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cryptotheism · 7 months

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hey, so i just read "the psychology of the transference" by c.g. jung bc my psychoanalyst told me to. all of the misogyny, rampant racism and overconfident speculation on the role of incestuos desires for the human psyche aside (lmao), i found it a worthwhile read. one of the main points that he seems to make in regards to alchemy is that it wasn't *really* about chemistry/material processes, but more about the images and metaphors used to describe the alchemical process. and jung compares this alchemical imagery, which in large parts revolves around themes of divisions and fusions, to subconscious (psychic) processes that in his opinion also revolve around divisions and fusions (like dissolutions or integrations of the self, contradictions in gender relations and other social relations, etc). and idk, that part makes sense to me. did alchemists really care about the physical world? or did they care about gender, sex, identity, art, death, the horrors, etc?

YES. THE TEXTS HE IS TALKING ABOUT ARE PROTO-CHEMISTRY WORKS.

Alchemy was demonstrably, overwhelmingly, about the physical world. Jung's psychological interpretations of them are --and I cannot stress this enough-- entirely invented ahistorical bullshit.

I cannot overstate the amount of damage that Jung has done to alchemical scholarship. His interpretations of alchemical texts have caused literally thousands of historical proto-chemistry texts to languish in the historical wastebin of "Psychological mumbo jumbo" or "it's just old therapy language tee hee!"

What's worse is he actively misrepresents many of the actual religious or mystical ideas present in the texts he cites. For example, many alchemical texts in the Arab world we're the result of Isma-ili mystics from northern Africa and more gnostic-influenced parts of the early Muslim world. Their equivocation of Hermes Trismegistus with the biblical Enoch, and unique relationship to both hermeticism and Jewish apocrypha, gets ENTIRELY sidelined in Jung's reading, in favor of "it's just early psychology."

Furthermore, Jung tries to make the argument that these images present in alchemical texts are somehow representative of some deeper, universal structure within human psychology. Which is, --again I cannot stress this enough-- howling clown bullshit. Alchemical texts are similar because chemistry works the same wherever you are on the planet. He actively ignores the hermeneutics of different alchemical theories, which change RADICALLY depending on culture and location.

All this in service of adding a pseudo-historical foundation for psychological theories that are about as scientific as astrology.

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genderkoolaid · 8 months

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"Implicit in the discovery of the transvestite’s identity is the public’s fear of the dissolution of naturalized gender and sexual differences, of not knowing the ‘‘truth’’ in terms of binary categories of male and female. The possibility that the transgender can ‘‘pass’’ permanently without ever becoming a ‘‘policed’’ spectacle undercuts the viewer’s belief in the stability of sexual identity and threatens the assurance that s/he is not unwittingly attracted to the ‘‘wrong’’ (i.e., same) sex. In other words, un-policed (undetected) transgenderism creates a crisis in which the transvestite may be ‘‘more woman than a woman’’ or ‘‘more man than a man.’’ When the cross-dresser’s experience is made public, however, the transvestism is exploited and transformed into cultural capital that manipulates the panic and attraction evoked by the transgendered body."

— The Lieutenant Nun: Transgenderism, Lesbian Desire, and Catalina de Erauso by Sherry Velasco

#m.#quotes

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ms-m-astrologer · 2 months

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Transiting Venus enters Pisces

Monday, March 11 - Friday, April 5, 2024

Venus is exalted in Pisces - that is, although she doesn’t rule the sign (Jupiter and Neptune do), being placed here tends to bring out her best anyway.

On the down side, we can have issues and problems with boundaries, or to be more precise a lack of boundaries. Not to mention self-pity, substance abuse, and a refusal to do more than drift.

Art - the Impressionists, of course. We like it when the artist’s imagination is on display, and we like it even more when we have to use our own.

Beauty - always in the eye of the beholder, but especially now. We don’t have to work very hard to find it.

Love - “Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds / Or bends with the remover to remove. / Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken;” and so forth.

Money - can piss it all away, and can have remarkable intuitive insights about investments. Charitable donations.

The story told by the aspects: we’re off to a bumpy start, have a few decent learning opportunities, and end ambiguously. Allow about a day on either side of these dates.

Monday, March 18 - Venus/Pisces square Pallas Athene/Sagittarius, 8°08’. Problems with gender identity. Our financial judgement isn’t very realistic, and we’re very distractable. Maybe some ham-handed attempts at flirtation.

Tuesday, March 19 - Venus/Pisces opposite Juno Rx/Virgo, 9°51’. Other people seem judgemental, critical, and negative. Some of us may get “played” by people who know how to manipulate us.

Thursday, March 21 - Venus/Pisces conjunct Saturn/Pisces, 12°26’. Kind of a turning point - we let past unpleasantness weigh us down, or we surrender and rise above it. Needing a little “alone” time. Real love is responsible, patient, and kind.

Saturday, March 23 - Venus/Pisces sextile Ceres/Capricorn, 14°08’. Take Mom out to a nice lunch! Also really good for green thumbs, prettying up your home, and spoiling your pets.

Sunday, March 24 - Venus/Pisces sextile Jupiter/Taurus, 15°48’. Very lucky (in a non-flashy way); we’re counting our blessings for sure. Spread those good vibes around.

Thursday, March 28 - Venus/Pisces sextile Uranus/Taurus, 20°37’. This gives us an opportunity (sextile) to shake things up a bit. If we’re in a rut, we can easily break out of it. If we’ve been wanting to try something new, we can find a way to do it.

Wednesday, April 3 - Venus/Pisces conjunct Neptune/Pisces, 28°00’. Can be a peak Pisces experience, overwhelming us with its spiritual beauty - or complete Piscean dissolution and escapism.

#Astrology #Transiting Venus enters Aries #Ms M astrologer

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pityroad · 5 months

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May a transsexual hear a bird?

by HARRY JOSEPHINE GILES

May a transsexual hear a bird? When I, a transsexual, hear a bird, I am a transsexual hearing a bird, when you hear a bird you are a person hearing a bird, that is, I am specific, you are general. When a bird sounds in a poem it is a symbol of hearing a bird, a symbol of a person being in relation to nature. Only a person may hear this. Only a person may hear a bird and write a poem about hearing a bird and in so doing praise the gentle dissolution of personhood or elsewhere strive towards the clear and questionless presence of an unworded bird, being. Were I to attempt such a poem again, I would be a transsexual writing a poem on hearing a bird—I note now that "transsexual" is the legal adjective for a person with the protected characteristic of "gender reassignment" under the Equality Act (2010), Section 7, which applies to any person at any stage of changing any aspect of sex, and so to make a claim of work discrimination I must both have the socioeconomic capital to bring such a claim and also be a transsexual—and so be unable to dissolve without first addressing my transsexuality to the bird. Even if I were to fail to sound out my transsexuality, it would remain in the title and byline, unsilent, a framing device, regardless, and so once again you would be hearing a transsexual hearing a bird. But now I am too preoccupied with how to source testosterone— a Class C Controlled Substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) carrying, for supply, a maximum penalty of 14 years imprisonment, and/or a heavy fine—to give to my friend, and how to publish a zine detailing how to negotiate and circumvent the Gender Identity Clinic system, given that waiting lists for first appointments now range from 3 to 6 years, without attracting the critical social media attention that would shut down any explicit alternative routes, and whether the fact that I have not heard from my trans sister in over a month means she is in severe mental health crisis or merely working, and whether I have the strength and love to call her, to remember to hear a bird. If I cannot remember to hear a bird I cannot write a poem. How can I not have the strength and love to call her? Because I have not heard enough birds. Because I am scared of what it will mean if she does not answer. Because I am scared of what it will mean if she does. Because I have been working in too many political meetings scolding Parliamentarians to call or hear a bird. In the morning I open the window before the sun rises so I, a transsexual, may hear the birds singing. If I may hear the birds singing the sound may lift me from myself and my working conditions. Then the sun, the conditions, and the working day.

#trans poetry #harry josephine giles #transsexual #trans art #trans poet #poem #may a transsexual hear a bird #mine #ie i am not harry josephine giles but i typed the thing out and the tag is for my reference #one of my current favourite poems

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drbased · 2 months

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i’m kind of a baby radfem and im learning about being gender critical and i definitely agree with most of it, the only part that i have thoughts about is the nonbinary identity. i believe that a gender non conforming woman and a nonbinary woman can mean the same thing. in that, i believe that you can be a nonbinary *insert sex here* and it basically just means you’re gender nonconforming. and then it’s like well why do we need two different terms to mean the same thing and we definitely don’t, but i think it’s dangerous to conflate being nonbinary with being agender bc it’s not the same thing and it just makes gender rhetoric even more stupid & ridiculous lol. i’ve seen plenty of people identify as nonbinary and still identify with their sex-based gender. i also believe you can be female and see yourself as a woman and still use they/them or even he/him pronouns. what do u think??

(Bear with me on this, this is a long response but I hope you find it illuminating)

People regularly accuse radfems of being nazis/right wingers and I take those accusations incredibly seriously, and as I result I regularly take time to doubt my position. But the thing I keep coming back to is that:

There is no proof, and perhaps there cannot be proof, that gender exists: it is fundamentally metaphysical, spiritual, soul-like, a product of mind-body dualism, the belief that there is some nebulous internal sense of self that happens to share some labels with sex classification but also happens to completely subsume it in modern leftist discourse, despite that

Regardless of whether or not 'gender' is real, it does not form the basis of the male class oppression of women as a class, and the moment you engage with any feminist theory this fact becomes impossible to ignore. There is no true biological backing behind race and yet we are (in theory, anyway) comfortable with being able to identify and codify the oppressor and oppresses classes in that scenario; however, arguments from the mainstream left will vaguely gesture towards sex being 'fluid' as justification for the dissolution of classic feminist arguments. It's important to be suspicious of why this is and who might benefit from it;

To build on point one, due to the fact that gender has no material basis in the real world, the only 'signifiers' for it are ones that already exist as cultural schemas - and these are, naturally, taken from existing sex roles designed to uphold misogyny and, more broadly, patriachy itself. 'Gender fluid' people are at this point infamous for their tik toks of when they're male or female, and the way they demonstrate this is through short hair and comfortable clothes vs long hair and feminine styling.

Occam's razor + feminist analysis will inevitably point towards women 'identifying' with nonbinary, agender etc. simply being women who are uncomfortable with the misogynistic connotations of femaleness, and who naturally wish to disassociate from them. When you see things under that lens, you can immediately notice patterns of behaviour and language that signal the belief system they hold. To 'identify' as anything is fundamentally meaningless, and signals nothing to both yourself and others except perhaps language. As a person recovering from depression, I have been detaching myself from all rigid concepts of classifying myself and instead focussing much more on being who I am in the moment. It it much healthier to be this way (and a lot less stressful, too)

When we call ourselves 'women', this is nothing more a neutral description of our biology. And due to our status as an oppressed class, especially one based on our biology, it is of paramount importance that we retain language that succinctly names us as such. Dworkin states in Pornography that one of the powers that men have is the power of naming. We still live under patriarchy, and the language we use cannot be separated from male ideas and male thought. Men had, and have, no problem naming us as the oppressor class when it benefits them (especially in the case of prostitution and pornography), but as it has become less, let's say' popular to be seen as a man in recent years, we have seen an explosion of transgender rhetoric enter the popular consciousness. Without the ability to recognise ourselves as women, we lose statistics, we lose safe spaces away from the oppressor class, and we lose class consciousness.

As for using 'they/them' and 'he/they' pronouns - well, I'm a straight woman, but I'm aware that there is a certain lesbian tradition of using masculine pronouns. But that's in a very different context to what's being described here. I've already addressed language but let's put a laser-sighted focus on pronouns for a second:

As a culture, we default to 'he' pronouns for a reason. For a long time, we were 'mankind' and everything akin to humanity is given masculine pronouns. Cute little critters are assumed to be male, probably all your soft toys are male, the most basic of doodles are assumed to be male and only allowed to be female once they are given a dress. It should be no surprise that women who want to escape the shackles of femininity want to be called he/him - they want access to the percieved full humanity of men. Meanwhile, the only times we attribute she/her to things other than people are to things like cars, ships, and natural disasters (with the exception of mother nature, of course) - tools of warfare, accessories of masculinity, and symbols of 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'.

There is a study somewhere that shows that when you use 'they/them' as a neutral pronoun, people assume male - especially if you're referencing a prestige profession. If I were to say, I went to the doctor yesterday, they were great - you would automatically assume a male doctor. This is no accident - as already stated, maleness is the default. Women who want to use they/them are dissociating themselves from femaleness but in doing so they are accidentally using language that signifies maleness. This is why feminist analysis is so important, and why 'identifying' as something holds little water in the real world. In an ideal world, perhaps they/them could be genuinely seen as neutral - but we don't live in an ideal world; we live in a world where women are oppressed.

So to answer part of your question, no, I do not believe that 'nonbinary' and 'gender non-conforming' are the same thing; nonbinary is an attempt at classifying someone according to some nebulous, unprovable sense of internal identity that has no real material impact - and any attempt to 'express' this gender are simply taking existing sex roles and mashing them together. Gender nonconforming has a different meaning in radfem circles as it does in transgender ones - TRAs take it to mean that someone is indentifying with a different gender than they were 'assigned' at birth, but radfems simply use it to describe the physical act of being a woman (or man) who doesn't conform to expected sex roles. I am 'gnc' but that's just a neutral descriptor of my dress-sense - and it's a loose descriptor because in many ways I'm definitely not gnc in my behaviour, although I am working on my self-confidence, especially in contexts such as physical fitness and DIY. Gnc is useful shorthand for 'not conforming to sex roles in some major capacity enough to be noticeable by others' - and the only reason it's important, especially for women, is because femininity (our expected behaviour) is designed by the patriarchy to dissociate us from our bodies and keep us decorative, fragile, weak and sexually vulnerable to men.

#my writing #theory posting

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gatheringbones · 2 years

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[“I am not suggesting that either men or women adopt a stance of vulnerability sexually; I am not prescribing any particular sexual behaviours. I’m not interested in the labels of dominance, submission, top, bottom, fucking versus being fucked. I don’t believe that particular sexual acts denote vulnerability or strength; that would be to buy the line that fucking is active and being fucked is passive; as if the arrangement of our bodies tells us something categorical about our psychological stances, our vulnerabilities, our feelings; as if the binaries of active and passive are not used to divide the ranks into powerful masculine attributes and powerless feminine ones. I am talking here instead about a psychological and social acceptance of vulnerability, of all our capacity for injury, of the shared softness of us all.

Nor is any of this to deny the powerful erotics of mastery in sex – this stance’s potential for excitement, in any gender. What I’m suggesting is that, for all of us, whether we like it or not, part of our sexual pleasure is the way it shatters – as Bersani puts it – that mastery, and shatters the boundary between ourself and the other. And there may be important ethical mileage in that acknowledgement. What happens, as Anat Pick asks in Creaturely Poetics, when we take seriously the ramifications of being ‘oriented towards vulnerability as a universal mode of exposure?’

This should be our utopian horizon: a world where we give up the illusion that any of us have real, or total, power when it comes to pleasure and sex. Feminist author Lynne Segal has written that in sex, if we are lucky, ‘the great dichotomies slide away’ – the dichotomies of male and female, of giver and receiver, of active and passive, of self and other. Sociologist Catherine Waldby speaks of the ‘mutual reciprocity of destruction’ in sex, and poet Vicki Feaver evokes ‘our shared penis a glistening pillar sliding between us’. These are all images of dissolution, of exchange, of confusion and merging of identities, a softening of the stark association of receptivity with women and of activity with men. These images are freeing in some way – unlocking the rigidity of gender roles, allowing us each to partake of a wider repertoire of sensation and feeling, to claim more for ourselves and to allow more for the other, to use language to break experience further open. And in this abandon of ideals of mastery, we might all find greater pleasure.”]

katherine angel, from tomorrow the sex will be good again: women and desire in the age of consent, 2021

#katherine angel #currently reading #gender stuff

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victoriadallonfan · 11 months

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YOU DID THIS @ragingcitrustree

Ben Shapiro: I could not be more excited to speak with Max Anders—well, as Max knows. Before the show, we talked for an hour about interesting things. We should have caught that on tape. But now we’re actually going to get the chance to do it live. Max new book, if you haven’t bought it yet—everybody on the planet has bought this book. I was walking through the office today; we didn’t have a copy in the office; the person at the front desk had a copy of your book just sitting on her desk. 14 Words: How To Strengthen and Empower Our Country’s Blood and Soil . A fantastic book, obviously topping all the bestseller lists, all over the world. Max, thanks so much for joining the show. I really appreciate it.

CEO of Medhall, Max Anders: Thanks for the invitation.

BS: Obviously your prominence has just blown up in the last year and a half. We were talking before the show about why that is and why there are so many people suddenly very angry about you. I noticed there was an article in the Brockton Bay Gazette suggesting that young, angry white males—you are now their leader. So congratulations.

MA: Oh, yes.

BS: I wanted to ask about that: why do you think that, number one, your profile’s become so big of late? And number two, why do you think it is that so many members of the left are so angry about that? Why are they characterizing people who listen to you as "angry" and "enraged young white men"?

MA: Well, we can look at the characterization to begin with. I think it speaks to the pathology of the radical left, instantly. They’re absolutely incapable of viewing the world except through group identity terms. If someone comes out and disagrees with them, then they have to characterize them by their fundamental group attribute, whatever that happens to be. Maybe it’s gender, because that’s a favourite, or maybe it’s race. So "angry young white man"—there we go: sexist, ageist, and racist all at once. They’re angry, young, white, men. Well, it has to be that way, if you’re going to play the leftist game, like New Wave does, because that’s the only way that you can look at the world. It’s strange that they would attempt to make them reprehensible on the grounds of race, age, and sex, since that’s precisely what they stand against, hypothetically. But if you can’t make your enemy reprehensible along some dimension, then you have to contend with them seriously. And so if I’m not an alt-right fascist like Hitler or supposedly Allfather, which was how I was characterized in Canada—because the radical leftists can’t even get their bloody interests straight: "he’s like Hitler or Allfather." There’s no obvious difference between them, right? It’s just another attempt to pillory, as far as I can tell. I think that it’s dreadful. I really think it is.

There was an article written by, I believe, The New York Review of Books, which was just republished in The Globe and Mail, talking about the emergence of hyper-masculinity, and how I was somehow responsible for that or contributing to it, like Mussolini or Crowley Brothers. I read that and I thought, "ok, so what are you doing? I see: you’re conflating masculinity and hyper-masculinity at the same time. Then you’re virtue signally by being against hyper-masculinity. But really, what you’re trying to do is bring down whatever it is that’s masculinity. And what masculinity is, in this frame, is something like competence." And so it’s part of the radical leftists’ general war on competence as well, which I think is one of the most pernicious elements of the culture wars—the dissolution of hierarchies; the assuming that every hierarchy has to be based on power and serve the needs of your group, whatever that happens to be; that there’s no such thing as competence. And then the other thing that’s reprehensible about it—because that’s not enough—is that it’s just wrong.

So I was in L.A. about a month and a half ago. I was downtown L.A, and downtown L.A. is kind of rough, because you know what hero runs that city. I was wandering around with my wife, and this young guy pulled a car up beside me and hopped out. He was kind of a stylish looking twenty-one-year-old Latino guy. No Alexandria shirt but even then I was like, “oh no, here comes trouble”. But he was all excited. He asked me who I was, and I told him. That’s what he had presumed, so he was kind of excited about that.

He said, "I’ve watched all your lectures, and it’s really helped me. I’ve been straightening out my life and trying to get my room clean"—he laughed about that—"developing some aims and trying to tell the truth. I’ve really fixed up my relationship with my father." Then he said, "wait, wait. Just wait a minute." I thought, "sure." So he went back in the car, and he got his father out of his car, and he came over with his dad. They had their arms around each other. He said, "look, we’ve really improved our relationship," and they’re both smiling away. That’s… Man, if you’re going to target me for that, just go right ahead.

BS: Yeah. It sounds real "white supremacist."

#This made my eyes bleed #99% of this is actual dialogue by the way #parahumans #wildbow #ward #worm #parody #Kaiser #max Anders

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viadescioism · 4 months

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The Yamasa Ona, The Divines of Viadescioism:

The divines, known as the Yamasa Ona in Viadescioism, exist not beyond but within our world. They are present in everything, embodying the sacred and the mundane as facets of their essence. The Yamasa Ona, comprising both greater and lesser divines, are infinite in number. The ten greater Yamasa Ona and the countless lesser ones are archetypal personifications of nature and existence's specific aspects. Nature refers to the world's inherent characteristics, while existence encompasses all that has any form of being.

Each aspect of nature and existence is divine, but for better understanding, we categorize them into distinct divine forms. The Yamasa Ona are not fixed entities; they are immutable forms, perpetually shifting in our perception. They transcend concrete form and gender, embodying a fluidity that changes in form and intensity from one emanation to another. They are not confined to any specific identity, as they embody both everything and nothing simultaneously.

Any entity or construct can achieve its own divinity and be recognized as a Yamasa. Belief in the Yamasa Ona is not a prerequisite for their influence; they exist as spiritual, mental, and physical forces all at once. Their divinity is present in everything connected to their aspects, flowing through us like a river, manifesting in parts of our being and the actions we take. The Yamasa are an intrinsic part of existence, as fundamental as the concept of roundness, and will continue to exist as long as existence itself persists.

The Main Yamasa Ona include:

Oxakna, The Yamasa of Existence: Oxakna embodies the very essence of being, the foundation upon which all else is built.

Damakna, The Yamasa of Creation: Damakna represents the force of creation, the genesis of ideas, forms, and realities.

Dasakna, The Yamasa of Destruction: Dasakna symbolizes the necessary end of things, the dissolution that paves the way for new beginnings.

Madaqa, The Yamasa of Spirit: Madaqa personifies the ethereal realm of spirit, the unseen yet deeply felt part of our existence.

Ladaqa, The Yamasa Of Mind: Ladaqa is the embodiment of thought, intellect, and consciousness, governing the mental processes.

Sadaqa, The Yamasa of Body: Sadaqa represents the physical aspect, the tangible, corporeal existence of beings.

Ukna, The Yamasa of Fire: Ukna symbolizes transformation and energy, like the dynamic and consuming nature of fire.

Nakna, The Yamasa of Air: Nakna embodies the unseen but vital force of air, representing breath, life, and movement.

Shakna, The Yamasa of Water: Shakna captures the fluid, adaptive, and life-giving qualities of water.

Dakna, The Yamasa of Earth: Dakna represents stability, growth, and the nurturing aspects of the earth.

Together, these divines form a complex tapestry of existence, each playing a crucial role in the grand scheme of the cosmos.

#witchblr #religion #occultism #spirituality #Viadescioism

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pantwolf · 18 days

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One of the things I keep noticing about my behavior is just how reliant I am on external validation.

Even finding a renewed sense of identity with xenogender, it still feels a lot like I chase others' approval and crave their acknowledgment of it. To the point that I bring up the "big new life development" to my friends multiple times in the span of a week.

It was such a momentous thing to me to acknowledge that I just don't feel like a PERSON. Such a fleeting feeling, because nothing changes in my day to day life, so I turn to words; I talk about it, over and over, injecting it into conversations with my friends, coworkers, anyone i can trust to keep my feelings safe (sorry family, maybe we'll get there again some day). I brag about it. Wagging my tail, "Did I do good? Did I do good?"

The best change to come of this was a dissolution of my internalized shame. Sure, it's still there, and I'm sure it will flare up sometimes, but I haven't felt a lack of shame regarding anything in a very long time. Even in the past, in moments of joy and carefreeness, the shame was still there, unawareness didn't change that. But now... I care about how I feel more than whether or not I'm doing whatever I'm "supposed to be doing." The dishes can wait if it means I don't hate myself.

My gender being "punk mustelidcore werewolf" and pronouns being it/its feels like the most genuine thing I've done in a long time. Maybe I'm crazy, or maybe I'm just lashing out and none of this is genuine. Maybe we're all just victims of the rise of puritanism and fascism and the annihilation of community and third spaces. Maybe this is the last ounce of control and agency I have in my life. Maybe it's just a symptom.

But fuck it! It makes me happy! It acknowledges my love of animals, my hyperfixation in furries! It acknowledges my thoughts on the world, rebellion, and standing up for justice! It acknowledges my troubled nature with the self, the struggle I face every day to keep the monster inside and not disrupt and make waves! I need to find more ways to express this! My clothes! My hair! Whatever! I'm queer and neurodivergent and I want that to be my truth, not the facade of functioning I have to put on every day in this capitalist hellscape!

I am a punk.

Mustelidcore.

Werewolf.

My pronouns are it/its.

I am afraid of what others think. I am struggling to make it day by day.

I am getting better. I finally have love for myself.

I am a furry. I am weird.

I am consciousness, AND I am an animal.

Let's be clear, I recognize the fleeting nature of identity. Right now, I feel unique and individual, I'm rebelling and refusing to fit into the neat, sterile boxes of society. In 10 years, I may look back on this moment, this "phase" of identity, and cringe at how extra and attached I am to it. But, as I have before, I will also look back with fondness and love, for even being a cringe CREATURE is better than the torture of lying to fit in.

It was all I had really ever known, but I'm excited to explore greener pastures. :3

#people pleasing #xenogender #psychology #people pleaser #awooo #hey this monologue is probably going to be part of a zine some day

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clowngames · 3 months

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"Rigid categories and rigid power structures never disappear without a backlash, and I think that is what we're seeing. One of the reasons for this backlash is that male and female have never been just identity categories, they've always been power categories, and people are really, really afraid of the dissolution of those categories. But it will come. It will change."

--Dr. Kit Heyam, author of Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender

#trans

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romanceyourdemons · 1 year

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i’m so glad i finally got to watch xie jin’s two stage sisters (1964). this film has been compared, including by chen kaige himself, to farewell my concubine (1993), and the similarity is obviously there. the films both depict two opera singers, one of whom plays male and one female roles, one of whom was born into opera and one of whom found refuge there from a background of sexual exploitation; they are either textually queer or notably queer-coded, and their lives take radically divergent paths between 1937 and 1949. despite these similarities, however, the films take very different perspectives on the revolution. xie’s film both philosophically and stylistically echoes the leftist films of the late 30s, with one of the main characters seeking illusory refuge among the glitz of shanghai’s bourgeoisie and the other becoming an active participant in the revolution. contrary to the sensibilities of the 30s, however, the intense affection between the two never diminishes and the two are eventually reconciled and reunited when yuehong repents of her association with the exploitative capitalist bosses and commits herself to the revolutionary cause—a very controversial narrative choice for which the director suffered intense and destructive backlash. contrast this active participation with the passive witnessing and unintentional entanglement in the events of war and revolution shown in farewell my concubine (1993). in another interesting contrast, the latter film frames the entire story through the lens of memory, whereas the former film frames it through the lens of opera, narrative chorus transitions implying that the story of two stage sisters (1964) is functionally a revolutionary opera. this change reflects the personal orientation of chen’s film and the public orientation of xie’s. the two films are similar, however, in that the “morally dissolute” actor is the one who performs cross-gender roles; this choice is fairly intuitive in the case of farewell my concubine (1993)’s cheng dieyi, who struggles with the intersection of his queer and male identities and with the knowledge that this intersection excludes him from participation in ordinary society. it is a more interesting choice in the case of xing yuehong, who plays male roles but off-stage embraces hyperfemininity in a way that allows her to enter upper-class society, while her counterpart zhu chunhua dresses more androgynously and takes on the active, unfeminine role of the revolutionary and community organizer even as she exclusively acts female parts. i do not feel confident in postulating that this crossing of genders was incorporated to use queerphobia to frame the revolution in normative terms and the bourgeoisie in deviant terms, but it is nonetheless an element of the film worth noting. altogether, i believe that two stage sisters (1964) is not only an incredibly enjoyable but an incredibly important piece of midcentury mainland chinese film, and is worth watching

#also the lead actresses attended the premier screening of the restored version of the film in 2014 #and for some reason that’s so wild to me #anyways check this film out it’s good #ryddles

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godsstrongestwhmfucker · 9 months

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Barbenheimer: Hell is Real and We Built It

Last night I decided to commit to the meme of watching both Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day. I had a bit of a mix up with the movie theaters, turns out that constructing movie theaters following the philosophy of Californian Starbucks is actually detrimental, but I digress. I was fortunate enough to have a two hour break between both of these films in order to let them properly digest. In fact, they’re still being broken down as I write them, so my thoughts are a bit more sporadic than I would usually have them when committing my thoughts to text. I have nothing but good things to say about both films, plotwise, I’ll try to stay away from any major spoilers, focusing more on themes rather than the story aspects of both stories. The Oppenheimer section will be riddled with spoilers, but I will mention that when we get there so you may skip that section.

Barbie was a bit of a shocker to me. I’m no stranger to stories that like to get on their soapbox, but Barbie was strikingly different. I wasn’t annoyed at the message the same way I was in regards to The Alchemist or Netflix’s Sabrina: The Teenage Witch. I make the connection between those three as they are incredibly loud about what they’re trying to tell you, they break a very fundamental rule of writing I hold very close to me: Show, don’t tell. None of those three tell as much as line up a series of megaphones directly next to your ear and yell their message, but Barbie executed that in an oddly entertaining way that felt real, felt genuine. When watching the characters loudly exclaim the issues of society, it’s not the writers telling me that patriarchal attitudes make life as a woman difficult, it’s someone’s mom venting to her friends, it’s raw.

The movie very loudly exclaims the issues of American, hell, Global patriarchal issues and the division it causes in men and the problems it causes women. Any system in which one group is the one in control inevitably oppresses the other while creating mass expectations for the oppressor that in turn are a source of anxiety and depression. Being in the position of power in turn chains us from any form of self-expression and creates societal expectations for the oppressor group. We refer to this issue in men as toxic masculinity (TM).

This is the opposite side of what we’re going to call Testosterone Poisoning (TP). TP is a voluntary and conscious thing, me taking action to look like a refrigerator with limbs because it’s what I want and it’s what makes me happy is entirely different to (TM). TM is doing things not because it’s what makes me happy, but because of the societal expectations that have been imposed upon me. To put it in layman’s terms, TP leads to himbos and TM leads to Andrew Tate. TP is self-actualization through masculinity, being masculine is your personality, you show up to the party driving the biggest fucking obnoxious vehicle but still give the right of way because in your meathead brain God has constructed you to be the epitome of goodness and virtue. You are the second coming of Christ with 3 scoops of protein. TM is none of that, as it fails at the act of self-actualization and instead follows the concept of conformity, you are no longer Todd, you are a man.

Which leads to my next point, why is that bad? It’s the dissolution of identity. Mike works out because he’s Mike, he likes lifting heavy objects because it’s a way for him to cool off after work. Todd works out to pick up chicks because some dude on the internet told him women like huge arms(which studies have actually disproven, women actually prefer you have a massive dumpy) and that he needs to have sex to be a man. I’m not going to say much other than Ken himself doesn’t actually like the image of what a man is in a patriarchal society and states he didn’t even like it at all nor that he found joy in it. The expectations of society to fit in to a specific gender norm/expectation made him unhappy, even if he was in a position of power. Combating the issue for women is just as problematic, though. Barbie and the mother acknowledge this in the end, as Barbie realizes that following these societal expectations of what female empowerment are accidentally have become her own chains. Society itself is a prison that we created ourselves because every idea of what we should be is shoved down our throats. You cannot be happy with yourself because of society's own expectations and fighting those expectations confronts you with more expectations of what the counterculture should be. If you’re a woman, in any position, say astronaut, you’re no longer just an astronaut. You’re a role model, you’re someone that all little girls should aspire to be. Anything you do will be judged because the society we live in simply does not want you to succeed.

Being happy with yourself in any society that does not see all as equal is simply not acceptable. As a man, you have to fulfill certain requirements to maintain that image of masculinity because it's expected of you, you are not yourself, you are a man, and you should act like one. As a woman, don’t you dare step out of line or we will find faults in you in every way possible. Don’t be single either, because you “aren’t complete” unless you’re in a relationship. Think about that for a second. Consider how many people online think that all their problems will be solved by having someone in their life and think about how many times you’ve heard the line “You complete me” in film. Again, society expects things from you, that you can’t self-actualize until you’re in a relationship. You’re not allowed to be happy until that American Nuclear Family ideology happens, because that’s what a happy ending *should* be, but is it? I’m not going to answer that for you, but finding out that I’m a massive Bible-Thumper and High Fantasy nerd did more for my mental health than any relationship I’ve been in.

I’m going to take a minute in regards to Allan(Michael Cera). Allan is perfect, Allan doesn’t abide by the gender norms, he is not “a man,” he’s Allan. Allan, if anything, is disgusted by the societal expectations of society and finds happiness in staying Allan. In a place where all the Kens choose to adopt the same personality, Allan retains himself as Allan and chooses to escape because that society is detrimental to his own self-being. I relate with Allan, it’s hard not to. Young boys are told not to play with dolls, like the color pink, or even grow their hair out sometimes, because it’s simply not “manly.” I’ve grown up with that, I’ve been told that having my hair at chest length is too girly and that I should cut it or even shave my head because that’s what guys do. Thankfully, there’s been a change in that, but you can see where I’m going with this. The patriarchy sucks. It’s a prison, for both men and women. Individuality is dead and the patriarchal attitudes don’t allow for people to exist for who they are, they must conform.

*Oppenheimer Spoilers*

Now that we’ve gone through that, let’s talk about Oppenheimer. I like to think we are all good, that no human is evil, but rather misguided, corrupted by the society in which we exist. Wars are never about good versus evil, they are conflicts of ideology. We can definitely argue that one side is “evil,” but any villain never considers themselves as such. No sane man would ever kill another willingly, yet, in war, it happens. We dehumanize the “enemy,” they are no longer people, they are rats, they are roaches, they are vermin. We do not kill, we eliminate the problem. War does not make heroes, it makes monsters.

Alfred Nobel invented dynamite for the sake of improving safety conditions in the creation of canals, but was labeled a “merchant of death” by the news as his explosives were used for war. Richard Gatling invented the gatling gun believing that it would diminish the need for large armies. Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project with the idea of creating one as a deterrence against the Nazis of ever using one on the basis of mutually assured destruction.

Oppenheimer fell into the same problem as his predecessors. He had revolutionized wars.

In one scene, they are discussing which places to target with nuclear weapons. Kyoto is immediately stricken off the list. Not for any particular reason other than one of the individuals there really likes vacationing there. The deaths of hundreds or thousands isn’t the problem. The problem is creating an inconvenience. The Japanese did some horrendous things during WWII, but what do random civilians have to do with anything? Nothing, and that was all they were worth. They are set pieces, they are not even a number.Their lives do not matter anywhere near as much as someone’s vacation being ruined. The atomic bomb created a massive gap in power, one so great that the so-called enemy isn’t even dehumanized, they are not even ants. Ants at least are knowingly exterminated when seen, but the lives of the Japanese people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t. War does not create heroes, it makes monsters.

The invention of the nuclear bomb created an arms race that the US is still economically recovering from. It created a world in which a fight between major powers dare not target each other out of fear of complete annihilation. A world where it’s no longer about strategy, manpower, or ideology, but who has the biggest bomb and how many of them? Oppenheimer and the researchers in the Manhattan Project had created a world in flames.

Both movies show that every act of villainy or evil is something we have fabricated. That much in the same way God has created us in his image, we have created the Devil in our own. We forge the same chains that bind us. The ones we use to dominate others, end up around our own necks. Every good intention paves another brick towards our own personal Hell, one we have already built. We’re just finding our way back home.

#barbenheimer #oppenheimer #barbie

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queer-starwars-bracket · 8 months

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Queer Star Wars Characters (Round 2): General Bracket Match 28

Sky Graf | Identity: non-binary | Media: The High Republic Quest for Planet X

Sky Graf was a young member of the wealthy Graf family. A year before the Night of Sorrow, their father went missing looking for Planet X. To prove themselves to their family and possibly find their father, they stole their older brother’s ship the Brightbird and deemed up with Dass Leffbruk (who had previously made it to Planet X) and the Jedi padawan Rooper Nitani to use a Force artifact to try to find Planet X during the great hyperspace race. The Force artifact brought them backwards through the planets Dass had recently visited, where they face challenges while also trying to outrun Sky’s brother. During their journey, they also had to take the Path of the Open Hand member Fel Ix as a hostage. Fel Ix began to break through his cult programming, and when the news of a possible battle between the Path and the Republic reached the crew of the Brightbird, he convinced Sky to give up the search for Planet X to travel to Dalna. Fel Ix succeeded by appealing to Sky’s connection with their father by pointing out how he was a father himself. Working with Fel Ix, Sky helped defeat the Graf code that was corrupting the communication buoys in the Dalna sector, preventing more violence during the Night of Sorrow. Their brother, Helis, eventually caught up with them. But the siblings were able to talk about their feelings and reconcile. The two of them would fly the Brightbird together and continue to prospect. But Sky would no longer chase their father’s ghost.

Sky’s lifestyle was a combination of the hard and technical life of a pilot and hyperspace prospector combined with the luxury of their family’s level of wealth. They are very intelligent when it comes to science. They are confident, with a prickly exterior. They didn’t connect with Fel Ix the way Dass or Rooper did until the end, not wanting to try to understand the perspective of someone who tried to kill them. When things got serious, they showed a surprising capacity of violence and a willingness to do anything to achieve their goals. They only felt like they had unconditional love from their father, his disappearance driving them even further in conflict with their family. At the end of the book, they are more at peace, but still eager to make their own name separate from the Graf dynasty. Unusually for transgender characters in Star Wars, there is explicit discussion in their internal monolog about how they felt gender dysphoria when they started to go through puberty and how their father got them a binder.

Amara Kel/Howlrunner | Identity: wlw couple | Media: “Amara Kel’s Rules for TIE Pilot Survival (Probably)”

Amara Kel is the narrator of the short story “Amara Kel’s Rules for TIE PIlot Survival (Probably)” which is her internal thoughts about how to survive as a line TIE Pilot. This military satire story also details her relationship with another pilot, nicknamed Howlrunner. Amara Kel is snarky and cynical, dissoluted with the Imperial Navy but without the kind of spark that would lead her to defecting. She is happy to stay in the background, staying alive without promotion and glory. However, Howl’s skilled flying inspires in her a sense of love and respect for the TIE fighter and the wire thin finesse in its flying.

Amara and Howl’s Theta Squadron was one of the squadrons dispatched to hunt the Millenium Falcon through the asteroid field around Hoth. In spite of rule number one “Don’t Get Attached”, Howl pulls off some crazy flying maneuvers and saves Amara from being eaten by the exogorth. Miraculously, they both survive that deployment.

#star wars #sw #facpov esb #sky graf #the high republic #sw thr #sw thr phase ii

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idkhowtopickausername · 1 year

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🔥 the locked tomb?

I typed out an answer to this earlier today and then somehow deleted all of it and didn’t get around to retyping it until now 😅

I’ve actually been meaning to ask what your thoughts are about it (if you have any you care to share) since I know you finished it recently and I’m trying to sort out my own thoughts.

Putting a read more bc I’m very long-winded

Overall I definitely enjoyed it and I think it’s a very fun and creative story that gives you a lot to think about and I like how each book sort of tries something new in regards to narrative structure/perspective. It definitely doesn’t feel formulaic or predictable which I appreciate. I think it’s really interesting how the cavalier/necromancer system is it’s own fictional oppressive system that people get indoctrinated into and that is used as a tool for control by the empire, and how it connects to stuff like gender roles and class and various forms of exploitation but doesn’t replace or directly mimic any of those things. I think it also ties into a lot of themes about like identity and belonging and social coercion and bodily autonomy in relationship to trauma, and it really gives you a lot to think about and analyze, especially in relation to the very prevalent theme of religion/Christianity.

I think it’s really interesting how Gideon and Harrow’s relationship ties into those themes, and I’m very curious to see how it will play out and how the power imbalance and dynamic between them will be dealt with, since it’s intertwined with the social system they exist within and I think the dissolution of that system will be mirrored by whatever happens between them (I love romances like that where the relationship is tied to breaking out of certain social roles or systems that the characters exist within if you haven’t noticed lol). I wish people confronted that a bit more in fan content and didn’t just take for granted the idea of Gideon being super forgiving and self-sacrificing and Harrow being super guilt-ridden—I think that’s just one stage of what will hopefully be a much more complex and nuanced arc of development for their relationship. I also don’t think the perfect lyctorhood thing is going to be some magic fix either in their relationship or in the empire as a whole, I think a greater and more tangible confrontation of the brutality of the system and how it’s been internalized by the characters and integrated into society will be necessary, and things will need to be completely altered in a more fundamental way.

All that being said, there are a few things I don’t care for about the books. I didn’t really care for the meme references (sorry, they really took me out of it), and I don’t know how to say this without sounding corny but I thought that it’s approach to humor and describing the characters could sometimes be a bit unnecessarily judgemental and it kind of lacked a certain air of openness and compassion in its approach to storytelling that is usually an important characteristic of SFF I really love. I really like the ideas at play and I think it can be emotional and insightful but it’s overall philosophy/mode of storytelling doesn’t really resonate with me or move me as much as other stuff has, and at times the prose and descriptions felt a bit empty to me as a result. Also, while I liked the change of setting and pace in Nona the Ninth and I think it was definitely a good choice to focus more on Blood of Eden and the society of people who’ve been displaced by the empire, I wish those topics had been delved into a bit more and that storyline felt a bit lacking to me in ways that I can’t quite put my finger on. Anyway that was just a very long summary of all my thoughts, which honestly shift around a fair amount and I kind of go back and forth about how much I like various facets of the story. I’d be really curious to hear your thoughts (or anyone else’s) though because I think it’s a very interesting story to discuss.

#this is less of an unpopular opinion and more just a summary of my thoughts #some of which may or may not be unpopular opinions depending on who you’re talking to #ask

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howlettbaz · 1 year

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Full Name: Baz Howlett.

Nicknames: Baz.

Pronouns and Gender: He/Him, Cis Male.

Birth place: Seattle, Washington.

How long have they been in town?: His whole life.

Sexuality: Bisexual.

Housing: Swindelbrook St. Apartments.

Occupation: Mechanic.

Family: 1 younger sibling.

tws for death, violence, crime

QUICK OVERVIEW:

Ghoulish grown man that stemmed from being a tearaway teen, yup yup.

Fell into a bad crowd in high school and got involved in some dodgy ass business. Very much was and still is a big fan of quick cash. Would be the perfect mark for being recruited for an MLM if he didn't lack patience the way he does.

Not a violent guy by any means but he def got a little too big for his boots when money started rolling in and pissed off the wrong people.

Joyriding since before he could even drive properly, was the fastest fucker when it came to stripping cars for parts which is why when he ended up going straight being a mechanic was about the only thing he could think to do that didn’t make him want to die of boredom. Though when he actually has to do his job, he does find himself veering pretty close.

Broke his mothers heart several times over with his life choices and his attitude and his dad always likes to remind him that thats what killed her (more aptly it was a stroke, but that doesn't mean those words still don't land).

Was the sole person with his best friend when he was killed over a drug dispute that went from an argument to a shooting and took off when he heard sirens. Never disclosed that to anyone and never got over it either.

Still wonders if he could have done something more that night to actually save him - kinda shut down for a long time over that, has done absolutely fuck all to process it really. Carrying that around still feels as real for him as helping carry the coffin at the funeral.

Very much uncomfortable with everything about himself and his life, most likely hasn't felt genuine joy in years.

Suffers from a terminal case of seeming out of place and disinterested.

If he cares then he cares but he’s just not the best at making that translate.

Got married on a whim during a two week stint of trying to live life to the max and is still trying to finalise that divorce.

PERSONALITY.

+ innovative, independent, methodical.

- disrespectful, selfish, untrustworthy.

FUN ADJACENT FACTS.

Swindelbrook St. Apartments anti even though he lives there, can’t stand the ruckus that’s always being caused by the 20 somethings that live there.

Drives a shitty car, especially for a mechanic, but he spends way too much time under the hood of everyone else’s to get caught up in that.

Thinks Grace and Frankie is the greatest show ever made. Jane Fonda stan for life.

Online menace!!!! Has a number of burner accounts on twitter so he can harass local politicians and dox Karens who've pissed him off at the garage.

Veers close to online identity theft at time if he really doesn't like someone because he'll make a burner with their name and image and start tweeting a stream of consciousness that usually gets him a fact check warning of a suspension.

Not materialistic but does wish he had a lawn so he could tell you to get off it.

CURRENT CONNECTIONS.

roommate of @murphyaltman

cousin of @zerolawrence

personal jigsaw the puppet on a tricycle to @thaddtilly

SPECIFIC WANTED CONNECTIONS.

his (soon-to-be) former ex-wife. this would need heavy plotting, but could be fun to play out the disintegration of the dynamic/dissolution of the marriage!

GENERIC WANTED CONNECTIONS.

connections wise he’s pretty much an open book right now, but some baseline ideas that can be springboarded off are:

friendly.

a best friend / ride or dies / close friends / childhood friends / pseudo-siblings / friends / drunk friends / new friends / former roommate / tbh anyone who can put up with him for longer than 5 mins.

romantic

flirtationship / friends with benefits / one time hook ups / tinder matches / unrequited crush (can be either way) / exes from high school / exes from his early twenties / exes on good terms.

antagonistic.

enemies / former (best) friends / exes on bad terms / frenemies / rivals / negative influence / people he's fought with online / people he's fought with in real life / people who simply fon't fuck with him.

#intro.#sewa.intro #crime tw #death tw #violence tw

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