#anti-sj backlash

[repriseofthereprise]

Our bodies are the flags

By Elana Dykewomon

From Sinster Wisdom 49, Spring/Summer 1993

In this issue there are three “notes from the editor” – mine, Jamie’s and Sauda’s. At the end of two of our editorial meetings Jamie, Sauda, SJ, Laura, Cath, Julia, Karyn and I talked about the ways we experience and perceive our own bodies (literally and metaphorically), and the anti-lesbian/lesbian-feminist backlash. We found the idea of a lesbian body to be a kind of labyrinth — a series of chambers in which it is difficult to find our way, though we can hear her heartbeat through the walls. That several of us wanted to follow that heartbeat in separate directions seemed useful — our different perspectives give some clues to the complexity of “the lesbian body.” While all our notes are editorial comment, they are meant not as group consensus but as our own voices.

For me, this started as such a clear idea: to reclaim lesbian identity. We, lesbians, will get to say who we are and who we are not. Politically, sexually, emotionally, within our communities. We will have space to discuss owning ourselves.

I’ve been wanting to do this issue for a year or two, in part to explore how we understand “lesbianism” in the present, in part to respond to attacks on lesbian identity. I believe the ideas that lesbians can sleep with men, that faggots can call themselves dykes and dykes can avail themselves of male privileges by calling themselves faggots, that men can be women and women who pass do it because they’re simply “playing with gender” — are meant to divide and destroy us, to drive us literally out of our own minds.

But I feel already driven out. Or more like I’m driving a car with no brakes down a side road in the mountains and it keeps picking up speed. I don’t know how to contain myself and make a nice, neat, clear argument. I have to finish ten books first, reread everything that came out in the last twenty years, find out exactly what deconstruction and essentialism mean. How am I going to do that, edit the magazine, go to work and have a life?

But I’ve got to try. I understand lesbians’ claim to own ourselves (well, it’s a stance more than a reality) as heroic.1 Our minds, our bodies, our labor, our sex, our heritages are constant staging grounds for war. Vastly out-powered on every front, we manage to survive and, for moments, thrive.

Owning ourselves is, after all, no small feat. That lesbians are different from “women”2 means something. Consider, for a minute, women’s bodies: women have been owned for centuries. This isn’t just some old-fashioned out-of-date political conceit — it’s why the abortion rights fight is so ugly, why fundamentalism is surging across the globe. The appropriation of female labor — including reproductive labor — is the cornerstone of social organization in the world we know. The resurgence of “family values” is the brother-movement to the ethnic “cleansing” movements we’re seeing worldwide. These movements are a strategic reestablishment of hierarchical male power that positions individual men to rule and fight for rulership and resources. But in order for men to do this, women have to be kept in line.

Men create ideas about what woman are in order to control them. These ideas vary from culture to culture, but their use is the same: to isolate females, to control their reproductive functions, to use their physical labor to support and enrich males, to keep females out of public spheres as much as possible — certainly out of positions of power. Those who think “real progress” is being made might consider that in the United States, a 6% woman membership in the Senate is hailed as “revolutionary.”

The “ideas” about women — sometimes called the “construction of women as a class”3 — work so well because they’re so individualized, and because women are so isolated from each other. A good woman is a jewel; a bad woman courts disaster. A woman has the power to be “good” or “bad” — her rewards in life will reflect her choice. Which is, interestingly enough, a choice about how she uses her body. But both choices, “good” and “bad,” belong to men, because men make these images and police their enforcement (often conscripting women to police for them).

Other lesbians of course have written papers and books on the way these things work — I think of Marilyn Frye and Monique Wittig in particular. But the point is: a lesbian is in opposition to a “woman” by her very being4. Of course we have to work on men’s terms to make a living, but even so we mostly rent our bodies out. A lesbian body is, theoretically, a body that no man owns.

Which may be why so many folks are out to “bend” the definition of a lesbian out of recognition. If the word lesbian loses its power and meaning, but the distribution of wealth, resources and opportunity remains overall the same, who benefits? In the midst of the San Francisco Bay Times’ current “gender debates,” Caryatis Cardea wrote: “If a woman who sleeps with both females and males is a lesbian; and, if a man who submits to surgical procedure to bring his body in line with his acceptance of sex role stereotypes, is a lesbian; and if a straight woman whose spiritual bond is with other females is a lesbian, then what is a female-born-female who loves only other females? Soon there will be no logical answer to that question.”5

Every gay paper is filled with these “gender debates.” It’s the ’90s — you are me and she is he and we are all together (okay, so the Beatles did it 20 years ago, that only means they were ahead of their time, not that we’re just following an old groove, right?). Transsexual men6 and their friends call lesbians hate-mongers, fascists and “essentialists” for not opening every lesbian and women’s organization to them. It’s in vogue for everyone to be a bi-sexual (the “natural” human state, which, oddly enough, makes lesbianism “unnatural” all over again).

Of course there’s a pivotal point in these arguments: what are women and men? If a woman is the sum of her clothing and mannerisms, then a man can become one, and the line so often read in lesbian personals, “must look like a woman” would make sense. This is a very confusing and tricky set of logical propositions.

Here’s the problem: if I claim that there is no such thing as “a woman” or as “the feminine” then I am claiming that a male or female’s attempt to be a “feminine woman” is an exercise in illusion (at best).

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you believe there is a “feminine principle” — some cosmic archetypal yin-thing that transcends culture, because it’s found everywhere.7 But if the “feminine” and “masculine” exist, that is, have an actual beingness in the universe independent of human beings — well that would suppose some grander design than I’m willing to admit. I have to go back and base my knowledge on what I can perceive.8

But in saying there is no “feminine” beyond culture, attitude, psychologically manufactured “psyche,” I don’t deny what’s in front of me: there are females and males. So what is female must be the actual body. Then I end up saying: a female is a female born in a female body, who has had to deal in some way with her reproductive cycle and the appropriation of her body by males. If I understand this right, this makes me an essentialist (actually I think it makes me a “materialist” in the old political language) because I appear to be claiming biology is destiny.

I sigh, then, and say, ok, biology is destiny because men have done this to us. Haven’t you gone to K-mart lately? Who do you think makes girls’ and boys’ toys all pink and blue? Being female is like being a Jew, or short — it’s a fact — but what it “means” is determined by culture, history, institutionalized power. No matter how clearly (or not) I perceive those things, I have few choices but to play my part or denounce it. Biology becomes destiny seems more like it.

Many of us, who perceive men as destroying the world, are reluctant to give up the old dichotomies: men war, women nurture. We can argue forever (and seem to be) about whether it’s being born with a womb or being socially constructed that makes us “women” without being able to come to a final answer. But the more we understand attributes (self-reliance, adventurousness, curiosity, domesticity) as options instead of innate qualities, the more choices we have as individuals. Lesbians tend to choose from the full range of available attributes (and occasionally invent some of our own). That doesn’t mean we don’t know where we live — all of us must choose, at some point, whether or not to cast our lots with the “women.” Individual choice alone does nothing to change power structures. Men can (and do) call themselves sensitive and understanding in order to maintain their power in new social climates10 (Chevron cares).

Queer Nation has picked up the idea that women and men are “created” and given it a popular spin: get behind the fluidity of identity, don’t be a rigid role-monger, don’t cling to your label like a reactionary to a life-boat, be flexible. It’s an attractive idea. So attractive that you’d think somebody would have thought of it before the late ’80s….

As many womyn, particularly womyn of color11, have noted, the more you have power, the more you don’t use “labels” to define yourself (you don’t see a lot of Rockefellers in the midst of these debates). It’s the use of the “label” that states: I have to assert my own identity. All of us who have to consciously name ourselves have, at some point, been uncomfortable with this (if for no other reason than that someone we don’t like can claim the same label).

But you can’t change power structures by simply proclaiming these “roles” (gender, class, race) culturally constructed, and therefore bourgeois baggage. Sure, roles are absurd — and they exist for reasons. “Deconstructing” them without challenging the power of those who make them necessary doesn’t accomplish anything — it’s only playing dress-up with fancy words.

This idea — everything is fluid, we can change the world by blowing straight people’s minds, we can overcome our origins — is nothing new. European and American cultures have a long “bohemian” tradition, and gender-bending has, in fact, been around since at least Shakespearean times. It’s a parlor game the privileged play, and they let some of us “others” in so the game doesn’t seem rigged. It doesn’t go to the root. And along the way it accomplishes the power structure’s dirty work: it makes it look like we can “transcend” who we are and all become “human.” Race and class become things we can shed — and should try to. Womyn-only space is invaded and neutralized.

Which is why it seems to me so important for us to do the work of claiming ourselves. Our own bodies, our pride in them. As often as we have to.

our bodies are the flags that advance our causes age race culture size ability lesbian womyn lesbian creased into the cloth a permanent seam flapping in the evening chemical breeze

SJ remembers: I was a child and saw survivors’ numbers tattooed on their arms my aunt said: cover it up shame cover it up safety cover it up do you want them to see?

Sauda says the darker we are the more we represent the unknown the thing which others are afraid of and are embarrassed to see us carry along with our daily lives

and Karyn says, they don’t just mean: oh you’re still here, Indian they mean: aren’t you dead yet?

and Cath says if I let myself feel or hear the names they call me on the street I’d never leave my house

the brand has always been on the flesh so obvious we have to turn our eyes away while we distract ourselves get through the week our bodies bear witness

1 While I have had the good fortune to always perceive womyn as “heroic,” I refer here to Marilyn Murphy’s essay “The Lesbian as Hero” (in Are You Girls Traveling Alone? Los Angeles: Clothespin Fever Press, 1991), a wonderful encouragement to take our ordinary bravery seriously.

2 Definition appears to be 9/10ths of the problem. For the purpose of this article, I use the word “female” to mean someone born with a vagina and a womb, and “woman” to mean all cultural/economic images created as trappings for that female. The same for males/men, although it’s males who create the images of men to, literally, suit themselves.

3 Monique Wittig was the first lesbian I know to use this phrase.

4 I doubt the majority of lesbians would agree with me, still I think this is so. It’s what makes being a lesbian scary. It’s why heterosexuals wish us to be invisible and why so many of us go to such great lengths to convince them we’re “just like them.”

5 San Francisco Bay Times, Vol. 14, No. 5, Dec. 3 1992.

6 Because I refuse to consider them females or lesbians doesn’t imply I have no compassion for them (although heaven forbid a lesbian shouldn’t have compassion for everyone) — I just would appreciate their claiming their own identity rather then appropriating lesbians’.

7 I can’t help but stay in the argument: just because you see it everywhere doesn’t mean it exists everywhere, does it? Pink tinted glass does not a pink world make. And, if you claim that constants are found in the psyche instead of the body, doesn’t that also make you an “essentialist”?

8 I realize this is shorthand for a thousand years of philosophy into what constitutes being, but I’ve only got six pages here.

9 I know I said lesbians are in opposition to “women” by our very being. By “casting our lots” I mean we have to choose, politically, whose side we’re on.

10 While we like to think that these “new climates” are the result of liberation movements, I tend to think they are more the result of capitalism’s having to soft-pedal its message in order to expand the market base.

11 I am thinking particularly of the work of Gloria Anzaldúa.

#resistance strategy and struggle

[thekotaroo]

Profiles of Pride: June 15th! 🏳️‍🌈Zooey Zephyr🏳️‍🌈

Zooey Zephyr (born August 29, 1988) is an American politician and university administrator who represents Missoula in the 100th district in the Montana House of Representatives. A member of the Democratic Party, she was elected in the 2022 election, making her the first openly transgender person to be elected to the state legislature in Montana. She was sworn in as a representative on January 2, 2023.

Zephyr became involved in activism in 2020. She testified before the Montana legislature in defense of LGBT+ rights and met with Republican Governor Greg Gianforte, but felt her words were not heard. Having watched bills limiting the rights of transgender people pass with one-vote margins, such as legislation making it difficult for transgender people to update birth certificates, she felt she needed to "get into the room where the laws are being written". On March 1, 2021, Zephyr decided to run for state representative in the 2022 mid-term elections.

House District 100 (Missoula) has been described as "one of the bluest" (i.e., most Democratic) districts in Montana. The seat was previously held by Andrea Olsen, who left the seat to run for state senator. Zephyr defeated Dave Severson in the Democratic primary on June 7, 2022. Upon defeating Republican opponent Sean Patrick McCoy that November, Zephyr became the first trans woman to be elected to the Montana legislature alongside SJ Howell, the first non-binary person to be elected. Zephyr assumed office in January 2023. On April 28, 2023, Zephyr announced she would seek re-election in 2024.

Zephyr was a vocal opponent of the multiple anti-LGBT+ bills introduced during the 2023 legislative session. During a floor debate on April 18, 2023, Zephyr admonished those who supported Senate Bill 99, which prohibits gender-affirming medical and surgical care for transgender minors. She first commented, "If you are forcing a trans child to go through puberty when they are trans, that is tantamount to torture, and this body should be ashamed." When this remark triggered an objection from Republican majority leader Sue Vinton, Zephyr replied, "The only thing I will say is if you vote 'yes' on this bill and 'yes' on these amendments, I hope the next time there's an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands." This prompted backlash from House Republicans. The Montana Freedom Caucus issued a statement misgendering Zephyr and calling for her censure. Zephyr stood by her words, and House Minority Leader Kim Abbott defended her, describing the statement as "blatantly disrespectful and the farthest thing imaginable from the 'commitment to civil discourse' that these letter writers demand". Thereafter, Speaker Matt Regier refused to let Zephyr speak on any bills despite no censure having taken place.

On April 24, about 100 people gathered at a rally in support of Zephyr, prompting heavy police presence. That afternoon, Zephyr was again denied speaking privileges, prompting every present Democratic lawmaker to stand in protest. All but two Republican members of the chamber's supermajority voted to uphold Regier's ruling. Protesters in the House Gallery then began chanting, "let her speak," resulting in a half-hour delay in proceedings as riot police were brought in to clear the gallery. Most Democratic legislators remained in the House chambers, mostly in the wings, but Republican lawmakers evacuated the room. Zephyr remained at her desk on the floor, silently holding aloft a microphone. Seven people were arrested, and after booking were released without needing to post bail. Afterwards, members of the conservative Montana Freedom Caucus, in a written letter that also misgendered Zephyr, accused her of "standing in the middle of the floor encouraging an insurrection."

On April 26, a hearing was held to vote on a proposal to sanction Zephyr's actions during the protest on April 24. After a speech by Zephyr and a brief debate limited to three speakers on each side, the House voted 68–32 along party lines to bar Zephyr from the House floor, gallery, and antechamber until the adjournment of the 2023 session the first week of May. She was permitted to vote remotely for the remainder of the session.

On April 27, Zephyr set up her laptop and assorted paperwork on a bench outside the House Chambers in a hall open to the public. Behind the bench, she placed a sticky note saying "Desk 31"—her designated seat on the house floor. When Regier asked her to leave, House Democrats pointed out that she was in a public area. He responded that he was afraid she was blocking the hallway, but claiming to be reassured that she was not blocking traffic, agreed that she could remain. Additionally, following her expulsion, Republican leadership cancelled all remaining hearings of the committees on which she served. To handle the bills still pending, they used their supermajority to "blast" several bills directly to the floor, and reassigned other bills to different committees. On May 1, the bench from which she had been working was occupied by a group of women, including Regier's mother, and the wife of senator Steve Hinebauch, in order to prevent Zephyr from sitting. A photo of the women apparently laughing and leering drew comparisons to civil rights era photos of white student Hazel Massery shouting at African-American student Elizabeth Eckford during the Little Rock Crisis. On subsequent days, a group of Zephyr’s supporters, primarily a group of tech workers able to work remotely dubbed “The Blue Bench Brigade,” came in and occupied the bench to save Zephyr’s spot. Immediately upon adjournment sine die on May 2, Zephyr walked onto the House floor to meet her colleagues.

On May 5, it was noted that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) intended to defend the protesters who were arrested at the Capitol on April 24.

#Zooey Zephyr #Pride #Pride Month #Trans Pride #Trans Rights #Trans Rights Are Human Rights #LGBTQIA+ #June Pride #June 15th #Pride 2023

[forevrdreamingofbetterthings]

trolls r tryina troll me again, how cute lmfao

#my post #text #3rd #June #2017 #June 3rd 2017 #anti-sj trolls #anti-sj backlash #haha

[bagged-a-bazooka]

Bro, last time I saw you we were waist deep in the anti-sjw bog. Obligatory, but how'd you leave the anti-sj scene?

I don't want to sound too self important or up my own ass about it, but a lot of the arguments and fighting just got so absolutely brain dead and stupid that I kind of grew out of it. It kind of felt too like a lot of people there were just conservative but didn't like the backlash and bad stigma that entails. Though, to give the benefit of the doubt, I feel a majority of people in there were like center left/right but just listened to the big names back then, myself included (even tho I wasn't all that smart back then lol). Long story short is I guess I expanded my world view outside of getting mad at Steven Universe or Star Wars

Which at the same time, I also don't hold any ill will or really any blame people who used to be anti-sjws but have wisened up and chilled out. Growing and changing is part of life, and yeah it's embarassing to look back on but if you're a better person then you were in 2013, it's a learning experience

Unless you're one of those people who still acts like this in 2021, then...well...dunno what to tell you there!

[liskantope]

I don’t mean this to be a full-blown thesis I’m defending or a fully-endorsed culture war take or anything, but today I got to thinking about the whole (very predictable) backlash to that very obnoxious “Is there a doctor in the White House?” article and the feminist issue of not treating men like the default gender.

Traditional sexism has historically been manifested in treating the default human as male while women show up as “human + gender characteristic” or “human + sexuality” (thus the only-recently-rejected norm of using male pronouns by default). I’ve become a lot more conscious of this issue in the past several years. Recently I was struck by Douglas Hofstadter’s apologetic discussion of why he used only male characters and pronouns in Gödel, Escher, Bach where he apparently thought that introducing female characters would inherently make them sexualized and so distract from the point he was trying to make. This is still kind of baked into our culture today to the extent that I consciously noticed only the last few years how many if not most people (including myself at the time) have a tendency to refer to an unknown particular person as “he” before knowing their gender. (To be fair, I noticed this in the context of discussing things happening in the math community, which is heavily male-skewed, but if anything that only means that more harm can come from this bad habit.) I would argue that phenomenon is one of those things that comes nowhere close to being neatly classified under “male privilege” but is insidious because anything that treats the genders very differently without justification is harmful.

Anyway, with the Dr. Jill Biden thing we have a writer who is completely dismissive of her credentials on the grounds that nobody should call themself doctor unless they practice medicine. He “supports” this by basically attempting to delegitimize the entire doctoral dissertation process at universities (in the good old days it was actually hard to get a doctorate, you see) but for some reason half the time he spends railing against non-medical people with the Dr. title is to sneer at honorary doctorates that universities give out to celebrities and wealthy donors (fun fact: the writer himself has one of those honorary doctorates! I had to look this up to believe it). He mostly names white men among the celebrities not deserving honorary PhDs but does slip in a few snide remarks about them being given to black women for political purposes -- he’s clearly very anti-PC but I have a feeling not many of the people outraged at his article know that about him or read that far into this particular piece.

Instead, all the outrage I’ve seen about this article is that its author, Epstein, has revealed himself to be a misogynist who wants to dismiss the credentials of a woman holder of an advanced degree. A lot of this outrage is coming from PhD-holders who don’t seem to mind that Epstein, you know, spent a bunch of paragraphs on his main thesis making out that advanced degrees nowadays are just a joke and shouldn’t be respected at all (mostly using men as examples). Not that titlism (looking down on non-PhD-holders) should be the alternative, of course, which ironically is what a couple of people seem to be emulating in their criticisms of him (actually referring to Epstein as just some loser who only has a BA). No, all that matters is that Jill Biden is a female doctorate-holder and so the whole article is an attack on women who use the title.

No, I don’t mean this as yet another “SJ is bad because it reinvents treating certain identities as relevant when we were trying to get past seeing them as relevant” because that whole take has pretty much been beaten to death as far as I’m concerned and I’m not sure this example can be entirely reduced to that, but it did get me thinking today about possible further instances of our subconscious tendency to categorize people as generic Xers and woman Xers.

#feminism #gendered pronouns #jill biden #advanced degrees #titlism #godel escher bach

[spaceshipkat]

I'm sorry that you guys have to be labelled 'antis' and even have to discuss exclusively on the anti tags just to avoid backlash from people who doesn't understand that all you do is point out all the problematic aspects of sj/m's works and not necessarily bash her just for the fun of it. I actually find your discussions more informative and well presented compared to the endless yada yada of the stans ❤️❤️

i’m so glad you enjoy our posts, thank you! and yeah, the term “anti” always has negative connotations, and i think that’s one reason we antis in this community work our asses off to prove we’re not like the other awful anti communities that have given the term a bad name. we’re a welcoming community and always open to hearing new perspectives, and i think that’s our defining characteristic. 

sj///m’s fandom is simply a particular breed of vile (though there are a few exceptions, since i’ve had decent interactions with a few fans in the past), but if they were more open to criticism, we antis probably wouldn’t exist. i think the reason they act this way toward us is bc they’re emulating sj///m’s narrators (namely faerug and alien) and how they react to criticism or disagreements. for instance, alien always threatens to burn people alive, and if they don’t bow and scrape to her they’re considered an enemy. 

thus, as we don’t bow and scrape to sj///m, in stans’ eyes, we’re their enemies. 

#ask #anonymous #anti sjm #sorta #stans being stans

[battlestar-royco]

corrrect me if I'm misinterpreting this, but it seems like lately, ppl are calling everything bad "cishet white shit" (I've seen this on several blogs, both in the anti community and in others) and it's really starting to rub me the wrong way. yes, cishet white people can pull off the worst shit in their books (like Ameri//can Di//rt - which they should def be criticized for!), but bad literature is not inherent to them or their identities, and it is really starting to come off like that lately

(bad literature anon) to further clarify, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be conversations about how someone’s status as a straight cis white person affects their work/the views in their work (eg JKR) and their chances of being published and whatnot. Those are v important conversations to be had!

So, Laini and Kat provided really good answers to this here that you’ve probably already seen. I’ll give my own answer in this ask without a recap so I don’t clog up everyone’s feed. I can’t speak for others but I have a few reasons why I personally like to add “white cis/het” qualifiers to things.

First off, even just saying those words disrupts our typical mode of discussion. In no way am I changing the social order by saying “white cis/het” on my blog—I’m not redistributing wealth to pay reparations for POC, I’m not overturning the institution of marriage, I’m not stripping society of gender norms etc—but I’ve gotten a huge amount of fuckery and backlash on and off Tumblr over the years for literally just using this rhetoric (as opposed to engaging in irl activism, which I have done off this site). People get uncomfortable when these words are used because it’s probably the first time their identity has been discussed as powerful in a way that POC, queer people, disabled people etc have been disempowered from birth or a very young age.

Second, by naming something as white cis/het, not only do you bring attention to the dominance of white cis/heteronormativity, but you also bring attention to who is excluded from that dominance. Using an obvious example: SJ/M’s books are marketed as feminist works. However, SJ/M and co rarely if ever acknowledges said feminism as white cis/het feminism, or they posit her feminism as some truly progressive and inclusive work. It’s a very dishonest practice, considering that her goal is to empower white cis/het women, and her work necessarily disempowers any other type of woman. By leaving out WOC, trans women, wlw, plus sized women etc in feminism, you defeat the purpose of feminism. So much “feminism” unfortunately turns out to be just for white cis/het women, and I find that unacceptable, so I bring attention to it when I can. Otherwise, Laini and Kat said everything very eloquently, so I encourage everyone to hop over to that post for more thoughts on the subject. :)

#asks #kat is a genius #pancake

[vanimeldes]

I just checked sj/m’s twitter and she hasn’t updated it since 2016. I’m not trying to be mean but other authors interact with their fans and let them know that they care bout them. Also her bio still says “ac0war will be out soon” or something like that

Yes, I know that. Other antis with more knowledge about how an author should interract with his fans discussed this, but I overall agree with you. 2016 is the year when E0S and AC0MAF were out and raised a certain backlash from a certain part of her readership who — rightly so — pointed the issues regarding representation and diversity and maybe the portrayal of abuse, but I'm really not sure. Again, other antis with better knowledge on this matter explained that it's in SJ/M's nature to avoid adressing any sort of topics her critiques point out.

I agree that not all the authors are comfortable with chatting with their fans and be very active on social media, but I agree that an author with such a big fanbase and whose books meant very much for many of her readers (according to what many fans of hers claim) should be more open to them

#ask #anonymous #anti sjm #authors behaving badly

[painted-starlight]

‘Whoops, I didn’t realize racism was bad. Now I’ll just stuff this skeleton in my closet and refuse to put in half the energy I devoted to being a shithead into trying to counteract any of the marginalization I perpetuated :)’

YEP

I think it’s because being a decent human being isn’t fun for them. 

They seek whatever is the most fun for them with as little consequences as possible. And stepping on the marginalized online is a standard method of being accepted into an already white supremacist society. 

When they see that this has actual social consequences (either because they try to perpetuate that anti-sj//w shit in real life and people rightfully start avoiding them or because they realize they actually ARE in that marginalized group) their use to other anti-sj//ws is over and they learn it the hard way.

It takes work to be a good person, and a lot of the time former anti-sj//w’s don’t even try to right their past wrongs. They aren’t willing to face the backlash they participated in when they change their mind, so they scrub their blogs or delete it altogether. 

They just say “Oh well! This is personally inconvenient for me now so I’ll just pretend it never happened and delete my blog! :DDD” 

[emperorren]

This is your anon-anon I guess, I have managed to escape most of the internalized mentality that I’m bad for liking Reylo, but I feel bad because I feel like I’m being a coward and unjust to the Reylos, like I’m letting you all bear the brunt of the backlash by acting neutral. I know I’m not an evil or unfeminist person, but I worry that other people, esp known SJ people, will see me as regressive and sexist or a N/azi apologist, like icons I had who are writers who think it’s toxic or abusive

Another anon:

this is real sad to admit but same? if someone asked me on my main or in the street what i thought about reylo i’d prob give a positive but more neutral answer, ‘yes i know about reylo, very interesting take on the dynamic between a villain and hero’. what’s worse before tlj i prob would’ve been one of those ‘reylo? i don’t know her’ or ‘it’s fine but ofc not in canon’ people. so i wonder if these peeps who rec reylo fic but write a bunch of disclaimers about not shipping it are like me that way

If you don’t want to get involved with the discourse, or if you feel like you’re an easy target, or that your shoulders aren’t broad enough to put up with this, that’s 100% your choice and I respect it. Nobody should feel like they have a moral obligation to make their ship preferences publicly clear if that makes them uncomfortable. There are plenty of people who quietly ship reylo but without publicly taking any side. The only question I have is why you're letting dumb fake woke strangers on the internet dictate what you can or can’t say on your own blog.

(actually, while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with acting neutral, I do think it’s a bit hypocritical---and I say this in the best possible way and meaning no offense---if you, like, ship reylo secretly but on the surface you reblog uncritically from known antis or SJ blogs who practice virtue signalling and purity culture. First, this contributes to spread their harmful messages around. Second, it isolates you even further from actual reylo shippers, who might believe you’re an anti sympathizer judging from the content of your main blog. It doesn’t have to be actual an/ti reylo content: I, and many others, have become pretty good at spotting potential antis from the sort of discourse they host on seemingly generic or unrelated topics like age gaps, “problematic” content in fanfiction & how to handle it, tag policing, certain lipstick feminist posts with 100k notes, “character X is pure because she’s a lesbian uwu” and so on. I personally tend to avoid blogs who *talk* in a certain way even if they don’t have actual ant/i reylo posts, because I know I would butt heads with them ANYWAY; that’s something to consider. And third, the people you’re wanting to please NOW are probably the ones who’ll target and attack you for the most innocent things the moment you lower your guard. Honestly life is SO much better without them, TRUST ME)

#anti discourse #fanwank #anon #asks

[onecornerface]

Some SJ people say “All white people are racist.” They justify this statement with evidence of implicit bias, and they argue that this statement is useful because it (1) suggests the severity and extent of the problem of systemic racism, along with (2) the universal moral responsibility (not to be confused with guilt) of all white people to stop contributing and to help combat it.

I’ll assume that the statement does have these benefits, at least to some degree. This may be debated. But I worry the statement also has a downside that I have never seen remarked on before:

A lot of outright white supremacists also think it’s politically useful to say “All white people are racist” (or similar statements). They also justify this statement with evidence of implicit bias (though perhaps focusing less on studies, and more on, say, whites’ tendency to avoid living in neighborhoods with a lot of black people). Their motive is to say, in effect, “White people in general already agree with us about a lot of things, but they won’t admit it to themselves or each other. They should stop living in denial.” Does saying “All white people are racist” problematically contribute to their narrative? Is their “Whites in general already agree with us” narrative widespread or potent enough (or growing enough) to be a serious threat? I don’t know.

(My concern here is separate from the other important concerns, such as questions of (A) how solid are some forms of evidence for implicit bias or the universality thereof, and (B) the more general accuracy or precision or non-misleading-ness of saying a person “is racist” on the grounds of the presence of implicit bias, and (C ) concerns over whether saying “All white people are racist” has other downsides in the form of triggering scrupulosity, associated anti-SJ backlash, etc.)

[chikkou]

as a 15 year old who is into homestuck rn, your post was interesting! every once in a while i do feel like i missed a reference, but for the most part i feel like i'm getting the experience. i am insanely curious though: what could have possibly been going on in the fandom that inspired the trickster arc?

first of all im glad u liked my post!! i honestly just got really into my thoughts and i had to share it…. im a fake deep hoe LMAO

now to ur question! its a VERY gud one… but unfortunately the answer is kind of troubling. essentially, the short answer is “kids who were pro-social justice.”

to expand on that, u may need some background. homestuck during this time (2013) had a notoriously garbidge fandom, which was well known for being full of infighting. homestuck drew a lot of different fans from a lot of different backgrounds, and it caught on really well with kids on tumblr in the age range of 12-18.

during that time, social justice was getting really popular online, so i can safely say that most of the kids that were homestuck fans were also in support of sj. those who werent were usually intensely anti-sj, and rejected any notions of it, especially where homestuck was concerned. that might seem unrelated, but it actually plays a big part in a lot of problems that came about later on.

one of homestucks biggest positive points was the kids being aracial. hussie made it explicit in tweets and such that the kids were intended to be without race, so readers could fill in whatever they wanted. fan artists really liked that bc it meant they could draw the kids however they chose, and it would technically be canonically accurate. thats a very difficult thing for a webcomic of all things to do, so it was exciting to have the ability to make the kids super diverse, in any sense of the word! 

unfortunately, the problem with this is that a lot of those fan artists were still making all the kids white. it didnt help that, in early pages, there were references to the characters being white (specifically bro, though if memory serves, john is also referred to as white), and much of the official merch also depicted them as white, like as the tarot cards that were released a few years back. even though hussie claimed to be dedicated to the aracial concept, there was a lot of pretty damning evidence that suggested he was really just depicting them as white.

pro-sj fans hated this, because even though the kids were TECHNICALLY aracial by the comics standards, it was clear that a bias was there. anti-sj fans defended the comic with their life against that criticism, saying it was the authors choice, and all sorts of similar things. that problem wasnt made any better by the introduction of kankri, a clear parody of Those Awful SJWs and a character which made it seem like hussie was siding with the anti-sj fans after all. at the time, i remember people trying to excuse it away by saying that kankri was an affectionate parody, or that it was only targeting Bad SJWs, or any other sorts of justifications.

it all came to a head in the beginning of the trickster arc tho, which, if you werent aware, originally had jane say this. it didnt help that he then went on to have ALL of the alpha kids appear in the same skin tone, and later made a tweet (that has since been deleted) saying that all of the trickster characters were white. it became pretty clear that the trickster arc, for all that it does contain some plot relevant stuff, was really just an excuse for hussie to isolate and mock the people that made up the majority of his fanbase.

though at the time i didnt fully understand that, looking back, it was a pretty swift knee to the gut for fans whose main reasons for enjoying homestuck had to do with the aracial aspect. on top of that, it was insanely audacious for hussie to even do something like that knowing that he was targeting a pretty sizable amount of his readers. to this day im not entirely sure what possessed him to do it. 

naturally, though, there was a MASSIVE backlash, and people were fighting about it for days. a lot of people i knew at the time stopped reading homestuck because of it, and those who stuck with it but dropped it later on cited the trickster arc as the reason why. it got so bad that, soon afterward, he edited the page to the version thats still up, which says “peachy” instead.

the racial aspect aside, even the stuff that happens in the arc proper is pretty clearly based in stuff that was happening amongst fans. in the arc, all the tricksters (except dirk) want to marry each other and have “a zillion babies.” it was a pretty clear joke about shippers in the fandom (especially since the arc ends with dirk and jake breaking up, and they were a fan favorite couple until that point). 

lastly, the fact that the arc just skips to the kids being in their respective moons, waiting to go god tier, seemed to be (in my humble analysis) a response to people who complained about the slowness of act 6. the trickster arc speeds the events of the story up considerably, to the point that we dont even see the path they take to get to the moons. they just. end up there. super hungover LMAO

but yeah tl;dr the trickster arc, or the handling of it anyway, was mainly a means of making fun of the pro-sj fans who rightfully addressed the fact that homestuck was failing as an “aracial” story, since there was a clear bias in favor of the kids being white. said mockery bombed spectacularly, cause, surprisingly, making fun of ur target audience is a bad idea. 

#anya's anons #long post #thank u for giving me yet another undeserved platform to yell about homestuck #i appreciate it and i thank u very much #i hope u enjoyed my tedtalk #homestuck

[lord-kitschener]

I'm so glad there's a backlash against hindutva shit on tunglr.hell, because there used to be a big push to get a foot in the door for that bullshit (usually the pattern was some hindutva prick who dressed up their bullshit in SJ/anti-colonialist language, followed and reblogged by a gaggle of clueless, mostly white SJ bloggers who wanted to get #woke cred, and would go full attack-dog on anybody who criticized or questioned op)

#anybody who says tunglr used to be less shitty is lying

[forevrdreamingofbetterthings]

Hi friends, please block @yoshis-against-exclusionists bc they’re admittedly and proudly anti-SJW, and are clearly a troll blog out to make aces look bad. 

Please don’t give these shitheads a platform!

More food for thought: Exclusionists are loving it and comparing it to “sonic-for-justice” which was also a troll blog (i forget all the details though, it was a while ago).

#text #block this user #signal boost #trigger jokes #murder tw #stalking tw #sex mention tw #romance mention tw #ace discourse #exclusionary tactics #troll blog #anti-sj backlash #caps #screencaps

[reverseracism]

She made a podcast about her experience at vidcon and people like the AmouredSkeptic thought she was talking about them specifically (if the shoe fits) and they got upset. She does make fun of them a bit but the backlash is absolute irony after everything they've done.

Well what can you expect. Anti-sjs are hypocritical as hell and lack self-awareness.Eon

[shinelikethunder]

I also have to disagree that radfems are the main group that benefited from the fandom environment - antis/"SJWs" are puritanical, but not in a radfem way, they're just puritanical in an old-fashioned conservative way and are often highly antifeminist, low tolerance of homosexuality or gender nonconformity, etc. (And if anyone's going to go "no, fandom loves gays", check out things like thewoesofyaoi.)

The tragedy of the online SJ trainwreck is that I don’t think there is a main group--or even any group--that’s seen a net benefit from it. The ones who’ve benefited are the inevitable fringe of bullies and sociopaths within each group, because its norms are so easily exploited to gain power/control/a license to abuse with impunity, and to suppress dissent. The other benefits have been undercut by infighting, backlash, weaponization of benefits into tools for more infighting, minorities getting held to higher standards and shredded by “their own,” and tokenism/political pressure warping genuine achievements into cheap Representation Victories. Nobody really comes out ahead except the people who thrive on the war of all against all.

Radfem ideology overlaps in a number of convenient ways with the directions SJ has gone, and I suspect it’s had considerable influence on the specific shape of some of the queer-gatekeeping and anti-kink discourse. But it seems to be riding the coattails rather than doing the walking, so to speak. And you’re right that the iddy underbelly of the anti movement looks more like religious puritanism than anything else--not just in its treatment of sex, but its whole underlying theology. (Privilege discourse: “hey guys, we rediscovered original sin! uh... what are we supposed to do with it now?”) But it’s not like radfems and conservative puritans have never found common ground before now.

That said, I’m also not sure they have it in for The Gays or The Wimminz in particular, even in the nightmarish depths of the current fetishization Discourse. It’s just that there’s literally no one they won’t throw under the bus to score points, and when they do, it tends to follow the easy well-worn mechanisms society (esp the parts of it that are saturated with religious fundamentalism) has laid out to do that.

#antis #tumblr 'social justice' #anonymous