hears a lot of anti-psychiatry stuff - because there's a lot of good reason to be skeptical of psychiatry, as a discipline - it was just nice to see some psychiatrists on the right side of things, doing right by their patients. Psychiatrists were making the argument that DSD would be psychologically harmful to a lot of intersex people.

ei: like. being told that something so inherently you, so inherently linked to your identity and sense of self, is a disorder of sexual development, something to be fixed and corrected. that has to be so harmful

ei: like i won't lie i do have a lot of severe trauma surrounding the way i've been treated due to being intersex. but so much of my negative experiences are repetitive smaller things. Like the way people treat me like my only purpose is to teach them about intersex people …. either that or they get really creepy and gross. I’m lucky in that i'm not visibly intersex, so i do have the privilege of choosing who knows. but there's a reason why i usually don't tell people irl.

M: intersex and autism have overlap again about how like, minor presentation can be? As opposed to the sort of monstrous presentation [Carnival barker impression] "Come see the sensational half-man, half-woman! Behold the h-------dite!" And like - the way nonverbal people are also treated feels relevant to that, because that's how autism is often treated, like a freakshow and a pity party for the parents? And it's so dehumanizing. And as someone who might potentially have a nonverbal child, because my wife is expecting and my husband and she both have ADHD - I'm just very fed up with ableism and the perception of monstrosity.

Overall, this was a chapter that had a lot to talk about! See here for our discussion of Chapters 5-7 from the same volume.

#intersex #intersex studies #queer theory #gender studies #actually intersex #intersex rights #intersex activism #intersex books #book reviews #book summaries #paper summaries #lit review #critical intersex #intersex history

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gallifreyinstituteforlearning · 11 days

Note

what kind of sex-ed is taught on Gallifrey? (and does it include physical reproduction, looming, and telepathic intimacy?)

Gallifreyan Sex Education

It won't surprise anyone at all to learn that details on Gallifreyan sex education are a bit sparse, so the below info is mostly speculative.

🖨️ Looming

For a summary/background on looms, see, 'What is looming and how does it exist alongside natural reproduction?'

Regardless of your opinion of the necessity of Looming, during the time Looming was the sole method of reproduction, the concepts of physical intimacy and sexual relationships would have been largely irrelevant. Gallifreyans during this period typically exhibited a lack of sexual drive, embracing a norm of celibacy that aligned with their asexual nature. It's from this point we start to explore just what they're teaching those kids.

📚 Educating Time Tots

1:🧬 Genetic Heritage and Responsibility

Young Gallifreyans would learn about their ancestral lines and the genetic legacies of their Houses. The emphasis would likely be on understanding the contributions each member is expected to make to their House and society.

House Pride and Legacy: Lessons on the importance of maintaining the genetic integrity and uniqueness of each House.

Genetic Contributions: How and why individuals contribute genetic material to their House's Loom, including the ethics and expectations involved.

Role in Society: The significance of each member's role in preserving and enhancing the House's standing within Gallifreyan society.

2:🏺 Sex as an Antiquated Curiosity

In a society deeply intertwined with the non-biological creation of life, the concept of sex for reproduction may be taught as an archaic and somewhat curious historical practice. Think of it like how humans now regard trepanation or bloodletting. Lessons might include:

Historical Context: An exploration of how earlier Gallifreyans might have engaged in physical reproduction before the advent of Looming, discussing it as a part of their ancient heritage.

Cultural Shifts: How and why Gallifrey moved away from physical sex to a more genetically controlled form of reproduction, with homage to Rassilon and the societal reforms that followed.

3:🧠 Telepathic Intimacy and Connectivity

Gallifreyans possess inherent telepathic abilities, making telepathic intimacy a critical part of their interactions. Education in this area would be robust, focusing not only on how to establish and maintain these connections but also on the ethics of mind-touch. Lessons would likely cover:

Consent and Mental Boundaries: Understanding and respecting the private mental spaces of others.

Emotional Exchange: How to safely and ethically share emotions and thoughts.

Telepathic Etiquette: The do’s and don’ts of entering another's mind, especially in a society where such interactions can have profound personal and political implications.

4:🏛️ Relationships as Political Alliances

With many Gallifreyan relationships influenced by political motives, education would also encompass the strategic aspects of forming alliances. This would involve training in:

Political Acumen: How to navigate the political landscape of Gallifrey, where alliances and familial ties can determine one’s social standing.

Strategic Partnerships: The role of personal relationships in political strategies and how these can influence House dynamics.

🔮 The Future of Gallifreyan Reproduction

With all that's happened recently, there's been a revival of physical reproduction, and we stand in a sort of limbo state. New curricula might be forced to emerge, covering:

Physical Reproduction: Basics of biologically-based reproduction, contrasting it with Looming.

Modern Ethics and Implications: How these changes affect the societal fabric and individual identity within Gallifreyan culture.

🏫 So ...

Gallifreyan 'sex ed' is probably less about sex in the human sense and more about understanding the broader implications of how Time Lords come into being, interact, and handle socio-political life.

For now.

Hope that helped! 😃

→🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (WIP) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP)

-------------------------------------------------------

》📫Got a question / submission? 》😆Jokes |🫀Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts 》📚Complete list of Q+A 》📜Masterpost If you like what GIL does, please consider buying a coffee or tipping below to help make future projects, including complete biology and language guides.

#doctor who #gil #gallifrey institute for learning #dr who #dw eu #gallifrey #gil biology #gallifreyans #ask answered #gallifreyan biology #whoniverse #time lord biology

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max1461 · 7 months

Text

I have said this before, and also gestured at it in a lot of my recent posts, but every time I think about it I am increasing convinced that the explanation for the Great Divergence is basically "there's nothing to explain".

Ok, maybe that's a little unfair: there is something to explain. Western European states and the US saw a series of remarkable technological leaps during roughly the period from 1600 to 1900, which allowed them to achieve astonishing wealth and global political power. There is an explanandum here.

But what I mean when I say there's nothing to be explained is the following. We already have good reason to believe that technological growth is approximately exponential. Technology is self-compounding: the more of it you have, the more of it you can develop. And very many metrics that we would expect to correlate with technology, like agricultural yield and life expectancy, seem to grow exponentially. So I think the idea that technological growth is more-or-less exponential is well evidenced. When something grows exponentially, there is necessarily going to be a point of rapid take-off, a "foom". This is also something we see with technology, and life expectancy, and so on, particularly around the time of the industrial revolution.

This is fairly uncontroversial.

Another fact that I think is uncontroversial is that technological and scientific growth are subject to network effects, and subject to local material conditions. Societies that are generally wealthier may have more time and resources to spend on science, etc., and once you have a bunch of scientists working together in a specific place and sharing ideas, you get more rapid advancement. This seems true even in today's highly interconnected world, which is presumably related to why a small number of universities produce so much cutting edge research—they have the funding and the networks of top people. And I think there really is a sense in which you have many more opportunities for fruitful research and collaboration at e.g. an R1 university than an R2 university. The network effects still matter a lot. In the world before the twentieth century, when information traveled much slower, network effects would presumably have been much more important.

This is, again, a conclusion that I think is independently obvious and uncontroversial. If there was some sense in which it was not true, that would deeply surprise me.

But, look: the conclusion of these too facts taken together is basically that the observed course of history was (in a sense) inevitable. The second fact predicts that you'll get localized "scientific booms" through history, where a bunch of progress is being made in one area. We see this multiple times, with "golden ages" of science and philosophy in the Bronze Age Near East, in the Greco-Roman world, in ancient India, Tang China, the medieval Islamic world, and so on. Obviously I think in some sense "golden ages" are post hoc constructions by historians, but I think there's likely at least some reality behind them. So you have these localized scientific booms that slowly contribute to the exponential increase in global scientific knowledge. And it follows, if scientific growth is exponential, that there's going to be a foom. And it follows that whoever's having a boom when there's a foom is going to benefit a lot—in fact, exponentially more than anyone has before!

I am tempted to call this the "boom and foom theory" of the scientific and industrial revolution.

But it's not really a theory. It's a prediction of two existing theories about technological growth generally, taken together.

And it seems consistent with observation to simply say that Western Europe got lucky, to be having a boom when the foom happened. This is what I mean when I say "there's nothing to explain". I am not really sure we need anything extra to explain why this happened where it did geographically. I mean obviously you can dig in to the historical particulars, but ultimately... it was bound to happen somewhere.

Maybe there's something I'm missing here, or maybe I'm being excessively deterministic. But I think probably that any more particular theory of why the Great Divergence happened needs to justify itself against this one; it needs to explain why it adds anything to the picture that this does not already account for. But I don't know.

#society #the world #navel gazing

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racefortheironthrone · 11 months

Note

Please innumerate for us the specialized problems of the library sciences.

Let me start with the caveat that my information is based on my experiences at the National Archives more than a decade ago, and policy has definitely changed on this front as we can see from this graph of recent digitization - apparently NARA wants to get to 85% digitization by 2026. (Even still, I'd note that the records of the WPA are <0.001% digitized.)

However, back when I was doing the research that would eventually become my first book, I remember being at the National Archives II building in College Park, Maryland (Go Terps!) and getting really frustrated that all the records of the WPA were only available in their original physical form and that all the guides and indexes were also in paper only and were all from the 1970s, and I asked the archivist why the hell the National Archives hadn't been digitized already.

This is what they told me: if it's handled correctly and stored in the right environmental circumstances, paper can last a thousand years. Carbon copies can last even longer, if they don't rip. (Seriously, the bastard things are like onion skins, they'll split if you look at them funny.) Microfilm is slightly more technologically advanced than paper, but it only lasts 500 years in the right conditions.

We've only had computers en masse since the 1980s, and already there's a huge amount of records (especially from the early years) that we don't have any more, because the hard drives got re-formatted due to higher costs of storage space back in the day, or because old computers got thrown out when they were replaced by newer models and the hard drives are all rotting in landfills somewhere, or because backwards compatibility broke down and we just can't read those file types on our modern computers, or because the actual data got corrupted on the disc, or because some legacy company is asserting copyright against a video game museum, or because some political hack and/or president of the United States decided to violate the Presidential Records Act.

While we thought that the internet would cause an explosion of written records from ordinary people on the scale of the advent of mass literacy, there are vast swathes of the early internet that simply do not exist any more because the servers got switched off when Geocities et al. folded in the dot-com bubble burst or when everyone migrated to Web 2.0, and the Internet Archive tries its best (bless its heart, affectionately) but it can't be everywhere and save everything.

As a result, the archivist told me, digitization is a fraught question: what file format do we use? How do we know that file format will still be compatible and backwards-compatible in 50 years? 100? Longer? Do we keep everything locally or store it on the cloud, and how do we ensure that the storage mechanisms won't fail if there's a blackout or a virus or whatever? Do we digitize everything now, or do we wait until optical character recognition improves enough to the point where digitized records can be searched for words and phrases? Etc.

Keep in mind, I am a public policy historian who studies the 20th century U.S - I work primarily with the official records and the central archives of the richest government in the world. From a library sciences perspectives, this is kind of an ideal scenario, and it's still kind of fucked up. (Let me tell you, the rage and grief I felt when I learned that most of the General File of the Public Works Administration was thrown away by the National fucking Archives and Records Administration in the mid-1950s because they were running out of shelf space in the D.C location and didn't think these records were important...)

Now imagine what it's like at a local historical society or a small liberal arts college, or the national museum of a developing nation for that matter, who do not have the resources for the kind of grand digitization project that NARA started doing five years ago. Think of the sheer scale of historical records that sleep, unseen and untouched perhaps for decades and perhaps for ever, in little cubbyholes all across the world. Among professionals, historical records are measured in linear and cubic feet - think about that for a second, how many pages of paper there are in a foot when you stack them up, and how many hundreds and thousands and millions of feet there are across the face of the world. Think of all the millions of feet of pieces of paper that have been lost to us because of fire or rot or war or time itself.

This is why Peter Turchin is a quack. Historical records are not a standardized little database for social scientists to plug their fucking spreadsheets into; historians don't play that kind of bullshit t-ball, with all our data neatly packaged and handed to us on a silver platter. Our profession is not a social science, it's a goddamn treasure hunt through boxes that were never catalogued or categorized (or that were re-catalogued so many times no one remembers how they were put together in the first place) to find writing that no one has read since the authors died. All of us know that our work, our understanding, will always be partial and limited, because memory is infinitely fragile and the very idea of historical preservation is a mad existential defiance of entropy itself. These records are real, they are fragile - to hell with the Library of Alexandria, remember the National Museum of Brazil? - and they are all that is left to us of the dead.

#history #library sciences #archives #digitization #historiography

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detroit-grand-prix · 11 days

Text

letzte rose - bittere erinnrungen

Toto Wolff x Susie Wolff Royal/Historical AU

Chapter Summary: During breakfast, Toto's mother brings up the possibility of remarriage, and a list of potential brides. Toto refuses to look at it, but spends an afternoon reflecting on the state of his personal life.

Weekends meant that Toto’s rigorous schedule was relaxed, albeit only a bit.

He let himself sleep in a bit later, getting up at 5am instead of 3:30, and he had breakfast with his children and his mother instead of taking it alone in his study.

As he arrived for breakfast on Saturday — at 7:00am sharp — though, the only other person at the table was his mother.

— Where are the children? — he said, sitting down at the chair at the head of the table, as the attendant pulled it out for him.

— Benedict said that he would be on the piste for an early fencing lesson, so he is with his trainer. Rosi, I think, said she would be dining with your sister this morning — Johanna said, her voice a little vacant. Her eyes were glued to a copy of some newspaper, likely the Wiener Zeitung, but Toto couldn’t see the masthead. A prickle of annoyance traveled down the back of his neck. How many times had he been told off for trying to read at the dining table, even in recent years?

— Something interesting in the papers this morning? — he said, as an attendant placed a tea tray in front of him.

— What? — Johanna said, startled — No, I mean… just the…

— Maybe something in the society pages caught your eye?

Toto smirked as Johanna became visibly flustered, tossing aside the hastily-folded volume and turning attention to her plate.

— Never mind that, I wanted to talk to you about something important, and it’s just as well that Bene and Rosi aren’t here — Johanna said, making Toto look up from his cup of tea, furrowing his eyebrows.

— It has been a while since we talked about it, but I think you need to give remarriage some more consideration again — she ignored Toto as he opened his mouth to immediately protest, pressing on — it’s been years since Stephanie’s passing, and you need someone other than me to perform the Empress’ duties.

— Why not Rosi? — Toto asked cooly, recalling his conversation with Niki.

— Because Rosi needs to put serious consideration into her own marriage and future. Both of your children do! Don’t think I won’t be speaking to them later on about this, either — She speared a piece of tomato with her fork and Toto felt that she was somehow eating it at him.

— Mama, I’ve told you before, I am not interested in marrying again.

— You’ve no good reason to refuse, my son.

— I just can’t, mama. It feels wrong — Toto pushed his eggs around his plate with his fork.

— What do you mean? There’s no sin in it. Father Strossmayer and I have spoken about this, and he agrees with me, and the Bible even encourages…

Toto took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down before giving in to his urge to stand up and start yelling. The calm, quiet, even way his voice came out surprised him.

— I know what the church says, but I loved Stephanie. When I was younger, I thought marriage was simply my duty, but I ended up being blessed enough to fall in love with the woman I married, a privilege I thought I’d never be afforded. I’ve discharged that particular duty to the crown and laid my heart to rest with her. It doesn’t feel right for me to dig it up again and give someone the rotted remains. Besides, I will remind you that you never remarried after papa died.

Toto and Lili’s father, Sven, was the Duke of Norrbotten and a Prince of Sweden. He and Johanna got along quite well, and Toto remembered his father as a kind, gentle man, but not long after the birth of Toto’s sister, something changed.

He started experiencing frequent nosebleeds and headaches that would make it difficult for him to leave his bed. He would frequently become too dizzy to walk, almost as if he was drunk, but he was never much of a drinker. He started showing fits of delirium, agitation, and hallucinations.

The court doctor was called, and theorized that it might be some sort of neurological issue. The court chaplain came to say some prayers at his bedside — Johanna refused to call it an “exorcism” — but it was all for naught. He eventually refused all food and drink, and slept at all hours, until his body and spirit just seemed to give up.

An autopsy was performed after Sven’s death, and it was found that his brain was riddled with tumors, which explained all of the horrid symptoms he had been experiencing.

It was not a time that Toto really cared to remember.

Johanna’s expression turned sour, and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair once more.

— No, I did not, because I had two children to take care of. Not to mention, it is far easier for a widowed man to find a spouse than a widowed woman, especially one that already has the future secured. Your grandfather agreed that it was best for me to remain single, as there was no material benefit to any potential suitors.

— And what benefit would there be to me remarrying now?

— Well, for one thing, it would afford you the opportunity to have another son, to insure that you have a successor — Johanna saw Toto open his mouth to argue, but ignored it and continued on — While you’ve done well to secure your line of succession, it would present an opportunity to ensure there’s a spare, in case something happens to Benedict. It is not as if I wish for it, but, we do not know God’s will for any of us. For another thing, there needs to be someone to manage the royal household and the social duties that you have been neglecting for the past few years, to your own detriment. Now, I’ve got a list of names of ladies that would be perfectly suitable…

Johanna slipped her hand into the small reticule she always carried, extracting a slip of paper from within.

— There’s Princess Francisca of Brazil… I believe she just turned twenty-four, I’ve heard she’s rather striking. And then there’s Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon Two-Sicilies, you’ve met her, I believe. She was born here in Vienna, and she’s the daughter of my cousin Clementina… and then Luisa Fernanda of Spain… she’s young, but that would be a handsome match; she’s the heir presumptive until Isabella has a child, you know. And that’s just the Catholic houses! It’s not ideal, but an especially good match from a Protestant family may be willing to convert…

Johanna had stopped looking at Toto, her eyes locked on the list of names in her hand. No doubt she was already planning the next great state wedding, and Toto could feel the anger rising within him as his mother continued to talk. It felt like a hot bile creeping up his throat, twisting his insides, making him clench his fists until he could feel his fingernails digging into the meat of his palms.

— That’s enough! — he said, pounding his fist on the tabletop. The flatware and cutlery clattered. One of the attendants in the room yelped slightly in surprise, immediately covering her mouth and blushing. Johanna stopped, mid-sentence, gaping at her son in shock. — I tell you this every time you bring it up, mother, but I do not wish to be remarried. If you must spend all of your spare time worrying about the security of my line of succession, I implore you to focus these efforts on your grandchildren instead. I am telling you, as a grown man and the emperor of this nation, that we shall not speak about remarriage again, and that is final.

Johanna’s eyes had narrowed, and her expression hardened.

— And I am your mother — she hissed, venom dripping from her every syllable — I am simply doing what is best for you, for this nation, and for your happiness.

— My happiness?! — Toto said, raising his voice almost to a shout — Mama, we both know you have never given a damn about my happiness!

He was now on his feet, his chair pushed back and his breakfast long-abandoned and likely ice-cold. The dishes continued to rattle on the tabletop as he jabbed his finger into the cloth-covered wood.

— You didn’t give a single thought to my happiness when you arranged my marriage to Stephanie, and it was only by the grace of God that we came to love each other. Of course, our marriage was happy before she passed, but as you’ve told me yourself, my happiness was secondary to ensuring the future of our family’s dynasty.

Toto stepped away from the table, breezing past the pair of servants that were frozen in shock. He pulled on the handle to the door into the dining room a bit harder than necessary, stopping halfway over the threshold to turn around and face his mother once more.

— If you truly have any concern for my happiness, you will not bring this up again!

Toto retreated into his study, pacing around the small room as he tried to calm himself down.

He hadn’t lost his temper that badly in years, that he could remember, possibly decades. When he was younger, in the earlier days of his reign, he had been quicker to anger. He was desperate to prove himself and his authority in the days right after his grandfather died, not trusting that anybody saw him as anything more than a child pretending to be a ruler and a statesman. Him being short, sometimes even brutal, with his advisors was the norm, but a combination of time and the perspective that came with wisdom and experience mellowed him greatly, as did his desire to be a good husband and father.

Normally after Saturday’s breakfast, he would review any paperwork or important matters that had come across overnight until the early afternoon. He did not work on Sundays, wishing to keep the Sabbath as a holy day of rest. Most of the royal household had the day off as well.

— I will never be able to focus like this — he mumbled to himself as he sat down at his desk. He buried his face in his hands, pressing his palms into his eyes until he could see stars, as if it would push the memory of the last hour out of his head by force.

He blinked as he lifted his head, trying to clear the blurriness from his vision, and the portrait of Stephanie resolved into focus from its place on the wall.

He knew exactly what would help.

Toto smirked, and opened the topmost drawer in his desk — the one right under the top, and fished out a ring of small brass keys. Then, he opened one of the lower drawers, extracting a small wooden box from within.

He set the box on his desk, running a finger over the inlaid brass lettering on the top, the word “MIZPAH” in large capital letters. It had been a while since he had seen it, and there was a thin coating of dust on its glossy lacquered surface. The box was unassuming by the standards of everything else in the palace, belying the value of its contents to Toto. True, what was inside the box did not have much — if any — monetary value, but was priceless in Toto’s eyes.

He put the key in the lock and sprang the latches, revealing a thick stack of papers — letters, envelopes, postcards. It was all of the letters he and Stephanie had exchanged through the years, the earliest ones having been written before they had even met, after their marriage arrangement had been finalized and before she arrived in Vienna. There were letters and postcards from the separate travels they had taken through the years. Toto often had to travel for functions of state, and Stephanie had always enjoyed seeing new places, even as a child. They had taken many trips together, but Toto was not always able to join her because of the demands of his schedule, so they resolved to write to each other often when they had to be apart.

Engraved on the underside of the lid was a Bible verse, the one referenced by the word on the lid’s inlay. A verse of Genesis, telling of the covenant made between Jacob and Laban, he remembered. It was written in the Latin vulgate — intueatur Dominus et iudicet inter nos quando recesserimus a nobis.

“The Lord watch between me and thee, while we are absent, one from another.”

The priest that performed Stephanie’s funeral rites had referenced the verse in his sermon, inspiring Toto to have one of the court’s artisans, a particularly talented furniture maker, make the box to contain the letters for safekeeping. He had meticulously paired each and every one together, the letters he sent and the ones she sent in response, and vice versa.

He felt his anger with his mother dissipating as he thumbed through the letters, admiring Stephanie’s elegant looping handwriting. Some of the pages had little mementos stuck to the pages — flowers she had pressed, little doodles she had made in the margins and footers. He skimmed through the contents, remembering trips she had taken with the children; home to Bavaria to visit her family once, trips to the seaside in France, to Paris via the Rhine, even to London.

Letting all of the memories flood back in left Toto feeling almost relaxed, until he came upon the last letter in the pile.

“How had I forgotten about this?”, he wondered, turning the pages over in his fingers.

For the last two years of her life, Stephanie had not been well. It started with her experiencing night sweats and fatigue. Before long, she was unable to keep weight on, no matter how much she ate. The doctors at court diagnosed her with consumption, but were optimistic about her recovery. It was recommended she leave Vienna and spend some time at the seaside, that the sea air would help.

The children went with her as she departed to a castle the family owned — Castelo di Miramare — just outside of Trieste, on the shore of the Adriatic Sea. The three of them spent many months there, and it seemed for a while that Stephanie was on the road to recovery. She planned to be in Trieste until the summer, when the family would reunite in Bad Ischl, at the summer villa.

Toto wrote letters every few days to her, and was reading one he had sent her while she was in Trieste. In it, he was telling her about a dilemma he was facing with the State Council. He had constantly been butting heads with Chancellor Metternich, even then, but the question had come up about one of Metternich’s staunchest allies, Count Karl Clam-Martinic. He was pushing for reforms that would make the government more conservative, practically relegating Toto’s role to merely a symbolic one, and would promote Chancellor Metternich to something akin to an autocrat, like the Shogunate of Japan allowing the emperor to remain in a ceremonial role with almost no power.

Niki, and another councilor, Count Franz Anton von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky, were pushing Toto to replace him with someone more moderate, but Toto thought removing him would destabilize the government, resolving to find other ways to keep him in check. His letter described the dilemma to his wife, hoping for some of her insight. Stephanie was very intelligent, and had an uncanny ability to see things objectively. Niki joked that she was the unofficial fifth member of the State Council.

She had written back within days, encouraging him to go forward with Count Karl’s dismissal.

“I know this is a difficult decision, my darling,” she wrote. Toto’s eyes hovered over the last line of the letter. “But, fortunately, spring is coming soon no matter how difficult the winter has been, and, like the flowers, you will need to bloom”.

Toto felt a tear streaming down his cheek as he reached the end of the letter. He did not know it when he had received it, but it would be the last one she had written. Her condition rapidly deteriorated for a week after months of steady improvement, until she passed away from pleurisy that February.

He sniffed, wiping the tears away that were forming in the corner of his eyes. He glanced up at the portrait once more.

“I suppose I still have a way to go before I bloom, meine geliebte”.

He sat in silence for a few moments before he neatly tucked away the letters, placing the box back in its compartment.

As he was doing so, a knock came from the door to his bedroom, and Phillip, his Kammerdiener, stuck his head through.

— I have your riding clothes ready for you, Your Imperial Majesty, if you were planning to go to the Stallburg today after lunch.

“How is it noon already?” Toto thought. After working for a few hours on Saturdays after breakfast, he would have a light lunch and go to the imperial stables for a few hours to ride.

While the indoor sand arena — the Stallburg — that Toto’s great-great-great-grandfather had built was more than adequate in size to get a decent ride in, he wished, more than anything, that he could go for a hack around the countryside, or even through the city, like he could when he was younger, before he himself was saddled with the burden of his duties. He liked to race the horses against his friends, and had started taking riding lessons at an early age. When he was young, he had aspired to attend the Spanish Riding School, but his accession at age 15 left no time for regular training.

Despite being confined to the arena most of the year — with the exception of the summer holidays — Toto looked forward to his time at the stables all week, because he felt like it was the only time where the mantle of his office didn’t sit so heavily on his shoulders, and around the arena always did a great deal to lift his spirits. The students of the riding school finished before lunch on Saturdays, and he made sure that nobody else could come in to ride in the afternoons. Even if he didn’t have time to ride very long before having to dash off to another appointment, he fit in time in the saddle where he could.

While the grooms at the stable took excellent care of the animals in their charge, and other people in his family had their horses prepared and waiting when they came riding, Toto always insisted on doing the preparation work himself; brushing down the horse, picking its hooves, and putting on tack. He even preferred to groom the horse after his ride, talking sweetly to it all the while, and feeding it peppermints from the pockets of his riding coat — probably more than the stablemaster would prefer.

His favorite was a stallion named Conversano Comtessa, but went by Campione. Campione was nearing twenty years old; very nearly an old man, and had always been especially sweet and gentle, especially with Toto’s children when they were young.

He was of exceptional beauty, too. All of the horses in the Stallburg were white-haired Lippizans, but Campione’s hair looked like spun silver, especially in his mane and tail. He was extraordinarily well-muscled, and Toto had heard that he had been a favorite of each student of the Spanish Riding School that had been assigned to him since he started under saddle. He was not used regularly for lessons now, as he was getting on in years, but the trainers still exercised him.

— Good afternoon, Campione — he said, as he reached the stall of his prized stallion. The horse perked its ears up, bringing his head over the door of the stall. Toto reached out and patted his velvety nose. The horse pushed his nose past Toto’s hand, sniffing at his pockets.

— Yes, I know, we have an agreement — Toto said, chuckling. He pulled out one of the candies from his pocket, which Campione snatched near immediately before backing up a bit, allowing Toto to open the door to the stall to enter. It was a routine by now. As he brushed and tacked up the horse, his mind was elsewhere, thinking about the conversation with his mother and reading his wife’s letters.

It had been eleven years since he was widowed, and that morning was not the first time that his mother had brought up remarriage, but he had never considered it on his own, and bristled whenever someone else brought it up.

“But why…?” he wondered, guiding Campione smoothly around the arena in a walk. He was letting the animal warm up, keeping the reins long and loose.

It certainly wouldn’t be out of the norm to remarry as a widower, and as his mother said, it was encouraged by the church. But whenever the thought crossed his mind, he swiftly dismissed it, telling himself that he needed more time.

Before he had even realized it, more time had turned into eleven years.

He and Stephanie had always talked about the things they would do together when they had grown old. He never aspired to stay on the throne until his death; it was not something he discussed with anyone but Stephanie, but he had planned on abdicating when Benedict had been sufficiently prepared for the job of running the empire. He and his wife had plans to renovate Ambras Castle in Innsbruck to use as a winter home, and they would spend their summers in Trieste. They would travel around Europe, of course, and they both wanted to see the United States.

But then, once she passed, Toto stopped making plans. He felt like a tree that dropped its leaves for the winter. Still standing, somehow, but dormant, maybe even dead from afar. He sank himself into his work, living by his routine and barely registering his own existence outside of it. He tried putting on a brave face for his children, but even they seemed to notice, asking occasionally if he was okay.

Toto pulled the reins a bit, directing Campione into a trot, making sure that his topline was long enough and low enough for the more strenuous exercises.

He let his thoughts skirt the idea he had long forbidden himself from thinking about — would it be the worst thing in the world to have some companionship again? It was not as if anyone would replace Stephanie in his memories or his heart, but he did miss having someone around who knew him as more than The Emperor, someone to share little jokes and knowing looks, someone to share his deepest worries, to share meals, someone to join him for ballets and concerts, on walks around the garden, on summers in Bad Ischl…

“Sure, take a new wife, fall in love again. But what if she leaves you in the same way? What if you die before her? Everybody dies sometime, after all”, asked a cruel voice in the back of his mind.

Suddenly, Campione stopped sharply, jerking Toto forward. He managed to keep himself in the saddle, but only just. He briefly wondered what could have spooked a normally superbly disciplined horse, but he was simply standing at rest in the arena, flicking his ears about as if he was waiting for the next command. Toto realized that the error was his — he had tightened the reins too much without even realizing it, giving the horse the signal to stop. He hadn’t meant to. It was a product of being startled by his own revelation.

— Sorry, boy — he said, sheepishly patting the beast’s neck. Campione snorted and pawed at the dirt a bit with his forelegs, before responding to Toto’s command to continue in a canter.

His fears were now plain as day; he never cared to live through the weeks following Stephanie’s death again, but…

The way he was now could hardly be called “living”. He was dormant, like the trees in winter. He was standing, sure, but from far away, he may as well be rotting upright.

The situation was different, but Stephanie’s advice in her letter was right — he needed to bloom.

He felt a strange calm as he finished up his ride, and felt a sense of clarity that he hadn’t had for a while. It carried him the rest of the way through the evening.

The next morning, as he kneeled and prayed before Sunday Mass with his family in — the Hofkapelle — the court chapel, the prayer he said was not the usual ones he did by rote each week. It was an earnest plea, less so to God or Christ or the Blessed Virgin, but to Stephanie.

“You will always be my first love, but it has been a very hard winter without you, meine geliebte, and I cannot join you yet. I’ve denied myself the comfort of another while I still live in this world, but I cannot continue in this loneliness. You told me I need to bloom, so please, send me a sign that it is time and continue to keep me in your prayers as you are always in mine”.

The next morning, while Toto was doing his morning work, there was a knock on the door of his study once again.

— Come in — he said, not looking up from the military dispatches he was in the middle of reading.

The door opened to reveal Phillip, holding a singular white rose.

— Sorry to interrupt, Your Imperial Majesty, but the head gardener thought you might like to have this — Phillip crossed the room and extended the flower to Toto.

Toto took the rose, glancing at it in his hand. It certainly wasn’t an ideal specimen. Its stem and leaves looked a bit ragged — damaged by frost, no doubt — but the petals looked like they were in decent shape, somehow, showing only the slightest discoloration around the edges.

— The garden staff was working on getting the rose bushes covered, but it seems that one of the blooms wasn’t pruned with the rest of them a few weeks ago, or just decided to come late. The last one, in any case — Phillip said — The gardener gave it to me to give to you, he said that the white ones were the Empress’ favorites.

Toto had stopped paying attention to what Phillip was saying, and was staring aghast at the flower. Stephanie did love white roses, often saying that they were the most beautiful ones of all, even if the petals lacked in color.

“They also signify purity and new love, you know,” he remembered her telling him once, after she had snipped a particularly large bloom from the palace garden. “I know you weren’t there for it, but my wedding dress had little white roses embroidered into it”.

He stared at the bloom for a moment aghast, before regaining his focus.

— Thank you, Phillip. Tell the gardener I appreciate it very much.

— I will, your Imperial Majesty — he bowed deeply and retreated, closing the door behind him, and Toto fixed his gaze on his wife’s portrait.

— I suppose this is your answer, meine geliebte. Thank you.

#f1 fanfic #f1 au #f1 historicial au #f1 royalty au #series: lezte rose #toto wolff fanfic #toto wolff x susie wolff #f1 rpf #f1 rpf fic

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orsialos · 1 year

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Hello, I just saw you're post about working with Ares, and I'm curious. Especially about what you said with him being a comfort to you as you work through your trauma since I've been working through mine. I've been thinking about working with him for a while, and I'd be happy to hear anything you have to share about him.

I think its a shame that he's so pigeon holed. I've seen a lot of people who worship and work with him say he's a paternal and comforting figure. Someone who encourages you to keep going through the worst of it. That'd someone I could really use right now.

Dia duit! My apologies for the delay, i constantly forget to check my asks inbox 🤦‍♀️

You are very correct that the modern interpretation of Ares is very limited and pigeon holes him as an angry, terrifying, almost evil presence. While some of this can be attributed to Athenian bias against Sparta, part of it is also due to the lack of knowledge about his various cults outside of Sparta.

Before I go too far I'mma drop this recently answered ask here about researching Ares, as it has good info about a few things I'll mention below. Ok, so getting into it. Let's talk about a bit of historical background because duh, I love history, and then my personal experiences.

Ares as a Protector - Historical Context

Here, we journey east into the rising Sun to the ancient lands of Anatolia, now modern-day Turkey. Many of the Greek gods worshipped here were syncretized with pre-existing deities as the Greek world expanded. Many of these deity names have been lost to time, but we do have evidence of a pastoral protective male deity that was likely syncretized with Ares. From what I have read, we have the most evidence for this new/syncretized cult of Ares from the Lycian and Pamphylian regions of southwestern Anatolia.

The ask I linked above contains an excellent free paper on an oracular cult of Ares in this region. We have documented inscriptions that this oracle called for a protective "binding" of a figure of Ares for the citizens to protect their shores from raiding pirates. Figures of Ares or figures symbolic of Ares were often found in areas around the city, another demonstration of his dual nature as both pastoral protector and invader.

Coinage is a very useful tool in archaeology for learning more about the important cultural figures in a given society. Time and time again we find detailed coins with an image of Ares, usually with a helmet. While we cannot use this to determine how Ares was worshipped, we can surmise Ares was a large part of daily life in western Anatolia.

This is in stark contrast to mainland Greece, where images of Ares outside of pottery and sculptures are quite rare; Ares was often seen as the literal personification of war itself, the din and fury and bloodlust that comes out during war is all because of Ares. Here, Ares was almost feared out of respect for his chaotic nature and ability to turn the tide in war rather than admired and worshipped for his protective nature.

Ares as a Protector - Personal Experience

Well this is the fun, UPG part! Everything you've heard about Ares - his protective nature, his warmth & tenderness, his encouragement in the face of darkness are all so true it nearly makes me cry! My experience with Ares has been about 70% him being fatherly and tender when i was in therapy to finally talk about my SA trauma and 30% helping me learn to deal with my anger towards life in general (for this I look to wisdom from the mythologies surrounding Ares, especially the death of Adonis).

I'd say currently Ares is more of a "hey, I'm here if you need me" presence in my life, always at the edges and sometimes coming to say hello unprompted, just as a loving father would do. While my worship of Ares has only gotten stronger and more involved over the year-ish I've had him in my life, his daily presence is much more subdued. And i think a lot of that is because I don't need him in my life as much, which is honestly a good thing!

Ares came to me at a time in my life where I was caught up in unresolved trauma from an incident years prior and experienced something that broke the floodgates holding everything back. He was there nearly every second of every day - a warmth at my shoulder, an echo in my mind. At night when i was lying awake trying not to let my mind spiral, i quite honestly felt a warmth by my side as if someone was sitting next to me tracing their fingers along my back to calm me down. What I find a bit unnerving as far as UPG goes is that is what a lot of other people have said their experiences are like with Ares.

It seems to me, from my experiences and what I've heard from others, is that Ares is wonderful at providing solid ground and a strong arm to hold on to when it feels like you are in free fall. He is not pushy or demanding and delights with any time we spend with him. Of course this is not to say his war-like aspect and place on the battlefield does not exist! But rather, as literally any other Greek god I can think of, he is a god of duality and while war and protection may seem at odds, they are truly two sides of the same coin.

Can you tell I love Ares just a little bit?

#asked and answered #ares #ares deity #ares worship #helpol #hellenism #hellenic worship #hellenic polytheism #hellenic devotion #hellenic deities #hellenic reconstructionism #hellenic polythiest #ares obsession is literally in hyperdrive rn #again lol thank you #ares devotion

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