#socially necessary labor time

[yngwrthr]

Thus productive human activity, work, will also be of decisive importance in socialist society. Of course, it will undergo dramatic qualitative and quantitative changes! It will be distinguished in qualitative terms from the capitalist form of work, the form which Smith so accurately described as a “sacrifice of freedom and happi­ness” by the fact that firstly, the worker will be turned into a conscious director of the production process, whose task will be more and more confined to the simple supervision of the enormous machines and natural forces which operate in production; and secondly, through its character as directly socialized communal work, the product of which will no longer confront the worker in the form of an alien and dominating thing. In this way labor, under socialism, freed from the dross of the past, will lose the repulsive character of forced labor and become “attractive work” in the sense adopted by Fourier and Owen. This total transformation of work will express itself quantitatively in a fundamental reduction of working-time, and a consequent creation and extension of disposable, free, time. For although even socialist society will not be able to dispense with “surplus labor” altogether, it will be in a position, thanks to the full unfolding of its productive forces, to reduce the amount of work for individual members of society to a minimum. When this has been accomplished not only will the traditional division of labor, with its separation of people into “manual” and “mental” workers, fall to one side, but also the difference between work time and free time will lose its present-day antithetical character, since work time and free time will begin to resemble one another, and complement each other.

Rosdolsky, “The Making of Marx’s Capital”, Vol. II, trans. Pete Burgess, London: Pluto Press, 1980, pp. 430-431.

#Marxism #Rosdolsky #value theory #value #law of value #value form #exchange #exchange value #labor time #free time #necessary labor #surplus labor #commodity #commodity exchange #commodity production #capitalist commodity production #capitalism #socialism #communism

[probablyasocialecologist]

There is a growing body of physiological, anatomical, ethnographic, and archaeological evidence to suggest that not only did women hunt in our evolutionary past, but they may well have been better suited for such an endurance-dependent activity. We are both biological anthropologists. I (co-author Cara) specialize in the physiology of humans who live in extreme conditions, using my research to reconstruct how our ancestors may have adapted to different climates. And I (co-author Sarah) study Neanderthal and early modern human health. I also excavate at their archaeological sites. It’s not uncommon for scientists like us—who attempt to include the contributions of all individuals, regardless of sex and gender, in reconstructions of our evolutionary past—to be accused of rewriting the past to fulfill a politically correct, woke agenda. The actual evidence speaks for itself, though: Gendered labor roles did not exist in the Paleolithic era, which lasted from 3.3 million years ago until 12,000 years ago. The story is written in human bodies, now and in the past.

[...]

Our Neanderthal cousins, a group of humans who lived across Western and Central Eurasia approximately 250,000 to 40,000 years ago, formed small, highly nomadic bands. Fossil evidence shows females and males experienced the same bony traumas across their bodies—a signature of a hard life hunting deer, aurochs, and woolly mammoths. Tooth wear that results from using the front teeth as a third hand, likely in tasks like tanning hides, is equally evident across females and males. This nongendered picture should not be surprising when you imagine small-group living. Everyone needs to contribute to the tasks necessary for group survival—chiefly, producing food and shelter, and raising children. Individual mothers are not solely responsible for their children; in forager communities, the whole group contributes to child care. You might imagine this unified labor strategy then changed in early modern humans, but archaeological and anatomical evidence shows it did not. Upper Paleolithic modern humans leaving Africa and entering Europe and Asia show very few sexed differences in trauma and repetitive motion wear. One difference is more evidence of “thrower’s elbow” in males than females, though some females shared these pathologies. And this was also the time when people were innovating with hunting technologies like atlatls (spear throwers), fishing hooks and nets, and bow and arrows—alleviating some of the wear and tear hunting would take on their bodies. A recent archaeological experiment found that using atlatls decreased sex differences in the speed of spears thrown by contemporary men and women. Even in death, there are no sexed differences in how Neanderthals or modern humans buried their dead or the goods affiliated with their graves. These indicators of differential gendered social status do not arrive until agriculture, with its stratified economic system and monopolizable resources. All this evidence suggests Paleolithic women and men did not occupy differing roles or social realms.

#foraging #hunting #prehistory #anthropology #archaeology #Paleoanthropology #gender #Paleolithic

[genderkoolaid]

So I read this interesting post from the MensLib subreddit, about how men's issues are always blamed on men themselves and never on society. The post itself as well as the comments are a very good read in digging in to antimasculism & the ways in which feminism has failed to critically examine men's suffering under the patriarchy. For example (all bolding by me):

Here again, the problems predominantly affecting women are addressed by changing society, while those predominantly affecting men are addressed by changing men (or by telling men to change themselves). The difference is not that one approach is right and the other wrong; they are both 'right' in the sense that they highlight genuine issues, but the approach to men's problems is more superficial. When dealing with men's problems, we focus on the immediate cause, which is usually the men's failure to cope with mental strain ("he should have gone to therapy", "he should have learned to open up more"); in contrast, when dealing with women's problems, we focus on "the cause of the cause", and try to remove the systemic social issues causing the mental strain, rather than telling the victims what they should have done to better cope with it.

I think this is a great point, and something we really need to tackle. OP also goes on to talk about self-repression, comparing girls avoiding sexual harassment and boys avoiding bullying:

Boys (and men) are notorious for repressing their emotions. They have a good reason: in boys' peer groups, a failure to control your emotions is almost as shameful as a failure to control your bladder; it is a sign of weakness, and any sign of weakness makes you a target for bullying and ridicule. So boys learn to wear a permanent mask of aloof toughness to avoid inadvertently revealing any sign of weakness or uncontrolled emotion, and many keep this habit into adulthood. It is generally well recognized that suppressing emotions is unhealthy in the long run, but it seems to me that the commonly proposed antidote is misguided: boys (or men) are told to "just open up more and be vulnerable" or to "learn how to cry", as if their reluctance to show emotions were some kind of irrational emotion-phobia, rather than a perfectly reasonable, perhaps even necessary, defense against the ridicule, contempt and loss of respect that society inflicts upon those who can't keep their emotions in check in the proper "manly" way.

It's something we don't really question in mainstream feminism. Women's issues have a societal root, and men's issues are issues that men put on themselves, and therefore men just need to fix it themselves and change.

And while yes, we all have a responsibility to unlearn harmful societal teachings, just saying "men need to fix their shit" doesn't help anyone. I've been annoyed for a while at how people will react to men suffering under the patriarchy with "UGH they need to go to therapy", as if

Needing therapy is a sign of failure or a bad thing, and someone not going to therapy when they need to is them being an asshole on purpose and not potentially a sign of them not feeling safe enough to go to therapy, feeling too ashamed, not having enough money or time, etc.

Individual men getting individual therapy will solve the societal problems of forcing boys and men to repress their emotions and view themselves as only valuable if they can perform manual labor and have a lot of sex with women. It's a problem that is only perpetuated by men themselves and if they just stopped doing that, then the problem would disappear.

No self-respecting feminist would ever react to a woman obviously suffering from the patriarchy with "ugh, she needs to go to therapy and fix herself." Yes, therapy would be helpful most likely, but that's not going to actually fix the underlying cause of her issues. So why do we, as feminists, think that "men just need to fix themselves" is an okay response to societal suffering under the patriarchy?

Who does this help? Who benefits from us ignoring these issues? Why do we assume that men's experiences under the patriarchy are so one-dimensional and that we have no responsibility for unlearning our societal biases around men and masculinity?

Someone in the comments also added this quote from the "perpetually relevant" I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out essay by Jen Coates:

Have you noticed, when a product is marketed in an unnecessarily gendered way, that the blame shifts depending on the gender? That a pink pen made “for women” is (and this is, of course, true) the work of idiotic cynical marketing people trying insultingly to pander to what they imagine women want? But when they make yogurt “for men” it is suddenly about how hilarious and fragile masculinity is — how men can’t eat yogurt unless their poor widdle bwains can be sure it doesn’t make them gay? #MasculinitySoFragile is aimed, with smug malice, at men—not marketers.

And then another commenter left this (and referenced bell hooks' work on men!!):

"Do you agree that we tend to approach women's problems as systemic issues, and men's problems as personal issues?" Yes, and there's even a name for this: Hyperagency. Individual men are assumed to be immune to systemic pressures because the people at the top of the hierarchies generating those pressures are also men. "And if you do agree with that, do you think this difference in approach is justified, or do you rather think it is a case of an unfair bias?" It's pretty clearly not rooted in reality. The idea that billions of ordinary men aren't beholden to the social constructs under which they were raised is just plain silly. I'd blame the empathy gap, but honestly I feel like it's more than that. Patriarchy hyper-individualizes every struggle a man faces as a way to shield itself from critique and gaslight ordinary men. The motivations there are readily apparent. However, we see the same blind spot appear even in more academic Feminist spaces (taking for granted that "Feminist" spaces on social media are hardly representative of the cutting edge of Feminist thought). bell hooks once postulated that some Feminist women are deeply afraid of acknowledging how little they understand about men, let alone taking the steps to broach that gap.

Another person explained hyperagency by saying "Every single individual man is a hyper agent who is just expected to bootstrap his way out of the patriarchy through sheer force of will."

#m. #antimasculism

[dragonmama76]

Beginnings Part 2

read Part One, and Interlude first. Part 3 is done!.

Eddie was the opposite of calm.  He was terrified well beyond rational thought and he had one intention.  Survive. By any means necessary.  When he jumped out of the boat and pressed the edge of the broken bottle against his attacker’s throat nothing could have stopped him.  Except.  “Steve, this is Steve!”  Steve.  Steve who he had wronged.  Steve who he had bullied.  Steve with the perfect life that maybe wasn’t so perfect.  And he stopped.  

************

Eddie’s cup runneth over.  His public display of dominance had been more than enough to establish a reputation that he was not to be fucked with.  He didn’t even need to torment Steve to keep the memory alive, but Eddie continued his menacing glances and subtle jabs nonetheless. Because he could.  Because it was fun.  It was that feeling you get when you’re five years old and you’ve just completed some kick ass move like jumping off the swing at it’s zenith and you shout to your parents, “Look at me!  Look at me!”  His own parents had never looked.  They had never been there to begin with.  But now.  Now everyone was looking at what he had done and it felt so fucking good.  He couldn’t be too obvious since the basketball team had rallied around Steve, keeping him out of bounds most of the time, but he still found sly little opportunities to flash his knife or murmur a not so subtle threat when Steve came near.  It was enough to keep his high feeling fresh.

By the time the school year was over, even local drug dealer Rick Lipton had heard of him.  When Eddie decided that manual labor didn’t fit his new image, he proposed they begin a business relationship and Rick was quick to agree.  He knew that Eddie could handle himself if there was trouble and having a dealer embedded in the high school made sense.  Eddie spent the next two years dealing at school and weekend parties and while he wasn’t exactly accepted, no one messed with him and he only rarely had to display his feral nature to the jocks that ran the school.   In the meantime, he convinced the theater teacher to sponsor an after school club for his gang of nerds.  Mr. Hughes didn’t know what Dungeons & Dragons was, exactly, but it felt dramatic and he was happy to oblige.  If only Eddie put as much energy into his academic responsibilities as he had done with his social life he would have been out of High School in a quick minute.  But he was too busy enjoying the life he created for himself to consider the consequences.

Senior year, Steve pulled up to the school in his BMW feeling pretty great for the first time in his high school career. He had an amazing girlfriend, basketball was starting soon, and best of all there would be no more run-ins with Munson.   It wasn’t that he was scared of him, exactly.  After that day in the cafeteria Freshman year Munson had backed off for the most part.  Sure he still glared at him and whispered threats and flashed his stupid knife, but for the most part Steve was able to avoid him and pretend he didn’t exist.  It helped that they never had any classes together.  And while the freak had managed to be at every house party Steve attended, he preferred alcohol over drugs anyway so they had zero interaction. And beyond that, Steve now knew there were much scarier things in the world than a high school kid with a knife.  No, he wasn’t afraid, it was just…a lot.  Munson was obviously still a live wire waiting to strike and Steve had to be vigilant.  He had put up walls and created a persona of his own to balance out the bully that still dogged him and it took a lot of effort to mask his more vulnerable, sensitive side.  Most of his energy went to creating the character of King Steve that everyone now expected and that he hated..  He had done things he regretted, that shit show with Jonathan Byers for example, and he had willingly lost friends in the process, good riddance to Tommy H. and Carol, but he was trying to scale back the arrogant jock attitude and be more himself, especially with Nancy.

His guard was so low that when he sauntered into his first class ready to take on the world Steve was completely blindsided when the freak, himself, pushed past him to grab a seat in the back.  Steve could feel the pinpricks of tears forming.  He couldn’t do this.  Not again.  Not when he thought he was finally free.  He bolted from the room and straight into the bathroom before anyone could really register he was gone.  Shit.  Shit shit shit.  He was pretty sure someone up there hated him these days.  He had fought an other-worldly creature no problem, but it was still Eddie Munson who had the power to make him run.  This year was officially going to suck.

Eddie watched Steve run from the classroom and grinned.  He still had it, baby.  Maybe his second senior year would actually be fun.

Steve’s senior year was anything but fun.   Steve graduated.  His parents didn’t come.  His ex-girlfriend didn’t come.  A bunch of middle school kids came and cheered for him and that was nice, but also kind of embarrassing.  This was apparently his life now.  The brightspot?  Eddie Munson’s name wasn’t called.  Not that Steve was listening for it.  Eddie Munson could go to hell as far as he was concerned.  But he couldn’t help but feel a little relieved not to have to share this day with him.

Eddie watched from under the bleachers as Steve Harrington received his diploma along with the rest of his class.  Whatever.  Fuck him and his perfect hair and his perfect life.

Eddie was definitely pissed to be doing Senior year for the third time, but there were still moments of joy like when he gathered new freshman sheepies.  His original group of freshmen had finally graduated without him, but he still had Jeff, Frank, and Gareth and now he was ready to induct a new crew.  They were a little wary, and if he didn’t know better he’d say they looked kind of shellshocked, sort of like some of Uncle Wayne’s friends who had been to ‘Nam.  With Eddie’s outlandish personality and dramatic welcome they opened up eventually.  He liked the curly hair kid, Dustin, the best.  God that kid never shut up, though which, depending on the topic, could be annoying.

Right now Eddie was extra annoyed because the topic he wouldn’t shut up about was Steve Fucking Harrington.  Was that guy going to haunt him for the rest of his life?  

“Eddie, you’d like Steve if you knew him.  I asked him and he was kind of weird about it, but he says he didn’t really get to know you in high school and I think that’s a shame because he was bullied really badly and I bet you could have helped him and protected him.”

“What are you talking about, kid?  King Steve was never bullied a day in his life.” Eddie scoffed.

“No, he was.” Lucas nodded sagely.  “He said that the only reason it didn’t totally destroy him was that he had the basketball team on his side.  That’s one of the reasons I’m doing basketball.  You got to have people on your side.  That’s what Steve says.”

“Steve says,” Eddie mimicked, “Jocks can’t be bullied, they ARE the bullies.”

“That’s not true.  I’m not a bully.”  Lucas muttered.

“Yeah, well you’re more nerd than jock.” 

“Steve’s a nerd too.” Dustin insisted, “He just doesn’t show it, but he watches Star Wars with me all the time and he has a huge collection of Spiderman comics stashed in his bedroom.  Even Robin calls him a dingus.  Do you know Robin?  I think they should date but she says they are platonic with a capital P.  I think that’s crap with a capital C. They’ll get their shit together eventually.”

“I….don’t know if I know Robin?”  Eddie’s head is starting to spin.  “So who bullied King Steve?”

“He won’t say, but it started freshman year.  He gave us a big talk before school started about being safe and staying in a group.  I guess the kid, like, followed him around and would push him and stuff.  And one time he even pulled a knife on him.  That’s crazy right?  He said he was afraid to go to school for all of freshman year.  It’s awful because Steve had, well he wouldn’t want me to say, but he doesn’t have great parents so home sucked and school sucked.  I wish you guys had been friends. And then maybe he could have been in Hellfire or something.  He’s great with a bat and I bet his character…”

Eddie couldn’t listen anymore. His brain was on overload.  Had he really done all that to Steve?  Actually caused him pain?  

Well.  Fuck.

“Roooobin,” Steve whined, “Are you even listening to me?”  They were behind the counter at Family Video rewinding tapes while they waited for even one customer to come in to relieve their boredom.

“I AM listening, Steve,” she reasoned, “But I think you’re letting your jockish prejudices get in the way of rational thought.  Hellfire is just a group of nerds who role play and I know Eddie can look all scary and intimidating, but he’s totally not a bad guy.  We were in band together last year and he’s honestly just a big goofball.  Yeah, he’s loud and okay, a drug dealer, but I know for sure that he doesn’t sell to underclassmen so you don’t have to worry about that.  The kids are fine with him.”

“You don’t know him like I do.”  Steve glowered, “And…well, I’m afraid that if he knows the kids are associated with me that he’ll, like, take it out on them.”

“Why?  What did you do to him?” Robin glared and Steve knew she thought there was some bullshit King Steve incident in their past and all of a sudden it was too much.  He couldn’t bring himself to tell her how weak he had been, but also this was ROBIN and he couldn’t stand the idea that she thought of him that way.

“NOTHING!” he burst out, “I did NOTHING to him EVER.” And suddenly he couldn’t breathe.  Tears pooled in his eyes and it felt like something was going to burst out of his chest, like that gross Sigourney Weaver film Robin had made him watch.  He sank to his knees and pressed his hands to his eyes.  

“Okay.  You’re okay, Steve.” Robin hunched over him.  She placed a firm hand on his chest, “I've got you.  Breathe with me.  In and out.  You’re safe.  I’m here and you’re safe.”

Steve managed some gasping breaths and could feel his heart rate coming down.  Right.  This was Robin, his soulmate, he could tell her and she would understand.  “It started the first day of freshman year…”

Eddie didn’t end Hellfire early, even though he felt nauseous and increasingly distracted.  He owed it to the group as their DM to see it through so he pushed his feelings aside and let the kids get through a tough battle before calling it a night.  “Okay, that’s it for now.  You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.  Y'all got rides lined up?”

“Yeah, we’re getting picked up,” muttered Mike, “He’s probably already out there waiting.”  “Alright then, chariots may wait no longer.  Scram!”  Eddie hurried everyone out the door and quickly cleaned up the papers and books sprawled on the table.  As he made his way out he could hear the kids chattering away about the most recent developments in the campaign and as he burst through the gym door he heard a sharp whistle.  “Can we please let’s go before your parents kill me for missing your curfew?  I’ve been out here forever waiting for you guys to be done.”  Eddie knew that voice.  He looked up straight into the eyes of Steve Harrington.  He was dressed in his regular polo and jeans, hair perfect as always, leaning confidently on the hood of his BMW, but as Eddie caught his eye he saw the boy flinch and round his shoulders.  Christ Almighty.  What had Eddie done?

Eddie didn’t even remember driving home.  He was at school in his van and then he was fully dressed in his bed.  Over and over his mind replayed the events of the last four years.  He wasn’t a stranger to reminiscing about his days as the Freak who humbled the King, but this time he tried to remember that Steve was a flesh and blood person, a kid, really, like Dustin or Mike or Lucas.  A kid with real feelings and problems who, maybe, didn’t deserve to get picked on for entertainment.  And wasn’t that the thing.  Eddie had never stopped to consider that what he was doing might have been just as bad, or even worse, than what had been done to him.  Maybe Harrington had deserved it?  By his junior year he certainly seemed like a real asshole.  But also, Eddie never really remembered seeing Steve initiate any of the prickish behaviors his sports ball friends liked to engage in.  Now that he thought about it, he remembered a few times where Steve hung back and helped pick up dropped books and papers or check that a kid was okay after having been tripped in the hall.  Eddie groaned.  This wasn’t the first time he’d messed up in his life, but it felt like the most important. 

Eddie didn’t get out of bed for three days.  His uncle tried to coax him out with favorite meals and rented movies, but Eddie couldn’t face him.  Uncle Wayne still thought Eddie was a good person and that was decidedly untrue.  On day three he decided that he needed a new plan.  He wasn’t even sure of the ultimate goal but he knew that step one would be making sure that Steve was okay.

“Robin,” Steve hissed.  “He’s out there again.”  Steve was staring out the front window of Family Video trying to look like he wasn’t staring out the window at the man casually leaning on a telephone pole across the street.  He knew it sounded crazy, but he was pretty sure that Eddie Munson was stalking him.  It was nothing he could prove because it was always in public but increasingly when he was out and about he would feel eyes on him and when he turned to look, Eddie would be there.  Yeah, alright, he was always doing something totally normal like buying groceries or having a smoke.  And sure, Eddie never approached him or glared at him the way he did when they were in school which, honestly felt weird.  And even weirder, a couple of times when Eddie noticed Steve noticing Eddie, he had smiled abashedly and fluttered his fingers in a little wave.  If Steve had to define it, he would have to say that Eddie was 'reverse bullying' him.  Was that even a thing?  Maybe he was just fattening him up with his pretty smiles and doe eyes like a lamb being fed before he was slaughtered.  It was disconcerting to say the least.

Robin gave Steve a sympathetic shrug.  She had been appropriately outraged when he had given her the details of his run-ins with Eddie but it was still hard for her to see him as anything other than the loud funny guy from band.  “Just ignore him.  He lives in this town just like us so you’re bound to see him now and again. And, so far at least, he’s been good to the kids.  Maybe try to let it go?  And speaking of band, did I tell you what Vickie did yesterday?....”  Steve turned away from the window to concentrate on Robin’s latest installment of the life of her crush.  Let it go.  Okay. He could try.

Eddie watched as Steve turned away.  He had learned a lot from watching him these past months.  Steve was kind to cashiers, patient when he was rung up incorrectly, and flirty in a dorky kind of way that never paid off.  He was always carting Eddie’s Hellfire kids places like the arcade or the diner or the mall two towns over and it seemed like he did it out of the goodness of his heart. He was a hard worker, staying late at work to clean thoroughly and lock up.  He was a good friend to Buckley, dancing with her and running around when the store was empty. Eddie could see why Dustin thought they were more than just friends. From the outside, Steve seemed to be just fine, but Eddie watched and he saw more.  When he thought no one was paying attention, Steve looked sad.  He flinched at loud noises.  And at night he went home to an empty house where, Eddie knew, he had to be lonely.  Eddie wasn’t so naive as to think all Steve’s problems stemmed from a stupid kid in high school who wouldn't leave him alone, but Eddie felt responsible for adding to his pain.  He felt lost, except for one thing. Every so often he would catch a glimpse of Steve with Robin or Dustin and his face would light up with the most painfully beautiful smile.  It was like looking into the face of the sun after a long rain and Eddie couldn’t catch his breath gazing at him.  “I see you Steve Harrington and I will do whatever it takes to keep you smiling. I goddamn swear it."

———————-

More to come. Tell me what you think!!

Taglist: @goodolefashionedloverboi @background-noise-headache @phirex22 @swimmingbirdrunningrock @lilpomelito @thaliaisalesbian @liesatemyocean @seilahtitania32 @nightmareglitter @writtenbyancientskeletonhats @dammitjim02 @newagemyth @slaalgumacoisayay @batxsignalsx @beawritingbooks @vacantwatchers @hallucinatedjosten @i-less-than-threee-you @bookworm0690 @dino-nuggets-posts @a-gae-af-racoon @my-chemical-sexuality-crisis @whalesharksart @uses-of-anger @epiclazershark @anaibis @kakashimeansplan @that-agender-from-pluto @novelnovella @jackiemonroe5512 @emly03 @shoujo-goddess @zaphodkilledthespeedforce @what-is-life-but-an-empty-void @riverofrainbows @pottenloved247 @strangersteddierthings @a-little-unsteddie

#steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington #the party #ongoing #angst #no happy ending yet #but it's coming...i think

[corpsebrigadier]

I feel the whole "touch grass" sentiment seldom really comes with any practical advice as to how to disengage with Internet discourse and to stop falling into the pit of doing Internet controversy so that social media companies can sell advertising at our petty gladiatorial battles. I cannot emphasize enough though how much logging off and interacting face-to-face with individuals in my community improves my mental well-being and is more useful praxis than having a virtual slap fight with some stranger whose life is far removed from mine. At the same time, I also recognize that not everyone has safe/receptive communities, grass to touch, and the ability to get out.

What I can say though is that there is still an abundance of virtual grass to touch, even if it isn't tailored to give you the same dopamine rush as fighting with WrongBad People online. We can still do things that are meaningful, that are locally-oriented, and/or that are generally good for us. If we can engage in the labor necessary to do shitty discourse (typing, composing, contemplating), we can probably work through our thoughts in a journal or a private blog. We can possibly YouTube/Zoom our way through City Council Meetings. We can learn to build old school websites. We can find volunteer opportunities (Transcribe museum texts! Donate Gutenberg books! Watch/catalog cute animals!). We can surf the archaic web and enjoy all manner of cool and enriching public domain media.

We can still use the Internet in ways that make us better.

#tech jubilations

[zvaigzdelasas]

"it was made by a person" does not absolve the image of sin, because by that logic every piece of ai art is ok actually. because obviously the ai could never just make art, the people using it to generate book covers so they don't have to pay an artist are actually typing in the description for what they want the ai to make. so it's ok !! a human told the ai to make that ❤❤❤❤

I mean. Other than the moralizing ("absolve of sin", "so it's ok!" etc)...Yes? Of course AI art is made by people?

Do you think AIs have agency or something? Do they find their own data and train themselves without a human telling it to? How does the AI pay for electricity?

If AIs have agency why can't they be Artists?

You're undermining your own position and actually fundamentally agreeing w the silicon valley tech bros lmao

If someone pays a human on Fiverr $5 to make a book cover in order to avoid paying someone a more reasonable price....thats basically the same moral situation right. If that guy on Fiverr is just choosing between 10 different templates he already has (and maybe copied from the internet!) and just changing the text on it, he is "typing what they want to make". What's the difference to paying someone $5 on Fiverr to generate a book cover for you using AI. Where's the moral difference, what does the tool have to do with anything.

AI doesn't have any agency, people do. AI is a tool. AI being used to lower prices is an economic choice made by humans.

A useful analytical framework to understand why this is the natural result of competition is actually Historical Materialism, which understands the social world as fundamentally existing of Humans, Human action, and Human relationships. Instead of trying to act like things like AI - spectral reflections of human labor - are "creatures" themselves, and tilting at windmills. Historical Materialism teaches not only why this happens, but how to overcome that process entirely.

In machinery, objectified labour materially confronts living labour as a ruling power and as an active subsumption of the latter under itself, not only by appropriating it, but in the real production process itself; [...]In machinery, objectified labour itself appears not only in the form of product or of the product employed as means of labour, but in the form of the force of production itself. The development of the means of labour into machinery is not an accidental moment of capital, but is rather the historical reshaping of the traditional, inherited means of labour into a form adequate to capital. The accumulation of knowledge and of skill, of the general productive forces of the social brain, is thus absorbed into capital, as opposed to labour, and hence appears as an attribute of capital, and more specifically of fixed capital, in so far as it enters into the production process as a means of production proper.[...]

In machinery, knowledge appears as alien, external to [the worker]; and living labour [as] subsumed under self-activating objectified labour. The worker appears as superfluous to the extent that his action is not determined by [capital's] requirements.[...]

Fixed capital, in its character as means of production, whose most adequate form [is] machinery, produces value, i.e. increases the value of the product, in only two respects: (1) in so far as it has value; ***i.e. is itself the product of labour, a certain quantity of labour in objectified form***; (2) in so far as it increases the relation of surplus labour to necessary labour, by enabling labour, through an increase of its productive power, to create a greater mass of the products required for the maintenance of living labour capacity in a shorter time. It is therefore a highly absurd bourgeois assertion that the worker shares with the capitalist, because the latter, with fixed capital (which is, as far as that goes, itself a product of labour, and of alien labour merely appropriated by capital) makes labour easier for him (rather, he robs it of all independence and attractive character, by means of the machine), or makes his labour shorter. Capital employs machinery, rather, only to the extent that it enables the worker to work a larger part of his time for capital, to relate to a larger part of his time as time which does not belong to him, to work longer for another. Through this process, the amount of labour necessary for the production of a given object is indeed reduced to a minimum, but only in order to realize a maximum of labour in the maximum number of such objects. The first aspect is important, because capital here -- quite unintentionally -- reduces human labour, expenditure of energy, to a minimum. This will redound to the benefit of emancipated labour, and is the condition of its emancipation.

Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process.

Marx [PDF link]

#other choice quotes in here but i figured thats enough #marx could easily explain ai

[sepublic]

In light of Clouds on the Horizon and Reaching Out, I’m really seeing past Alador scenes in a whole new light...

This isn’t Alador actually being opportunistic here; Rather, it’s him standing up for his daughter and her friends, now that he has an excuse to do so. Al knows he can’t sway his wife on morals or anything like that, the only way to appeal to her is by Odalia’s sense of profit; And when he sees how Luz motivates Amity, Alador sees a reason he can give Odalia to make her back down. He’s still a terrible parent at this point, but now it gives the vibes of a victim having carefully learned how to ‘speak the language’ of their abuser and get them around to things, by framing them in just the right way.

Obviously Alador WAS also keen on his daughter’s potential, but this time we can view it in a more positive light, as believing this is good for his daughter and what he believes her goals to be at this point. Alador really is unironically, genuinely happy for Amity’s skills here; Proud from a fatherly sense before any desire for social gain, even for Amity’s benefit!

When Luz points out the Abomaton display is getting excessive, Alador agrees, but he doesn’t step in because his power really is limited. Odalia is essentially holding their kids hostage, and it’s not the first time a Blight has been forced by her to choose the lesser of two evils in order to protect loved ones...!

This shot? Honestly, it’s probably more the last vestiges of what happiness their marriage might’ve started out with... Or it’s Odalia being ‘proud’ of her husband for being business-oriented, while Al is just glad he got her to listen for once.

Suddenly, the scenes of Odalia taking Alador’s interest from him DO hit hard, actually... She really is taking away what little enjoyment and reprieve he has left and holding all the power, and not just veering her husband back on track. And when Alador reminds Odalia that she’s a Blight to make her uphold her end of the deal, it’s likely Al throwing back a saying Odalia used against him and their kids to keep them bound to their deals with her; He’s not impressed with her sudden hypocritical double-standard towards Luz here, for Odalia’s own benefit.

I’m getting the vibes that Odalia was the Blight first and Alador married in, and she’s really obsessed with making herself an old money name, even if she’s actually new money. Maybe the Blights used to be rich but fell into ‘hard’ times, and Odalia saw Alador as a means to make her family name influential again? Not that she cared to restore her parents alongside herself, Odalia really is selfish...

So the initial fandom perception of the Blights as Victorian nobles might not be too far off, as that was what they once were; And Odalia has tried to regain that wealth, while also adapting to more modern times as well. How her hypothetical parents would feel, I’m not sure; As long as it’s power, I guess Odalia doesn’t care about ‘sullying’ the Blight name by reinventing themselves as a modern tech company, new money and all that.

And to help achieve that Odalia wanted cheap labor and fired half of Alador’s team; And he proceeded to take on the burden of labor to make up for that, just so his kids wouldn’t have to. How much did Al even get paid... That’s like domestic slave labor y’all! And only an abuser’s victim would stomach such harsh working conditions for such little pay, because Alador is already bound to Odalia by marriage, and is concerned for his kids... Like damn, Emira and Edric got to goof off partially because of him, even if Odalia still enticed Amity to work in school to prove herself.

It sucks that Alador stopped paying attention, and his kids are still valid in any resentment for not standing up to Odalia earlier for their sake; But it really does cast what free time the kids had, that was necessary for their interactions with Luz and eventual growth, into a whole new light! What little happiness these kids had underneath their mother’s abuse came from their father’s neglect and sacrifice... Amity was already so stressed back in Season 1, imagine that AND child labor...

Which as I mentioned; Odalia still got what she wanted out of Amity and even the twins, hadn’t she? So it was still kind of for nothing, hence Alador realizing that and making his stand; He’s done playing Odalia’s game and negotiating on her terms.

#the owl house #alador blight #odalia blight #speculation

[gothhabiba]

During the hundred years of new Jewish settlement in Palestine, whose starting point is conventionally assigned to 1882 (and commonly called "the First Aliya"), a society was produced whose nature and structure proved to be highly fluid [...]. Each new wave [of immigrants] resulted in a restructuring of the whole system. It is, however, commonly accepted that around the time of the establishment of the State of Israel, in 1948, a relatively crystallized Jewish society existed in Palestine with a specific cultural character and a high level of self-awareness, as well as established social, economic, and political institutions. It differed, culturally and otherwise, from the old Jewish, pre-Zionist Palestinian community, and from that of Jewish communities in other countries. Moreover, this distinctiveness was one of its major goals, involving the replacement of the then-current identifications "Jew" and "Jewish" with "Hebrew." [...]

[...] [T]he cultural behavior of immigrants oscillates between two poles: the preservation of their source culture and the adoption of the culture of the target country. [...] Most migrations from England tended to preserve the source culture. European immigrants to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, on the other hand, left their home countries with the hope of "starting a new life in the new world" [...]. [This slogan's] effect was to encourage the replacement of the "old" by the "new" and often engendered attitudes of contempt towards the "old." Such replacement assumes, of course, the existence of an available cultural repertoire in the target country [...]. [...] [I]t is precisely here that the case of immigration to Palestine stands in sharp contradistinction to that of many other migrations. A decision to "abandon" the source culture, partially or completely, could not have led to the adoption of the target culture since the existing culture did not possess the status of an alternative. In order to provide an alternative system to that of the source culture, in this case East European culture, it was necessary to invent one.

The main difference between most other migration movements and that of the Jews to Palestine lies in the deliberate, conscious activity carried out by the immigrants themselves in replacing constituents of the culture they brought with them with those of another. [...] Zionist ideology and its ramifications (or sub-ideologies) provided the major motivation for immigration to Palestine as well as the underlying principles for cultural selection, that is, the principles for the creation of an alternative culture. [...] [T]he governing principle at work was "the creation of a new Jewish people and a new Jew in the Land of Israel," with emphasis on the concept "new."

At the end of the nineteenth century, there was sharp criticism of many elements in Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Among the secular, or semi-secular Jews, [...] Jewish culture was conceived to be in a state of decline, even degenerate. There was a notable tendency to dispense with many of the traditional constituents of Jewish culture. The assimilationists were prepared to give up everything; the Zionists, in the conceptual tradition of the Haskala, sought a return to the "purity" and "authenticity" of the existence of the "Hebrew nation in its land," an existence conceived according to the romantic stereotypes of contemporary (including Hebrew) literature, exalting the primordial folk nation. It is interesting to note that both assimilationists and Zionists accepted many of the negative Jewish stereotypes, promulgated by non-Jews, and adapted them to their own purposes. Thus they accepted at face value the ideas that Jews were rootless, physically weak, deviously averse to pleasure, averse to physical labor, alienated from nature, etc., although these ideas had little basis in fact.

Among the numerous ways manifested for counterposing "new Hebrew" to "old Diaspora Jew" were the transition to physical labor (mainly agriculture or "working the land," as it was called); self defense and the concomitant use of arms; the supplanting of the old, "contemptible" Diaspora language, Yiddish, with a new tongue, colloquial Hebrew (conceived of at one and the same time as being the authentic and the ancient language of the people), adopting the Sephardi rather than the Ashkenazi pronunciation; discarding traditional Jewish dress and adopting other fashions [...]; dropping East European family names and assuming Hebrew names instead.

[...] [E]xperiments were continuously carried out in Palestine to supply the components necessary for the fulfillment of the basic cultural opposition new Hebrew-old Jew. It was not the origin of the components which determined whether or not they would be adopted, but their capacity to fulfill the new functions in accordance with this opposition. Green olives, olive oil and white cheese, Bedouin welcoming ceremonies, and kaffiyehs all acquired a clear semiotic status. The by now classical literary description of the Hebrew worker sitting on a wooden box, eating Arabic bread dipped in olive oil, expresses at once three new phenomena: (a) he is a worker; (b) he is a "true son of the land"; (c) he is not eating in a "Jewish" way (he is not sitting at a table and has obviously not fulfilled the religious commandment to wash his hands).

— Itamar Even-Zohar, "The Emergence of a Native Hebrew Culture in Palestine, 1882-1948." Studies in Zionism 4, 1981. DOI 10.1080/13531048108575807.

#Itamar Even Zohar #quote #Palestine #Israel #food #Zionism

[femmefatalevibe]

What advice/resources would you recommend for someone who is trying to decentralize her life from men (or really anybody other than herself)?

Any books/videos/advice/etc. that you have would be great!

Thanks! Your blog helps me so much xo

Hi love! I'm so glad to hear this <3. Sharing some tips/resources below. Hope this helps xx

How To Decenter Men In Your Life:

Consider the values, goals, and desired lifestyle that feel most authentic to you if social scripts/stigmas didn't apply to you

Take time to become radically honest with your desires as an individual – outside of the perception of men, your family, boss, teachers, peers, etc.

Cultivate a sense of personhood and identity established in your interests, hobbies, skillsets, learning capabilities, creativity, and desire for growth in all aspects of life

Act in your own best interests. Speak up for your needs, and advocate for yourself. Be more "selfish." Don't apologize for what you want and go after it. Act in your own best interests

Become confident in negotiating, assertive communication, and standing on your own two feet. Establish relationships in all aspects that are based on mutual benefit and equitable exchange

Unlearn your self-sacrificing & people-pleasing. Stop shrinking yourself or suppressing your needs to make others feel better or more comfortable

Validate yourself: your needs, desires, goals, dreams, preferences, and opinions. You need to choose yourself every day. Your appeal to others means nothing if you don't like the person you are or are becoming to satisfy the needs or desires of others

Consider the ways you're consciously and subconsciously confining your self-expression and belief system to fit the mold/appease the patriarchy. Actively work to deconstruct this mentality and way of being

Be honest with yourself about how men enrich your life. Not the other way around. Do they fulfill you romantically, sexually, both, or neither? There's no right or wrong answer, except the one that requires you to put on a performance rather than live in alignment with your true self

TikTok Creators:

Melanie Hamlett (LOVE her! My favorite creator/author on this topic.)

Katie Jgin

Soberside

Rose Hackman

Hope Peddler

Therese Lee (@thereselee6)

SpirtualWhistleBlower

Books On Decentering Men:

A Single Revolution by Shani Silver

Patriarchy Stress Disorder: The Invisible Inner Barrier to Women's Happiness and Fulfillment by Valerie Rein, Ph.D

What a Time to Be Alone: The Slumflower's Guide to Why You Are Already Enough by Chidera Eggerue 

All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation by Rebecca Traister

Enjoy Your Solo By Mary Delia Allen

How to Be Single and Happy by Jennifer Taitz

Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After by Bella DePaulo, Ph.D

On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good by Elise Loehnen 

We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives by Manon Garcia 

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy 

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling  Men by Lundy Bancroft 

Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All by Laura Bates

Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward by Gemma Hartley  

#decentering men #intersectional feminism #feminism #feminist #women empowerment #womens rights #intersectionality #social justice #patriarchy #purity culture #female gaze #female excellence #female power #female writers #it girl #femme fatale #female sexuality #the feminine urge #queen energy #high value woman #internalized shame #girl advice #personal growth #femmefatalevibe #women's rights #gender norms #female rage #feminist theory #book rec list #womanism

[misfithive]

What Simon can teach us about boundaries!

Been seeing a lot of Simon hate again lately (mostly on other apps but i’m sure its here too) and it's getting pretty frustrating and honestly a little bit troubling that people think so little of Simon and his needs.

Simon hate feels like some weird connection to the patriarchy/heteronormativity where some people have just decided that it is okay for one person's needs to be ignored in a relationship in order to satisfy the other. Lisa seemed to intentionally try and create a dynamic in their relationship where they see each other as equals. They may struggle to see each others perspectives at times but that is true for literally ANY RELATIONSHIP where two people come together from different walks of life. Both their needs matter and their journey in the relationship is to figure out how to honor the other persons needs while honoring themselves or see if that is even possible.

Sooo I wanted to share some lessons about boundaries that people could learn through Simon instead of talking sh!t about him !!!

1. Boundaries are about what we want and need in a relationship. Sometimes people want different things and thats ok!

People love to say that Simon forced Wilhelm to come out. I even saw someone say that Simon was asking Wilhelm to "give up his family and the throne". No where does Simon ask him to do any of those things. Notice how Simon says "I don't want to be anyones secret"? This is not just about Wille. This is a boundary that he has for himself and the types of relationships that he wants to have. Everyone is allowed to have expectations or want a certain type of relationship. Saying you don’t want to be in a secret relationship is quite a reasonable request. It is also quite reasonable to say that you don't want to be in a public relationship. Sometimes in relationships, what two people need is incompatible at the time which is why it made sense for them to end things. That is the point- for both people to say what they need to feel comfortable and sometimes other people cannot meet your needs- you have to decide if that is a dealbreaker and for Simon at the time it was.

2. Boundaries ≠ manipulation

He tells Wilhelm he take as much time as he needs but you have to do it alone. That is a boundary it is NOT manipulation. He does not try to control Wilhelm or tell Wilhelm what to do. Saying a relationship wont work for you unless certain needs are met or that you dont want to do tons of emotional labor for another person is not manipulation. He is saying I am not okay with being a secret, I am not okay with having my trust broken, i’m not okay with being in a relationship where you say one thing and do another (Wilhelm made a promise he could not keep and even he has owned up to that to Nils). Simon is not saying YOU HAVE TO COME OUT RIGHT NOW OR ELSE. He is not playing mind games or trying to get Wilhelm to change his mind in order to be with him. He is willing to walk away even tho his heart is breaking because he knows it is not possible at that point for Wille and him to get on the same page.

Boundaries have become part of social media language lately thanks to instagram therapists and the like but a lot of people have misconstrued the meaning. Some people call something a boundary when they are actually being controlling. However the purpose of a boundary is about what you yourself are comfortable with, not what other people can/cannot do. Ex: “i am okay with holding hands in public but otherwise I don’t feel comfortable with PDA” (healthy boundary). Vs “you can’t have guy friends because I get jealous” (unhealthy boundary). Boundaries are healthy and necessary for a relationship to be healthy- they are not the same as manipulation or trying to control someone else.

3. What is okay for you does not have to be okay for someone else. Everyone’s boundaries are different because we are all different people with different traumas, needs, experiences, relationships, and limits. I have seen people compare the Wilmon to Narlie where Charlie is okay with Nick wanting to keep things “secret”. Besides the fact that this is a completely different relationship and context, the fun thing about boundaries is that what is okay for you does not have to be okay for someone else! Just because you would have been willing to be Wilhelm’s secret if he asked does not mean that Simon has to. Just because Charlie was willing to to do that for Nick does not mean that Simon has to. Not to mention !!! Nick also acknowledged that is not fair to Charlie and outside of not telling people they had a very loving smooth sailing relationship - people expect Simon to be like Charlie without acknowledging that Wilhelm is not giving the level of trust and security that Nick is. If you want to go there, I'm sure if Wille was acting like Nick being consistent not saying "i'm not like that", "delete my number" etc (regardless of the reason) then maybe Simon would have been more okay with it. This is not Wille hate bc i get it, but sometimes in empathizing with Wille people forget that Simon is a whole human with wants and needs. Simon needs to protect himself and his heart. We all do. Relationships should not require you to subject yourself to pain for someone else. It is healthy to have boundaries and know your needs and what you deserve. And at that point in time Wille could not give him that. Most people watching were quite proud of Simon for that so idk how the narrative got turned to him being selfish.

4. Boundaries can change

It is normal to reassess your boundaries, that does not make them any less valid. Clearly for Simon, once Wilhelm proved his trust more and and Simon reevaluated what he wanted, he decided that he was willing to be a secret if that meant having each other. If he never decided that, it still would have been totally valid. Also noting, there was no compromise/meet in the middle there in Simon deciding that he was willing to be a secret for Wille. It's just funny that Simon is getting the flack for not wanting to "compromise" or meet in the middle when in the end, Simon was willing to do exactly what Wille wanted and he gets ZERO credit from some people for that. Luckily Wilhelm sees what a sacrifice this is for Simon and does not leave Simon to sacrifice alone.

4. Boundaries protect the relationship, build trust and help relationships grow

If Simon had never stood his ground both in s1e6 and throughout s2 Wille would have likely continued the way he was going bc it was comfortable for him and he was understandably scared. They probably would have gotten in even more arguments and honestly i do not think Wille would have been forced to mature and consider Simons feelings in the way he eventually did. I know people resist Edvin calling Wille selfish but Simon has to constantly keep telling Wille “what about me? What about my family? Do you see how hard this is for me?” For some reason viewers are interpreting that as selfish ?? In a relationship you really should not have to be constantly reminding someone to consider you and your feelings.

Simon setting boundaries and saying what he wanted only made their relationship stronger even tho they had to take some time apart. Protecting yourself and wanting a healthy balanced relationship where your needs are considered as much as the other person’s is not selfish. And anyone who tells you that it is does not have your best intentions at heart. Simon is not saying his needs are MORE important than Wille’s he is saying that his needs matter TOO and are EQUALLY IMPORTANT to Wille’s. Which was the journey he needed to go on (as stated by his sister) and the journey that Wille needed to go on as well in order to create a healthy dynamic together.

Setting boundaries is hard but worth it in the end!!!

So yeah! I hope you all set some boundaries today or use this info to argue with simon antis 💖

—————-

Disclaimer// I am not a therapist i just do workshops with teens about healthy relationships and it is a passion of mine.

#young royals #wilmon #simon eriksson #anyone who hates on simon needs to self reflect #boundaries #simon and wilhelm #young royals s2

[drdemonprince]

Do you worry about being so open about your sex life under the same name you use professionally? How did you settle on your current approach to talking about kink/fetishism publicly?

That's my question. Below is some background but feel free to ignore it.

I'm asking because, like many people, my kinks are integral to my sense of self and engaging in BDSM has been significant for my psychological wellbeing. I don't like keeping these important aspects of myself separate from the rest of my life and I'm jealous of the people I meet at munches who share openly kinky stuff on their regular Instagrams. But I also have relatives on all of my socials, including a few adult family members who take any opportunity to create drama or get on their high horses, and teenage cousins who obviously shouldn't be given information about my sex life.

I like using social media to connect with people, and it feels harder to do that when big parts of me are walled off. I'm so worried about sharing anything 'inappropriate' that I'm only presenting this bland, watered down version of myself and it makes me feel alienated. Making side accounts is one option, but it feels like compartmentalising and involves more 'personal brand' management than I care to juggle.

That's without even touching on in-person disclosures. How do I embrace these aspects of myself without acting like they're shameful, but also without being obnoxious or unfair on other people who might not want to know?

I know "authenticity" can be an unattainable ideal, especially on social media platforms that necessitate curation, but I do want to stop tying myself in so many knots over this (in the figurative, unsexy way).

Sorry for venting in your askbox.

Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on this.

I don't worry about the potential of my speaking openly about my sex life ruining my professional life because I hate my professional life and professionalism in nearly all forms. I have nothing but contempt for the academy, social psychology, my employer, the publishing industry, 99% of the organizations that hire me to provide workshops, and a decent-sized subset of my readers who are of the more liberal end of things. Alienating myself from these institutions and people and making myself incompatible with their viewpoints feels as necessary to me as breathing air.

when I was very young I was concerned with making myself palatable to academia and shucking off everything that was unprofessional and hillbillyish and childish and weird about me, but then I learned what success within the academy really entailed. I heard faculty members shrug and say they "didn't really care" about the topics they were studying (topics like racism, sexism, transphobia, etc) and were just publishing work on these subjects to further their own careers. I was trained to use questionable research protocols that generated false positives and specious results. Nearly all the research that I worked on for three years of undergrad and five years of graduate school would eventually be discredited due to failure to replicate. And I realized that I was being taken advantage of all the while, mined for cheap labor on meaningless projects that meant nothing scientifically, making $14k a year in a field where there were no future job prospects.

by the time i finished my PhD I knew that I wanted to be nothing like the people that had trained me and taken advantage of me, and that I had useless skills in a dying field. I was plenty happy to cut the shit by then and be real about who I was, what I believed, and what was and wasn't a virtuous use of my time. This only became more pronounced after I was screwed over by even more employers as a part-time instructor, and then finally hired full-time in a department that was doing good work, but which was constantly getting undercut by those in higher up administrative positions.

My entire career I have essentially been daring people to fire me and they never seem to do it. No matter how much shit I talk about the university and my profession and no matter how much I bear about myself, I just keep getting rewarded for it and allowed to float along relatively unbothered. There's a power in having a lot of audacity. I am not ashamed of who I am and I don't worry about how my employer and colleagues see me because as a whole I have zero respect for any of them or their opinions. (I have some individual coworkers who are great! but they dont represent Psychology or Academia as a whole or its values. my coworker friends are supportive of my freaky trans kinky self).

It's much the same dynamic in my family. I have no respect for the majority of people in my family and I don't concern myself with how they might react to the things I have to say. When I first started writing openly about Autism some relatives found it deeply offensive and talked a lot of shit about me behind my back, saying that I was embarassing all of them by associating us with a disability they found shameful, but my mom communicated to those relatives in no uncertain terms that I was gonna just keep doing whatever the fuck I wanted and they'd have to find some way to deal with it.

My mom had already learned that about me firsthand. I complain about her sometimes but I do have immense gratitude to her for just accepting who I am, even if there are elements of it she can't understand and probably does not feel good about. She learned a long long time ago that I was on my own separate planet and that there was nothing she could do to stop me from running my mouth and living my life, and I'm thankful to her for that. My actions have set the tone with my family pretty clearly: i came out as trans publicly before I told them, I started hormones and changed my name/gender marker without consulting them and then told them it was a fact already and they'd need to get in line. I approach most things about myself that others might take issue with in the same way: it's a fact, it's fucking happening, and you can't tell me shit about it that is going to keep me from doing it. and if you're too much of a dick about it I might end up writing about you in a book or essay so watch out, I guess.

That sounds more vindicitive than how I actually feel most of the time, of course. I just don't think about the opinions of people I don't respect. I care about what my friends think of me, and the people I look up to, and I try to rise to a level that is worthy of them. And of course I do experience fear of ostacism and failure in those respects and have not always coped with it in a confident, principled way. But with my aunts and uncles or my boss? Fuck them. I have no desire to win their approval because I've seen what they approve of and it sucks.

All of this is possible because I am not financially reliant upon my family, of course, and because if I lose my job I would have a back-up plan. I've always done freelancing and side writing gigs, even back when I was a part-timer with really insecure teaching jobs, and so the loss of any one position has never felt that catastrophic to me. I was already released by my PhD program into economically shaky ground and I never had a prayer of having a successful tenure track academic "career", so I'm not afraid of losing that. that's already gone. I feel generally pretty confident in my ability to scratch by making a living doing this or that even if somebody fires me, and I won't have to ask relatives for money so it really does not matter if I alienate any of them. that is an IMMENSE PRIVILEGE and someone not in that position shouldn't compare themselves to me or expect themselves to have that same degree of confidence. sometimes you have to just keep your head down to survive and there's no shame in that either.

as for the question about "authenticity" as an idealized end state and how to reconcile it with social media, here are some of my thoughts: it's not authenticity if it is focused on how other people interpret you. authenticity is letting go of trying to manage what other people think about you. that means you dont ever have to broadcast everything about yourself to the public or on social media, you dont ever have to share something that you dont want to, the pursuit of being perfectly understood is one that will never be fulfilled and there is no need to make oneself unnecessarily vulnerable just for the sake of appealing to people who might not ever understand and accept you anyway. authenticity is more about an energy than about revealment. it's an energy of self acceptance, not necessarily self love, and it's not something that one broadcasts, it's something one cultivates by developing secure, supportive relationships, improving one's self knowledge, and by working through one's baggage.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Without a doubt, if countries in the Global South committed to a socialism founded on agroecological principles, they would, in turn, put their productive capacities toward meeting their own needs, rather than growing surpluses. This is to say that Americans and other importers of bananas would have to figure out a way to meet their own demand for bananas. In a socialist future, necessary labor would be organized democratically and collectively by the associated producers, and unnecessary labor will be eliminated (advertising, consulting, finance, marketing, and all the bullshit jobs people currently do). Banana production could, therefore, be taken up in the “realm of freedom,” the part of the economy that would be managed by people in their free time. This isn’t implausible. The variety of banana that most people eat in the West was cultivated in a greenhouse in England. While some of Harris’s critics suggest that this would amount to an intolerable increase in toil, it could also be fun: after all, people in the West love to garden, forage, and cook in their free time and no one suggests automating these activities. Indeed, it’s hard to understand the aversion some on the Western left have toward manual labor when lots of them pay to spend hours exerting themselves in gyms, proudly running headlong to nowhere.

Anselm Kizza-Besigye, Banana Republics

#agroecology #socialism #farming #agriculture #banana discourse

[txttletale]

Hi Im a begginer marxist. I've read a few of his books and agree with his points, but there's something I don't quite understand yet as he hasn't addressed it all that much in the ones I've read so far which is: why do communists support wage equality? Although I definitely agree that every worker deserves the full product of ther labor, don't different jobs produce diferent amounts of value in the same period of time? And with supply and demand, wouldn't more necessary jobs still be paid more?

so the answer to this one is kinda just 'they don't, really'. communists are generally (in principle) opposed to the wage-form entirely. the marxist definition of a wage is 'the price of the commodity called labour-power'. that is:

Their commodity, labour-power, the workers exchange for the commodity of the capitalist, for money, and, moreover, this exchange takes place at a certain ratio. [...] The exchange value of a commodity estimated in money is called its price. Wages therefore are only a special name for the price of labour-power.

— Karl Marx, Wage Labour & Capital

alright, let's back up a bit. what does any of that mean? well, labour-power is a marxist concept that distinguishes 'labour' (that is, work, which is qualitative--work is done for a particular purpose, you labour to achieve something) vs. labour-power (that is, potential labour which is sold and therefore quantified--enumerated in hours or in finished products, the purpose of which is to receive compensation). unlike labour, labour-power is a commodity--which is to say, as well as a use value (it fulfils some kind of need or desire) it has an exchange value (it is exchanged for other commodities).

so 'wages' are the price of labour-power. what exists here to 'oppose', exactly? well, it's the very act of buying and selling labour-power, because labour-power is worth more than its price! that is, unlike every other sort of commodity, it is productive--when you purchase labour-power, that labour-power generates for you more value than you paid for it (e.g., when a starbucks barista is paid $10 an hour for a five-hour shift, they produce far more than $50 in profit by making and selling coffee). this is the fundamental economic engine of capitalist exploitation

however, the answer to this exploitation is not so much that 'workers deserve the full product of their labour', as you put it. one of the fundamental injustices of capitalism is that for the eight hours (or more!) of the day that one spends labouring, you have no control over your life or your work. you are selling this time of your life to somebody else--they have quite literally bought these hours from you. you are not spending them doing what you are doing, but spending them making money so that you can survive--you're alienated from the actual actions you take and product you produce, which become fungible and irrelevant.

in a communist (i.e. classless society), this sale of labour would no longer take place. you would not work to make money (that is, at a price, which is to say, for a wage)--your life would be your own and you would work to accomplish that which you are working towards. builders would not build houses so that they could get paid, but so that there would be houses for people to live in.

"alright, but that's pretty far-off, right?" yep! the abolition of the wage is not by any means a short-term or immediate goal. so do revolutionary socialist states in a transitional economy support total wage equality? nope. and it's not because of any bourgeois guff about some jobs being 'more important' than others--it's certainly not because of 'supply and demand', which is not a natural law but simply a law of the functioning of a labour market.

to understand why not every job would be compensated equally under socialism, let's take a look at how prices emerge. sure, every commodity's price is influenced by supply and demand. the more people are competing to buy it, the more necessary it is that each buyer outbids the others and so the higher the price. likewise, the more people are competing to sell it, the more necessary it is that each seller finds a means of of undercutting the other and so the lower the price.

but hold on--higher in relation to what? lower in relation to what? if supply & demand led to a potato costing $600, you'd probably say 'that's a fucking ridiculously high price for a potato'--but why? 'high' and 'low' are relative terms--supply and demand can drive prices 'up' or 'down' but they must be driven 'from' something. and that's simple--the basic price of a commodity is the cost of producing it. you expect a potato to be significantly less than $600 because it costs significantly less than that to grow one (1) potato.

what does that mean for wages (remember, they're just the price of labour-power)? the cost of producing labour-power (the potential to work) is, to be blunt, the cost of keeping the worker in question alive, able to have and raise children, and in a condition to work. now that last point is quite important--because there are some jobs that can be done by anybody with a warm body, and there are others that can only be done with years and years of training. you can get anyone off the street and get them to wait tables, even if they'll obviously not be as good as somebody who's done the job for a long time. you can't do the same with nuclear physicists or plumbers.

so--even in absence of the capitalist labour market (the competition betwen employers to buy labour and the competition between workers to sell it) the cost of producing labour-power is going to vary across jobs. it costs more to produce an hour of a doctor's labour than it does a waiter's, not because the doctor is more worthy or important a profession, but because that hour of labour is prefigured by years of medical school.

tldr: under communism, there will be no wages. under socialism, wages will vary according to their cost of production (and not according to prestige, or supply and demand) so long as some sort of exchange-economy is still maintained.

#ask #marxism

[dizzymoods]

Since we're bashing afropessimists we should remember that they love citing Fanon and DuBois. You know, Black communists. But we must ask ourselves, why do they ignore their contributions to communism? Bc Fanon & DuBois understand that

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

They locate identity within a class analysis. Engels says the first class struggle was against patriarchy — meaning class goes beyond the stereotypical factory worker radical liberal/anarchistic identitarians like to use against communists. DuBois famously said that the slaves should be understood as proletarian because their labor was the dialectical negation of slavery.

Gabriel Rockhill & Domenico Losourdo (rip) have been doing work showing how Critical Theory (which AP is), French Philosophy, and Frankfurt School were funded by the Rockefeller, Ford Foundation, with support from the CIA post WWII as part of anticommunist movement. One way these theories restate imperialist ideology is to move from class consciousness and dialectical materialism to discursive bullshit about culture & identity devoid of class analysis. By de-emphasizing Fanon's marxism & overemphasizing his psychoanalysis, AP claims that everybody, everywhere, all the time is antiBlack. You can never beat a feeling like you can beat a capitalist or colonizer.

But this is stupid bc feelings are not borne out of thin air. The APs cite the arab slave trade as the origins of antiBlackness. And there you have it. the material reality comes first. And Fanon answers this question about the relationship between dehumanization and colonial exploitation in Concerning Violence. If antiBlackness is a thing, then you have to defeat the incentive for antiBlackness. All societies inherent the contradictions of their previous formations. slavery to capitalism. And when we get to socialism antiBlackness will still exist but! there is no incentive for it. As socialism eases the burden of scarcity the need for the Black as villain decreases.

Wilderson says capitalism wasn't a historical inevitability implying that communism is somehow irrelevant. But you'll notice he doesn't ever breach the possibility that the arab slave trade wasn't inevitable either! Very telling!

Lastly, there's a reason why all anti-imperial movements have had the participation of (some spearheaded by!) communists and why all communists movements are anti-imperialist. You cannot understand communism without understanding imperialism. You cannot defeat capitalism without defeating imperialism.

So African communists like Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Aimé Césaire, Claudia Jones (Carribean!), Thomas Sankara are necessary to learn from. imperialism rots the core of the empire so Jon Watson, Ben Davis, Huey Newton, Assata Shakur, and Paul Robeson are important too.

As we move together globally against capitalism, as we learn about each others' struggles and cultures, the artificial barriers the captialists construct to keep us afraid of each other crumble. Only then can antiBlackness can be defeated.

[koikurasu]

i just finished reading Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China by Leta Hong Fincher and during this part where the author discusses the central role woman played in the development of revolutionary thought and activism in the early 1900's and the eventual founding of china's communist party (part of her broader argument that women's rights in china have actually decreased in the last 50ish years) this passage really stuck out to me:

Liu argues that the “liberated” images of women presented through Socialist Realism and the bare faces and colorless uniforms—designed to further the goal of equality—“end up denying difference to women.” “The category of women, like that of class, has long been exploited by the hegemonic discourse of the state of China,” she writes. “In the emancipatory discourse of the state, which always subsumes woman under the nationalist agenda, women’s liberation means little more than equal opportunity to participate in public labor.” Ding Ling joined the Communist Party in 1932 after her husband, the author Hu Yepin, was murdered by the Nationalists. She was then kidnapped by the Nationalists and kept under house arrest for several years until she escaped to Yan’an, which became the Communists’ base after the Red Army completed its legendary Long March to escape Nationalist forces. As a prominent Communist Party member, Ding Ling renounced writing about sexuality and romantic love and embraced the Socialist Realist form of literature for the revolutionary masses. Even so, for International Women’s Day in 1942, Ding Ling vehemently criticized the Communist Party’s gender politics in a damning essay about the Party’s treatment of “women comrades.” “When will it no longer be necessary to attach special weight to the word ‘woman’ and raise it specially?” she began. She discussed the pressure on women comrades to marry, as single women were the target of “slanderous gossip”: “So they can’t afford to be choosy, anyone will do: whether he rides horses or wears straw sandals, whether he’s an artist or a supervisor.” Ding Ling pointed out the Party’s double standards, with its expectation that women have children, only to deride the same women for “political backwardness” and insufficient devotion to the revolution. “I myself am a woman, and I therefore understand the failings of women better than others. But I also have a deeper understanding of what they suffer,” she wrote. “Women are incapable of transcending the age they live in, of being perfect, or of being hard as steel.” She called on men in the Communist Party to consider the suffering and “social context” of their female counterparts: “It would be better if there were less empty theorizing and more talk about real problems, so that theory and practice are not divorced, and if each Communist Party member were more responsible for his own moral conduct.” Party officials accused Ding Ling of having “narrow feminist” feelings and holding “a nonrevolutionary view of the relationship between women’s liberation and class struggle,” according to Rebecca Karl. In retaliation for her criticism of the Party, Ding Ling was fired from her position as editor of a literary journal and ordered to re-educate herself. She later recovered politically, only to be sent for re-education among the masses during the anti-rightist campaign in 1957 for speaking out about women’s “double burden”: “Women were celebrated in their public role as ‘iron women,’ for their heroic contributions to production. Meanwhile, they were forced to silently struggle with household chores.”

all men across literally all of space and time, no matter their race, religion, or political views, have relied on women's physical and intellectual labor to prop up their movements then turn around and denounce them for not meeting their standards. never forget that any male-centered political movement, no matter how feminist it may seem, will find its own way to exploit women

#radblr #radical feminism #feminist literature

[ideas-on-paper]

A hypothetical look at the childhoods of Carlo and Romeo

Despite Carlo and Romeo being two of the most central characters of Lies of P, what we know about their backstory is next to marginal. We know that the two of them went to school together and were best friends (perhaps even more than that), but their time in Monad Charity House is only presented in snippets and fragmented memories, and despite being highly significant, their characters remain elusive - like shadows cast over the entirety of the story, always present, never tangible.

Thus, many have filled the gaps left in their characterization with their own imagination. As for myself, I was curious what their early lives might have been like, before they met at Monad Charity House - and since it was the closest thing to the game's setting I could find, I did some research on Victorian children and their upbringing.

What I found out, however, left me absolutely shocked and made me keenly aware of just how awful Carlo and Romeo's childhood must have been, going by historic standards. As pretty much everything during the Victorian Era, a child's upbringing was very dependent on social class - however, no matter if you grew up in a rich or poor family, each came with its own kind of suffering, and regarding the question of "What were Carlo and Romeo's lives like before Monad Charity House?", the brief answer would be: "Probably not great."

As for the long answer... I should mention this is my own interpretation of Carlo and Romeo's backgrounds, and none of this is officially confirmed. However, given what we know about the two's origins, I consider it quite plausible, and what we can conclude from it might not only give us better insight into their personalities, but also some of the real-life background behind the original fairy tale of Pinocchio.

Just as a fair warning, though: This is about to get a little depressing.

[Spoilers for Lies of P!]

[CW: mentions of very questionable parenting methods, depression, suicidal ideation, poverty, parent death, child labor, abuse and exploitation of children]

Carlo

For this analysis, I'm going to assume that Carlo was born into a fairly well-off household. (The description of Carlo's portrait calls him "an aristocratic boy", and since Geppetto is the mastermind behind Krat's puppet technology, I assume he'd have his fair share of the profits.)

By the standard of their time, upper-class children were quite spoiled: Unlike their working-class peers, they never had to worry about who was going to provide food for them, and the horrors of child labor were never of any concern to them. You would think that being born into a rich family doesn't leave you a single thing to wish for - you'd have nice toys, fine clothes... and well, everything, except for parental affection.

For the most part of the day, upper-class children wouldn't even see their parents - they were only summoned to appear before them at a set hour of the day, and during these occasions, they had to address their fathers as "sir". Essentially, meeting your parents was more like an audience with a stranger, a rare privilege strictly regulated by formality. Children were expected to act prim and proper, only allowed to speak when spoken to, and thus unable to express their true feelings, thoughts, or opinions. Any show of affection was extremely rare - Winston Churchill (1874 - 1945) once remarked that he could "count the times he had been hugged by his mother" as a child.

The parents were more or less completely absent from their children's lives, and when there actually was interaction between them, the children were expected to unconditionally obey their parents. Osbert Sitwell (1892 - 1969) once commented: "Parents were aware that the child would be a nuisance and a whole bevy of servants, in addition to the complex guardianship of nursery and school rooms was necessary not so much to aid the infant as to screen him from his father or mother, except on some occasions as he could be used by them as adjuncts, toys or decorations." (Can you imagine? Geppetto taking Carlo to some big social event to show off his "perfect little son", and Carlo just standing there and silently enduring the ordeal, looking at his father all the while and wondering "Did he ever realize I'm not one of his puppets?")

So, by the standard of the time period Lies of P is set in, Geppetto neglecting his son isn't even anything terribly unusual - in fact, that's perfectly normal Victorian upper-class parent behavior.

Since they didn't take care of their children themselves, upper-class parents would hire a nanny to raise them. Nannies would be instructed what kind of behavior and morals the parents wanted instilled into their child, and they would be responsible for their education as well as teaching them manners, propriety, how to dress and so on. As such, the nanny effectively acted as a substitute for the parents - and given that maid puppets exist and Geppetto probably wouldn't let any strangers near Carlo, Carlo's nanny was most likely a puppet as well.

The daily life of upper-class children was based on strict routine - some like to say it operated with "clockwork regularity". Breakfast would be served at 8 o'clock in the morning, dinner at 12 o'clock, and tea at 6 o'clock.* Children would very seldom leave their room, except to take short walks in the park with their nanny. Education would mostly be given at home by a tutor, which included basic lessons like reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also "socially appropriate skills" like dancing and playing the piano. (Since we see a puppet giving piano lessons to a child in the intro, chances are Carlo's tutors were also puppets.)

*Eating times varied throughout the Victorian Era; a "dinner" might also be a meal eaten during midday.

The rest of the time, children would have nothing to do but to play with their toys (except on Sundays, which was forbidden). Rich families had the luxury of being able to afford the most elaborate of toys, such as automated dolls, clockwork trains, and jack-in-the-boxes, which were extremely popular among children. In fact, since clockmakers were also the ones to build toys, I could imagine Geppetto actually made the toys for Carlo himself. (However, I feel like this only would have made Carlo loathe them; in his eyes, it would've been proof that "father pays more attention to the toys he makes for me than actually looking at me".)

In short, the life of Victorian upper-class children was lonely, depressing, and stuffy to the point of suffocating. Given these circumstances, I would actually be surprised if this didn't leave mental scars on Carlo. It has been documented that a lack of parental affection causes psychological issues lasting all the way into adulthood, such as low self-esteem, trust issues, anxiety, difficulty with social relationships, and lack of emotional control. Also, considering Carlo was probably surrounded by puppet servants all day, he wouldn't even have had a single human being to interact with most of the time - something which most likely had a detrimental effect on his psyche.

Given this dreary existence, it would make absolute sense for Carlo to look nothing short of depressed in every depiction we see of him. The feeling of emptiness when being pressed into the corset of others' expectations is actually something I'm well acquainted with - it feels like walking beside yourself, like your body moving while actually feeling dead inside. A bit like a puppet on strings, if you will. With his life being a monotonous routine controlled by someone else, it wouldn't be surprising if Carlo had difficulty still seeing a purpose in it. (There have been some theories going around that Carlo committed suicide; at the very least, I think it's highly likely he had suicidal ideations during his youth.)

Perhaps this is where Pinocchio - the character from the fairy tale - might have become something like an identification figure for Carlo. Pinocchio was a puppet, but instead of doing what his creator intended - what his father expected - he did whatever he wanted. I'm sure Geppetto gave him the book as a measure to educate him, but it ended up having the opposite effect. In fact, it might have been what first taught him the concept of freedom: Geppetto's puppets only ever did what he told them to, executing the exact actions he had programmed them with, over and over again - but Pinocchio showed Carlo that it didn't have to be this way. (I've seen a lot of interpretations of Carlo disliking puppets, and while I can see where this is coming from, I don't think this is because Carlo disliked puppets in general. Rather, I think he saw them as "extended arms" of his father and a symbol of his need to control everything around him; otherwise, it would be a little strange for Carlo to be attached to the story of Pinocchio so much.)

However, I think beneath all the pent-up frustration and hatred, there was also the wish for his father to love and appreciate him. At the end of the book, Pinocchio returns to his father after all the hardships he had to go through, and the two reconcile and live happily ever after. Since Pinocchio's father goes looking for him when he disappears, perhaps Carlo believed that if he rebelled against him and put himself in danger, Geppetto would realize that he actually cared for him.

So, if Carlo was very prone to temper tantrums and acting defiantly towards his father, it might have been on one hand to show that he didn't want to be part of Geppetto's perfect stage play anymore, and on the other because he was vying for his attention. Due to his upbringing, however, Carlo wasn't really able to communicate his feelings in a proper way. (I like to imagine Carlo as a very emotional person, but having difficulty to actually express his feelings.)

Geppetto, however, wouldn't have the sensitivity to understand this - he most likely would've tried to rectify his son's "mischievous behavior" by disciplining, as was typical for the time period (in general, it was believed that you had to "beat the evil out of children" for them to become a good person). Of course, that wouldn't have made things better - in fact, I wonder if part of the reason Geppetto sent Carlo to Monad Charity House was that he was just at a loss what to do with the boy. Since all of his educational measures were fruitless, perhaps he thought that sending him to the boarding school would finally put Carlo on the right track - although the result of that probably was also quite different from what Geppetto expected.

Romeo

Meanwhile, poor Victorian children had to live in a completely different, brutal reality - for them, day-to-day life was a literal struggle to stay alive.

We know that Romeo was an orphan, and according to Eugénie, that's not much of a rarity in Krat. Indeed, street children existed in abundance during Victorian times: It wasn't uncommon for working-class children to lose one or both parents - due to unsanitary conditions in Victorian slums, many people died of disease, and given the hazardous working conditions in factories and coal mines, accidents were commonplace. However, the term of a Victorian orphan was actually a little broader than that, also extending to children who ran away from home due to hailing from alcoholic and neglectful families. Often, mothers who were single or had a child out of wedlock would also simply abandon their children. Whatever the reason for their situation, these children were forced to fend for themselves at a very young age.

In the Trinity Sanctum in Krat Central Station, there's a note mentioning a "pickpocket who was overconfident in a gamble" and "had his heart stolen and died". Since Romeo made "a deal with the devil" (the "devil" presumably being Geppetto who turned him into a puppet), people have interpreted this as referring to Romeo. Turing to crime to support themselves was not a rarity among poor Victorian children - in fact, half of the defendants tried at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales between 1830 and 1860 were aged 20 or younger. There were even organized gangs of child thieves who were trained in pickpocketing by a "captain", similar to those from Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. (However, the items that were stolen most often were actually not purses or pocket watches, but handkerchiefs; silk handkerchiefs had a pretty high resale value, and the thieves would take them from pockets, rip out the initials, and resell them for a good price.)

We can't be sure whether Romeo teamed up with a few other kids or not, but personally, I'd wager he did - it would be much safer to operate in a group in case one of them gets in trouble, and overall, Romeo's personality seems a bit too caring for a lone wolf. (As the King of Puppets, he was not only determined to save as many humans as possible, but also possessed the unconditional trust and loyalty of the other puppets. To me, this means he most likely cared about them, and they cared about him in return - if it was just programming, the puppets probably wouldn't be lamenting his loss after he dies. Compare this to Geppetto, who has to use force and coercion for others to obey him.)

Also, since the notes in the Trinity Sanctums always seem to have a connection to the place where they're located (factory worker -> factory; cleric -> cathedral; "greatest singer"/Adelina -> opera house), that would mean the train station was most likely Romeo's base of operations.* (Train stations tend to be very popular among thieves, since it's easier to pick pockets in the confusion of people boarding or getting off trains.) This would imply that Romeo didn't grow up in Monad Charity House since he was an infant, but arrived there at a later point during his childhood.

*EDIT: I just had a thought that the note in the Trinity Sanctum could also mean the train station is the place where Romeo died. (All the other notes are connected to murder or some other violent action, and since we can assume they were written by Arlecchino, he was probably more interested in that.) Since Geppetto has his secret workshop wagon in Krat Central Station, maybe the place where he built P is the same where he built Romeo.

Since there were so many orphaned children, the few orphanages that existed couldn't receive all of them. Instead, workhouses were established as institutions for all kinds of destitute people - including orphans - who were unable to support themselves and were given lodging and food in exchange for labor. However, many children actually preferred living on the streets, rather turning to crime than going to the workhouse. At a first glance, this may seem a bit unreasonable - surely, not having to run around in worn-down rags and steal your food just to survive would at least be an improvement?

Well... Turns out, not really. The conditions in Victorian workhouses were notoriously awful - they were overcrowded, unsanitary, and cruel places to live. Daily routine was strictly regimented, consisting of 9–10 hours of repetitive and physically demanding labor and very little free time. What little food there was was of poor quality, privacy was basically nonexistent, and the dozens of inmates sleeping together in dormitories often had to share their beds - children usually had to sleep up to four in a bed. The consequences for refusal of work or any kind of rule violation were beatings, deprivation of food, being locked up in solitary confinement in a dark cell, and other draconian punishments.

If this doesn't sound like a very hospitable atmosphere, that's because that was the exact intention behind it. Workhouses weren't meant to support poor people - they were supposed to scare them into finding work and make a living for themselves. Victorians viewed poverty as a self-imposed misery, and if you were a pauper, that was because you were lazy, retarded, or made bad choices in life. That's why beggars, vagrants, orphans, criminals, and mentally ill people were all indiscriminately housed in workhouses, because from the Victorian point of view, they all belonged to the same category of people: A stain that had to be removed from the public eye, either by forcing them to support themselves or by making use of their work force once they had donned the workhouse uniform. They were a nuisance to society, and their treatment in the workhouse was sure to make them feel that.

One of the worst fates for workhouse children, however, was to be hired out as pauper apprentices: Usually from 10-13 years of age, but sometimes as young as eight or seven, workhouses would send pauper children to factories in the countryside for an "apprenticeship". This "apprenticeship" involved factory owners buying children from orphanages and workhouses and making them sign a contract that lasted until they were 21 years of age, dictating that the apprentices had to be provided with food and accommodation, and in exchange, the factory owner was free to make use of their working power.

So in summary, workhouse orphans were essentially sold into slavery. This was all that much easier to do with children who had no parents and no other means to support themselves, and thus were free to be exploited by their employers. Some of the recollections from these former pauper apprentices are just utterly horrific - and in this case, I think it's appropriate to let the victims speak for themselves.

John Birley, who lost his father when he was two, lived in the Bethnal Green Workhouse for a time after his mother died of illness when he was around six. He was sent to Litton Mill as a pauper apprentice, and he had this to say about his experiences in an interview with The Ashton Chronicle in 1849 (source):

The same year my mother died, I being between six and seven years of age, there came a man looking for a number of parish apprentices. We were all ordered to come into the board room, about forty of us. There were, I dare say, about twenty gentlemen seated at a table, with pens and paper before them. Our names were called out one by one. We were all standing before them in a row. My name was called and I stepped out in the middle of the room. They said, "Well John, you are a fine lad, would you like to go into the country?" I said "Yes sir". We had often talked over amongst ourselves how we should like to be taken into the country, Mr. Nicholls the old master, used to tell us what fine sport we should have amongst the hills, what time we should have for play and pleasure. He said we should have plenty of roast beef and get plenty of money, and come back gentlemen to see our friends. The committee picked out about twenty of us, all boys. In a day or two after this, two coaches came up to the workhouse door. We were got ready. They gave us a shilling piece to take our attention, and we set off. I can remember a crowd of women standing by the coaches, at the workhouse door, crying "shame on them, to send poor little children away from home in that fashion." Some of them were weeping. I heard one say, "I would run away if I was them." They drove us to the Paddington Canal, where there was a boat provided to take us. We got to Buxton at four o'clock on Saturday afternoon. A covered cart was waiting for us there. We all got in, and drove off to the apprentice house at Litton Mill, about six miles from Buxton. The cart stopped, and we marched up to the house, where we saw the master, who came to examine us and gave orders where we were put. [...] Our regular time was from five in the morning till nine or ten at night; and on Saturday, till eleven, and often twelve o'clock at night, and then we were sent to clean the machinery on the Sunday. No time was allowed for breakfast and no sitting for dinner and no time for tea. We went to the mill at five o'clock and worked till about eight or nine when they brought us our breakfast, [...] We then worked till nine or ten at night when the water-wheel stopped. We stopped working, and went to the apprentice house, about three hundred yards from the mill. It was a large stone house, surrounded by a wall, two to three yards high, with one door, which was kept locked. It was capable of lodging about one hundred and fifty apprentices. Supper was the same as breakfast - onion porridge and dry oatcake. We all ate in the same room and all went up a common staircase to our bed-chamber; all the boys slept in one chamber, all the girls in another. We slept three in one bed. [...] Mr. Needham, the master, had five sons: Frank, Charles, Samuel, Robert and John. The sons and a man named Swann, the overlooker, used to go up and down the mill with hazzle sticks. Frank once beat me till he frightened himself. He thought he had killed me. He had struck me on the temples and knocked me dateless. He once knocked me down and threatened me with a stick. To save my head I raised my arm, which he then hit with all his might. My elbow was broken. I bear the marks, and suffer pain from it to this day, and always shall as long as I live. I was determined to let the gentleman of the Bethnal Green parish know the treatment we had, and I wrote a letter with John Oats and put it into the Tydeswell Post Office. It was broken open and given to old Needham. He beat us with a knob-stick till we could scarcely crawl. Sometime after this three gentlemen came down from London. But before we were examined we were washed and cleaned up and ordered to tell them we liked working at the mill and were well treated. Needham and his sons were in the room at the time. They asked us questions about our treatment, which we answered as we had been told, not daring to do any other, knowing what would happen if we told them the truth."

In case there were any surviving family members, the children were sometimes deported without their knowledge. In 1849, Sarah Carpenter related the story of her lost brother who was taken away from Bristol Workhouse to The Ashton Chronicle (source):

When I was eight years old my father died and our family had to go to the Bristol Workhouse. My brother was sent from Bristol workhouse in the same way as many other children were - cart-loads at a time. My mother did not know where he was for two years. He was taken off in the dead of night without her knowledge, and the parish officers would never tell her where he was. It was the mother of Joseph Russell who first found out where the children were, and told my mother. We set off together, my mother and I, we walked the whole way from Bristol to Cressbrook Mill in Derbyshire. We were many days on the road. Mrs. Newton fondled over my mother when we arrived. [...] My brother told me that Mrs. Newton's fondling was all a blind; but I was so young and foolish, and so glad to see him again; that I did not heed what he said, and could not be persuaded to leave him. They would not let me stay unless I would take the shilling binding money. I took the shilling and I was very proud of it. They took me into the counting house and showed me a piece of paper with a red sealed horse on which they told me to touch, and then to make a cross, which I did. This meant I had to stay at Cressbrook Mill till I was twenty one.

So, if the situation in the Lies of P universe in any way resembles that during the real-life 19th century, and if these street children are in any way smart, I think it's very understandable they'd want to stay the hell away from the workhouse or any similar institution. Of course, it would be easy to attribute this to laziness, but honestly, I'd say they just wanted to avoid the abuse. (You could pose the question whether there are even any lowly paid jobs for children to do in the LoP universe, since a lot of those were probably taken over by puppets. However, if you ask me, that might only lead to employers trying to underbid the price that puppet laborers would cost, which would lead to serious wage cuts for any human workers - we know there was a violent protest of the factory labor union, which might have happened for a reason like this. Also, I reckon the puppet industry itself would create new branches of "dirty work", like recycling parts from scrapped puppets, disposing of puppet junk, etc.)

In fact, these harrowing stories happen to have quite a few parallels to the original fairy tale of Pinocchio. Did you notice? The children are taken away in coaches and carts, in a way that conceals their presence (e.g. in a covered cart or in the dead of the night), which is very reminiscent of the Coachman picking up boys at night (in the book, the coach is described as having wrapped wheels, so it doesn't make noise and can't be discovered). At first, the children are told they can make a fortune by working in the textile mills and will have plenty of time for leisure - in A memoir of Robert Blincoe from 1828, it's even mentioned they tried to lure children into working in a cotton mill by telling them that "they would be transformed into ladies and gentlemen" when they arrived there, that "they would be fed on roast beef and plum pudding, be allowed to ride their masters' horses, and have silver watches, and plenty of cash in their pockets". This sounds quite similar to the Coachman promising the boys unlimited play time and freedom if they come with him to the Land of Toys. However, as both the pauper apprentice children and the boys from Pinocchio had to realize, all of this was a fraud to exploit them for what is essentially slave labor.

This also suggests that with his depiction of the Land of Toys, Carlo Collodi was doing more than just telling a horror story to scare kids into behaving. He was commenting on a real-life problem - and this, exactly this, is what Collodi wanted to warn his young readers about. In that sense, the boys turning into donkeys might also be a metaphor for what their employers saw them as: livestock, to be used and abused as they pleased.

Because the living conditions of workhouse children were so appalling, there was clamor for change, specifically among the reformist middle class. It was argued that orphans and destitute children should be housed in an institution meant exclusively for them, rather than together with criminals, cripples, and lunatics. The movement really began to pick up speed in mid-19th century, and many orphanages were founded by private benefactors and philanthropists. One of the most influential was Thomas John Barnardo, the founder of the charity Barnardos, who built homes for waifs, strays, and all kinds of children in need to provide them with a place to live, food, and education.

In general, there was an effort to make education accessible to even the lowest classes. Sunday Schools and Ragged Schools were established, which allowed poor children to take classes without having to pay a fee, giving them more opportunities in later life. However, the parents of working-class children were often against them going to school, since it meant that they couldn't work to earn additional income for the family. This is why attending school was made mandatory for all children between 5 and 10 in 1870, with the leaving age being raised to 11 in 1893. (This is also what Carlo Collodi meant by saying "for the love of God, get yourself some education" - because if you didn't, you would be stuck in a circle of bone-breaking labor forever.)

The Monad Charity House fits quite well into this historical frame: We do know that the Rose Estate was originally a charity organization for poor children, but was turned into a boarding school after Lady Isabelle and the Monad family started sponsoring money. Since charities for poor children are a phenomenon of the mid- to late-19th century, it's possible the situation was a lot worse before in the Lies of P universe as well. Romeo might not have gone there willingly (perhaps he was caught during one of his thefts), and truth be told, Victorian schools weren't the most rosy of affairs (if you'd like to know the details, feel free to check out this page). However, given what could've been his fate, Romeo probably considered himself lucky to be alive and not exploited by someone else for donkey work. (Still, one thing that should be kept in mind is that the Alchemists' patronage of the Rose Estate probably isn't based on purely altruistic motives: Since all of the children are trained as Stalkers, Alchemists, or Workshop Technicians, all of them ultimately become part of Krat's economic apparatus.)

It seems almost miraculous that two boys coming from such different worlds would develop such a strong bond. However, despite this, they had one experience in common: pain. Although the way in which they suffered might have differed, they both knew what it's like to be abandoned. Romeo had to grow up in a society that didn't care whether he lived or died, and since all Carlo ever received from his father was scrutiny or cold ignorance, he probably felt the same about him. Living in a cruel world where the odds were stacked against them, it's easy to see why these kindred souls sought comfort in each other.

In any case, if the untold backstory of these characters was crafted with this in mind, my sincerest compliments go to the people of Neowiz for not only taking such a nuanced approach to child education in a historical context, but also for doing so with respect to the original story by Carlo Collodi. It may be really subtle at times, but you can't deny how much effort the devs put into the themes - themes that are so universal to human psychology that they continue to be relevant today, and undoubtedly made the story resonate with a lot of people.

#lies of p #lies of p carlo #lies of p romeo #lies of p geppetto #analysis #lore theories #the adventures of pinocchio #carlo collodi #I've never used so many content warnings in a post before xD #Carlo seriously has one of the most messed up family situations I've ever seen #like I knew it was bad; but I had no idea it was THAT BAD #also I was floored when I found out that the Coachman essentially had a real-life inspiration #anyway here I am back to trying to deduce story contents based on historical comparisons xD