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manyunhappygreenies · 7 months

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I agree with the tier list but I'm curious why idw and 2007 are on the bottom half and not like 2012 splinter? Or even rise they were both pretty bad fathers

I'll answer rise and 2012 first because 2007 and idw fuel me with so much anger.

DISCLAIMER: I love Rise Splinter and 12 Splinter but they are not without flaws!!!!!

Trigger warnings will be in tags please adhere to them!

[Rise Splinter Start]

I put rise splinter in "you're okay" tier because Hamato Yoshi (will be calling rise splinter "Lou" from now on for context) did his very best and tried to make the very best out of a terrible situation.

He had lost his mother at a very young age and dealt with an emotionally neglectful grandfather who had only cared about a Hamato's duty to their clan up to his late teens into adulthood. [This undermines Karai's sacrifice in the first place. As she had sacrificed herself out of love for the world around her and the love of her father. Not because of a sense of duty.]

Lou moves to America in order to separate himself from his trauma, never addressing it but rather repressing it. In hopes he can move on and start a new life, which he fully intended when he proposed to Big Mama. [Though it's never spoken directly or stated directly in the show, it's implied Splinter was ready to even have a family with her because he loved her so much]

This is quickly torn to shreds when Big Mama reveals she's a Yokai crime boss [essentially] and human traffic [yes. HUMAN TRAFFICS] Lou to New York to become a champion in her Battle Nexus. While in the beginning of the show it's depreciated as Lou Jitsu loved being a Nexus champion we quickly learned in "Many Unhappy Returns" he in fact did not relish being a champion and was clearly traumatized by Big Mama's actions.

> Enter Baron Draxum

Lou is human trafficked once again and this time is experimented on, his DNA used to create turtle super soldiers that will be trained and raised to murder humans. [This show is super fucked up now that I think about it.]

And after completely destroying Draxum's lab, being freshly mutated into a rat man. Stripped of his humanity, he now has 4 turtle sons dropped into his lap.

TLDR: Rise Splinter did the very best he could in a terrible situation and struggled to overcome his own generational trauma. His actions are explained, not excused. He needs therapy, his sons needs therapy. He needs to make up for his neglectful behavior [which we do see towards the end of season 1 and into season 2] and understand his children are in no way shape or form obligated to forgive him.

[End of Rise Splinter]

[Start of 2012 Splinter]

My reasoning for putting 2012 Splinter in "Seek therapy before having kids" tier is because Hamato Yoshi [will just be calling him Yoshi for context] has been a parent before, while brief and tragically separated from his child for many years, on top of losing his wife.

Yoshi did as I would feel did the best he could but could have definitely done better. He's freshly traumatized, well into his 30s, maybe early 40s [?] And moves to America from Japan. [Clearly he needs therapy]

Yoshi clearly was not expecting to be a parent again, so soon after losing his only daughter. [perceived]

He loves his children, though he more often than not struggles to actually connect with them and see them as his sons rather than just clan members. I would consider this emotionally neglectful [?]

I personally always headcanoned this as a trauma response. A subconscious way to protect himself from the hurt of losing another child. And it's clear that Yoshi's trauma over losing miwa has manifested for his sons as well, as we see in the episode "Panic in the Sewers" one of the first episodes we actually see Yoshi PUT HIS HANDS ON HIS SON outside of training. And it's very clear that he was in fact hurting Raph. [Intentional or not. He still hurt his son.]

He loves his sons very much. But please. Get therapy.

[End of 2012 Splinter.]

Cracks Knuckles

[Start IDW Splinter.]

FUCK THIS STUPID ASS RAT I HATE HIM SO FUCKING MUCH. ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY AFTER THE EVENTS OF CITY FALL.

YOUR SON IS CLEARLY TRAUMATIZED BY NOT JUST OROKU SAKI BUT YOU, HE IS AFRAID OF YOU ANGRY AT YOU AND DESPITE YOU KNOWING THIS YOU STILL CHOOSE TO INVADE HIS SPACE, PRIVACY AND COMFORT ZONE. FUCK YOU!

That being said the entire Trauma and storyline with IDW Leo being brainwashed was handled poorly and clearly written from a stigmatized view. I'm not surprised that his recovery was handled just as poorly.

[End of IDW Splinter]

[Start of 2007 Splinter]

Fuck you. You literally look like the cheetah from Cheetos you nasty, emotionally and physically neglectful fuck!!!

The only time you EVER paid attention to your sons was when Leo came home. 2 YEARS AFTER YOU SENT HIM TO CENTRAL AMERICA.

You did NOT care about Raphael's feelings about Leo's departure or return, nor the abandonment issues he had developed and the resentment that he had for you and his older brother.

You did NOT care that Donnie had to pick up the slack and pay bills so YOUR CRUSTY CHEETO LOOKING ASS COULD WATCH THE NEWS AND YELL "BOYS" WHEN LEO CAME HOME AND THEY CONVENIENTLY WENT OUT TO FIGHT CRIME

I DON'T THINK YOU EVEN ACKNOWLEDGED MIKEY UNTIL THE END OF THE MOVIE AFTER LEO WAS SAVED

TLDR: FUCK 2007 SPLINTER.

#cw / perceived child death #cw / spouse death #cw / implied human trafficking #cw / child abuse #cw / child neglect #cw / cursing #cw / caps #cw / parental death #tmnt #tmnt 2012 #tmnt 2007 #tmnt idw #rottmnt #greenie talks #anonymous #thanks for the ask!#if theres anything else i should tah please let me know!#cw / ableism

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thirteenthmaiden · 4 months

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Up late. Thinking about tall black femmes.

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chaneajoyyy · 1 year

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Andrew Tate and his brother were arrested for Human Trafficking!!🥳

#let’s chat #sip tea #talk arrests #tw: human trafficking #andrew tate #tristan tate #human trafficking #two dummies #international news

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suncaptor · 2 months

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The episode where everyone gaslights Deluca because he's has a few symptoms of mania (that are uhhhh not more severe than many of the nonpathological moods other characters on the show have had at different points) is SO upsetting like he tries so hard to protect this victim of human trafficking and no one believes him so she never gets help and then later on he literally gets killed too because of it 👁👄👁

#like when hes talking to Bailey even with how hes talking so worried she would have taken him actually seriously enough to handle the #the situation if it weren't for his family history and suspected diagnosis making her assume hes psychotic 👁👄👁#is he manic? probably. is he psychotic? no.#i do think he came to the conclusion fast and it makes me wonder why but he is right and i see that girl with a hernia and uti whos #terrified to talk with the way her 'aunt' speaks and the way she looks at her and its like.#even if it WERENT human trafficking i do think worrying about some type of abuse is. rational.#and andrew refusing to ignore it when NO ONE is taking him seriously enough to give HIM a logical reason to not worry 👁👄👁#best part of this episode to me is that he IS RIGHT though #so obviously the show writers meant to show how horrible it can be to not take mentally ill people seriously #but still having your main characters just gaslight some guy on screen 👁👄👁#incoherents #greys #greys anatomy #andrew deluca #deluca

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sparatus · 4 months

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heyoooo I saw some tags on a post you shared that said something about how the batarian resistance was born, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on a batarian resistance because I also want to do a batarian resistance, but I've been having trouble noodling out what that looks like.

okay attempt two at answering this cause my computer decided to restart itself last time and i got mad and didn't want to retype everything lol

obviously i'm going to start with saying the vast majority of my batarian work is in my no-reapers au exponential differentiation, especially blood in the water where the two deuteragonists working with shepard are second in command of the resistance tarvok shad'derah and his friend and close ally of the resistance gurji taeja, and we're also poised right at the start of the hegemony plotline in in the land of giants and the resistance will be pretty involved in upcoming chapters (and are already there, please come read it i have essays). moving on.

the short answer is... there is no short answer. it's complicated. the hegemony, per canon, is a strict caste-based, totalitarian oligarchy with complete control over every aspect of life underneath them. you can't work with batarians without addressing the hegemony somehow. there's going to be a lot of messy politics, and wildly varying opinions towards the resistance (there's going to be a lot of people who think it's not worth fighting! let them kill themselves off! why are you going to so much effort!), and very heavy topics that need a lot of care to portray sensitively. the hegemony is very clearly based on very real regimes that killed a lot of people and left a lot of lasting damage. a lot of where i started looking at batarians with a sympathetic lens is from talking to a friend of mine who lives in brazil and saw a lot of their own experiences reflected in the batarians, and quite a few other regimes there are still people alive who remember living under them are obvious inspiration for bioware as well (stalinist ussr is the most obvious, but there's definitely aspects of mussolini's italy and north korea as well, to name a few). accordingly, i've been doing my best to approach the topic sensitively; literally the most important thing i can stress with working with batarians is do your research. there's an awful lot of nuance to consider, and boiling it down to basic "good guy rebels vs evil government" does it a serious disservice.

that out of the way, let's get into it after the cut. i'm going to preface this with a disclaimer that a lot of this is my own work and i am not comfortable with others using it without permission. nothing against you personally i just have some bad experiences with people "taking inspiration" from me and literally just lifting my shit whole-cloth without asking me and only crediting me in a separate place away from the actual fic, lol. so anything with specific names or timelines or just anything that's me speculating and not found in canon is not free to use, kthx.

anyway.

in order to write a resistance against the hegemony, you have to start with actually writing the hegemony. yeah i know i know nobody wants to put too much effort into the slaver assholes, but it's important. and we do actually have some canon details about how the hegemony functions, so Reading The Wiki actually a pretty good place to start! based on what (admittedly not a lot) we know about the hegemony, they're a totalitarian oligarchy where the richest rule. you can potentially buy your way to a higher caste if you make enough money, but it's very difficult, and they're incredibly cutthroat. basically, life under the hegemony is very every man for himself.

this is to the upper castes' advantage! aggressive enforcement of the status quo by the higher-ups, using fear and violence as weapons, not only works very well to oppress the lower castes, but it also encourages people to turn on each other and rat each other out. you're unlikely to find a lot of camaraderie among average batarians - if anyone could turn you in to the cops, you're not gonna trust anybody, and that's gonna go a long way to keeping people under the upper castes' thumbs. we can even reasonably infer that family members are encouraged to report on each other - it's happened irl! it's super useful! nobody trusts each other, everyone's afraid of surveillance, nobody is safe. building up any sort of resistance movement is going to be incredibly difficult anywhere the hegemony can listen.

further, it's canon that the hegemony very tightly controls the flow of information in and out of their borders, and that includes information about the other species and life outside the hegemony. keeping the population ignorant makes them easier to control, after all. this is a known and very common tactic in authoritarian regimes. the common batarian living within hegemony borders believes that their way of life is best, this is how things are meant to be, and all the aliens are lesser beings and basically savages, so it's best to just listen to the hegemony and do as you're told and never ever leave :) why would you want to leave when this is the best possible life for you :) most batarians aren't going to be aware that there's anything wrong with the dystopian horror they're living in, because it's all they've ever known and all they can know. so odds of the lower castes all realizing they're being oppressed and agreeing "fuck that" together are uhhh slim to none, to say the least. this shit goes very deep, and the hegemony has been in place for centuries, so they've had a lot of time to root themselves in the populace's collective heads as Good And Correct And The Only Way To Live.

so, okay, let's leave the hegemony. easy right? wrong. sure, omega has no rules, but that means you're unlikely to find a lot of help if the hegemony decides to drag your ass back. you're still going to have to stay vigilant for spies and trackers and unfriendly tech, assuming they're not going to just up and kill you (which is probably more likely, even - out in terminus, nobody looks twice at somebody getting ganked, but a kidnapping will draw more attention, and then you've got martyrs, and nobody wants those). outside hegemony space, you're going to run into two main flavors of batarian:

batarians who were born under the hegemony, but no longer live there. these can be divided further into batarians who are still loyal to the hegemony for one reason or another (money, habit, blackmail), and those who have cut ties. either they managed to escape somehow, they were let go willingly and decided never to go back, or somebody else took them out of hegemony space.

batarians who were not. these will then be divided into those who still work with the hegemony (we know they pay good, after all) and those who want nothing to do with them.

of those four groups, you're going to have to make a hell of a pitch to get allies for any budding resistance movement - the hegemony are seen as an omnipresent evil in terminus, but one you can live with as long as you don't do anything stupid. keep your head down, or take their money even, and you'll probably be okay. they're a big damn government with a wide territory and lots of guns, and we know canonically that they have a lot of tech and stuff that they don't even share with the rest of the galaxy because they're paranoid and selfish, so "just stay out of their way" is going to be a very, very popular method of dealing with them.

oh, and remember what i said about hegemony info diets? yeah. culture shock once you're out is gonna be a bitch. we're talking near-catatonia levels of existential crisis here.

"what about the citadel," you may ask. great question! fair point! we can in fact reasonably infer that the vast majority of citadel species, with the exception of the asari with their """indentured servitude""" and possibly the hanar depending on how far down the rabbit hole of the hanar-drell relationship you feel like going down with me, are very anti-slavery and would support going against the hegemony! except, unfortunately, it's more complicated than that, because the batarians were the fourth species to reach the citadel, can be inferred to have been the "peacekeepers" of the galaxy prior to the uplifting of the krogan (yes i have textbooks of batarian history no we're not getting into it right now go read bitw), and in general are a big damn nuisance that the council don't want to risk war with right at the moment. "but there's more of them then there are of the hegemony!" yeah and you know how many of them are actually capable of war? the turians. das it. until the alliance start getting in slapfights with the hegemony, the turians are the only species really capable of waging war to any meaningful extent, and supporting the resistance in any way, even just allowing them to Exist on the citadel, would cause a lot of trouble for the council that they simply aren't able to deal with while the batarians still have their embassy on the station. remember what i said about politics? yeah you came and asked tumblr user sparatus about this there's so much xenopolitics involved in why the hegemony haven't been wiped off the map yet i made this field up but it's my passion--

ahem. does this sound like more effort than it's worth yet? good. that's the point.

in short: getting any sort of resistance movement going with any degree of traction is going to be incredibly difficult. there's very few places to run, getting recruits who are at least mostly sane will be like pulling teeth, and you're basically on your own. it's even fair to assume that resistance movements have happened in the past and failed. the hegemony are large and in charge, and yeah sure they're falling down on themselves and a shadow of their former selves but that makes them more dangerous because, as we can see in canon, that pride makes them aggressive and very determined not to show weakness or let anyone know how bad things are getting. taking them down is an uphill battle in the blinding snow and brother, the resistance are a beat-up rear-wheel drive with no snow tires and a faulty fuel injector.

no, i don't make metaphors that make sense. i write about political intrigue and the comics characters, it's obscure bullshit or bust over here.

obviously that's not all to say a resistance movement is impossible. i have one myself, hi how ya doin read my fic. that's all just set up. to write a resistance movement against a massive, well-entrenched regime like the hegemony, you first have to have a good, solid idea of what they're resisting against, and all the factors getting in their way. it's hard! it's difficult! it's true to how these things tend to work out in real life!

here's how i have things set up for my own work (again, keep in mind this work is not free to use):

the hegemony's fall from grace following their defeat by the rachni and their job as the main military might being usurped by the krogan and later turians has led to infighting and cannibalizing each other. as conditions steadily declined and the bad parts of the bad system got worse, what was previously a sustainable dystopia spiraled downwards into a ticking timebomb. the conclave (the "senate" which is now effectively no longer elected running everything, the top caste) is inbred to hell and back, because you can't possibly marry outside your caste, and the question of nonviability is becoming a when, not an if.

the arrival of the alliance and the council's apparent "favoritism" (read: not simply letting the hegemony have their way, because no you're both breaking laws actually please just shut up and sit down for mediation) has destabilized their standing in galactic society, causing their retreat further into isolation. this is making everything worse. things fall apart.

some senators within the conclave, particularly senators shahok khor'berran and morem kednelok, have recognized the hegemony is barrelling towards its breaking point and are looking for reform.

morvarn taryn, a cop in dasrak (the capital city, btw i will always be salty bioware didn't even give khar'shan a CANON CAPITAL CITY), has always struggled with having more empathy than a man of his caste is supposed to have. this gets him in trouble when dealing with a krogan slave that keeps breaking confinement, wragg, because damn that poor guy's really fucked up huh. (this also gets into alien slavery and that whole quagmire, but that's a different essay), but he doesn't really actually question the regime fully until a friend of his, air force lieutenant tarvok shad'derah, comes by the bar one day clearly in pain, and morvarn convinces him to come to his apartment for treatment and finds tarvok and his squad have been subjected to sapient experimentation without anaesthesia and the wounds have been left exposed.

the shad'derahs are a prominent family line due to their ancestor rothok being the second spectre in history and a close friend of gurji beelo. further, as a military officer tarvok is roughly the same caste as morvarn, and they both should be spared from this kind of treatment. the fact that even their middle-tier caste isn't enough to keep them from being seen as tools and objects radicalizes morvarn, but he doesn't realize it yet.

he brings his concerns to a close friend. friend happens to be senator shahok, who sees an opportunity and agrees with morvarn that either things need to change, or the hegemony will fall, and perhaps it needs to for their own survival as a species.

several months pass, with much thinking and discussing of what to do. tarvok disagrees that anything needs to change, and insists this is just the way things are, but morvarn's compassion sticks with him until a fateful mission rattles him, and the hegemony's plan to subject his younger brother thrajul to the same treatment he's had convinces him it's time to leave.

shit happens, blah blah blah, morvarn and tarvok end up fleeing khar'shan with a small group of supporters and also non-supporters who have no other choice but to go with. they run to omega and spend a few months trying to sort themselves out before deciding to keep trying to rescue friends and family from the hegemony.

this evolves into other batarians seeking their help getting their own loved ones out, raiding slavers, deep-cover missions, etc etc, until they're actually a proper resistance movement. they even make non-batarian friends, including gurji taeja, beelo's descendant who has a familial loyalty to the shad'derahs because salarians have like a whole thing about that.

there is no true plan for taking down the conclave, because how the fuck are they supposed to do that

and that's how exdiff and the whole x57 and resulting hegemony plotline tie in, because x57 kicks off the hegemony gearing up for war properly and once [REDACTED] then well the hegemony's the only problem left to deal with and hey look there's this whole group of guys with very intimate knowledge of what to do with them and some guys on the inside,

i have a fic planned for the actual downfall it's called carrion men and i am GOING to outline it next year so maybe i can get started writing it for camp nano or proper nano

..... oh my god this is so much. i am so sorry to anybody whose phone this fucking destroys trying to load it. but also not really. my m.e. big bang fic was an entire treatise of political intrigue and speculation on potential asari supremacy conspiracy, you don't come to me for concise answers on xenopolitical things. anyway hello i have put a completely normal and reasonable amount of work into the hegemony and the resistance and batarians in general

#press conference #cr-noble-main #HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO MUCH LONGER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE IM SO SORRY FDHSLD #do you understand why i got mad and didnt want to retype it for a while lol #council memos #council records #WHICH ONE WAS MY FANDOM DISCUSSION TAG I FORGET #yeah lemme just make a smart themed tag system i said. i will definitely remember this i said.#demented screaming.#turning off reblogs preemptively. any time i talk about batarians nobody can fucking behave #do you guys remember that time i got accused of supporting human trafficking because i said the batarians have a point #in being mad about the humans setting up colonies in territory the batarians had already claimed and were in. i remember.#i trust none of you. no reblogs.

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irondad-defensesquad · 11 months

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context: these comments belong to a video of the scene where quill receives his christmas present, kevin bacon, and quill is horrified and says "dude this is literally human trafficking!!!!"

i don't even have the energy to say why this pissed me off lmao.

(if you find the video and the comments, please don't go after the users)

#lotus speaks #i'm in a bad mood today sorry lol #ranting #ah yes. recruiting a teenager to NOT fight but talk to the other superheroes = human trafficking #do you guys even read what you write #i hate how many likes these comments have

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inkyvulture · 1 year

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Happy moments reading in my law book and seeing all of Tate's crimes actually not have any bail out pay, but all attracting a minimum of years in jail AND loss of exercising certain rights for him.

#seriously #happy new year #2022 delivering right now #andrew tate #human trafficking #greta thunberg #get his ass #also I can actually watch the process #talking to my jury buddy right now #and we plan on going to watch him go to hell in person #there won't be prescription to this case #so it may take a while but I'm ready as fuck to watch him #go to hell tate

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anti-death · 8 months

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PSA that anyone who watches porn has no right to shame or criticize anyone else, ever. you're an embarassment!

#This is abt those men who cry abt astrology girls and lattes or w/e #At least they dont get off to human trafficking #radfems please interact #radfems do touch #radical feminist safe #terfs do interact #mag talks

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budugaapologist · 5 months

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tbh liking hien on tumblr feels like liking edward again :/

#i talk #will literally have a blog themed after the guy and see 1 post of him a week. okay #tumblr just recommending me emet selch and estinien. i do not care.#i also dont like searching through tags because of heavensward fuckers that make everything worse #'this exp didnt have yaoi elves in it' dude the buduga are explicitly gay. also shut up #also also then youll have ppl complaining about yotsuyu dying like girl. she comitted genocide lmao #yeah bad things happened to her but like? same? girl u are in your thirties please just talk to somebody #'hes the king how is it not his place to judge' you cannot decide what is worse. genocide or human trafficking.#they were under imperial rule. there were few ways to survive in morally good ways. hien is not condoning the action #also everyone that looks at yotsuyu and is genuinely like well shes hot she can do no wrong #Missed The Point also i dont think she'd like you in the first place.#anyway.#tumblr show me stuff i actually wanna see challenge

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hauntingblue · 5 months

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Luffy screaming for zoro I can't do this

#kuma has to be sent by garp or dragon even. like they would have been dead if not. and its like a mercy #maybe not garp bc his was the marines encircling them at the human trafficking show #so yeah #sanji is losing it omg #the bubbles popping. what a massacre omg #NAMI NOOOOOOO #she is so scared omg #oh robin that was cruel. that was vile #thia fucking song again #god it hurts seeing luffy like this #kuma count your fucking days #god imagine this ends like this..... thank god i know there are like 700 more episodes lmao #talking tag #watching one piece #episode 405

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stars-and-soda · 1 month

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Ppl in that post about porn being nuanced topic are saying shit like "I trust the puritans less" and like,, yknow massive porn companies have gotten sued for posting actual rape right? Like last year Pornhub got fined for over a million for human trafficking charges. Teenagers who've been assualted and posted online get denied when asked to be taken down and their rapist gets money from it.

Can we stop ignoring the rampant abuse in the industry because you want to overcorrect for 'puritans'? Those 'puritans', at the very least, aren't actively supporting sites that do this shit. Support sex workers means support sex workers, not the industry. The whole point of focusing on the workers was to give freedom to work without being taken advantage of, in a safe enviroment, that they can retract consent at any time, and to stop supporting these companies. If you want to sex positive, actually listen to sex workers and victims, including their abuse stories.

#i say pornhub bc its the one of the largest platforms #but its really only the surface #one woman talked about how millions of ppl have seen video of her rape and that the host site isnt even searchable #soda speaks #tw rape #tw human trafficking #tw csa

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coochiequeens · 1 month

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If 100 couples seek surrogacy services in Thailand, they will likely spend 100 million baht here.” - Dr. Sura Wisedsak

Well if commercial surrogacy can pump money into the nations economy who gives a fuck about women and the babies that would be born through this? Apparently not Doctor Wisedsak.

The idea of legalizing surrogacy services for foreign couples, including LGBTQ partners, promises rich benefits for Thailand’s medical industry – but has also triggered grave concerns about human trafficking risks.

“I am not against attracting the flow of foreign currency. But I would urge caution and also demand assurances that it [surrogacy for foreigners] will not leave Thailand labeled as a human-trafficking country,” said Prof. Dr. Kamthorn Pruksananonda, a lecturer in Obstetrics & Gynecology at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Medicine.

Prof. Dr. Kamthorn Pruksananonda

The medical lecturer pointed out that the concern about the sale and exploitation of children born from surrogacy arrangements were so prominent that they often feature in reports to the United Nations General Assembly.

“Such arrangements may be connected to child pornography,” he said, highlighting one aspect of the dangers associated with surrogacy.

Kamthorn said Thai authorities teamed up with United States’ Homeland Security Investigations to crack down on an illegal multinational surrogacy gang in Thailand several months ago. Foreign security agencies see Thailand as a base for human traffickers exploiting surrogacy services, he added.

“Lax legal enforcement means illegal surrogacy services are still able to operate here,” he said.

Efforts to protect kids

In 2015, Thailand passed a law to protect children born through assisted reproductive technologies, to prevent foreigners from hiring Thai women to serve as surrogate mothers. Prior to the law’s enactment, such surrogacy services were widely available in Thailand.

“We drafted the Children Born through Assisted Reproductive Technologies Protection Act to plug legal loopholes. With so many foreigners coming to Thailand for surrogacy services, there was a risk of human trafficking,” Kamthorn said.

The medical expert sits on the committee for the protection of children born through assisted reproductive services, and also the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ committee on Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility.

During the passage of the new law, a scandal erupted over a Thai surrogate mother who was left struggling with the burden of raising a Down Syndrome baby – named Gammy – after the infant was abandoned by his biological Australian parents. The foreign couple left Thailand with only Gammy’s twin sister after medical tests confirmed she was healthy and did not have Downs.

The scandal deepened after an investigation revealed that the Australian father had been convicted twice of molesting girls. This new finding also raised questions about the ethics of gestational surrogacy.

Under Thailand’s current law, only Thai heterosexual couples married for more than three years can hire a surrogate to have their child. Commercial surrogacy serving foreign clients and LGBTQs is currently banned.

Penalties for illegal surrogacy under the new law are severe.

A surrogate mother faces up to 10 years in jail and a maximum fine of 200,000 baht if she joins an illegal surrogacy service. Those caught selling sperm or eggs are punishable by up to three years in jail and/or a fine of 60,000 baht. And an agent for illegal surrogacy services faces five years in jail and/or a fine of 100,00 baht.

Proposed changes

According to Dr. Sura Wisedsak, director-general of the Department of Health Service Support (DHSS), the scope of the law is set to be expanded so that Thai surrogacy services also cover foreign and LGBTQ couples.

Dr. Sura Wisedsak

He pointed to the financial benefits of this move.

“If 100 couples seek surrogacy services in Thailand, they will likely spend 100 million baht here.”

Sura said Thai services and expertise in surrogacy are second to none, so would attract plenty of foreigners.

“Our service fees are also cheaper,” he added.

Thailand currently has 115 providers of services related to infertility. Of these, 17 are state hospitals, 31 are private hospitals and 67 are private clinics.

Each year, they provide around 12,000 artificial insemination procedures and around 20,000 in vitro fertilization services. These form part of a growing surrogacy sector serving couples who are unable to conceive naturally. Authorities have so far approved 754 surrogacy applications – accounting for 97.2% of total requests. The success rate of these services is currently 48.53% – up from 46%.

Dr. Olarik Musigavong, a reproductive medicine specialist, is an enthusiastic supporter of legalizing surrogacy services for foreigners, explaining that it will generate income for Thailand and enrich the skills of Thais working in the field.

“The government could also use tax revenue from the expanded surrogacy sector to subsidize assisted reproduction for Thais who need but cannot afford such services,” he said.

Asked about the potential dangers of commercial surrogacy, Olarik said that if proper control measures were in place, human trafficking would not be a risk.

“If we legalize the services, illegal practices will fade. And with a legal process and clear registration, those involved won’t be able to abandon kids either,” he said.

In some countries, the commercial system is so well-established that there are even sperm/egg banks that pay donors, Olarik said.

DHSS deputy director-general Arkom Praditsuwan said to prevent human trafficking, couples seeking surrogacy services may be asked to prove their good financial status.

Dr. Olarik Musigavong

‘Illegal practices put surrogate moms at risk’

Kamthorn said numerous Thai women who volunteered to serve as surrogate mothers for underground operations have ended up receiving substandard care. They have been crowded together in condo apartments and sometimes medicated to produce more eggs than they should.

“A few months ago, a teenager ended up in an intensive care unit due to the practice of overdosing with medication. She nearly died,” he said, “Agents don’t give a damn. They just try to lower costs to maximize their profits.”

Thai advertisements looking for surrogate moms are easily found on the internet.

They typically offer 500,000 baht plus monthly allowances during the surrogacy period. The monthly pay usually ranges between 10,000 and 20,000 baht.

Underground surrogacy rings usually divide their operations into several parts, each handled by different units, making it difficult for authorities to investigate and prosecute.

The Department of Special Investigation says a recent case involved Chinese customers hiring an underground ring operating in Thailand and neighboring countries.

In Thailand, they used three clinics for prenatal care and child-delivery services. Investigators found the gang had well over 100 million baht in cash flow at the time they were arrested.

By Thai PBS World’s General Desk

#Thailand #Anti surrogacy #Surrogacy exploits women #Surrogacy turns babies into commodities #Surrogacy is human trafficking #United Nations General Assembly #the Children Born through Assisted Reproductive Technologies Protection Act #Confirmed case of purchasing parents refusing a child with disabilities #Confirmed case of a purchasing father being a sex offender with crimes against children #Exploited surrogates should not be the ones facing jail #Teenagers put through surrogacy #Surrogate mothers receiving substandard care #Men talking about the pros and cons of commercial surrogacy

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