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ixlander · 2 years

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What is the family? So deep runs the idea that the family is the exclusive place where people are safe, where people come from, where people are made, and where people belong, it doesn’t even feel like an idea anymore. Let us unpick it, then. The family is the reason we are supposed to want to go to work, the reason we have to go to work, and the reason we can go to work. It is, at root, the name we use for the fact that care is privatized in our society. And because it feels synonymous with care, “family” is every civic-minded individual’s raison d’être par excellence: an ostensibly non-individualist creed and unselfish principle to which one voluntarily signs up without thinking about it. What alternative could there be? The economic assumption that behind every “breadwinner” there is a private someone (or someones) worth being exploited for, notably some kind of wife—that is, a person who is likely a breadwinner too—“freely” making sandwiches with the hard-won bread, or hiring someone else to do so, vacuuming up the crumbs, and refrigerating leftovers, such that more bread can be won tomorrow: this feels to many of us like a description of “human nature.” Without the family, who or what would take responsibility for the lives of non-workers, including the ill, the young, and the elderly? This question is a bad one. We don’t hesitate to say that nonhuman animals are better off outside of zoos, even if alternative habitats for them are growing scarcer and scarcer and, moreover, they have become used to the abusive care of zoos. Similarly: transition out of the family will be tricky, yes, but the family is doing a bad job at care, and we all deserve better. The family is getting in the way of alternatives. In part, the vertiginous question “what’s the alternative?” arises because it is not just the worker (and her work) that the family gives birth to every day, in theory. The family is also the legal assertion that a baby, a neonatal human, is the creation of the familial romantic dyad; and that this act of authorship in turn generates, for the authors, property rights in “their” progeny—parenthood—but also quasi-exclusive accountability for the child’s life. The near-total dependence of the young person on these guardians is portrayed not as the harsh lottery that it patently is, but rather as “natural,” not in need of social mitigation, and, furthermore, beautiful for all concerned. Children, it is proposed, benefit from having only one or two parents and, at best, a few other “secondary” caregivers. Parents, it is supposed, derive nothing so much as joy from the romance of this isolated intensity. Constant allusions to the hellworld of sheer exhaustion parents inhabit notwithstanding, their condition is sentimentalized to the nth degree: it is downright taboo to regret parenthood. All too seldom is parenthood identified as an absurdly unfair distribution of labor, and a despotic distribution of responsibility for and power over younger people. A distribution that could be changed. Like a microcosm of the nation-state, the family incubates chauvinism and competition. Like a factory with a billion branches, it manufactures “individuals” with a cultural, ethnic, and binary gender identity; a class; and a racial consciousness. Like an infinitely renewable energy source, it performs free labor for the market. Like an “organic element of historical progress,” writes Anne McClintock in Imperial Leather, it worked for imperialism as an image of hierarchy-within-unity that grew “indispensable for legitimating exclusion and hierarchy” in general. For all these reasons, the family functions as capitalism’s base unit—in Mario Mieli’s phrase, “the cell of the social tissue.” It may be easier to imagine the end of capitalism, as I’ve riffed elsewhere, than the end of the family. But everyday utopian experiments do generate strands of an altogether different social tissue: micro-cultures which could be scaled up if the movement for a classless society took seriously the premise that households can be formed freely and run democratically; the principle that no one shall be deprived of food, shelter, or care because they don’t work.

Sophie Lewis, Abolish the Family

#sophie lewis #abolish the family

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blackhistorystoryteller · 5 months

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Africa has been very rich even before colonialism

The truth you should know about African

Blacks know your history and divinity

They gave us the Bible and stole our natural resources

Community and Social Cohesion: Traditional African religions often emphasized communal values, fostering a sense of belonging and mutual support within the community. Rituals and ceremonies were communal events that strengthened social ties.

Respect for Nature: Many African traditional religions were deeply connected to nature, promoting a harmonious relationship with the environment. This connection often led to sustainable practices and a respect for the natural world.

Ethical Guidelines: These religions often included moral and ethical guidelines that governed interpersonal relationships. Concepts such as honesty, hospitality, and respect for elders were commonly emphasized.

Cultural Identity: Traditional African religions played a crucial role in shaping cultural identity. They provided a framework for understanding the world, explaining origins, and passing down cultural practices through rituals, myths, and oral traditions.

Islam reached Nigeria through a combination of trade, migration, and cultural interactions. The trans-Saharan trade routes were crucial in bringing Islam to the region. Muslim traders from North Africa and the Middle East ventured into West Africa, establishing economic ties and introducing Islam to local communities.

The city-states along the trade routes, such as Kano and Katsina, became significant centers for Islamic influence. Merchants not only engaged in commercial activities but also played a role in spreading Islamic teachings. Over time, rulers and elites in these city-states embraced Islam, contributing to its gradual acceptance.

Additionally, the spread of Islam in Nigeria was facilitated by the activities of Islamic scholars and missionaries. Scholars known as clerics or Mallams played a key role in teaching Islamic principles and converting people to Islam. They often established Quranic schools and engaged in educational activities that promoted the understanding of Islamic teachings.

Military conquests also played a part in the expansion of Islam in Nigeria. Islamic empires, such as the Sokoto Caliphate in the 19th century, emerged through conquest and warfare, bringing Islam to new territories. The Sokoto Caliphate, led by Usman dan Fodio, sought to establish a strict Islamic state based on Sharia law.

Overall, the spread of Islam in Nigeria was a gradual process influenced by trade networks, migration, the activities of scholars, and, at times, military expansion. The interplay of these factors contributed to the integration of Islam into Nigerian society, shaping its cultural and religious landscape.

In the vast tapestry of Africa's rich cultural heritage, herbal traditional healing stands out as a profound and time-honored practice. African herbal traditional healers, often known as traditional or indigenous healers, play a vital role in the healthcare systems of many communities across the continent. Their practices are deeply rooted in the natural world, drawing on centuries-old wisdom and an intimate understanding of local flora.

African herbal traditional healers are custodians of ancient knowledge, passing down their expertise through generations. They serve as primary healthcare providers in many communities, addressing a wide range of physical, mental, and spiritual ailments. The healing process involves a holistic approach, considering the interconnectedness of the individual with their community and environment.

One of the hallmark features of African herbal traditional healers is their profound knowledge of medicinal plants. These healers have an intricate understanding of the properties, uses, and combinations of various herbs. Passed down through oral traditions, this knowledge is often a well-guarded family secret or shared within the apprentice-master relationship.

The methods employed by herbal traditional healers encompass diverse approaches. Herbal remedies, administered as infusions, decoctions, or ointments, form a significant part of their treatment. These remedies are carefully crafted based on the healer's understanding of the patient's symptoms, lifestyle, and spiritual condition. Additionally, rituals, ceremonies, and prayers are often incorporated into the healing process, acknowledging the interconnectedness of physical and spiritual well-being.

African herbal traditional healers frequently integrate spiritual elements into their practice. They believe that illness can be a manifestation of spiritual imbalances or disharmony. Through rituals and consultations with ancestors or spirits, healers seek to restore balance and harmony within the individual and the community.

Herbal traditional healers are integral to the social fabric of their communities. They often serve not only as healers but also as counselors, mediators, and keepers of cultural traditions. Their practices are deeply intertwined with community life, contributing to the resilience and cohesion of African societies.

While herbal traditional healing holds immense value, it faces challenges in the modern era. The encroachment of Western medicine, issues related to regulation and standardization, and the potential exploitation of traditional knowledge pose threats to this practice. However, there is also a growing recognition of the importance of integrating traditional healing into mainstream healthcare systems, leading to collaborative efforts to preserve and promote this valuable heritage.

African herbal traditional healers are bearers of an ancient legacy, embodying a profound connection between humanity and the natural world. Their healing practices, rooted in herbal wisdom and spiritual insights, offer a unique perspective on healthcare that complements modern medical approaches. Preserving and respecting the knowledge of these healers is not only crucial for the well-being of local communities but also for the broader appreciation of the diverse cultural tapestry that defines Africa.

#life #animals #culture #aesthetic #black history #history #blm blacklivesmatter #anime and manga #architecture #black community

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wrecklwj · 1 year

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MXTX Diaspora May 2023 is drawing to a close, so here are some personal reflections

As some of you may know, MXTX Diaspora May was originally started by Frost in 2021 as a means of elevating Chinese diaspora creators in fandom. At the time the event was set up, the climate in fandom was truly a hostile one, with Chinese diaspora creators routinely facing discrimination and marginalization. Adding to that were a slew of vicious hate crimes against Asian diaspora people in real life.

May is AAPI Heritage month in the US, and thus it was chosen as the posting month for the event. In other words, it was a time for us to come together, to heal, and above all, to let our voices be heard.

Since 2021, the scope of MXTX Diaspora May has evolved. Instead of solely focusing on MDZS, we now spotlight fanworks for all of MXTX’s novels. More importantly, MXTX Diaspora May has gone international in welcoming the participation of Chinese diaspora creators from not just the US, but all around the world (like me)!

So, why is MXTX Diaspora May so meaningful to me?

At the time that Frost invited me to be a part of the mod team, I was honestly struggling to find a place in MDZS fandom. I was frequently spoken over, treated as an expendable resource for cultural information, and on the receiving end of comments that contained racist microaggressions (and sometimes, outright aggression). Dealing with these interactions was exhausting, as well as grappling with the constant feeling that I had no real right to be in the English-speaking fandom. I still feel like this, even today — works where I (subconsciously or otherwise) downplay my identity as a member of the Chinese diaspora are always substantially more well-received than works where I do not. In other words, as some commenters (helpfully) pointed out to me, it was exhausting and difficult to get into the stories I told and the viewpoints I presented, especially if they contained too many cultural markers and language code-switches.

Being part of MXTX Diaspora May changed everything for me. Creating and interacting in this space that belonged to us, that was built solely for the purpose of elevating voices like mine — it meant that for once, I could tell the stories I wanted to tell, to the likeminded people I wanted to reach, without needing to downplay, apologize, or make excuses for just how unpalatable they might be.

Personal revelations aside and back to the culture-building aspect — I truly believe that the path to disempowering racist structures in fandom (and by extension, in real life as well) lies in changing the fundamental mindsets and worldviews of people. And to achieve that, we all have to relearn the ways in which we think, feel, and operate. MXTX Diaspora May is built on this very principle — the belief that through giving a platform to marginalized voices and actively encouraging open dialogue and appreciation, we can connect with each other over our shared experiences and gradually influence the perception that others outside our immediate circle have over our culture and language. It is an active, inclusive, and sustainable way of dismantling preconceived notions and habits that allow racism to flourish in fandom.

At the same time, it is also worth acknowledging that there is also a limit to how much power we place in institutions to do the work for us. Sit with the discomfort and the exhaustion, question our preconceived notions, and challenge our hearts — and I am optimistic that as things change at the individual level, the associated structures and systems will naturally follow.

So, where should we start?

There are so many ways we can be a part of the movement to dismantle systemic racism against members of the Chinese diaspora in MXTX fandom. One of the most actionable ways would be to boost and consume works by Chinese diaspora creators. And if we’re reading, listening to, or looking at something that doesn’t immediately appeal to us, and especially if we find ourselves struggling to comprehend or relate — ask ourselves honestly if it is a failing on the part of the creator, or just our own unfamiliarity with the context of the work, and/or implicit biases coming into play. Take our time to realize it for what it is, and then decide from there whether to move on, or move ahead.

MXTX is a Chinese writer, and her works are an extension and reflection of her culture and upbringing. It is impossible to separate her identity and belonging from the stories she writes. It’s exactly the same for us Chinese diaspora creators. Wherever we are in the world, however we were raised, and whatever pieces of ourselves that we choose to share in our works — I hope that we will continue to find our peace, our pride, and our homecoming whenever we do.

Resources

MXTX Diaspora May collection (2023, 2022, 2021)

Danmei Diaspora Creatives collection (showcases work by Chinese diaspora creators across a myriad of danmei fandoms including MXTX; not affiliated with MXTX Diaspora May)

Directory of MDZS fics and podfics by Chinese diaspora writers that are focused on the modern diaspora experience, compiled by G (not affiliated with MXTX Diaspora May)

#MXTX Diaspora May #own voices #Chinese diaspora #danmei fandom thoughts #Racism in fandom

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archietransdrews · 1 year

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literally talking to the walls of my room like. riverdale's internal logic relies on the explanatory power of one's origins to an absurd degree, framing the actions of the protagonists as prescribed by their generational predecessors to such an extreme that the town's founding years not only provide meaning, context, and motive to current events as is typical in an archetypal place-based narrative but futhermore exert a horrifying control over the characters, compelling them to repeat or rebel against the actions of long-dead townspeople to whom they are only distantly related. these scenes from the past, when included in the show, are filmed using the same actors as the present-day scenes, producing the past as not only reminiscent of but in some aspects identical to the present. blood and bloodlines are used by various characters as explanatory schemas for the behavior of different characters throughout; riverdale is a place overdetermined by its own origins to the point that our protagonists spend years trying and usually failing to escape the combined generational curses of an entire town whose entire history consists in the repetition of its own genesis ad nauseum. does this seeming over-reliance on origins exaggerate the process to the point of effective parody, or does it merely & more straight-forwardly reinforce the [genetic] origin as privileged locus of [fictional] meaning?

a potentially conflictual reading of riverdale's historical "origins" is that they are invented or produced through the act of jughead's narration of riverdale as text; this reading posits that there is no "before" the pilot of riverdale, save what jughead invents to give additional meaning to the events which make up his plots. riverdale is his puppet show; everything in the text has been filtered through his point of view, which is to say that everything acquires the exact same level of (un)reality, whether it's a comic book character come to life or the sins of one's ancestors. in this framing, the true origin, and the key to whatever meaning might be made of this text, is the moment jughead's narration begins in the pilot with "our story is about a town.." in foregrounding jughead's ongoing acts of authorship and creation which function to continually produce the narrative & all it contains, riverdale destabilizes epigenetic origin as a locus of meaning by framing it as in some way artificial, invented, unreal; however, it does this by substituting another, no less authoritative, specifically authorial origin in its place.

and there is still a THIRD possible genealogy through which we can read riverdale as understanding itself, namely the genealogy of the cinematic canon. we well know that riverdale is constantly referring back to earlier moments in the history of film, from 70s noirs to 80s coming of age movies to 90s thrillers to etc. etc., not so much situating itself within this history as aiming to encompass all of the various stages of the medium's development. this argument could be broadened to include the histories of other prominent cultural forms, namely the novel and the comic strip; the meaning in riverdale might be said to be primarily derived from comic conventions, the principles of character creation and economy of image that have governed strips for decades and which now cause riverdale characters to wear outfits that have no in-world meaning except to refer back to their original iconic wardrobes, e.g. archie and jughead's S and R t-shirts.

which of these frames has the most explanatory power? which best helps us to understand or analyze why events in riverdale play out the way they do? i think in most cases one needs some combination of the three to be able to even begin getting at what's going on, which suggests that at least part of riverdale's project is the destabilization of the genealogical narrative via the introduction of several distinct, at times competing, narrative origins. riverdale is a story whose meaning is located simultaneously in the past, the act of narration, and the development of cinema and comics as mediums. while this structure does not necessarily step outside of the dominant symbolic framework that looks to origins in order to generate the meaning of a text, it is in typical riverdale fashion that the show wants to do everything at once, meaning in this case that rather than privileging one frame through which we are meant to make sense of the show's content, we are given to several possible readings which are all compelling in their own ways & when taken together succeed in troubling the final authority of any one interpretation.

#took a break from the liveblog this week to watch some other programs but she is still HEAVILY. on my mind #the jughead paradox is going to blow this whole thing wide open btw #syllabus

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marvelstars · 2 months

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I always found Obi-Wan and Anakin´s fights interesting because while there is definitely a subtext of a familiar relationship on their part, in fact Vaderkin tells Obi-Wan to go meditate somewhere else, a very insane notion given what he just did and the fact he knew Obi-Wan was send to Mustafar to kill him.

Objectively speaking they are master and apprentice and acording to the cultural themes from myths and legends Lucas took from to create the Jedi Order, a master´s duty is to kill their student if they use their habilities agaisn´t the principles of the master.

Given Obi-Wan killed Anakin first or well, left him to burn to death, Obi-Wan was doing his duty as a member of the Jedi with orders from Yoda and as Vader Anakin understood those actions in this sense, he just had a brief moment in which he silently asked for help which Obi-Wan answered talking about their duty again, Anakin´s as the chosen one and Obi-Wan´s as his master and member of the Jedi Order, effectively rejecting their familiar relationship.

This is also why their second duel on the death star, or even their retconed duel on OWK is not a duel between family members, it´s pretty much a ritual duel between members of opposite force schools or philosophies and that´s how both Obi-Wan and Vader fought in them.

This is also why Vader wasn´t surprised to know his Son was being raised as a Jedi or at least he thought so until he discovered Luke wasn´t as trained as he should have been but recognized his advances on their duel in cloud city.

Vader didn´t discuss with his master when he told him he could be send to destroy them, that was to be expected, he isn´t surprised to know Luke was being trained to kill him, he just argued Obi-Wan could no longer train him and so he wasn´t a danger to Palpatine, which was Vader´s way of trying to keep Luke out of this whole issue but when that didn´t work, he promised he could make Luke fall to the darkside and make him join them or kill him himself but he knew that if it came to that, he could not kill his Son, Luke knew this and so did Palpatine and that´s why when Luke rejected the darkside it was Palpatine who decided to kill him until Vader stopped him knowing that would kill him.

This is also why it´s so interesting read, in one of the novels from ROTJ, when Obi-Wan´s spirit tried to contact and teach Anakin how he could become a force ghost as he lay dying, Anakin´s first question is why? not just because of Anakin´s actions but because he effectively was no longer a Jedi, so Obi-Wan tells him he fulfilled the prophecy as the chosen one but that isn´t enough for Anakin, he stayed silent and only accepted Obi-Wan´s offer when Obi-Wan told him because you are my friend/brother.

In the end, while Anakin respected the fact that being a Jedi was always going to be part of Obi-Wan´s identity, he didn´t want Obi-Wan to help him become a force ghost as a Jedi because he was the chosen one or because he fulfilled a prophecy, he wanted Obi-Wan to recognize him as his brother/friend, as family and in this way heal that old rejection from Mustafar because Anakin himself always saw him as family and after expending so many years following the traditions of the Jedi and the Sith, a tradition that made him leave his mother behind and put him at odds with his family, he was beyond faking tradition post death.

#anakin skywalker #obi-wan kenobi #star wars #Jedi Order #Sith Order #Yoda #Palpatine #luke skywalker

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stairset · 1 year

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Satine says “we are a people of tradition” in season 3, and in this behind the scenes featurette from 2010, when lead designer Kilian Plunkett discusses the design process behind Satine (at the 16: 44 mark), he says that they tried to “make it feel that she was definitely part of this culture”. This proves that Satine hated everything about Mandalorian culture and was ashamed of her Mandalorian heritage and tried to deny it.

Mandalore joined the Republic after Satine become the leader, which is obviously inherently a bad thing because All Government Automatically Bad Always. Despite being loyal to the Republic and its core principles, she was often very vocally critical of them when she disagreed with their decisions, and she chose to stay neutral in the war and was upset at the prospect of a Republic occupation of Mandalore. This proves that she was a total shill and sell-out for the Republic who forced her people to assimilate into Republic culture. (Even though the Republic, not unlike the United Nations in the real world, is a largely symbolic organization that consists of thousands of planets with different cultures and thus there really is no one singular “Republic culture”)

In the aforementioned behind the scenes featurette, (at 7:12) Dave Filoni, Kilian Plunkett and Joel Aron discuss how the shapes in Mandalorian armor inspired the design direction of the New Mandalorians (including Satine herself as previously stated) so as to give them a uniquely Mandalorian aesthetic, from the architecture to the clothing to the artwork to the ship design to the goddamn hair textures. In Rebels, when we meet a prominent warrior clan in the form of Clan Wren, the design of their ancestral home, the artwork on the wall, and the clothing worn by non-warrior Alrich Wren all generally follow similar design cues as the New Mandalorians. These design choices were clearly not done for a reason and this only further proves that Satine stripped Mandalore of their unique identity and Made Them Assimilate Into Republic Culture™. They’re now totally interchangeable with core worlds like Coruscant because Mandalorian culture is WAR KILL DEATH CARNAGE only and none of that other stuff matters. Also, the royal palace has a giant ass mural of Mandalorians fighting Jedi in ancient times right on the front of it for all to see, which clearly shows that she was erasing history and that the New Mandalorians Forgot About Their Roots.

It’s an important plot point in both season 2 and season 5 of The Clone Wars that Death Watch cannot take Mandalore by force because they are too small in numbers and Satine has the will of the people on her side, which is why they have to ally themselves with outside forces (first the Separatists, then Maul and the criminal syndicates) and must come up with super elaborate schemes for the express purpose of painting themselves as heroes and making her look bad, and it is only by doing this that they are able to win the people over to their side, at which point she surrenders the throne. But BEFORE she lost the throne, members of the Protectors, an ancient group of elite warriors dedicated to serving as royal guards to Mandalore’s leader, made up Satine’s royal guard during the Clone Wars, as stated in this Rebels Recon episode (10:30). In Rebels, Fenn Rau, the leader of the aforementioned Protectors, says that many Mandalorians by that time regard Bo-Katan as Mandalore’s rightful ruler in part because of her relation to Satine. Also if we go by the novelization for the Shadow Collective arc in season 5 (said novelization is technically Legends now but it’s one of the few sources in either continuity that gives any specifics on how her rise to power went down and this specific detail has not been contradicted by current canon) it claims that the warriors who supported her rule did so willingly because even they were tired of the constant fighting. All of this clearly demonstrates that Satine did not respect the will of the people at all and did not have the majority on her side for the bulk of her time as ruler and her rule was definitely not recognized as legitimate by anyone.

As also mentioned in the aforementioned Rebels Recon episode, the Protectors who served as Satine’s royal guard wore armor that was essentially just a more ceremonial version of their traditional combat armor, as worn by the aforementioned Fenn Rau. Also, Sundari’s police wear armor too. Also also, Satine’s own former Prime Minister Almec has his own armor that he pulls out during the Siege of Mandalore, and since it doesn’t match the aesthetic of the other Maul loyalists it’s safe to say it’s most likely his family’s armor passed down to him. This clearly proves without a doubt that Satine flat out banned wearing armor even though that’s never stated anywhere, that’s clearly the only logical explanation as to why the average citizens don’t wear it. Certainly not because their society was actually peaceful for about 20 years give or take and they didn’t need it or anything like that.

Satine speaks Mando’a (specifically the Concordian dialect) in the literal first episode she appeared in. Mando’a can also be seen in written form on the police speeders and in the royal academy. This shows us that she suppressed the language, further destroying Mandalorian culture.

The lack of racial diversity on Mandalore in The Clone Wars was definitely NOT an out-of-universe character design problem, but rather an in-universe problem that only applies to Satine and the New Mandalorians specifically (even though their opponents in Death Watch are just as white), as opposed to, say, the True Mandalorians in Legends who are so much more racially diverse. And season 7 definitely did NOT add more New Mandalorians with darker skin-tones as a direct result of the criticisms regarding how white the planet was in the previous seasons (and because Star Wars in general became much more diverse after the Disney buyout).

Also she’s a colonizer despite literally being born on a Mandalorian colony planet. And she can’t be the leader specifically because she wasn’t born on Mandalore and is thus not a real Mandalorian, but this same logic doesn’t extend to any other Mandalorian characters who weren’t born on Mandalore, such as Jango Fett, Boba Fett, Din Djarin, Fenn Rau, Ursa Wren, Ketsu Onyo, Jaster Mereel (assuming the broad strokes of his Legends history still hold true in canon), etc.

In conclusion, if you can’t see how Satine was OBVIOUSLY meant to be seen as a villain who committed cultural genocide by telling her people to maybe stop doing imperialism in favor of focusing on productive things like art and education, and also implementing gun control, then you CLEARLY haven’t been paying enough attention. Hashtag Make Mandalore Great Again.

#before i made this post i asked myself: am i really petty enough to look up all these videos and images just to make a point?#the answer is yes yes i am #satine kryze #star wars #star wars the clone wars #star wars rebels #shut up tristan

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l0gic1 · 7 months

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The Inclusivity Facade

Like the name suggests, ‘inclusionists’ often perceive themselves as the inclusive side. They see themselves as martyrs—morally righteous individuals guided by a one-track goal: to promote “inclusivity” and “compassion” in all areas of life, particularly in LGBTQ+ discourse. Admirable, right?

However, despite what it might seem like on the surface, the core principles of inclusionist rhetoric are not based on actualized inclusion. Instead, they are based around dogma, control, blind acceptance, exclusion (surprise!), and sometimes even abuse. Inclusionists typically spread their value of “inclusivity” by blithely accepting any identities, no matter how contradictory, illogical, or unscientific they may seem. They will claim they believe in inclusivity, yet they are notably exclusionary towards those of different beliefs. They will claim they believe in compassion and understanding, yet they will send death threats or threats of violence to transmedicalists, exclusionists, and others that don't conform to their ideology, tell them to harm or kill themselves, verbally abuse them (cyberbullying), enable their eating disorders, claim false and derogatory things about them, dox them, engage in online harassment campaigns, attempt to silence dissenting opinions through mass-reporting, etc.

As such, the vast majority of inclusionists (it is unfortunately not a small but vocal minority, as one might hope) are as averse to basic human decency as a vampire is to sunlight. The truth is that inclusionists, for the most part, are not really trying to spread “inclusion”. Instead, they use the deceptive veil of “inclusion” as a way to make them seem better than they really are; if you present yourself as someone who stands for such an agreeable ideology (inclusion), people are more likely to perceive you as a virtuous person who stands for virtuous things.

That said, their actions often reveal their true intentions. In reality, inclusionists are quick to label anyone who disagrees with them as intolerant, bigoted, or even evil. They have no interest in understanding different perspectives or engaging in meaningful dialogue. Instead, they resort to unethical, damaging, and even borderline abusive behavior patterns that make a genuinely positive shift in society and online discourse virtually impossible. It becomes readily apparent that their supposed commitment to inclusion is nothing more than a facade to boost their own egos and maintain a false sense of moral superiority.

What inclusionists fail to realize is that inclusion is about creating a space where people feel respected and valued, regardless of their opinions and intrinsic qualities. This doesn't mean one should welcome people who are bigoted or hold harmful views, but rather that creating an environment where differing perspectives can be respectfully challenged and debated is essential to intellectual growth and fostering a culture of critical thinking. Inclusionists should understand that true inclusion involves embracing diversity and allowing for open dialogue, even with those who hold opposing views. It is through respectful engagement and the exchange of ideas that we can foster empathy and understanding and ultimately work towards positive societal change. By excluding individuals solely based on their opinions, we risk perpetuating echo chambers and hindering progress in our collective pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment.

#exclus #just exclusionist things #transmed #truscum #transmedicalism #lgbt discourse #battle axe bi #bab #anti inclusionist #exclusionist #opinion

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dindjarindiaries · 1 year

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I am thoroughly enjoying this season of The Mandalorian. And I think the criticism I've seen toward it is completely unfounded. This story is about Grogu as much as about Din from the start, so there's always been 2 titular characters. And Grogu chose The Way, so the title of the show is about him too now. He is getting pieces of armor and all that, why can't he one day wield the dark saber... As for Din, character development doesn't mean constant or quick change. He can't jump from who he was in season 2 to wanting to sit on a throne in season 3, that's just ridiculous. Working with others and letting others lead at what they do better than him is very in-character for Din, he's been doing that since chapter 1. Finally, given how important Mandalorian identity is for Din, Bo and other Mandalorian leaders plus the larger Mandalore storyline were bound to become a big part of the show at some point. Because for Din, the focus is on identity and culture, not power. That's the only way his people can reunite and rebuild their home - through identity and culture, The Way. Din accepts different walks of life of other Mandalorians and remains true to his own principles, which inspires others to do the same and believe that it is possible. Whether this takes Din to a bigger leadership position or not is really not important at this point.

That's my opinion. What do you think?

You make so many good points!

It’s true. Din can’t be expected to be a leader when he’s still trying to find his identity. That’s what the creators have said this season is all about. It’s clear that Din’s felt lost searching for who he is and, because we see the story through his eyes, it’s made him feel lost amidst the story. It all makes sense. It would’ve been a very extreme jump to go from the man who tearfully watched his foundling get taken away from him to ruling an entire planet within just a year or so.

#din djarin #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #you have spoken

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picturejasper20 · 4 months

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Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur The Beyonder analysis (Season 2-A)

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur Season 2 A brought a lot of interesting changes for the series, one of them being the development that the Beyonder gets as character in some episodes from this part of the season, where we get to see a new side of him and his dynamic with Lunella changing as result.

In this post i'm going to talk about this development and where i think it his arc it is going to go from there:

The Beyonder made his character debut in Season 1 Episode 6 ¨The Beyonder¨. He introduces himself by shapeshifting into Lunella's family members and other people she knows, making Lunella believe for a moment that her secret identity as Moon Girl was found out. Then he changes into his normal form while laughing about how he scared off Lunella.

Beyonder's introduction scene leaves clear that, at his core, he is a troll. Someone who enjoys pulling pranks up on others and laugh at them. He uses his divine like powers to do this, usually altering reality or shapeshifting himself.

His divine powers also allow him to avoid having to face the consequences of his actions most of the time since he is an immortal being thanks to them. He can simply snap his fingers to make himself disappear. In general he seems to be untouchable for his enemies.

Unlike other villains in the show, The Beyonder doesn't have desire to commit crimes, get more power or get revenge on someone. It is easy to assume he isn't interested in these things since he already is ¨all powerful and all knowing¨.

He is on Earth because he was casted away from his own planet/species and he was sent to study humanity as species and see how they operate. While it is his ¨job¨, he shows certain interest in learning about human culture and psyche, which usually involves getting Lunella dragged to take part in his ¨experiments¨.

Lunella's relationship with Beyonder is quite unique since the Beyonder, when not trying to put Lunella into some form of trial, seems to be amicable to her. The way he interacts with Lunella at times gives off the impression that he sees her as a sort of friend, in his own way.

The Beyonder is, in plenty of ways, amoral. He doesn't seem to care about principles nor morals when it comes to messing with other people. Being an immortal semi-god, his moral code is very different from the mortals', seeing the universe as his own playground to do whatever he pleases. For example, he didn't care about making Lunella believe that he erased humanity for a minute just to reveal that he was faking it.

¨The Great Beyonder¨ (Season 2 Episode 1) explores deeper how Lunella isn't the only person he likes pulling up heavy pranks on since many aliens come to the planet Lunella and him find themselves stranded in to get revenge on the things that Beyonder did to them. He fully admits in one point of the episode he likes going to other universes just to mess with different versions of Lunella, such as it is the case of Devil Girl.

It wouldn't be out of place to assume that the reason he got casted from his own planet was because of the way he abused his powers on mortal beings, if not his own people. He doesn't seem to take his job that seriously and prefers to go around starting chaos.

In ¨The Great Beyonder¨ he sees Lunella going through an interdimensional vortex and takes her to planet that it used to be a sort of vacation-relax spot instead of her own home. When Lunella demands to Beyonder to take her back to Earth, he tries using his powers, only to realize he that they aren't working and they are both stuck on this planet.

Lunella proposes the Beyonder to work together to get out from the planet by using a black hole: She builds the spaceship for them to travel while Beyonder shows her the way to where the black hole is since he has been in this planet before. Beyonder says that he doesn't need the help from someone like Lunella and he can find his own way out.

Suddenly he gets attacked by an alien he trolled time ago by changing her spaceship into a polo stick. Since he doesn't have his divine powers, he gets beaten down by this alien. Lunella offers getting rid of his enemy if in exchange he helps her with finding the black hole. Beyonder is forced to accept the offer and Lunella sends the alien flying, followed by taking Beyonder with her. Unfortunately, without them knowing, the same alien sends a message to many people throughout the galaxy telling tjem about how the Beyonder is without his powers and vunerable to attack.

For around half of the episode (what would be a day for the characters), the Beyonder is reduced to someone who is pretty much helpless. He isn't used to having to walk for hours. He doesn't know why he gets thirsty nor why he yawns, because with his powers he doesn't have to worry about these things. For the first time he gets to experience what is to be a mortal, or a ¨human¨ as Lunella puts it. He has to rely on Lunella to hide and defend himself from people who are searching for him to get back at him for pranks he pulled up.

It could be said that he gets to experience what it is to be like to be the people he often messes with, not being to fight back or defend himself. Not only that but having to deal with the consequences of his chaotic actions, which he doesn't have to face when he has his powers.

During their battle against Devil Girl and Moon Dinosaur Devil Girl makes fun of Beyonder by telling him how he is useless without his god-like powers, something that hurts Beyonder's pride and self esteem. Lunella manages to get them away by causing a distraction to Devil Girl and Moon Dinosaur.

At night, while they are resting and Lunella is trying to build a spaceship using the remains of a bigger one, Beyonder asks to Lunella about how she is able to fight and ¨do all this stuff¨ without any powers. Then he starts to break down about how he can't do anything and that Devil was right about him being useless. He doesn't know who he is supposed to be without his own powers, having a bit of an identity crisis.

Lunella feels sorry for Beyonder and tells him that he can do great things without any special powers. She shows him how to braid his own hair, something that he tries doing by himself and is able do one braid. He gets happy that he can do something for himself. Then he goes to sleep, being tired of having to walk all day.

Next morning, Beyonder wakes up Lunella to show her that he made more braids in his hair and grabbed some vines and tied them around the spaceship so they would have a way to take it with them to the black hole. Beyonder is back to his confident self, indicating that he learned from what Lunella taught to him last night.

There is a montage of Lunella and Beyonder working together to take the spaceship to the black hole ride. In these scenes they are in better terms with each other, even laughing together at one part. They take several days until they are able to reach their destination.

They are finally able to finish their journey when they arrive at the black hole ride. They both get inside the spaceship and Lunella checks that all things are working, ready to take off. Lunella tells to Beyonder that she is proud of him by how much he helped, to which Beyonder replies that he is proud of being able to do things without his powers and thanks to Lunella for teaching him that.

However, before they are able to take off, they are stopped by Molecular Man. It turns out that he has been waiting to get revenge on the Beyonder all this time since he was the one that caused the planet, the one Molecular Man spent years building, to become a wasteland by him playing a golf space game and accidentally throwing asteroids to the planet.

This is a good metaphor of the way Beyonder usually abuses his own powers, not considering how he can hurt other people. He didn't consider that he was the reason this planet got destroyed. Since he is a god like cosmic entity, he sees himself above others, in the sense that makes him hard to empathize with mortals.

Lunella tries taking on Molecular Man and gets a terrible beat down, to the point it is traumatic for her. However, while Molecular Man is distracted by giving a speech to Lunella, Beyonder tip-toes and takes the opportunity to take the wand from Molecular Man. He gets his powers back by breaking the wand, transforms Molecular Man into a baby and saves Lunella.

He makes the ship appear near them and asks Lunella to test it out to see if it works. The spaceship goes through the black hole without any problems and Beyonder takes Lunella to Morlak's lair, where the portal opened in Season 1 finale.

In this episode Beyonder goes through an important change in character, as he is forced to experience what is like to be without powers and face the consequences of his own actions. He learns that he is capable of doing things on his own in spite of being powerless. His relationship with Lunella ends on better terms in some ways, having a new found respect for her.

While Beyonder appears a few times to narrate the episodes that followed, it isn't until episode ¨Wish-Tar¨ that he truly shows up again by popping out of a wishtar machine and scaring Lunella and Casey. Although he still has his troll tendencies, He expresses regretting the way he brought chaos to Lunella's life in the past and that he wants to make things right. He admits he sees Lunella as his friend after the events of ¨The Great Beyonder¨ but she doesn't totally feel the same way because of the times he antagonized her.

When walking down the street, Lunella and Casey notice how the wish that Lunella asked for the wishtar became true. They decide to go back to Roll With It and see that Beyonder is the one behind the wish becoming reality. Beyonder wants to grant Lunella's wishes to prove that he can be a ¨good friend¨. After getting the shoes she wanted so much, Lunella agrees to Beyonder's idea.

In the sequence ¨Switch it up¨ Lunella and Casey try to constanly keep up with new trendings in social media by asking the Beyonder to give them all the things they want. Beyonder doesn't seem to have any problem with this, as he assumes he is being a good friend by giving them anything they ask.

The problem is that the Beyonder doesn't a clear understanding of how human friendships work because he believes that giving a person anything they want is enough make them his friend. He doesn't realize that in reality Lunella and Casey are taking advantage of his powers.

Around half of the episode Lunella wishes for Bobby the Myth singer to show up in Roll With It so she is able to get all the attention from her school. Bobby accepts Lunella's offer of hosting his concert on Roll With It but he says that he needs a cooler piano than his competition. Lunella goes again to Beyonder to wish for the ¨baddest¨ piano in the world and he grants her wish.

When the concert starts all seems to be going well... until Bobby plays the piano that Lunella wished for him. He gets posessed by an evil energy that comes from it and endangers the audience. Lunella changes into Moon Girl and people are lead to the exit of the skate rink.

Then Beyonder appears on the rink, observing what it is happening. Lunella calls him out for summoning an evil piano. Beyonder explains to her that he made the "baddest piano" (as in evil) just like she asked and they shouldn't let a mistake get away in the middle of their friendship.

Lunella snaps at Beyonder by telling him that they "aren't friends", indirectly revealing that she had been taken advantage of his powers during the events of this episode and she didn't see him as a friend. In her moment of anger she says some awful things to the Beyonder and wishes that he was gone.

Because he isn't sure what he did wrong, Beyonder is left confused by Lunella's words. He is heartbroken upon learning that Lunella didn't see him as a friend in return like he assumed she did and sadly disappears, calling Moon Girl "former friend".

At the end of the episode Lunella realizes that she was really mean to Beyonder, regretting the way she lashed out at him for something that was her own fault.

In the rest of the episodes from Season 2 A that followed Beyonder isn't seen narrating the villains backstories like he used to before Wish-Tar, leaving clear that he is truly gone, at least for the moment.

In this episode Beyonder's development involves him trying to be a "good friend" to Lunella and make amends for his previous misheeds. The problem is that he still has quite a lot to learn on how to be a friend and that he can't just buy friendships from others by using his powers. He is forced to learn this lesson the hard way after learning that Lunella took advantage of him to get what she wanted.

It's a bit hard to guess Beyonder's whereabouts for the rest of Season 2 A. Nevertheless, it's worth of pointing that it has been confirmed by the crew that there is going to be a resolution for this fallout between Beyonder and Lunella, meaning that Beyonder won't probably go back to his old ways of causing problems for others.

Source: https://twitter.com/e1n/status/1754972244206665910 (The Op account who posted the tweet got deleted but Ben's response is still there)

My speculation is that in Season 2-B there is going to be an episode about Lunella finding out where Beyonder is and she apologizes to him for the way she treated him and lashed out at him in ¨Wish-Tar¨. They are likely going to make up but it isn't possible to tell if they are immediately going to become friends again or just start over.

Another thing i think it is going to happen is that Beyonder is going to learn better how friendships and human relationships work, gaining a better understanding of them. Maybe he would learn from the mistakes he commited in the past and try not repeating it again in case he wants to form new connections with people in the future.

I don't necessary believe that that he is going to become an antagonist again or trying to get revenge on Lunella for what happened. If anything, his expression in ¨Wish-Tar¨ after Lunella yelled at him was a heartbroken one. His body language before leaving read as he was going to left Lunella alone, just like she wished in her outburst.

It is going to be interesting to see what happened to his character after the events of ¨Wish-Tar¨ and how he is going to change in Season 2 B. This part of the season already did some really good things for Beyonder in terms of character evolution and i'm intrigued to see where it goes from here.

#moon girl and devil dinosaur #mgadd season 2 #mgadd the beyonder #mgadd beyonder #lunella lafayette #MGADD analysis #MGADD Wishtar #The Great Beyonder #MGADD Molecular Man

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blossomingframe · 1 month

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Horror house part one

This is the monster fucker feedism story I keep mentioning that no one cares about. This is one of three.

Kinks; monster fucking, slob kink, burping, farting, intox (weed), corruption, dumbification, weight gain,body hair

TW; weed mention, diet culture, xenophobia, serious “dead dove do not eat” situation on the tags

Howard’s speech

Charles’s speech

When Charles saw the ad for a makeup artist for a horror attraction he got confused. He knew the Parallel Plus Woodson Manor Walkthrough. He knew that they hired monsters, mostly succubi for their shapeshifting properties, on principle. He knew that they even teamed up with temp agencies to find enough of them to fill out the whole staff. Why would they need a makeup artist? But he needed work so he called them up and went to the zoom interview with the Parallel Plus HR guy.

On his first day they said that they would have the team leader pick him up at the gate because he needed an employee pass to get through the doors. He was still shocked when he saw a seven foot succubus on the sidewalk. While he knew that monsters were a part of society and the humanoid ones were sometimes even smarter than the average human it was still … intimidating. When he went up to the gate the succubi introduced himself as Howard. “I’ll show you around then you can start setting up your stuff”. Howard didn’t look like most succubi either. He had the typical light green skin, purple hair and horns but that was where the resemblance ended from the fit young demons he saw at the gym. Howard was in his early thirties with messy curtain bangs, grown out body hair and a visibly overweight body. He was dressed oddly too in a cropped shirt, a trench coat and low rise jeans with his hairy gut and love handles spilling over the waistband.

The space was two wings of huge mansion so it was majestic but creepy. Perfect for a horror tour. Eventually they left the building itself out the back and went to a large tent that served as a dressing room for all the monsters. “Because of our shapeshifting abilities and a few cultural differences in gender identity it makes no sense to divide by gender or sex so you might see the occasional half-naked person who looks like a woman but we’re all monsters not humans so just remember that. Our A team gets ready at four and our B team gets ready at six. I know your start time says three but we might call you in early if needs be and you’ll get paid for that time as well. Any questions?” “Umm if you don’t mind asking why do need a makeup artist if most of you can shapeshift?” “Oh I don’t mind at all. We actually have a bit diversity this year with us scoping out the local performing arts school so not everyone can shape shift. Our appearance undergoes a lot of changes throughout the month plus fake blood, mud and some fake injuries always help with scaring people.” “Okay then I’m going to go set up.” Howard grunted and pointed a long table with a few chairs in a line on it.

Charles was grateful for diligence in both purchasing and organising his products by the time B team arrived, led by a fae woman named Chris. He had already gone through two tubes of green concealer and a full box of fake blood when six rolled around and Chris sat and asked for a fake chin injury. People were bobbing in and out for the whole night snacking, asking for touch ups or changes, telling customer stories and eventually signing out and asking for a wet wipe to clean themselves. By 10:30 everyone was out except for Howard and Charles. Howard said “don’t judge Chris for running off. She has a couple kids and likes to feed the younger one before he actually goes to sleep” “wasn’t going to but thanks for the help cleaning up” Charles was starving. He had come in after a late but light lunch, thinking he would have a spare second to eat the oranges stowed away in his bag but he barely had time to drink water between clients. He hoped with extra help he would be done sooner but it was still 11:19 before he got out. Howard offered him a lift and a trip through the drive thru and he took it but alerted him that he was on a diet so might just have a drink.

By the time Howard drove in Charles was ravenous. He scoured the menu online for something he could eat. The abs would worth it come his next job he told himself as he said “can I have a garden salad with no dressing, a bag of carrot sticks and a Diet Coke.” Howard repeated the order then said “Can I have a family bucket with bbq for all the dips and a spicy chicken sandwich deal with large fries? Oh coke for the family meal drinks and a chocolate milkshake with the spicy chicken.” Someone should probably tell him about all the salt. It was clear how he got such a bulging belly and rounded face. He ate like a competitive eater as he drove Charles home. By the time he pulled up he was completely finished with everything and Charles hadn’t even started on his carrot sticks. It was mesmerising to watch Howard’s comedically stuffed belly churn to process the huge meal. Suddenly Charles separated from his body like there was a piece of dirty glass in between his thoughts and his actions and vision. Then he saw himself rubbing and kneading Howard’s stomach as the corpulent demon belched and farted. It was so loud he was sure the neighbours could hear it but it still didn’t wake him up. Then he left the car and entered the house still in a dream state and went to the fridge.

“Fuck fuck fuck” he said to himself as he looked around his house. It looked he ate everything in the kitchen and his secret stash in the bedroom. He could feel the blubber under his skin. He went to the bathroom and sure enough his pooch from stress eating all August and September had rounded out into full belly. He poked it and let out a loud burp. He drank a glass of water and got on the scale. His dance teacher told him to always get the “worst possible result” when weighing himself so his aim would be to be as small as possible and not just to be empty on the day. He was now 135 pounds, meaning he was up 8 from yesterday. That stupid succubus had to die. What the hell did he do to him?

He slumped on his couch until it was time to leave staring into space and drinking more and more water. According to his calculations from the food packets he now couldn’t eat anything for four days. The water would help him get full and make him pee to piss out all the fat. Another trick he learned from his dance teacher. Eventually it was 2:00 and he had to put on a shirt and walk to work. He put on a baggy t-shirt he usually slept in and an old tech hoodie from his job last year. Sweating would also loose calories. In the interest of weight loss he also ran to work. It was only 2:45 when he slammed his new employee ID against the gates sensor. He smiled. A thirty minute mile on an empty stomach wasn’t so bad. Sure the movement knocked a couple of loud farts out of him at inopportune times but he was running so quick nobody noticed.

As he set up Howard walked over to him. He had a smirk on his face. “I hope you’ve eaten breakfast because it’s a late one tonight. We’ve got a couple of stag do groups com-brrp-ing in” he said. Charles was furious “no I didn’t. I just drank water because thanks to you and your succubus magic bullshit I can’t eat for four days if I want a job after this one. I’m getting a lift from a mate. Don’t come near me unless it’s for work”. Charles immediately regret his outburst. Yes, Howard had violated his boundaries but how was he supposed to know how strict his diet was? “for your information it wasn’t my succubus magic. It was you. You’re the buuurpp one who eats like a damn bird. Maybe being around me did some passive shit but binging when you’re on a crash buurrrpdiet is really fucking common. Please eat by buuurrrp the way we’re liable if you faint” Howard shoved a protein bar into Charles’s hand. Charles sat feeling guilty about being so harsh with him. He finished setting up his stuff then started his shift.

He felt like it was taking forever. By 12:30 when everyone got out his vision was almost completely gone and he was dizzy as hell. Howard still helped him put everything away but did so in silence. Charles sat down and gripped the table. He had skipped eating before why was it so hard today? He took the protein bar and started eating it. He could go back to the gym. He was sick of having to stay so small but as a dancer he had to be incredibly light with good muscle definition. He was struggling to get jobs already he didn’t need to be fat too. Howard finally spoke “I’m sorry I yelled. I’m glad you’ve eaten.” Charles replied “I shouldn’t have accused you like that. I can’t get work as a dancer so my teacher and my agent put me on a crash diet because I gained weight. I was pissed because I knew I’d have to stop eating for a few days.” Howard looked at him in the eyes. He looked like he was planning something. Up close he was kind of handsome. His eyes were soft and playful. As Howard pulled Charles out of the chair to meet his gaze Charles felt himself blush. “Fuck that shit! Diets are dumb and theirs plenty of work for dancers buuurrrp who aren’t stick thin. Plus you’re really good at stage makeup. Life’s too short to buuurrrp be starving and cranky all the time. You’d look better if you put on a few anyway.” “Really” “Really. You look skeletal when you’re not bloated. If you gained weight buuurrp I’d hate to see you then. Cancel your lift, you are lucky you’ve got a pretty face. Im going to get you some food.” “Ok.” Charles was getting hard. Why was he getting hard? It was just some guy from work who kept bothering him.

Charles fell asleep in the backseat. Next thing he knew he was being offered a joint inside Howard’s apartment with five bulging bags of fast food and snacks at his feet. He nodded and Howard placed the joint inside his mouth with one hand and pulled his trousers down with the other. Howard himself had stripped down to his boxers revealing that he had a boner. Charles smoked it slowly enjoying feeling his muscles relax. He loved weed but rarely smoked because it tripled his appetite. That was a good thing right now though because he wanted to eat a lot to impress Howard who was getting sexier by the minute. In the back of his head he knew it was the weed and the succubus magic but he didn’t really care. This was the happiest he’d been in years. Howard started giving him bite after bite of food that he eagerly swallowed. After each one Howard heaped praise on him.

After two double cheeseburgers, three portions of fries, twelve chicken nuggets, a big bag of crisps, two litres of cola and four mars bars Charles was finally full to the point where he couldn’t be fed anymore. Howard who had polished off twice as much with ease started rubbing Charles’s belly “look at you. Already such a big appetite. BurrrpYou’ll be easy to fatten up. I know deep down burrrp you love big sexy fat boys. I saw you staring at my belly yesterday. I saw you bluuurrsh when I burped accidentally during the tour. I saw you today getting rock hard as burrpp soon as I turned on the charm. Buuurrpp Well now you’re going to become one. Buuurrp No need to worry about that diet I’ll take of your burrp job. I’m going to feed you until you become my fat, slobby fucktoy. Your going to eat tasty buurrpp food all the time, your going to belch and fart all the time, your going to sweat like a buuurrrp pig whenever you have to get up. I’m going to keep buuurrrp you high and hypnotised whenbuuurrrpever you’re not at work so you get really dumb too. We’re going to be fat slobs buuurrrrrppp together. You humans put so much work into being buuurrrp polite. Being gross is the most buuuurrrrpp fun part of humanoid bodies!” Howard said whilst rubbing Charles’s belly and letting out a stream of farts. Charles deliberately made every burp and fart he did as loud as possible. He was eager to please. His attraction to fat men and to monsters had been hidden for so long that he didn’t dare date either. He reached out and started rubbing Howard’s big green hairy gut. Now he was going to be the chubby, kept boyfriend of a giant succubus. A certified fat guy was going to teach him their ways. “Yes! Make me fat! BuuurppTriple me in size! I want to be a dumb slob! I want to be a fat boy! You’re so buuurrpp sexy, I’d do buuuurrrp anything for you! Fuck buuurrrp me! Please I’m so desperate! Buuurrp I’m so hard!” Charles whined.

Charles woke up bloated. But instead of being angry he smiled. Then he belched loudly. Today was different. Today was the first full day of his new life. He stroked his little belly and farted a couple times. Howard was next to him also sporting a bloated belly, snoring loudly and farting in his sleep. Eventually he stirred and smirked at the sight of Charles playing with his own belly. Howard reached over and pulled Charles in then belched in his face.

To be continued

#burp kink #belly kink #fart kink #eprocto #slob kink #fat slob #feedism.

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sophieinwonderland · 9 months

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Just a few notes on Tulpamancy and the DSM.

Tulpamancy is tulpamancy

When speaking of tulpamancy and the tulpamancy community, we're going to keep referring to it as tulpamancy. Trying to relabel a community as something else... isn't going to happen, and creates way more confusion.

The tulpamancy spoken of in academic papers, in TEDx Talks and on Chicago Med is tulpamancy. Tulpas created this way and from this community aren't thoughtforms or willos. At least for the purposes of discussions of the community.

Tulpamancy is primarily psychological

The community is primarily divided between so-called psychological and metaphysical explanatory principles. In the psychological community, neuroscience (or folk neuroscience) is the explanation of choice. Tulpas are understood as mental constructs that have achieved sentience. The metaphysical explanation holds that Tulpas are agents of supernatural origins that exist outside the hosts’ minds, and who come to communicate with them. Of 118 respondents queried on the question, 76.5% identified with the psychological explanation, 8.5% with the metaphysical, and 14% with a variety of “other” explanations, such as a mixture of psychological and metaphysical.

76.5% of tulpamancers identified with purely psychological explanations. Only 8.5% identified with purely spiritual ones.

It's worth repeating that this data is only accurate insofar as it's related to the tulpamancy community.

If you take this data out of context, change the label and claim that 76.5% of the "thoughtform community" identifies with spiritual explanation, that would be wrong because there's a very sizable pagan community that makes spiritual thoughtforms.

The data obviously didn't study them because this is a study about tulpamancers and their tulpas.

The cultural exemption still applies to tulpamancy

Criterion D.

The disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice. Note: In children, the symptoms are not better explained by imaginary playmates or other fantasy play.

It's not actually required that the practice being religious or spiritual. In fact, the example it gives is one that's purely psychological.

Admittedly, "broadly accepted" is a bit loaded. Personally, I'm choosing to interpret this is as applicable to subcultures. The alternative would mean that a lot of smaller religions and spiritual beliefs wouldn't be covered because they aren't broadly accepted enough. A very strict reading of that text would have paganism and many other religions not protected, as they're generally not accepted in the Christian-majority United States.

I'm choosing to believe the people who wrote the DSM didn't write this in a way that was intended to leave the door open to pathologize less unpopular religions. If that is the intended reading, then it's a severe flaw that desperately needs to be rectified.

The exemption isn't absolute

The key term in the exemption is "normal part."

This is covered further in the section on culture-related diagnostic issues.

Many features of dissociative identity disorder can be influenced by the individual's cultural background. Individuals with this disorder may present with prominent medically unexplained neurological symptoms, such as non-epileptic seizures, paralyses, or sensory loss, in cultural settings where such symptoms are common. Similarly, in settings where normative possession is common (e.g., rural areas in the developing world, among certain religious groups in the United States and Europe), the fragmented identities may take the form of possessing spirits, deities, demons, animals, or mythical figures. Acculturation or prolonged intercultural contact may shape the characteristics of the other identities (e.g., identities in India may speak English exclusively and wear Western clothes). Possessionform dissociative identity disorder can be distinguished from culturally accepted possession states in that the former is involuntary, distressing, uncontrollable, and often recurrent or persistent; involves conflict between the individual and his or her surrounding family, social, or work milieu; and is manifested at times and in places that violate the norms of the culture or religion.

Essentially, cases of possessing spirits and the like can be diagnosed as DID (or OSDD) if they exist in a way that is outside the normal bounds of the cultural phenomena.

Which really should be a no-brainer.

Imaginary friends in children are part of a culturally accepted phenomena, as was mentioned in that example. But once they start taking over a child's body and the child has severe memory gaps, that's something outside the boundaries of what's considered normal for the culture.

The cultural exemption and Koomer & Oguigi

While headmate creation itself is normal within the tulpa community, their ordeal was largely not. The numerous malevolent walk-ins that spawned after Oguigi's intentional creation are an example of something that was both harmful, and outside what's considered normal within the tulpa community.

In fact, when people show up on r/tulpas asking about similar experiences to know if they have tulpas, they're often told tulpas don't behave like that, and that they should probably seek out help from a professional.

Koomer and Oguigi's experiences were well outside the boundaries of normality within tulpamancy culture, and they would therefore meet Criterion D.

TL;DR

Calling the tulpamancy community and tulpas by other names they don't use for themselves is silly and actively harmful to communities you conflate us with.

76.5% of tulpamancers identify with purely psychological explanations, and don't consider tulpamancy spiritual or religious at all.

Criterion D still explicitly applies to psychological culturally-accepted experiences.

Criterion D specifies that it can't be a "normal part" of said cultural practice, meaning an experience can become pathological if it steps outside of the boundaries of what's considered normal for that particular subculture.

#syscourse #pro endo #pro endogenic #tulpa #pro tulpa #tulpamancy #multiplicity #endogenic #system #systems #plural #plurality #plural system #endogenic system #psychiatry #psychology #mental illness #mental health #actually a system

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almalvo · 1 year

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I been angry, but I am just pissed as sh1t rn let me be petty like?? So ima talk. After all this time, after seeing all I have seen, hearing all that I have heard, received all that I have received - Ima talk. Nuff silence; block me all you want but - Ima talk.

The "Star Trek" fandom is literally full of bullsh1t.

For a source material that speaks most largely on exploring strange NEW worlds, to SEEK out NEW life and NEW civilisations, to boldly go where no one has gone before... (though nothing is really new...) ... yall are just so nuzzled up and comfy over here in this hive echo-chamber you call a "fandom" because you can so easily and comfortably pervert the principle of differences and diversities in Star Trek so that you can surf the dunes of your own politicised, discriminatory, prejudiced, distorted delusional sandbox of what "freedom of speech" and "freedom of identity" and "liberty itself" (whatever tf THAT means lol) and what fake twitter/tumblr-sjw and chronically online "woke culture" look, sound, and feel like, gone most greatly uncontested because as soon as one person says or people say something, then they risk outting themselves for the same sh1t they pull in this "community", which would ultimately lead them to lose this sickening "freedom" that they cultivated for decades to say and be the sh1ttiest in a homogenised sh1tty social environment where they won't ever be conspicuous or scorned; to blend right in (worsening over time).

I been silently lurking around in this pop-culture space, observing for the better part of a year, and it's ALL I need to see more than enough - and what I seen is precisely why I stay the fvck a w a y from most all of you and do not involve myself with most activities or events (if any) being done - and if I do, I do so with utter self-awareness and caution. I been seeing what so many of yall doing and been doing. Whether you out here drawing strictly pink red-blooded Spock's; bleaching Uhura; being anti-SNW Uhura; accusing Spock to be anything near an anti-sem1tic symbol; forcing pressurised and uncomfortable messages to many artists over the years in their DMs completely unsolicited and unasked for without consent to make them draw Kirk the way you see yourself for your own restrictive agenda while completely disregarding the everything the artists say to you; talking about race theory when you don't even know what a hypothesis is; being a spokesperson for the population of people you have absolutely z e r o agency over; talking about or participating presumptuously or dismissively in subjects regarding identity that you have no idea about and don't investigate; using your identity as some kind of ticket of immutable correctness when you in fact still have to actually be correct; blindly believing and bandwagoning any ideas and social/emotional/political subjects without even at least questioning what it is that you are nodding your head to; refusing to do your part and put in the actual time and effort to do your own research into things that you dont actually truly understand; not admitting to your own ignorances; not having conversations with yourself and others in efforts to think learn and grow; not having the capacity to identify fault in yourself or actively recognising erroneous commentary elsewhere; being an utter bystander and doing nothing in the face of total ideological evil; being hypocritically super "identity-phobic" by using your own identity as some kind of justification and validating mouthpiece to push others beneath you to feed your insecure ego; being an unapologetic hypocrite at all; unchallenging the problematic nature of the environment around you or in even the people you know or talk to and encounter whether irl or online; committing to silence and performative activism for things that you should/need to care about; being lazy with caring; perverting social spaces in favour of your own unconditional freedom to harbour and flourish with your criminally bad takes and mentalities and ideologies where others around you will only be of the species to agree with you; thinking of Star Trek as just "oh next episode of entertainment oo ahh shiny shiny funny funny sad sad oo woke haha" instead of understanding that these things raised in the show are based in reality and are things to actually think about and reflect on regarding others AND YOURSELF and are not just solely thought-pieces for entertainment value; detaching the relevance of what you should've understood and learned from "woke" media to the real world/vicinity around you offline or online as two NOT-mutually-exclusive things...

... how so many of you art people drawing even caucasian people with skin that aint just white but like white white like an office drywall - like where all the blood at? god you must really hate colour that much dont you damn; how none of yall ever out here complaining about how restricted and problematic it is on multiple levels that only japanese people are constantly the MAIN group from all of asia that show up at all in Star Trek fr - and liking TOS/AOS Uhura only actually because of how close/how she compares and contrasts to WHITE beauty standards and not cuz yall really think they are beautiful for who they as bipoc/black women are without that prejudiced caucasian perspective (and I BET you so many of yall dont even KNOW you're doing it cuz you are so subconsciously conditioned to think and upkeep and pursue eurocentrism by society...) (wont say more for now...) I see you.

I never expected much of anything from a community of something I newly entered in not so long ago, because I know the world is not great and I seen too many fandoms to be pretty trashy (with very very VERY few exceptions - like a good percentage of BTS Army lol and I aint even really into kpop) But I think it hurts most when it is for something that I value so much, so deeply - That this fandom is a sham. That it is often the very antithesis of what birthed it. That it is just a guise for fools to use to live in problematic peace.

Such a critical portion of yall at this point for who knows how long these last 57 years are really just appropriating characters like Spock cuz IDIC is fvcked.

"Trekkie" is nigh equivalent to a moniker of insult by the rabid sickness of thought I see being pedaled everywhere by so many, many of you.

And that sheer lack of shame.

Not all, but I never said all. Of course there are exceptions. But don't let this ^ make you feel comfortable.

Because it's undeniable that so many of yall just dont care.

Just dont care. Complacy's a fvckn disease.

Like why the fvck am I here? How could I endure and strenuously press-on in such an insufferable place?

Because I ain't here for you. I am here for what brought me here and any who uphold thus to be true and just.

I love Star Trek.

But I hate to be thought of as a Trekkie.

Not while it stays the label it has become and will remain for long. Egregious. I grieve for the contributions and dedication and original vision that the greats like Mr. Nimoy and others had graced this pioneering of human creation with that have been so marred and abused.

I grieve for Star Trek.

I grieve.

To any and all who read through this entire thing and feel the fire of anger as I do against all that is so terribly misled and lost - do.

To any and all who read through this all the way and felt embarrassment, humiliation, shame - feel it. Admit it. Learn from it.

And grow the fvck up.

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dailyanarchistposts · 1 month

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A.2.5 Why are anarchists in favour of equality?

As mentioned in above, anarchists are dedicated to social equality because it is the only context in which individual liberty can flourish. However, there has been much nonsense written about “equality,” and much of what is commonly believed about it is very strange indeed. Before discussing what anarchist do mean by equality, we have to indicate what we do not mean by it.

Anarchists do not believe in “equality of endowment,” which is not only non-existent but would be very undesirable if it could be brought about. Everyone is unique. Biologically determined human differences not only exist but are “a cause for joy, not fear or regret.” Why? Because “life among clones would not be worth living, and a sane person will only rejoice that others have abilities that they do not share.” [Noam Chomsky, Marxism, Anarchism, and Alternative Futures, p. 782]

That some people seriously suggest that anarchists means by “equality” that everyone should be identical is a sad reflection on the state of present-day intellectual culture and the corruption of words — a corruption used to divert attention from an unjust and authoritarian system and side-track people into discussions of biology. “The uniqueness of the self in no way contradicts the principle of equality,” noted Erich Fromm, “The thesis that men are born equal implies that they all share the same fundamental human qualities, that they share the same basic fate of human beings, that they all have the same inalienable claim on freedom and happiness. It furthermore means that their relationship is one of solidarity, not one of domination-submission. What the concept of equality does not mean is that all men are alike.” [The Fear of Freedom, p. 228] Thus it would be fairer to say that anarchists seek equality because we recognise that everyone is different and, consequently, seek the full affirmation and development of that uniqueness.

Nor are anarchists in favour of so-called “equality of outcome.” We have no desire to live in a society were everyone gets the same goods, lives in the same kind of house, wears the same uniform, etc. Part of the reason for the anarchist revolt against capitalism and statism is that they standardise so much of life (see George Reitzer’s The McDonaldisation of Society on why capitalism is driven towards standardisation and conformity). In the words of Alexander Berkman:

“The spirit of authority, law, written and unwritten, tradition and custom force us into a common grove and make a man [or woman] a will-less automation without independence or individuality… All of us are its victims, and only the exceptionally strong succeed in breaking its chains, and that only partly.” [What is Anarchism?, p. 165]

Anarchists, therefore, have little to desire to make this “common grove” even deeper. Rather, we desire to destroy it and every social relationship and institution that creates it in the first place.

“Equality of outcome” can only be introduced and maintained by force, which would not be equality anyway, as some would have more power than others! “Equality of outcome” is particularly hated by anarchists, as we recognise that every individual has different needs, abilities, desires and interests. To make all consume the same would be tyranny. Obviously, if one person needs medical treatment and another does not, they do not receive an “equal” amount of medical care. The same is true of other human needs. As Alexander Berkman put it:

“equality does not mean an equal amount but equal opportunity… Do not make the mistake of identifying equality in liberty with the forced equality of the convict camp. True anarchist equality implies freedom, not quantity. It does not mean that every one must eat, drink, or wear the same things, do the same work, or live in the same manner. Far from it: the very reverse in fact.” “Individual needs and tastes differ, as appetites differ. It is equal opportunity to satisfy them that constitutes true equality. “Far from levelling, such equality opens the door for the greatest possible variety of activity and development. For human character is diverse … Free opportunity of expressing and acting out your individuality means development of natural dissimilarities and variations.” [Op. Cit., pp. 164–5]

For anarchists, the “concepts” of “equality” as “equality of outcome” or “equality of endowment” are meaningless. However, in a hierarchical society, “equality of opportunity” and “equality of outcome” are related. Under capitalism, for example, the opportunities each generation face are dependent on the outcomes of the previous ones. This means that under capitalism “equality of opportunity” without a rough “equality of outcome” (in the sense of income and resources) becomes meaningless, as there is no real equality of opportunity for the off-spring of a millionaire and that of a road sweeper. Those who argue for “equality of opportunity” while ignoring the barriers created by previous outcomes indicate that they do not know what they are talking about — opportunity in a hierarchical society depends not only on an open road but also upon an equal start. From this obvious fact springs the misconception that anarchists desire “equality of outcome” — but this applies to a hierarchical system, in a free society this would not the case (as we will see).

Equality, in anarchist theory, does not mean denying individual diversity or uniqueness. As Bakunin observes:

“once equality has triumphed and is well established, will various individuals’ abilities and their levels of energy cease to differ? Some will exist, perhaps not so many as now, but certainly some will always exist. It is proverbial that the same tree never bears two identical leaves, and this will probably be always be true. And it is even more truer with regard to human beings, who are much more complex than leaves. But this diversity is hardly an evil. On the contrary… it is a resource of the human race. Thanks to this diversity, humanity is a collective whole in which the one individual complements all the others and needs them. As a result, this infinite diversity of human individuals is the fundamental cause and the very basis of their solidarity. It is all-powerful argument for equality.” [“All-Round Education”, The Basic Bakunin, pp. 117–8]

Equality for anarchists means social equality, or, to use Murray Bookchin’s term, the “equality of unequals” (some like Malatesta used the term “equality of conditions” to express the same idea). By this he means that an anarchist society recognises the differences in ability and need of individuals but does not allow these differences to be turned into power. Individual differences, in other words, “would be of no consequence, because inequality in fact is lost in the collectivity when it cannot cling to some legal fiction or institution.” [Michael Bakunin, God and the State, p. 53]

If hierarchical social relationships, and the forces that create them, are abolished in favour of ones that encourage participation and are based on the principle of “one person, one vote” then natural differences would not be able to be turned into hierarchical power. For example, without capitalist property rights there would not be means by which a minority could monopolise the means of life (machinery and land) and enrich themselves by the work of others via the wages system and usury (profits, rent and interest). Similarly, if workers manage their own work, there is no class of capitalists to grow rich off their labour. Thus Proudhon:

“Now, what can be the origin of this inequality? “As we see it, … that origin is the realisation within society of this triple abstraction: capital, labour and talent. “It is because society has divided itself into three categories of citizen corresponding to the three terms of the formula… that caste distinctions have always been arrived at, and one half of the human race enslaved to the other… socialism thus consists of reducing the aristocratic formula of capital-labour-talent into the simpler formula of labour!… in order to make every citizen simultaneously, equally and to the same extent capitalist, labourer and expert or artist.” [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, pp. 57–8]

Like all anarchists, Proudhon saw this integration of functions as the key to equality and freedom and proposed self-management as the means to achieve it. Thus self-management is the key to social equality. Social equality in the workplace, for example, means that everyone has an equal say in the policy decisions on how the workplace develops and changes. Anarchists are strong believers in the maxim “that which touches all, is decided by all.”

This does not mean, of course, that expertise will be ignored or that everyone will decide everything. As far as expertise goes, different people have different interests, talents, and abilities, so obviously they will want to study different things and do different kinds of work. It is also obvious that when people are ill they consult a doctor — an expert — who manages his or her own work rather than being directed by a committee. We are sorry to have to bring these points up, but once the topics of social equality and workers’ self-management come up, some people start to talk nonsense. It is common sense that a hospital managed in a socially equal way will not involve non-medical staff voting on how doctors should perform an operation!

In fact, social equality and individual liberty are inseparable. Without the collective self-management of decisions that affect a group (equality) to complement the individual self-management of decisions that affect the individual (liberty), a free society is impossible. For without both, some will have power over others, making decisions for them (i.e. governing them), and thus some will be more free than others. Which implies, just to state the obvious, anarchists seek equality in all aspects of life, not just in terms of wealth. Anarchists “demand for every person not just his [or her] entire measure of the wealth of society but also his [or her] portion of social power.” [Malatesta and Hamon, No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, p. 20] Thus self-management is needed to ensure both liberty and equality.

Social equality is required for individuals to both govern and express themselves, for the self-management it implies means “people working in face-to-face relations with their fellows in order to bring the uniqueness of their own perspective to the business of solving common problems and achieving common goals.” [George Benello, From the Ground Up, p. 160] Thus equality allows the expression of individuality and so is a necessary base for individual liberty.

Section F.3 (“Why do ‘anarcho’-capitalists place little or no value on equality?”) discusses anarchist ideas on equality further. Noam Chomsky’s essay “Equality” (contained in The Chomsky Reader) is a good summary of libertarian ideas on the subject.

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bestworstcase · 5 months

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You've mentioned that hatedoms tend to be very similar to each other, if not outright identical across fandoms. What is it that causes them to be like this and so similar to each other?

well. to explain this i think it’s first helpful to lay out why hatedom… exists, because i think that is generally not understood in normative fandom space; what i see happening in a lot of conversations about hatedom is that there is a widespread presupposition that hatedom is kind of a side effect of bullies and bigots lashing out at fans for liking something they don’t, and… that’s a misconception because hatedom is a fandom subculture.

“but farran,” you might be thinking, “hatedom is full of bigoted bullies”—and yes, it is. that is true of fandom across the board and, frankly, the harassment is often mutual. it’s just that trolling hatedom or just being combative and nasty toward people in hatedom is broadly socially acceptable in a lot of fandom spaces and the perception that hatedom is demographically homogenous (white, cishet, male) allows fandom’s bad actors to spin aggression as self-defense by rhetorically invoking identity politics.

which is not to say that hatedom isn’t ever reactionary or that hatedom doesn’t have a massive bigotry problem—it is and it does—but rather that those things are not unique to this one subculture. it is a Fandom Problem.

so, with that said, what makes hatedom happen?

it isn’t about not liking something. it isn’t even really about hating a thing. people in hatedoms are… fans, actually.

specifically they are fans who have reached the natural terminus of fandom’s “fuck canon/yay fanon” culture. this is actually the main reason i tend to get somewhat acidic with the anons i get sometimes kvetching about hatedom rewrites and the like, because… hello?

inside every happy fan besotted with fanon is an embittered screed just one favorite-headcanon-shattering narrative turn away from getting out. it is the same. mindset. bifurcated solely by whether the preferred fanon resembles the real story enough to believe the fanon is real.

this is why hatedom is disproportionately populated by shippers of torpedoed ships and hardcore believers of popular fan theories that flopped. (and once you notice this, perusing fandom tags and blogs becomes a fun exercise in forecasting the hatedom.)

anyway the point of all this being that hatedom arises when there is an irreconcilable break away from popular fanon in the actual text. when ships get sunk, popular fan theories get jossed, or the narrative status quo is changed, it’s really common for fans who were deeply invested in that ship or theory or paradigm to pivot to hatedom because the emotional attachment they have to the story and characters doesn’t go away, it just hits an immovable obstacle and ricochets off in a new direction.

again, fans do exactly the same thing at a lesser intensity. fix-it fic. headcanons of omission, ie, “i know x happened in canon but i don’t like it so i am choosing to pretend it didn’t, actually.” the entire sentiment that fandom itself is about stripping a story for spare parts to write bespoke au fic tailored exactly to suit the fan’s preferences.

what distinguishes hatedom—& this is getting to the answer of your actual question—is that in hatedom the “fuck canon/yay fanon” principle is applied in the context of that irreparable breach opening between canon and fanon. in normative fandom spaces, the popular fanon kind of gets superimposed with the text in a manner that allows them to blend together, hiding any small discrepancies. that isn’t possible in hatedom because the discrepancies are always so large.

inevitably what that leads to is this feedback loop where the hatedom develops its preferred fanon through a combination of fanworks, meta-posting about why the fanon would have been better or should have been what happened instead, and cherry-picking whatever bits and pieces from canon people in the hatedom happen to like.

(which is how all fanon develops, yes.)

over time, it’s the meta-posting about the preferred fanon that causes hatedom to dissolve into the vindictive nitpicky circus. no matter where you go in fandom, there is always a huge social incentive to keep coming up with new things to talk about. obviously. in normative fandom spaces a lot of that is generated by excitement and joy and just a desire to spend more time with the story and share what you think and kick fun or interesting ideas around. but in hatedom, the passion binding these fans together is estranged from canon almost completely and the group identity is predicated on this really intense disappointment that the preferred fanon got left in the dust.

so hatedom is fundamentally driven by a powerful social incentive to keep coming up with new reasons why the preferred fanon is better. that pushes the fanfic away from au and into spitefic territory, leaches nuance out of the discussions, encourages nitpicking and angry screeds. eventually it hits a certain critical mass and tailspins rapidly into bullshit because (and this is the key) people in hatedom are fans.

as in, most of them like the stories they’re ripping apart. they largely do not actually have any deep problem with the story because they are fans having extreme reactions to disappointment. so they talk shit and nitpick and make melodramas out of molehills and sometimes fling bizarre identity politics around to either legitimize nonsense Story Bad arguments or score imaginary points in altercations with normative fandom.

if that all sounds familiar, yeah. lmao

i will close with an anecdote to illustrate the broader point.

once upon a time i made a snarky little post about an extremely stupid ironwood take i scrolled past while blogwalking. somehow or another that ended up in front of one of the BNFs of rwby’s hatedom; he misinterpreted my point (because it was a vague snarky paragraph) and wrote a fairly harsh response based on that misinterpretation. there were several followers of mine in the notes kind of signaling an expectation that i was about to receive a barrage of harassment over this.

i responded by:

clarifying that i didn’t mean the (genuinely awful!) thing he thought i was saying

indicating that i understood how/why he’d read the post that way and no hard feelings

elaborating in detail on what i did mean and why i thought that

and what happened?

the dude apologized for jumping to conclusions and being so caustic off the bat, then explained his own opinion and the thought process behind it. and that was that. the number of hostile angry anons i received was zero. the number of inane bad faith reblogs i got on other posts afterwards was zero.

now this is a basic, basic deescalating tactic but it’s also really illustrative of what i’m talking about when i say that hatedom isn’t motivated by a desire to bully fans out of fandom because if it hadn’t been for the handful of people in the notes going basically, “oh no! it’s him! brace yourself!” i wouldn’t have known the guy was a hatedom BNF at all. his initial response to me was indistinguishable from the tantrums the dadpin people or that one penny truther throw in my inbox every now and then and frankly he was a lot more reasonable and mature about our differences of opinion than them once the misunderstanding was cleared up.

like…

i’m not conflict averse at all. anyone who’s been following me for any significant length of time knows that, lmao. but i do try to lead with reasonable and presume good faith until proven otherwise and the thing is? that shuts down hatedom aggro fucking instantly. because people in hatedom are just… fans, really. fans who are usually pretty stoked to be treated like fellow fans instead of the enemy and will usually make an effort to rise to the occasion.

and once you grok that hatedom becomes really quite simple to understand; the homogenous pan-fandom slurry of inane bullshit happens because fundamentally most people in hatedom like the story but rode the “fuck canon/yay fanon” train all the way to its very toxic and unpleasant last stop and now they’re kind of… stuck there trying to shout the cognitive dissonance away. most of them would be 1000% happier if they hopped the fence back to fandom and went “here’s my wish fulfillment power fantasy au fic that i’m writing for a target audience of Me” buuut there are a lot of social and emotional headwinds against that.

so instead they make up wildly entertaining bullshit reasons a story is bad like “the animation is ugly” and “it’s bad writing not to explain how [completely mundane everyday thing that children can understand, like haircuts or the concept of money] works” and “how could the disney princess show have monarchy in it?!/how could the fairytale show have fairytales in it?!” and so forth. it just gets sillier and sillier forever.

#the haircut thing is a real example btw #grown ass woman pretending she needed to watch the scene where rapunzel cuts her hair with a razor sharp jag of rock #THREE TIMES before she understood how the hair got cut. bc of the bad writing u see.#only the focal point of the scene in a masterfully animated show written for a target audience of six year olds! grhdfhdvsj

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mariacallous · 5 months

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The world is embarking on a critical year for the future of democracy. Elections in India, Indonesia, South Africa, and the United States—to name just a few prominent countries headed to the polls in 2024—would normally be routine affairs. But many of these democracies are at an inflection point. Can the strengthening tides of polarization, institutional degradation, and authoritarianism be reversed? Or will democracy reach a breaking point?

Every democracy has its own particular set of characteristics. In each country holding elections this year, voters will judge incumbent governments on familiar issues such as inflation, employment, personal security, and a sense of confidence about their future prospects. But the foreboding that accompanies the world’s elections in 2024 stems from one singular fact: The uneasy accommodation between nationalism and democracy is coming under severe stress.

The crisis in democracy is in part a crisis in nationalism, which today seems to revolve around four issues: how nations define membership; how they popularize a version of historical memory; how they locate a sovereign identity; and how they contend with the forces of globalization. In each of these, nationalism and liberalism are often in tension. Democracies tend to navigate this tension rather than resolve it. Yet, around the world, nationalism is slowly strangling liberalism—a trend that could accelerate in a damaging way this year. As more citizens cast their ballots in 2024 than in any other year in the history of the world, they will be voting not only for a particular leader or party but for the very future of their civil liberties.

Let’s first discuss how societies set parameters for membership. If a political community is sovereign, it has a right to make decisions on whom to exclude from or include in membership. Liberal democracies have historically opted for a variety of criteria for membership. Some have privileged ethnic and cultural factors, while others have picked civic criteria that merely demand allegiance to a common set of constitutional values.

In practice, a range of considerations have guided the immigration policies of liberal democracies, including the economic advantages of immigration, historical ties to particular groups of people, and humanitarian considerations. Most liberal societies have dealt with the membership question not on a principled basis but through various arrangements, some more open than others.

The question of membership is increasing in political salience. The causes may vary. In the United States, a surge of migrants at the southern border has politically foregrounded the issue, forcing even the Biden administration to reverse some of its promised liberal policies. To be sure, immigration has always been an important political issue in the United States. But since the political arrival of Donald Trump, it has acquired a new edge. Trump’s so-called Muslim ban—even though it was eventually repealed—raised the specter of new forms of overt or covert discrimination forming the basis of a possible future U.S. immigration regime.

Europe’s refugee crisis—induced by global conflicts and economic and climate distress—is inflecting the politics of every country. Sweden has grown deep concerns about its model of integrating immigrants, ushering in a right-wing government in 2022. In the United Kingdom, Brexit hinged in part on concerns over immigration. And in India, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will implement the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act, which excludes Muslim refugees from certain neighboring countries from a pathway to seeking citizenship. For New Delhi, membership concerns are driven by the need to prioritize a large ethnic majority. Similarly, the status of migrants in South Africa is being increasingly contested.

The increasing salience of membership is worrying for the future of liberalism. Since liberal values have historically been compatible with a variety of immigration and membership regimes, a liberal membership regime may not be a necessary condition for creating a liberal society. One could argue that not having a well-controlled membership policy is more likely to undermine liberalism by upsetting the social cohesion on which liberalism relies. But it is a remarkable fact that many of the world’s political leaders who endorse closed or discriminatory membership regimes, from Hungary’s Viktor Orban to the Netherlands’s Geert Wilders, also happen to oppose liberal values. That makes it harder to create a distinction between being anti-immigration and anti-liberal.

The second dimension of nationalism is the contest over historical memory. All nations need something of a usable past—a story that binds its peoples together—that can be the basis of a collective identity and self-esteem. The distinction between history and memory can be overdrawn, but it is important. As the French historian Pierre Nora put it, memory looks for facts, especially ones that suit the veneration of the main object of recollection. Memory has an affective quality: It is supposed to move you and constitute your identity. It draws the boundaries of communities. History is more detached; the facts will always complicate both identity and community.

History is not a morality tale as much as it is a very difficult form of hard-won knowledge, always aware of its selectivity.

Memory is easiest to hold on to as a morality tale. It is not just about the past. Memory is a kind of eternal truth about one’s collective identity, to keep and carry forward.

Memories are increasingly being emphasized in the political arena. In India, to take the most obvious case, historical memory is central to the consolidation of Hindu nationalism. In January, Modi will open a temple to the god Ram in Ayodhya, built on the site where Hindu nationalists demolished a mosque in 1992. It is an important religious symbol. But it is also central to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s narrative that the most salient historical memory for Indians should not be colonial rule by the British but a thousand-year history of subjugation by Islam. Modi declared Aug. 5, the day the foundation stone of the temple was laid in 2020, as being as important a national milestone as Aug. 15, the day of India’s independence from the British in 1947.

In South Africa, questions of memory may seem less pronounced. But the compromise of the Nelson Mandela years, which some now see as sacrificing economic justice for the cause of social solidarity, is increasingly being interrogated. Faced with continuing inequality, economic worries, and declining social mobility, many South Africans are questioning the legacy of Mandela and whether he did enough to empower Black people in the country. This reflects some disillusionment with the ruling African National Congress. But this reconsideration could also potentially redefine the memory in terms of which modern South Africa has understood itself.

In the United States, the contest over how to tell the national story goes back to the Founding Fathers. But debates around this are more politically visible than ever, with politicians from Trump to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis basing their candidacies in part on what it means to be American and how to “make America great again.” Florida, for example, created dubious standards for the teaching of Black history, seeking to regulate what students learn about race and slavery. This is not just a contest over the politics of pedagogy; behind it is a larger, anxious political debate about how the United States remembers its past—and therefore how it will build its future.

The third dimension in the surge of nationalism is the contest over popular sovereignty, or the will of the people. There has always been a close connection between popular sovereignty and nationalism, as the former required the formation of the concept of a people with a distinct identity and special solidarity toward one another. During the French Revolution, inspired by the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the popular sovereign was supposed to have a singular will. But if the will of the people is unitary, what explains differences? Furthermore, if there are differences among people, as there naturally are, then how is one to ascertain the will of the people? One way out of this puzzle is to see who can effectively perform the will of the able—and in doing so represent the other side as betraying that will, rather than as merely carrying an alternative interpretation of it. In order for such a performance to take place, one has to castigate anyone who represents an alternative viewpoint as an enemy of the people. In that sense, rhetorical invocations of “the people”—understood as a unitary entity—always run the risk of being anti-pluralist. Even when democracies around the world have embraced a pluralist and representative conception of democracy, there is a residual trace of unity that gets transposed to the nation. The nation is not a nation, or cannot acquire a will, unless it is united.

People rally around a unitary will by benchmarking their national identity: We are Indian by virtue of X or American by virtue of Y. Sometimes, this kind of benchmarking of identity can be quite productive; it is a reminder to citizens of what gives their particular community a distinct identity. Yet one of nationalism’s features is that it struggles to make room for its own contestation. The opposition is delegitimized or stigmatized not because it has a different point of view on policy matters but because its views are represented as anti-national. It is not an accident that the rhetoric of national populists is often directed against forces that are seen to challenge their version of the national identity or their benchmarking of nationalism. As national identities become more contested, there are increasing chances that unity can be achieved only by being imposed.

As a political style, national populism thrives not so much by finding enemies of the people but enemies of the nation, who are often measured by certain taboos. Almost all modern populists—from Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Modi, Orban, and Trump—draw the distinction between people and elites not in terms of class but in terms of who authentically represents the nation. Who gets benchmarked as the true nationalist? The cultural contempt for the elite gets its strength not just from the fact that they are elites but that they can be represented as elites who are no longer part of the nation, as it were. This kind of rhetoric increasingly sees difference as seditious rather than merely a disagreement. In India, for example, national security charges are deployed against students who question the government’s stance on Kashmir. This is seen not just as a contestation—or possibly a misguided view—but an anti-national act than needs to be criminalized.

The fourth dimension of the crisis of nationalism relates to globalization. Even in the era of hyperglobalization, national interest never faded away. Countries embraced globalization or greater integration into the world economy because they thought it served their interests. But a critical question in this year’s elections in all democracies is a reconsideration of the terms on which they engage the international system.

Globalization created winners but also losers. The loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States or premature de-industrialization in India was bound to prompt a reconsideration of globalization—and all of this was happening even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which accentuated a fear of dependency on global supply chains.

Countries are increasingly convinced that the assertion of political control over the economy—their ability to create a legitimate social contract—requires rethinking the terms of globalization. The trend is to feel more skeptical about globalization and to seek out greater self-sufficiency for national security or economic reasons. “America First” and “India First” are to a certain extent understandable, particularly in a context where China has emerged as an authoritarian competitor.

But the current moment seems like a much larger pivot in the politics of nationalism. Globalization, while seeking to advance national interests, also mitigated nationalism. It presented the global order as something other than a zero-sum game in which all countries could mutually benefit by greater integration. It was not suspicious of cosmopolitan solidarity. Increasingly, democracies are abandoning this assumption, with profound consequences for the world. Less globalization and more protectionism will inevitably translate to more nationalism—a trend that will also hurt global trade, especially for smaller countries that need the rising tide of open borders and commerce.

Each of the four features of nationalism described here—membership, memory, sovereign identity, and openness to the world—has shadowed democracy since its inception. All democracies are also facing their own profound economic challenges: inequality and wage stagnation in the United States, the crisis of employment in India, and corruption in South Africa. There is no necessary binary between economic issues and the politics of nationalism. Successful nationalist politicians such as Modi see their economic success as a means of consolidating their nationalist visions. And in times of stress, nationalism is the language through which grievance can be articulated. It is the means by which politicians give a sense of belonging and participation to the people.

Nationalism is the most potent form of identity politics. It views individuals and the rights they have through the prism of the compulsory identity to which nationalism confines them. Nationalism and liberalism have long been competing forces. It is easier to navigate the tension between them if the stakes around nationalism are lowered, not raised. Yet it is increasingly likely that in many elections in 2024, the nature of the national identities of these countries will be at stake along the four dimensions listed above. These contests could invigorate democracy. But if the recent past is any guide, the salience of nationalism in politics is more likely to pose a threat to liberal values.

Advancing forms of nationalism that do not allow their own meaning to be contested or that seek to preserve the privilege of particular groups generally produces a more divisive and polarized society. India, Israel, France, and the United States each face a version of this challenge. Issues of memory and membership are the least amenable to being resolved by simple policy deliberation. The truths they trade on are not about facts that could be a basis for a common ground. It is notorious, for example, that we often choose our histories because of our identity rather than the other way around.

Perhaps most importantly, assaults on liberal freedoms are often justified in the name of nationalism. For example, freedom of expression is most likely to discover its limits if it is seen to target a deeply cherished national myth. Every emerging populist or authoritarian leader who is willing to abridge civil liberties or pay short shrift to institutional integrity wears the mantle of nationalism. It allows such leaders to crack down on dissent by using the canard “anti-national.” In many ways, this year’s elections may well decide whether democracy can successfully negotiate the dilemmas of nationalism—or whether it will be degraded or crushed.

George L. Mosse, the great 20th-century historian of fascism, described this challenge in his inaugural lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1979: “If we do not succeed in giving nationalism a human face, a future historian might write about our civilization what Edward Gibbon wrote about the fall of the Roman Empire: that at its height moderation prevailed and citizens had respect for each other’s beliefs, but that it fell through intolerant zeal and military despotism.”

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