#or do not include the political inherent oppression

[honeylemony]

Every single anti- bi/pan-lesbian post i make goes the same way.

I go "hey lesbians dont experience attraction to men actually."

And some fucknut goes "thats exclusionary!! Lesbians can fuck men!!"

And i go "so thats rape culture. Youre advocating for lesbian corrective rape"

And they go "you dont respect diverse genders/sexualities!!"

And i go "i dont care what people call themselves, feel free to make up new labels, but lesbianism does not include attraction to men"

And the circle back around to "youre being exclusionary!! And a terf!!"

And i go "excluding is not inherently morally bad. Including is not inherently morally good. Also, im only talking about not being attracted to men, why do you think i mean "trans women" when i say men"

Then they go "well theres a long history of lesbians fucking men! Dont deny history!"

And i go "those lesbians were bisexual women who fought hard to have their own label and identity. You are being biphobic by erasing their struggles. Additionally, something having history doesnt absolve it of any crime"

And sometimes theyll go "but men fucking lesbians is a kink! You cant kinkshame!"

And ill go "something being a kink does not automatically mean it can't be criticized. Are pedophilia and beastiality a kink? Are they something that should be allowed? Kinks are not some magical, untouchable item that can do no harm in any situation."

And they'll go back to "some people just have open or fluid genders/sexualities! You cant box us in!"

And i go "sure. And you cant tell me how open or closed my sexuality is. You cant redefine a sexuality for all lesbians just because you want to. A sexuality is not more morally correct when open, and not more morally condemnable when closed. Aren't you against political lesbianism? How is political fluidity any better? (fluidity just for the sake of being more Politically Correct)"

And they go "but youre being mean!! Youre being loud and mean and your tone is bad"

And i go "well im a sexual assault survivor advocating against sexual assault of lesbians. My tone is probably indicative of how strongly i feel about this issue. Plus, its fucked up to ask an oppressed class to try and get the boot off their neck as prettily and quietly as possible."

And then they devolve into calling me a transphobe-terf mean scary fat lesbian who doesn't care about other people. All over me saying "lesbians do not fuck men".

#gay #lesbian #lgbt #bi #anti bi lesbian #anti pan lesbian #sapphic #lesbophobia

[aberrant-angel]

you know what, if i'm gonna get called a baeddel anyway i'm just gonna drop some real baeddel shit like a live grenade:

being a man, including wanting to become a man, is not a politically or socially neutral choice, and i'm tired of people pretending it is.

not saying you're necessarily a bad person if you're a man or want to be one, but you have to accept that you're choosing to aspire to a constructed archetype which is set up in society to come with power and privileges over those below you.

you can argue that there's something immutable in your neuroanatomy that requires testosterone and a more typically masculine body. you can argue that you are naturally drawn to aesthetics usually associated with masculinity. but gender as a social construct is not innate, there are no universal traits exclusive to manhood, just like there are no traits that you can only find within womanhood. arguing otherwise is a form of gender essentialism.

man and woman only exist as vague archetypes with loose clusters of associated traits, which are then ordered into society as inequal opposites.

women are women because that's either simply what they've been told to be, or because it's the easiest way to communicate certain things about ourselves within the narrow man/woman framework society is built around and forces us into, but it does not in any way benefit us to be women. womanhood is a compromise. for many women, becoming or remaining a woman is simply the path of least resistance, where you don't have to constantly explain yourself or defend defining yourself outside this binary. so why is the woman/man divide even a thing? the reason this dichotomy exists in the first place is to benefit men. men are men because that is a powerful thing to be in the patriarchy.

don't try to frame it as if people are personally attacking you when they criticise men as a social class (because that is first and foremost what being a man is.) if you are a man, the very least you can do is be aware of the tools of oppression handed to you through it and try to use your position to uplift those below you, (which requires acknowledging that you have indeed placed yourself above them in the hierarchy to begin with.)

to imply that being a man or a woman is inherently neutral is almost like saying prison guards and prisoners are on the same level.

#transmisogyny

[rijl]

My most passionately-held controversial Young Royals take: Wille should absolutely abdicate the throne. (Season 2 spoilers ahead.)

"But Wille would make a good king!" There are no good cops, there are no good US presidents, there are no good kings. Monarchies are inherently unjust. The whole foundation of a monarchy is the idea that one family deserves exorbitant wealth and status at the expense of the majority just because they had the luck to be descended from some guys who probably killed and maneuvered their way into power and control. Monarchies are about the powerful dominating and exploiting the masses, and especially the already-oppressed. The writing of Young Royals isn't shy about showing how inhumane the monarchy is, and how holding power does not mean you deserve it. ALSO Wille doesn't want to be king!! He doesn't want that power, responsibility, or exposure, and he's likely becoming skeptical of the legitimacy of monarchy in general. Also "don't let Erik down" is just not a good reason, it doesn't make any sense. (Ok, the only scenario where he should be come king is if he plans to abolish the monarchy immediately afterward.)

"But then August would be king!" Well, ideally, Wille's abdication would result in a crisis that would lead to the end of the monarchy. But even if August did become king, maybe he and the monarchy deserve each other! They're both toxic. If the pressure of being prefect was tearing him up, just wait til he's king. It's not the ethical conundrum that it would be if the monarch of Sweden had any actual political power.

"But it would be cool/historical/good representation to have a queer king and prince consort." No, it wouldn't. It would be cool to have a queer couple cause the end of the monarchy. The systems of domination and exploitation that legitimize monarchies are the same ones that underlie sexism, racism, and yes, homophobia. Letting a queer person be in charge of the exploitation machine isn't justice. Ending the exploitation machine is justice. (This is also why discussions of whether Kristina is homophobic just run in circles-- her individual sympathies or lack thereof don't matter because her loyalty is to an institution that is inherently unjust and incompatible with queer liberation.) Also, Simon would never ever want to be a prince consort or involved in the monarchy in general! Lol! I think that's the clearest part of all this.

Again, I think the show is very clear about being anti-monarchy. It's critical of Sweden's class structure, and the monarchy is the pinnacle of that structure. The "welfare fraud vs. tax evasion" discussion shows the entitled and inhumane mindset of the wealthy students. The very creepy Society shows that the monarchy and the 1% are in a symbiotic relationship with the shared goal of keeping status and wealth in the hands of a few noble (i.e. been around for a long time i.e. white) families.

I do get the affinity for the Cinderella story happy ending idea! It's a compelling fairytale. And that's part of what fanfic is for. But as @communityradiointerndanielle put it: Young Royals and Red, White & Royal Blue have similarities and understandable fandom overlap, but the difference is: RWRB paints liberal aesthetics over the unjust institutions to let progressive-minded people enjoy the Cinderella fantasy without feeling guilty. Young Royals is a cautionary tale about why you don't actually want the Cinderella fantasy.

(This post brought to you by a recent poll where ~75% said Wille should not abdicate. Thankfully a few people including @tooindecisivetopickaurl, @antigorite, @emberc, eloquently disagreed or qualified this in the RBs!)

#young royals #prince wilhelm #simon eriksson #young royals analysis #rwrb #by the way no shade to rwrb I enjoyed it #queen kristina #august horn #august of årnäs #wilmon

[hiiragi7]

Endogenic Plurality, Disability, & Ableism

Note: For simplicity's sake, this post will be focused on endogenic plurals without a CDD, and uses endogenic interchangeably with "endogenic without a CDD" to be less wordy. Disability and disorder are also used somewhat interchangeably here.

I've been thinking more on the "do endogenic plurals experience ableism for being plural" debate, and something which I really would like to explore more in discussion is how plurality's proximity to disability impacts the ways in which endogenic plurals are treated.

While I see some fair points in each argument, statements such as "if you don't have a disorder, you do not face ableism" and "endogenic plurals only face misdirected ableism" are vastly oversimplifying the actual issues here to the point that they are actually misleading at best and harmfully incorrect at worst.

I have been reading Cripping Intersex lately and it has changed a lot of the ways in which I view disability politics. One thing that this book has made very clear: Saying "I do not have a disorder" does not prevent you from being subjected to discrimination based on an ableist system, and in fact rejecting the disability framework entirely not only does nothing to dismantle that ableism but even reinforces it.

This is not to say that endogenic plurals are "actually disabled/disordered", but rather that plurality as a whole has a proximity to disability in such a way that it is almost inherently subjected to ableism. There is absolutely a socially and medically enforced view of self which excludes any sort of overt plurality, especially in a Western colonialist context. Whether your plurality is actually disordered or not, that does not matter when you are working within a systemic framework which seeks to eliminate anything not defined as normal or acceptable. It doesn't even matter if your plurality is non-pathological; if it is not socially accepted as "normal", it is treated as disordered and to be fixed.

This sort of ableism is not only related to ableism more common to DID, but ableism as a whole. It is related to disability as a socially prescribed status through discrimination rather than black-and-white categories or objective truths regarding disorder and non-disorder. It is related to how saneism defines what is and is not normal and acceptable, rather than what psychology or the medical field defines as "actually" pathological and disordered (though it is important to acknowledge that these two systems heavily interact, as well, and that oppression impacts how the medical system defines pathology).

I reject that ableism towards endogenic plurals is simply "misdirected". To call it "misdirected ableism" is so often used to say that endogenic plurals are not the intended target, but I argue that they absolutely are included as intentional targets because plurality as a whole is a target, explicitly named or not. The determining factor for ableism is not whether someone is "really" disordered or not, but that they are treated as such due to societal standards regarding acceptable and unacceptable ways of being. When "unacceptable" is equated to "disordered" through a saneist lens, you are treated as such - and, you are, therefore, vulnerable to ableism.

I heavily agree with those who have so far spoken about how what people call pluralphobia is so often just ableism (though I also view it as often intersecting with anti-spiritual/religious views and racism), however I feel that we need to take this conversation even further to examine exactly how ableism works and who it affects. This post is also not meant to say "endos are oppressed for being plural", but rather that endos are oppressed through the same ableist systems that affect all plurals/people with CDDs and to expand on that to open conversation about it.

On a final note, I'd like to reflect on how rejection of disability has gone for various movements in the past and how that relates to the modern plural community and its approach to "plural acceptance".

As someone who was diagnosed with autism in the 2000s and saw a lot of push from autistics back then to de-medicalize autism to avoid further forced "normalizing treatment" like ABA, I can say that rejecting the framework of disability and ableism did not help us to dismantle systemic medical violence against autistic people and even isolated many severely disabled autistics who rely on medical interventions and support.

As an intersex person, I can say that the intersex community rejecting the framework of disability and ableism did not help us to end "normalizing treatments" against intersex people and even isolated many intersex people who do identify themselves as being disordered due to their intersex condition.

And as a person with DID, I have learned about how the empowered multiples movement had attempted to reject the framework of disorder and ableism to avoid medicalization and forced fusion, and how that did not help systems who did need medical intervention nor did it do anything to dismantle medical violence or stigma against multiples.

Any sort of wider "Plural Acceptance Movement" that comes into existence will fail if it is not also simultaneously and inherently a disability movement, and this is not just due to the existence of CDD systems. Seperation from disability does not exempt you from ableism or ableist frameworks and systemic oppression. CDD or not, we all as a community are impacted by ableism and cannot find any widespread acceptance while ignoring that. Plural acceptance is disability acceptance.

#syscourse #sysconvo #sysconversation #ableism #disability politics

[aronarchy]

broke: i can armchair anyone with cluster b pds just because they’re abusive/manipulative/unpleasant/i don’t like them, lol.

woke: only professionals should diagnose, if you’re a layperson you’re uneducated on the topic and don’t have sufficient understanding to be accurate and unbiased. disorders are a very serious thing you should take very seriously, not just throw around randomly whenever.

bespoke: the psychiatric field is institutionally corrupt as a result of its historical and ongoing construction as an apparatus of oppression. this leads to major blind spots in their ability to understand the experience of marginalized people, including mentally ill and neurodivergent people. much of psychiatric research, not to mention practice, is politically motivated and systematically incentivized to serve the interests of power. thus, many people are wrongly or inaccurately diagnosed with cluster b pds to demonize them or reinforce ideas about criminality, fundamental pathology contributing to their problematicness, justifying oppression, claiming struggles which are results of oppression are actually inherent and biological, etc. on the other hand, many people are underdiagnosed, unidentified, denied help when they’re struggling with a certain illness because psychiatrists are often incompetent and wrong, and with cluster b’s this may apply along a gendered line. this applies for any diagnostic practice, and even for other doctors who are part of the medical-industrial complex. psychiatrists are also disproportionately abusive, and some of this is baked into the cultural norms, intended purposes, and rules and regulations and privileges regarding psychiatric practice. you cannot trust an oppressor class to have the last and most accurate say on the oppressed’s subjectivities and interiorities. furthermore, part of the structure of the institution of academia itself ensures an elitist and hierarchical epistemology. dismantling this and other intersecting oppressions means reaffirming the right of the individual themself to either self-diagnose or self-(non/un)diagnose. existing information or medical professionals should be helpful for doing this better and to improve individual being, and acknowledging the significance or accuracy of their or others’ information accurately is obviously important, but professionals should not be treated as authorities who have the right to wholesale override self-understandings instead of supporting, or to control patients. this is in no way contradictory to opposing armchair diagnoses by underinformed or malicious laypeople who trivialize or misunderstand disorders. however, the problem with such behavior must be located correctly. the inaccuracy is a problem, but that means inaccuracy from actual psychiatrists is also a problem (and it certainly does exist). additionally it might perhaps be helpful to identify saneist armchair-diagnosing laypeople as engaging in behavior similar to that of psychiatrists and both wrong, rather than trying to position them as opposed. the same kind of epistemic overriding and even absurdity is often done by many psychs (and in fact the practice and framework has in large part originated or at least been spread starting from the psychiatric institution itself).

#OP #saneism #cluster B #antipsych

[probablyasocialecologist]

During these times, and in line with its long-standing exploitation of liberal identity politics, Israel has been weaponizing queer bodies to counter any support for Palestine and any critique of its settler-colonial project. Israelis (politicians, organizations, and “civilians”) have been mobilizing colonial dichotomies such as “civilized” and “barbaric,” “human” and “animal,” and other dehumanizing binaries as a discourse that legitimizes the attacks on Palestinians. Within this settler-colonial rhetoric, Israel seeks to garner and mobilize support from Western governments and liberal societies by portraying itself as a nation that respects freedom, diversity, and human rights, that is fighting a “monstrous” and oppressive society, illuminated clearly through the declaration of the Prime Minister of Israel “There is a struggle between the children of light and children of darkness, between humanity and law of the jungle.” While these blatantly racist genocidal declarations take the stage, activists in Palestine and internationally are being silenced, harassed, detained, criminalized, workers fired from their jobs, and students suspended from universities. International feminist and queer activists, in solidarity with Palestine, are facing attacks and harassment by Zionists under the premise that those who support Palestine will be “raped” and “beheaded” by Palestinians for merely being women and queers. Yet more often than not, rape and death are what Zionists wish upon queers and women who stand in solidarity with Palestine. Zionist fantasies of brutalized bodies do not surprise us, for we have experienced the reality of their manifestation on our skin and spirit. Yet they never seize to accelerate in their explicit vehemence. It becomes evermore absurd when such framings are constructed against Palestinian society, in light of countless testimonies, reports, and documentations of sexual violence Palestinians have been facing throughout Israel’s 75 years of military occupation. From the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, men and women, who are subject to sexual torture and rape since Israel’s inception to this very day, to daily and escalating settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, to Israeli “civilians” filming themselves torturing kidnapped Palestinians as a TikTok trend, and the most recent harrowing footage published on social media platforms by Israeli soldiers which document the lengths of torture and sexual abuse soldiers and settlers inflict on our bodies regardless of their sexual orientation and gender – all forms of violence, including sexual violence are systematically and structurally part of Zionist domination over Palestinian life. And yet Israeli society continues to weaponize queerness for the purposes of justifying war and colonial repression, as if their bombs, apartheid walls, guns, knives, and bulldozers are selective of who they harm based on sexuality and gender. We refuse the instrumentalization of our queerness, our bodies, and the violence we face as queer people to demonize and dehumanize our communities, especially in service of imperial and genocidal acts. We refuse that Palestinian sexuality and Palestinian attitudes towards diverse sexualities become parameters for assigning humanity to any colonized society. We deserve life because we are human, with the multitude of our imperfections, and not because of our proximity to colonial modes of liberal humanity. We refuse colonial and imperialist tactics that seek to alienate us from our society and alienate our society from us, on the basis of our queerness. We are fighting interconnected systems of oppression, including patriarchy and capitalism, and our dreams of autonomy, community, and liberation are inherently tied to our desire for self-determination. No queer liberation can be achieved with settler-colonization, and no queer solidarity can be fostered if it stands blind to the racialized, capitalist, fascist, and imperial structures that dominate us.

#palestine #israel #lgbt #zionism

[eyeoftheaxolotl]

⚠️SPREAD THE WORD⚠️ HB999/SB266 just got signed, and I refuse to keep yelling at a brick wall.

This bill aims, among other things, to ban core classes/courses of study that teach "theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities."

....which, as anybody who knows anything about anything about the United States knows, is literally the case. We see it in everything from finance to healthcare to job opportunities to literally everything we see. And we know for a fact that our institutions are and always have been steeped in inequity — such as law enforcement, which was literally brought up to maintain social, political, and economic inequities. There is no debate, only people who wish to force us back down.

The bill also bans and defunds DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs such as pride groups, Black Student Union, etc. (EDIT: The bill does not outright ban the groups, it prevents them from receiving funding outside of student fees, in the hopes of choking them out into nonexistence.)

I'm a Floridian. I refuse to keep yelling at a brick wall. I'll post it every day if I have to, but I need this to be heard. Our government does not represent us. We cannot afford to give up at this stage, we can only fight back harder. We need to be louder and stronger and more resilient than ever. And, for the last time, no we will not be moving out of Florida. We will not be giving up and leaving our homes, our families, our livelihoods — and many of us, including myself, are incapable of even doing so. We will stay and fight, and we expect those outside of Florida — even in the bluest of blue states — to stand with us and fight too. This is your fight too. Today it's Florida, tomorrow it's your home. These problems are not exclusive to Florida. These problems are FAR from exclusive to Florida. These are problems that are rearing their heads across the whole nation, that could become mirrored in other nations as well — and we need to fight back NOW — or forever wish we had.

Reblog. Share. Spread the word.

No matter who you are, no matter where you are — this is your fight, too.

#politics #florida #signal boost #important #america #eyeoftheaxolotl #axolspeaks

[transmascpetewentz]

Here's the thing about tagging slurs. It's an inherent political statement, whether you want it to be or not. When you tag "q slur," you aren't just helping people filter it out. You are making a political statement about the original post, and derailing the point being made. When I see you tag my post with "q slur," it's saying that the preferred umbrella term mainly for those who don't want to explain the nuances of their identity to everyone they meet, is something that should be censored in some cases.

I only tag for one slur (though I am very inconsistent with my tagging of it), and that is the CB slur (c**tb*y). The reason I tag for this specific slur is because I am drawing attention to its history in the fetishization and dehumanization of people like me, and the attention being drawn to this history is important when we are discussing its use as a slur. When you tag "q slur" on unrelated posts, you are derailing the original post by talking about queer's past usage as a derogatory term. You need not do that when someone is talking about their identification with the term and not talking about the specific oppression they face.

You can tag a post with "queer" or "q" or anything similar. I'm sure your followers know how to filter out specific words in posts, too, so they can just choose to filter out any posts that include the word queer in them. But when you tag a queer person identifying as queer as "q slur," you are making a political statement about what you think of this person's identity. That is why I, and many others, do not want you to tag our posts with "q slur."

#wentz.txt #queer discourse #queer is not a slur

[canichangemyblogname]

I had someone tell me Ireland is an ethnostate, similar to Israel. Ireland is a nation-state: a state that is relatively homogeneous in factors such as language. Israel is an ethnostate: a state that de facto and/or de jure restricts citizenship to members of a certain racial, ethnic, or religious group. The two are not the same. Suggesting they are is nothing short of insulting.

Relative ethnic homogeneity within a state’s borders is *not* inherently a sign of an ethnostate because relative homogeneity within a state’s borders is *not* necessarily the result of ethnostate citizenship restrictions. It is possible for a state to have a very heterogeneous population within its borders and be an ethnostate. Because what defines an ethnostate is whether the state de facto and/or de jure restricts citizenship to members of a certain racial, ethnic, or religious group. 

Ethnostate citizenship restrictions are also *not* inherently the result of a preexisting relative homogeneity within a state’s borders. There is absolutely a conversation to be had about the political, legal, economic, and social resources at a hegemonic group’s disposal to maintain its majority. One of those political and legal resources can be the establishment of an ethnostate. We can see this principle in action in the United States with right-wing calls to end jus soli. They know that ending jus soli and combining it with greater immigration restrictions is a more feasible way to achieve a homogeneous staatsvolk in the United States given that, by 2050, immigration will account for 71% of population growth and there will be no clear ethnic or racial majority within US borders. Legally restricting citizenship to members of a certain racial, ethnic, or religious group is the only way for the white, Christian majority to maintain itself, so it is publicly advocating for this to become a legal reality. 

On the other side of the spectrum, the modern Yamato people comprise over 98% of Japan’s population. For decades, Japanese political leaders have stated that ethnic homogeneity is key to Japanese national identity, and Japan has a long history of racism toward the Ainu, the Ryukyuans, the Koreans, and the Vietnamese. Japanese governments have created programs encouraging a single, unified, monocultural Japanese identity. Many of these programs included the erasure, forced assimilation, and suppression of minority ethnic groups and multiethnic people. Japanese imperialism and racism have a long history of brutal violence and oppression. It is through violence and oppression that they have been able to maintain its hegemonic ethnic state. They do not need to utilize ethnostate citizenship policies for Japan to maintain its staatsvolk.

Israel had to build its staatsvolk from scratch, similarly to other settler-colonial nations like the US, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. Israelis did not exist before 1948. The state had to build its national subjects, national identity, and hegemonic groups from the outside - in rather than the inside - out (like, say, Japan). The Israeli State had to secure the primacy of Judaism, Hebrew, and Ashkenazi identity among secular life and government, and it did it through Zionism. Zionism’s political intention and goal was a demographic shift in Palestine. It wanted to make the minority Jewish population a majority through massive Jewish immigration and settlement building, as well as the expulsion of the native Palestinians. It has continued its settler-colonial project by codifying Jewish entitlement to citizenship while making citizenship to Israel incredibly difficult to obtain if you are non-Jewish. Israel legally, socially, and economically encourages the settlement and citizenship of Jewish people while legally, socially, and economically discouraging the settlement and citizenship of non-Jewish people. Israeli law states that national self-determination is unique to Jewish people, establishes Hebrew as Israel’s official language, establishes Jewish settlement and citizenship as a national value, and calls Israel the “national home of the Jewish People.” There is no promise of political or legal equality for Palestinians and non-Jews in Israel as they are relegated to separate legal, political, public, and health systems.

Israel is an ethnoreligious state.

#Palestine #Israel #Apartheid #ethnostate #zionism #Youtube

[bcomic-blog]

Tonight in El Goonish Shive

HOLY

SHIT

Okay, I'm not sure how people generally come across this post. I'm assuming MOST have already read the update first. But I don't doubt that for a few tumblrites seeing this in their dash is their reminder, "oh hey, I should check out the new page"

Just in case, I ain't saying fuck all about this page and especially not SHOWING anything from this page without a cut...

(Maybe I should always do this? But especially tonight.)

If you are not caught up with EGS up to the Wed 12/6 update proceed no further, this is your warning lol

WOW!

I wanna call this a HUGE update, where so much happens. But technically we learned almost nothing new lol. Most everything that is confirmed about Mist in this update we already knew, basically...

Quick review of all of the plot points that Mist is part of:

Alternate universes aren't all equally "alternate"

The universe that the Griifins come from is inherently connected to the Universe the main cast live in. For simplicity, we'll call them Moperville and Avalon:

Like Moperville. Avalon has Uryuom and Seyonulu people. In Moperville they live in secret, disguised as humans. In Avalon, they live openly, but as a distrusted and opressed minority. Evidently it is believed that they originally arrived with intent to conquer, and they are legally prohibited from touching tech out of distrust that they aren't STILL plotting something

(Fuckin Dwight, man...)

So, on the Moperville side magic is a secret on the verge of coming out, but on the Avalon side, magic has been open for a long time. On the Moperville side humans believe they are the only sapients on Earth, and they aren't far off. Secretly, there are also some Uryuom and the Immortals, but that's mostly it. On the Avalon side, humans are one of a variety of sapient species, including Griffins, unicorns, and we haven't yet seen who all else. But the humans are a minority with a monopoly on political power, which is concentrated in those who have what is called a "royal aura"

So, the ENTIRE point of everything that happens in the "Balance" chapter is that Liam (the owl griffin) is sympathetic to the plight of the oppressed Uryuom, so he arranges the entire rigamarole of himself getting mind-controlled to attack royalty all as a distraction to pull one of the guards (Dwight) away from the portal from Avalon to Moperville, allowing three insurgents to sneak through to our side.

Their plan is to use the fact the Uryuom can use magic on the Moperville side again meaning that over here they can use magic items, specifically:

this thing, to allow them to STEAL the Royal Aura from someone over here, then go back with the aura that has always meant you are considered one of the powerful few on the Avalon side, and use that power to end the oppression of Uryuom and Seyunolu people.

There are three members of our cast that it's confirmed have a royal aura:

So in this page, Mist is looking for a way to supercharge the dream search, which is what happens in the NP chapter "Parable" which had been in a state of "canon, but it hasn't happened yet" but with tonight's upfate i assume it's going to finally happen!

Evidently, though, Seyunolu, unlike griffins. can't just see a royal aura. So that's Mist's part of the job: he can sense a being's auras and stuff, but only by entering their dreams, a process that wasn't finding their candidates very quickly. (Not too surprising,as they would have focused on the wealthy and powerful based on the mistaken assumption that if the Royal Aura people didn't rule openly here, they must be ruling from the shadows...)

So-- as I said at the beginning-- we don't actually learn a lot that's totally new about Mist... except we now know for sure that he is a Tulougol Seyunolu with a combination of human, Uryuom, and Unicorn... but that always seemed the likely bet. And we learned what he looks like without his disguise (which is one hell of a cool character design!)

I mean, wow!

Before this, it seemed likely this character would look like some sort of Unicorn/Human, but we couldn't be sure if that would look cool

It does!

So, at first when I read this I thought this was a confirmation of the character's NAME, but no, that had been confirmed a while ago, i just missed it!

For a long time this character was known by a placeholder name: "Mystucorn":

BUT, in passing, the leader called him "Mist" a while ago, as easy as this was to miss!

Another cool thing this page does is give Mist's pronouns. This is helpful because he has a very feminine appearance, even more so than the androgynous Noah, and it would be easy to accidentally misgender him. BUT that one also isn't actually new info: Mist's gender was established WAY back in his first appearance:

But there is one other COMPLETELY new thing established in this page: the NAMES of the other two Seyonulu involved in the plot to steal a royal aura, as well as their roles!

Saou is the leader who the plan is to make into Seyonulu royalty, and Potestas is essentially the bodyguard.

At this point I think it is safe to say which is which in their various forms and disguises going back to their earliest appearances!

Mist:

(note the uryuom antennae!)

(the scene with different shaped speech balloons to distinguish different speakers)

And finally:

Now...

Saou:

And

Potestas:

So, anyhow, this is all super exciting, I can't wait to find out what happens next... I mean, evidently "Parable" happens next, but now that that's no longer "sometime later this year", we'll finally find out more what happens AFTER "Parable"!

#el goonish shive #webcomics

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Mike Ramsay

Published: Mar 7, 2024

Late last month, the public learned that the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) through its Equity, Anti-Racism & Anti-Oppression Department issued a teaching guide claiming the Canadian education system is “colonialist” and designed to uphold the dominant white culture. The document, entitled “Facilitating Critical Conversations,” specifies that “education is a colonial structure that centres whiteness and Eurocentricity and therefore it must be actively decolonized,” and “schooling in North America is inherently designed for the benefit of the dominant culture (i.e., white, middle-upper class, male, Christian, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical, etc.)”. It adds that, “race matters—it is a visible and dominant identity factor determining people’s social, political, economic, and cultural experiences.”

While the school board has since temporarily removed the guide pending review after the Ontario Ministry of Education called it divisive, it is important that this thinking which has captured our school systems not be ignored. 

That this handbook was actually produced and distributed by the TDSB did not come as a shock to me, because, in my view, it is representative of what is taking place at other school boards right across Ontario. A reasonable question to ask is how all of this came about.

Having served as a trustee for 24 years, I would suggest it emerged because of the work of frontline activists who truly believe in their cause and that the system is stacked against racialized students. However, many others in leadership positions, who have other motives, simply see this as an opportunity to enrich themselves. They did this by pretending to address the activists’ perception of the issues.

As a Black trustee and past chair of a large school board (WRDSB), I often wondered what good could come from paying DEI consultants upwards of $500.00 an hour to teach kids that if they are white, the successes they experience are not due to personal effort. Meanwhile, racialized students are being taught that despite personal effort, their chances of success are diminished because society is racist and therefore biased against them.

The fact is that we have both white and racialized kids who are doing well academically. Conversely, we have white and racialized kids who are not doing so well. What I have found as a member of my board’s discipline committee is that the kids (from all backgrounds) who are not doing well usually have other issues that are at play, including, but not limited to significant behavioural issues that are impacting their ability to learn. However, you can’t tell this to the proponents of DEI, who have been busy organizing events to celebrate and take credit for the academic success of racialized students who I believe were, for the most part, never in danger of failing school in the first place. The credit should go to the parents and caregivers who worked and continue to work hard to encourage and support their children.

Thankfully, with the passing of each day, more and more people are beginning to question the need for school initiatives that are fixated on identity politics. They are coming to realize that certain aspects of DEI instruction can actually lead to greater prejudice and even harm, as highlighted in a recent study released by the Aristotle Foundation and authored by Professor David Haskell. 

Haskell’s report shows that DEI related to “anti-racism” education and its promotion of “white privilege” doesn’t make participants more sympathetic to disadvantaged Black people as DEI trainers claim, and can in fact make them more hostile toward poor white people.  

As he elaborates, “Teaching students about white privilege, a core component of the DEI curriculum, does not make them feel more compassion toward poor people of colour but can reduce sympathy [and] increase blame…for White people struggling with poverty.”

In light of Haskell’s overwhelming evidence, I feel school boards should be required to justify the expense and existence of DEI in their organizations. Moreover, if it is doing harm as his research shows, do we not have an obligation to use legislation to stop the practice immediately in our classrooms?

I would say we do. And that is why I agree wholeheartedly with parent Liz Galvin who recently told the Halton District School Board: “Trustees, when your equity and inclusion policies are used to generate administrative procedures by un-elected DEI proponents that contradict the aims and prescribed goals of said policy, then you have an obligation to insist that they be scrutinized, amended and or removed.” 

It seems straightforward, but the practice will not stop if it is left solely to the discretion of the Ontario NDP supporting majority which dominates most school boards.

This is where the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Doug Ford comes in. Even though his government has made it clear through their 2023 Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act (Bill 98) that they want boards to be dead focused on tangible measurable learning achievement, rather than on faddish so-called “social justice” experiments, boards continue to double down on these DEI initiatives. I don’t know if the government is tiptoeing around the issue out of fear that the far-Left radicals entrenched in our education system will attack them. More and more parents and education workers from all backgrounds across our province are paying closer and closer attention to the damage being done. It is time for the Ford government to respond firmly and issue clear directives to boards to end these divisive practices.

==

You can tell it's a cult because they don't care about evidence.

The way to combat this is the same as combatting religion. You say, prove it. You're asking us to sink a tub of taxpayer money into your program. So, let's see your statistics. Let's see your before and after metrics. Let's see how you measured the success of your training program and the results. Let's see what we can expect for ourselves based on your success elsewhere.

They can't and won't. They'll instead morally brow-beat you with words like "white supremacy" and "danger" and "harm." Despite them making truth claims - that is, statements that are supposed to be taken as factually true - part of the scam is that they'll even claim that asking for this sort of evidence is itself part of the problem. This is the same tactic as a priest threatening you with hell to sell you salvation, or a salesman frightening you with murder and rape to sell you an alarm system.

At that point you say, so, no statistics, no metrics, no results, huh? And you invite them to leave.

#Mike Ramsay #DEI #DEI must die #diversity equity and inclusion #diversity #equity #inclusion #DEI bureaucracy #DEI consultants #antiracism #antiracism as religion #neoracism #woke #wokeness #cult of woke #wokeism #wokeness as religion #corruption of education #ideological corruption #ideological capture #religion is a mental illness

[darci-tbh]

don't really vibe with the whole proshipper tendency to compare this discourse to real world problems like acab and maga tbqh. we're not being oppressed. the issue of fictional freedom is not comparable to the issue of police violence. can we all take a step back and realize that pro/anti ship discourse is an online, fandom issue pretty much exclusively, and antishippers online have nothing to do with wider scale censorship issues and freedom violations?

like it's fine to be an activist for the freedom of fiction online and in fandom and in totality, including things like book bans and other infringements on our free speech that happen on a wider scale, but we still need to acknowledge sometimes that the issue of proship vs antiship is, by itself, not that wider scale, and exists exclusively online, so that we don't say stupid shit like "antishippers are literally worse than (trump supporters/fascists/cops/lgbtphobes/other actual bigot) at this point". because the 16 year old puriteen shouting about how incest shippers should die is just an immature asshole, not a fascist, and we as proshippers (this label SPECIFICALLY) stand for freedom to create what we want online, and that does not inherently have anything to do with wider scale politics.

obviously censorship on a wider scale is a real, very political problem, but I promise you the puriteens are just as much a victim of this as we are, and are not somehow conspiring with fascist government for our demise

#proship #proshipper #proshippers please interact #anti censorship #comship #comshipper #comshipper safe #ship discourse

[askvectorprime]

Has any transformer ever become President of the United States? Some of them WERE technically born in the US

Dear Presidentially Persistent,

In one universe, it was Laser Cycle who made history by becoming the first Cybertronian ever to run for president. Like most Cybertronians of the era, she was born on Earth, part of the “second generation” of post-war Cybertronians constructed through a fusion of Human, Nebulan, and Cybertronian technology. And like many other Cybertronians on the East Coast, she owed her existence to the Powell Motorworks Quantum Laboratories Cyberfactory in Pittsburgh, the third-largest facility of its kind in the nation. When a wave of factionalism threatened to rekindle the Great War on Terran soil, she was one of the many Transformers who chose to side with the Autobots.

With the end of the Machine Wars and the ratification of the Pax Cybertronia in the year 2013, Earth and Cybertron prepared to enter an unprecedented era of peace, prosperity, and alliance-building. However, after decades of geopolitical chaos, not all humans regarded the Autobots as benevolent protectors. Many humans came to regard the Cyberfactories as symbols of “alien oppression”—complexes that stole Earth’s own resources to build an army of resource-gobbling aliens. Power-hungry politicians such as Megan Guiglione’s Earth First party rode to power on a wave of populist rhetoric, while the Terran Coalition, which advocated peaceful cooperation between humans and aliens, struggled to rebound from a string of political losses.

When not working her day job as a food courier, Laser Cycle leveraged her take-charge personality and oratory skills to become a community organizer. In the year 2048, she made history when she ran for office and became the representative for Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district; in doing so, she became the first Earth-born Cybertronian to hold office. In 2062, Senator Cycle announced, to much fanfare, that she would run for President as a member of the Terran Coalition—if she won, she would become the first non-human leader of the United States. After a particularly heated convention, Laser Cycle emerged as the frontrunner and entered the 2064 presidential primaries against Earth First representative Terence Berger.

During the primaries, Laser Cycle promised that she would work to build alliances with Nebulos and Cybertron, while taking conciliatory stances on a number of controversial political issues—these included offering amnesty and rehabilitation programs for captured members of Jhiaxus’s clone army, increased access to mental health services for ex-Headmasters, and de-escalating tensions between the United States and the Sino-Soviet Alliance. But after a strong start, factors beyond her control threatened to stymie the Cycle campaign.

In January 2064, a long-range EDC patrol reported an encounter with a rogue Decepticon ship that had somehow slipped past Earthen sensors—while the “ship” was little more than an old scow, crewed by three Decepticons who hadn’t yet heard the war had ended, the incident nevertheless alarmed many constituents, who found themselves gravitating to Berger’s pro-rearmament proposal.

The second threat came from Cybertron itself. In the post-war years, Cybertron had undergone something of a religious revival; in particular, many Transformers were attracted to the teachings of Heretech, a repentant ex-Decepticon who had rededicated his life to preaching Reversionism. However, his theology espoused that the only “real” Cybertronians were those who’d been constructed from the sacred metals of the homeworld—those constructed on worlds like Nebulos or Earth were pale imitations of “true” Cybertronians, who had never basked in the warming glow of Vector Sigma. Laser Cycle’s campaign, he decreed, was a direct affront to Cybertron itself, an attempt to dilute the inherent purity of their race. While many Cybertronians wrote these words off as mere bigotry, some were swayed by his rhetoric. Even some Autobots held a kind of vague resentment towards the second generation—after all, they’d spent years fighting the Decepticons in deep space, while their successors lived the peaceful, comfortable lives they’d never known.

Finally, on November 4, 2064, the election was held. While Laser Cycle secured the majority of the Cybertronian vote, as the polls foretold, low voter turnout meant that she ultimately didn’t clinch the final tally required to win the race. Graceful in defeat as well as victory, she offered a congratulatory telephone call to her opponent. Berger governed for three years, until a scandal involving the sordid history of his great-grandfather Shawn led to him resigning in disgrace. Still, Laser Cycle was the first to seriously introduce the American people to the idea of a Cybertronian in office—and by the year 2109, many felt that only an Autobot would be able to save Earth from the impending threat of the Swarm… but that’s a story for another time, I think.

#ask vector prime #transformers #maccadam #generation 1 cartoon #generation 2 #wings universe #laser cycle #powell motorworks #cyberfactories #machine wars #megan guiglione #terence berger #jhiaxus #headmasters #earth defense command #heretech #reversionism #nebulos #vector sigma #swarm