#the problem with being anti is that you define yourself through opposition

[mintacle]

So, you've seen the words "anti" and "proshipper" thrown around in people's bios and "batc*st dni" on people's posts. Maybe you want to know what all the fuss is about, maybe you have a particular opinion about all this fuss. In any case, this informative post is for you.

Using Samantha Aburime's paper "the cult structure of the american anti", I'm going to explain the issue.

First of all what is an anti even? It's a term people use to self-identify within fandoms. As the name anti implies, they mainly identify with being against things.

Which leads us to our problem of the anti mentality.

Most antis are minors or under 24. People who left the anti community have explained their experiences in the following manners:

Maybe you have felt the pressure to join in anti behavior as well. If any of the following feelings are familiar to you, then you are experiencing anti indoctrination:

If the shame and guilt instilled in anti members isn't bad enough, there are more consequences for the targets of the antis. In the batman fandom these are blogs that may or may not describe themselves as proship, meaning they ship characters that are (adoptive) members of the wayne family (Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne) with one another.

Essentially: this is how anti action works:

Examples of dehumanization and harrasement which are very commonly practised among antis:

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And threats of violence:

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Beyond the aggresive nature of the anti mentality, the problem is that the people it targets are overwhelmingly vulnerable minorities.

And I have often seen antis justifying their harrasement by explaining that they are themselves queer or non-caucasian, which is an example of moral licencing and does not actually excuse targetting other minorities or people of the same minority as you.

So what do antis specifically do? The anti community of the batman fandom will often throw around accusations of incest ("batc*st") and pedophilia.

Let us examine those three concepts, disinformation, virtue signaling and legitimate abuse.

We can find disinformation in the prectise of denying reasonable arguments for tolerance of proshipping. An anti will not engage in any attempt to understand why people ship something they find morally apprehensible. They will label proshippers as degenarates, thereby misrepresenting who it is they are targeting. Furthermore they will misrespresent the amount of influence that proshippers yave on influencing people.

Virtue signaling describes the practise of labelling things as problematic without delivering reasonable arguments for doing so and instead using strong emotional language to explain their judgement:

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Virtue signaling also represents the practise of self-describing the anti as morally pure and the "enemy", the proshipper as morally degenerate.

Both disinformation and virtue signaling allow for legitimate abuse. Depersonifying and villifying the opponent gives the anti a feeling of being legitimized in their abuse.

For followers of my blog, I would like to raise awareness of this side of anti culture. Emotional and shame-inducing language can easily sway us. I plead my case for reasonable and distanced evaluation of what you see online. Condemning pedophilia and incest will seem perfectly natural on face value, which is why it is so hare to understand that often time what is labbelled as such is misrepresented, and really all the time the anti myth will equate preference of fiction to beliefs of real life morality (see first image)

To finish my informational post, I leave you with one last essential quote from Samantha Aburime's paper:

"The anti movement perpetuates archaic systems of judgement based on personal disgust and region-specific morality, punishing powerless people for their fannish interests and tainting their online communities. Their work does nothing to dismantle harmful systematic institutions; rather, it embraces them, even going so far as to actively harm and destroy members of their own community."

Read the full paper here. It's very interesting and a not too long read.

https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/2147/2829

#fandom meta #batcest #or batc*st if that makes you feel better I guess #education as a way of combatting polarism and extremism #essentially. no matter what your opinion is. if you find yourself harrassing people online... you are probably doing something wrong #anti #anti culture #antis #the problem with being anti is that you define yourself through opposition #proshipping #proship #i happen not to be proship. but don't let that make you think I endorse anti mentality or dnis #because I really just HAPPEN not to ship any batfam members #there is more. but the post is already very long and I have hit the ten image limit #ideally I would have inclided a part about how antis call out. expose and target specific blogs #rules for life: 1. live and let live 2. don't yuck someone else's yumm 3. always allow yourself to have your own opinion #dc #batman

[mclegibilist]

Typification Enforces Anti-Inductivity in the Game of Authenticity

Epistemic Status: Broad strokes of common gameplay.

Why is being authentic "hard"? Why is it something you have to try at?

Personally, I believe that being "authentic" is fundamentally a matter of being understood. I've seen people twist themselves into knots about how if you were a true Scotsman then you would just be able to be yourself, but I can't really see how we'd have much acquaintance with such people: eventually their notions of authenticity would butt-up against some societal norm and they would be pushed out. Most of the arguments I've heard against this seem to implicitly rely on an unawakened power of unparalleled proportions that being authentic gives you. I think this confuses authenticity and self-knowledge, and most people who we encounter with good self-knowledge are pragmatic enough to (a) know how to talk to other people in their native emotional language (b) never, ever say that they're always manipulating and restructuring their messages in order to get the most significant bits across and risk seeming inauthentic.

A lot of people who struggle with finding their authentic self tend to reach for intrinsic explanations for why authenticity is a hard problem, usually along the lines of "You've become estranged from yourself while trying to please other people, so you need to rediscover who you really are." As @in-stenography has pointed out before, we should be a bit skeptical about what it is we're discovering, and if we have any method of distinguishing between discovering and inventing.

So, take on my premise for a moment or stop reading here: authenticity is mostly invented personae, meant to incept elements of one's own self-image in the minds of others.

Why is that a hard problem?

Don't worry, I won't go full Robin Hanson on you, it's obvious why this is hard! There's no easy way to enforce honest signaling for lots of attributes people want to lay claim to like "honest" or "sexually experienced", "punctual" is a bit easier and consequently feels trivial.

Yet, we do traverse social landscapes and I would argue, on average, we do so very effectively. The average person in my broad social circles can almost immediately get across a persona, that may later come into question, but which is usually supported by initial markers or surrogates for the kinds of things we actually care about.

Sometimes, though, someone manages to feel "fresh" without (looking like they're) trying too hard. They, through pure interaction, describe a character they are that doesn't make you bucket them immediately. You get to know them, and you're amazed to find that they are, at least partially, who they say they are and begin the true exploration of friendship and actually getting to know each other.

Why can't everyone do this?

The answer is in "typification", terminology that @spilledreality introduced me to, which originates from Alfred Schütz, the philosopher and social phenomenologist. I will not use this term exactly as he did; I believe it is a basic pillar of knowledge logistics that we must make our references nods, but rely only on our presented definitions. Call this "portable foundations"—I don't want to rely on experts' interpretations of other people's definitions, I want to rely on what I can explain to you in our shared context.

Typification, as I define it, is an inherent property of cognition and expressible knowledge, basically that definitions are inherently categories. The best way to understand is to take literally any statement and see why it relies on typification, so I just took a random sentence from a random CNN article:

A North Port Police spokesperson declined to comment on the report.

What is "North Port Police"? It's a kind of bureaucratic body, we assume has certain properties because of the other similar bodies we are familiar with. We can go look it up, and we'll understand it as an entity of certain overlapping types: an employer, an arm of the executive branch, etc.

What does it mean to "comment on"—we can understand that there is some kind of message indicated by this action, but it goes much deeper. When people "comment" on things they generally have something to say about its fitness, or about some salient property that's meaningful to a the present crowd. And because the subject is a government body, that crowd is assumed to be the public.

All of this information is transferred by our understanding of "types of things"—types of entities, types of actions, types of properties. Maybe this seems obvious, but consider the opposite: what if we had some basic properties and we could mix them in any proportion like a color palette? Certainly we think some parts of the universe are like this, e.g. physical color. Yet we tend to refer to colors by types, e.g., red, yellow, mauve, maroon, etc. We tend to understand things through types, and language's focus on reusable categories is both a cause and a byproduct of this fact.

When person A discovers a way to present themselves authentically, every person who sees a little bit of themselves in the expression A managed to thread through the gravitational fields of the present-at-hand types will immediately engage in the most natural human process: memetic analysis for mimetic execution. By picking apart A's presentation of themselves, different people will carve out different collections of behavior and aspects of A's self-presentation and retool them to explain themselves. This is the origin of memes.

When B, C, D, and all the way to Z do this, a wave will ripple through the local social ecosystem that causes new types to arrive, likely centering around the most easy-to-understand elements of A's new style which many of the new behavioral memes will have in common. When that happens, A's presentation will either seem less fresh, if these spin-offs capture much of A's implicit message...or will seem fresh in a ghostly and subtle way because they failed to capture it.

Eitherway, the interplay, driven by human mimesis and memetic networks, will eventually cause A's original expression lines to go stale. It doesn't go stale because it's wrong, it might be that no one ever successfully replicates A's style. But it will still go stale because the message gets distorted by the change in the communication protocol that the gravitational pull of new types causes. The expressive range may remain unchanged, but saying the same thing will require different words. And just as often, old messages become impossible to express, often due to unshakeable connotations parasitic on some original meme.

This is nothing more than anti-inductivity: authenticity is a game where (i) you reveal your strategy by playing and (ii) others can use this information for themselves, in a way that actively competes with your goals. Just because your goal was "to express yourself" doesn't mean you weren't competing with other people. Quite the opposite: your unique idea has to fight to convince people it's meaningfully unique, and the kicker is it often isn't unique as much as you want it to be, but you've still got to express positivity towards your product along the axes people understand.

Every time a new type of guy drops, someone loses their current medium for expressing themself authentically.

#anti-inductivity #authenticity #type of guy

[skinfeeler]

i read twisted road to genocide by henri zukier today. the original published paper published in 1994.

it was an interesting read in a couple ways i hadn’t expected. while i feel that its portrayal of functionalism wasn’t exactly fair — functionalists are (to my knowledge and limited methodological expertise) mostly not ‘fluke historians’ and i feel a lot of this paper could have been written in a way that it would fit the archetypal functionalist canon, or at least the newer groupshift synthesis — there still were a lot of rebuttals of rhetoric that exists now still in some shape or form. turns out that the ‘financial anxiety’ type of apologia has existed for a long time, as noted under the ‘economic hardships’ section in the enumeration of various attempts to explain away necessary insights about the holocaust. i don’t think one can really say that ‘history repeats itself’ (or could be at risk to) in a methodologically sound sense, but it was certainly a great overview overview of rebuttals of those who would seek to replicate its horrors with the qualities of balance in cadence and formulaism that i find lacking in many papers. i will probably send it to family too since so far i’ve had little success in convincing anyone but my siblings of the structural complicity that was present in general but especially in the netherlands specifically. hopefully a well-cited academical source not written by the family’s problem child might do more to sway them. i visited the ‘resistance museum’ in amsterdam last summer. i kind of knew what to expect but it was disheartening to see it match the propaganda (mostly in the form of fictional quasi-historical narratives read to children in my circles, including me) in which a certain volksgeist of lionised mass resistance (of protestant bent) was attributed to the netherlands which seems largely unsusceptible to anything in the realm of coherent  histiography. this holds true even with the elucidation that many ministers preaching against the nazis and collaboration were also communists (who in this museum were framed as ‘socialists’ to be equated with the ‘national-socialists’, and therefore any and all communism in any advocates at all was erased) with every present piece of history (clippings of newspapers, pamphlets, photographs, and so on and so forth) framed with the appropriate text to soothe the sensibilities of visitors who were seemingly presumed to be gentile and generally culturally christian (and therefore, not queer or communist) and to appropriate both self-defense of targeted communities as well as leftist resistance (which of course largely overlapped) to this particular contingent.

no mention was made of the connections between say, calvinism and the general complicity of civil servants in doing the administrative work — wordly powers are not to be questioned, as all power derives from god according to paul of tarsus — that precipitated the majority of jewish people in the netherlands being murdered, with one of the highest death rates per capita in europe. while the netherlands wasn’t mentioned in this article, denmark was, which largely appears to have exhibited the opposite qualities in at least the bureaucracy and thus also largely yielded inverse results. there is more to say on this with regards to the dutch history of (ethno)religious segregation/pillarisation/federalism and the particular role that dynamic played in our country’s history (and continues to, with some would-be social planners with ambiguous intentions wanting islam to become a new ‘pillar’), but that’s not really what i want to focus on right now.

simply put, i could declare myself content with being more critical than my culturally christian family and the narrative of the culturally christian netherlands in general, especially as i am exiled from these structures and therefore have little personal interest in defending them— or even from refraining to attack them. however, especially after reading this paper, i have to come to the conclusion that i haven’t really developed beyond these relatively straightforward insights (even if they are rare in my country) in any real way for a few years now. what i think was extremely valuable in this article for me was not only the denunciation of the anti-sociological assertion that good and evil are essential properties of a human being but building on that, that they are ‘nurtured qualities of the mind’. i do not agree with this proposition without caveats for reasons beyond the scope of this piece of writing, however, the way that zukier expounds on this is, i believe, of timeless relevance. the nazis constantly stressed the horrors of their actions and indeed many battalions weeded out those too eager to engage in them — as one example people who volunteered to perform executions were summarily dismissed — but nevertheless viewed them perhaps not even so much as duties in service of some larger goal. however, first, crucially, considerations of such were seen and treated as largely external to any notion of morality or ideology worth considering, which he expounds on at length over the course of the history of nazi germany.

here lies something i think is crucial to any such person or people who see themselves as grand architects of ideology and the future (and i myself have been partial to this at some points): you cannot let yourself become callous to the existence of such forces of which you are not the primary target. there is no excuse for letting orthogonal ideological interests outweigh the threat of mass oppression and violence, especially in a time where such things are emergent again. there is responsibility in what projects one considers themselves part of and in the scope of these projects, to root out such indifference. even in light of certain zionist histiographies who have constructed a new continuity to integrate the holocaust in a historical and metaphysical scheme that leads from there to redemption through the state of israel in the levant (quoting zukier almost verbatim), one cannot allow themselves to be caught into cooperating with this sophistry where to disagree with such narratives must necessarily co-implicate indifference (or even hostility) to the people involved. no antizionist or antitheist schema can permit any form of ideological reductionism or bargaining of the still very real threat of genocide which may very well become institutional in a number of countries in the near future, as it has before.

to acknowledge this much in spite of the muddying of this issue by bad faith actors (whether in the form of zionist genocide enthusiasts or white supremacists and their useful idiots who seek to bargain or deny the holocaust) is necessary for everyone, and i very much also assert this to myself as an un-christian (and queer and trans and so forth) but still nevertheless gentile person. this much is clear regardless of any and all complex geopolitical reasonings which in the scope of this particular issue are really only worth mentioning in the abstract, even if they are very much worth discussing on their own terms— indeed, criticisms must exist which separate the struggle against bigotry from certain imperialist and pro-family agendas and to refuse such actors the monopoly on these issues. i’ll make sure to send this piece to my various academical peers and to discuss this with them to keep in mind even as we strive towards other common goals together— which must be and are by definition synonymous with exactly this refusal to equate the two. however, as established, defining and stating one’s owns interests is hardly enough when it comes to this kind of subject, and failure to do so cannot be tolerated, and this i insist to any fellow adversaries of organised religion who might read this.

#atheism

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Lygia Clark, "Óculos" ("Goggles"), 1968

* * * *

Joohn Choe

Did you know that half of U.S. adults can’t read a book written at the 8th-grade level?

It's a constraint on victory outcomes in counter-disinformation work; it's a problem when you declare war on things like QAnon or the Republican industrial lie complex.

It arises when you use a technique from military planners called "thinking backwards".

This doesn't mean "be old-school and nostalgic" (I mean, you'd think), it means "start from the outcome and work backwards".

Illiteracy turns out to be a problem when you consider the basic problem of active measures defense as an exercise in thinking backwards. You get new solutions and new problems; illiteracy, and being literate but not reading, or alliteracy (irritatingly not a word in spell-check), are some of those problems.

First, let's talk about the outcome.

The fundamental problem with disinformation studies is that you can't define what disinformation is unless you take a stance on what information is, and how it's used in society.

It's meaningless to point your finger and say "liar!" as we are wont to do in this field if you're not even clear on what role that should play in society, or how things are supposed to work normally. You can't diagnose a dysfunction in how society produces and consumes information if you don't even have a view on how it functions.

You need to have a defensible, testable theory of how America's information economy operates normally if you are going to put yourself forward as some authority on how it's functioning abnormally. You cannot be a counter-disinformation operator without being a philosopher, and to some extent, a systems theorist and, increasingly, I'd argue, an aestheticist (as in "studies aesthetics", not "aesthetician who does your nails").

This is incredibly basic. I still find it odd that even very professional people and companies in this field don't grapple with this issue. Even the data is meaningless, no matter how impressively objective it is, if you're lacking that kind of context; you end up having anomalies with no baseline, like an endless stream of singleton events.

That's no way to run a railroad, like the old saying goes.

So, back when I had a startup, with advisors, I talked to one of them who actually taught a class at Berkeley on startups about this crazy recording of a Federal crime I'd gotten in Alabama, and I asked for advice for what to do about it in terms of the fight against disinformation.

The answer he gave ended up being a lead-in to thinking about this in a systems-oriented, long-terms sustainable kind of way. I still come back to it as a recurrent point in shaping outcome scenarios.

He suggested, first off, in this sort of infuriatingly wise way that he has (he's an old Asian dude, so) that you have to ask, first: is zero percent really possible?

What kind of victory state are you after, if this is actually a lie that involves disinformation on the scale that you observe it?

He argued that you have to fit disinformation into a place with other aspects of how we talk to each other. On his account, there was potentially value in giving people the ability to create and pass on value in determining what was disinformation and what wasn't, and it verged into a discussion of a crypto-currency based anti-disinformation app that I ended up not really wanting to do.

Credit where credit is due, though: his argument about the achievability of zero percent disinformation made a lot of sense.

The outcome state we're after can't be "zero active measures" and "zero disinformation". Not only is that unrealistic, if you even did manage to achieve that, you'd have North Korea. They have no problem with differing versions of state truth and reality, because everything is state truth that excludes reality.

Diversity in viewpoints is one of our strengths as a country, too; reducing everything down to one version of truth, even as generous as the boundaries might be on that, would inevitably end up flattening society. Like, no one wants "information socialism", that just... sounds bad.

You could argue that disinformation is a flipside of a coin, actually. Disinformation is in a state of mutual entailment with socially accepted official truth; there can't be one without the other, in one way of looking at it. And that's what I think my advisor was getting at.

It's like that old cliché about "tHe sIgN fOr cRiSiS aNd ChAngE ArE tEh sAmE iN cHiNeSe" which is like, you understand, up there with Sun Tzu quotes and "your people are so hard-working!" as far as Things I Ain't 'Bout As An Asian Person, You Feel Me Though (the game show!).

And don't even get me started on people ripping off strategy ideas from theorists of Chinese stick-poking and rock-throwing warfare.

In a normal time, you could say that there's a balance between disinformation and truth, and truth is usually the winning side on that, because normally, the President and the ruling party aren't active sources of disinformation with the veneer of authority on it.

We're getting out of a period of time in which that balance was badly, badly disrupted on the side of disinformation. The kind of abnormalities we see as a society - from the Capitol insurrection to how weird people around us are, compared to what they were like in 2015 - those can all be seen as stemming from that state of imbalance.

The outcome, the advisor argued, was fundamentally about balance. Not about destroying disinformation, or striking it until it wasn't a problem; the paradigm was rebalancing, he argued.

Winning isn't reducing disinformation to zero. It's achieving a new balance between disinformation and truth where the boundary favors truth more.

Almost every victory state for "The War On Disinformation" boils down to that, actually.

If you see it as rebalancing, then new ways of achieving achieving victory by restoring balance open up.

For starters, you could add to the flow of information coming out; you could even make oppositional truth part of it. That's really what "fact-checking" is on social media - Politifact and LeadStories aren't "fact-checkers", because fact-checkers are people at media institutions who run quality control on news, and they are not that. They pick and choose what stories to oppose, at times seemingly arbitrarily, at times politically, and calling them "fact-checkers" hides the essentially subjective nature of that practice.

You could create personal truth, give people new ways to be, new role models to emulate and new social roles to fulfill - "offensive fact-checker", "Nazi-hunter", "deplatformer", and the like. And you could even amplify it and try to drown out the misleadingly framed truth, and the outright mistruths, coming out of the disinformation industry.

You could mobilize the truth to create political crises, and work to reset the boundary on allowable lies. This is the core methodology of an activist, it's creating strategic dilemmas for institutions based on public perception and the pressure to do the right thing.

Outcome-focused political activism, where you're trying to get a specific candidate elected or voted out of office, is one way of specifically mobilizing the truth, instead of just sitting on ass and feeling good about having it (this is common, I'd argue). We can not only reduce disinformation better - interdict it better, ban it better, find it better, track it better - we can also get better at producing alternative presentations and modes of appeal for truth.

The problem with all these solution scenarios, though, and the area that I see where we could really stand to improve, and maybe even something that I'd work on for a minute, is our culture.

I'd argue we just don't have the kind of intellectual culture that supports a lot of these solutions. We can't, not with fundamental adult literacy the way it is; not with the state of the public intellectual the way it is.

There was a point around 2015 when people were declaring a crisis of the French public intellectual tradition; since Henri-Levy, basically, Pierre Bourdieu if you count him, there just haven't been globally notable, famous French philosophers like there used to be. That traces to any number of factors with them, but a lot of them are factors we share, like the ever-wider spread of spectacular culture and its increasing efficacy at exploiting us, drawing us into addiction loops, even, with social media and "binge-watching" TV shows.

I'd argue that the best counter-disinformational solutions we have right now come down to art and aesthetics, actually, because we are so bad as a culture at reading.

Militarized truth, and grassroots truth, and offensive truth, are forms of rebalancing between disinformation and truth, yes, but it's a reactionary, almost frantic kind of truth. The jobs that it gives people, the roles that it puts people into - content moderator, offensive fact-checker - eat people up in the long run because they're in a race against disinformation, and disinformation keeps winning.

And it ends up repeating the basic problem of piling truth upon truth without mobilizing it, positioning it in a way to get through to people.

If it takes a pretty image and a witty notion to introject a critical idea into someone's head; if it takes a song and a dance, even, to get someone to have a bullshit filter... I say, do it.

Call it less "Art of War', more "War of Art".

---

Lygia Clark, "Óculos" ("Goggles"), 1968

https://www.politico.eu/.../decline-of-french.../

https://www.wyliecomm.com/.../whats-the-latest-u-s.../

#Lygia Clark #Oculos #1960s #quotes #articles #propaganda #disinformation #counter-disinformaltional #Joohn Choe

[kendrixtermina]

Sigh. Chibnall.

Jodie Whittaker and demographic realism

So I want to make clear that I have no problems whatsoever with Jodie Whittaker’s performance - the character seamlessly kept walking across the screen, she has great energy, love the steampunk goggles. 

Honestly I’ve always believed that giving existing characters a demographic change is not really as revolutionary or helpful as ppl think; New characters and stories (esp. told by writers of those samedemographics) solve the problem much better. Keeping specificity is often better than losing it, and the character still has a background (from an “advanced” civilization that used to do dirty deeds and is still kind of uppity attitudes, a character who’s decided to be against that attitude but still needs to be knocked own from the occasional uppity moment; It makes sense for them to look like a british dude, and they have the freedom to go wherever problems like sexism and racism don’t exist so... ), and will be linked to its origin.  But at worst something that will look dated in a few years like the 80s outfits, the show’s done dated and crowdpleasing before; There’s no hard reason not to do it and I expected no quality dip. 

It certainly worked as as attention grab, the premiere drew a lot of attention but that only lasted as long as it took for the reviews to go sour. But one of the main good things its proponents said could come of it was to help the lack of female anti heroes. So far she really didn’t get to anti hero much; It’s not Whittaker, it’s the scripts. 

I want to make this clear: Varied demograpics are good; 

This is why I kind of hate the term “diversity” is one of those vague euphemisms if you mean “demographic representation”, “social equity” or “demographic realism” just say that. 

In a way this is a good thing, it used to be only the best boldest writers who could get away, noadays it has become acceptable to have varied casts. And that’s how it should be artshouldn’t have to have to pass some arbitrary quality standard to simply reflect reality. But as the rebootverse and star trek discovery should’ve proved realistic demographics can’t replace good writing. Sometimes lack of realistic demographis is associated with bad writing because both come from play-it-safe more-of-the-same consummerism focussed sameyness, often someone who goes against the formulas has a solid vision which makes them good, and focussing on ignored topics and perspectives can yield new ideas (consider stuff like Wonder Woman, Get Out, Black Panther... which were just good, novel movies) but you could have a super interesting memorable story where everyone is a medieval european monk, but the characters are differentiated by personality, attitude, beliefs, or something where the cast ticks all sort of all demographic boxes but the characters are 1D and the story trite and predictable

On the one hand you get those gamergate adjacent fanboys who make “diversity” and “good writing” out to be enimical opposites and then you have the purists/antis who treat any critique of writing to be founded in having something against realistic demographics. You need both! 

Series 11

There were good things about it: An attempt at leastto do more of your classic thought provoking space operas or going back to the shows’ pulp fiction roots, covering some historic periods/topics other than the classic historical fiction tropes (they got a pakistani writer, had Yaz and Ryan discuss social topics among themselves etc.), the emotional story centered around this family coping with a loss, having Ryan sort of be the “main” companion and the one the rest of the team is protective of

But overall the reason I didn’t rush to watch s12 as soon as it came out is that it was a bit... bland. The team interacted mostly with each other; The Doctor had more charge with one shot characters like King James or the Solitract than she really did with the companions. Graham was such a missed opportunity. Remember how everyone loved the dynamic with Wilfred? No attempt to strike a bond over how they’re the older party members, or the professional xenophile trying to nudge the bilbo baggins like reluctant hero? We’re told the Doctor really likes Yaz, and I believe it cause she always liked people like that, but are we shown?

For all that Moffat and RTD were very different writers with different strenghts and weaknesses, both were very character-driven writers, and that was really missing here a bit. 

Some ppl said they didn’t give Yaz enough screentime or personality - but the thing is, they did try. They just failed. They let her make little remarks here and there about her homelife, they just never really assembled into a whole beyond buzzwords and inspirational platitudes and the Standard Companion Traits. I didn’t get a read on what she’s about or who she’s like until the pakisan episode where she unlike Barbara, Donna etc. immediately accepted that the past can’t be changed. Ah, I finally thought, she’s a very responsible dutiful person.

Everything lacks edges and defining moments. 

So far, I didn’t sweat it. I though, ok, not everything can be the high-concept character driven spec fic epic type of story that is my personal favorite. Every time there was some addition to the mythos in any way someone cried ruined forever. When the time lords first appeared. When the time war was introduced. 

The classics too were lower on the character driven ness; Still good pulp fiction content. (imho the character concepts themselves were often pretty good, just not used to the fullest and some of the actresses were treated crappy backstage)

I thought “okey, it wouldn’t be good to break with the tradition of making the sussequent incarnations contrasting”

I did think that there was much liberty with the additions which the others did do only towards the end when it feltmore earned, but, the addition of say, sisters, isn’t too disruptive

Series 12 and the Timeless Child Nonsense

The frustrating thing about this is that it COULD have been good. 

The Master teaming up with the cybermen to try and take over Gallifrey is precisely the sort of story the classics would’ve done. 

“Your society is founded on a shady secret and exploitation of the innocent” is a good plot twist especially in these times. The Master finding that secret and using it to his advantage - also very him. 

Imagine what it could have been like if it had been approached from the perspective of someone who, for all that they were a rebel, still sort of profited from being part of that society, someone who wants to take responsibility for that past and would maybe have to make some tough choice to let the exploitation victim go because it’s right even if it has cosequences for themselves and their civilization. 

but then you ruin that by immediately taking the protagonist out of that society. They and they alone are the victim. 

like this plot could have been good except for the twist that the Doctor and the timeless child are the same. 

Not connecting it to existing lore about the earlier war game days, everything with Omega and Rassilon, that bit about the Time Lord becoming what they were through exposure to the untempered schism... that might be forgiven. Even if it does stretch the suspension of disbelief that every single piece of sci fi scanning equipment in the show didn’t pick anything up; Not to mention that it destroys the stake on every heroic sacrifice or death prophecy plot, every time a companion or oneshot character took the bullet, the whole “out of regens” plot...

This is not me being mad about things being added or changed, but this being done in such a way that undermines the philosophy, the whole flavor... 

Yes, the MC is mysterious, the 7th Doctor arcs did a lot with this etc. but doesn’t spelling something out this clear not deplete rather than add to that? It#s a definite answer even if the final origin isn’t clear. 

But they’re so much else.

The trickster hero accomplishing great deeds with planning, guile, improvisation and duct tape, the implicit value that ressourcefulness trumps raw power. 

The rebel, different because they chose to be or made themselves to be such through their adventures, sticking to their own values in a close-minded society - who embodies & encourages thinking for yourself in every situation and universal plot, who battles enemies like the Daleks and Cybermen that represent comformity

Yeah they have many names yeah they take out gods... but all this was the result of their actions & path in pursuit of knowledge, and also, as Moffat once stated, the funny part is that behind all the fearsome reputation is wit and duct tape. 

The fish in a small pond who started out a misfit, failed their tardis driving exam... etc. and often made a point that they didn’t want immortality or endless godlike power. That’s meaningless if they had it to begin with. 

The explorer who wanted to see more than their corner of the world. 

The ANTI HERO that’s made alltogether too tragic here, too absolved from their uppity civilization

All that is wiped away if they were this special creature to begin with.

Where WAS the philosophy, rly? The big humanist speeches that made me love the show. 

Going Forward

So I think - I HOPE - that this in particular will be treated like the “half human” thing from the TV movie or the now josses additional origin stories from the audios, or be handwaved under the “you cant get it wrong cause everything is in flux” carpet

It’s the Master effing with her to pay her back for the half broken chameleon arch thing. 

It’s possible the Child actually existed, long dead or trapped somewhere - again, dirty mystery at the bottom of a stck-up society is a good twist. but this shouldn’t be more than another maybe in the multiple choice past not a definite answer. 

Also, i hate this line of thought but I can’t stave it off: Why is is now that the MC looks female that we get this vulnerable, passively victimized tomato surprise rather than something with an ugly but definite choice in it. 

I will probably ignore it - parts of me resents this cause “your civilization is based on a lie” could be such a good plot twist (then again the existing twists to that end from the classics and End of Time do enough rly) but if i have to choose between that and the basic meaning of the character....

#Doctor Who #timeless child #chris chibnall

[malethirsty]

Polar Saviour: Sandy

Summary: When you trip up at a rally, a different type of hero steps up to help you, one that has opposing views, but sometimes, opposites attract & make a blasting connection.

Warnings: M/M smut (21+), bareback (Wrap Before You Tap!)

Attending an Anti Trump rally was something you’d never experienced before, but you were part of the generation that he and many like him was fucking over, so you had to do your part for a better world. So you threw on a ‘Why be racist, sexist, homophobic, when you could be quiet’ shirt, grabbed your homemade banner saying ‘Peach showers await Mr. Trump’ and made your way out to the streets.

As expected the place was packed as you marched down the streets of New York, chants alternating between ‘No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA’, ‘Lock Him Up’ and various other things like that. The reason you hadn’t gone to one of these before was because of the raucousness of the crowd & this was no exception, people were hustling and bustling about, and various people were being squashed around, including yourself. Not wanting to cut in front of people, you reluctantly stayed where you were as the crowd bustled forwards through the streets. Suddenly, you lost your footing and fell hard onto the pavement “Fuck!” You groaned, if you’ve ever fallen over, you’d know how rough and gut wrenching it is. “Shit man, are you ok?” Came a voice, you cautiously moved your head to see a man had departed from the crowd and had moved over to make sure you were alright “Yeah, leave me here for a bit and I’ll gather my strength” you said. The man laughed “I think people will think you’re dead if you stay stock still on the road.” “I guess so” you conceded “I’m gonna help you up alright?” He stooped down and pulled you up, “We’ll head to a cafe on the corner, I’ll check you out, make sure you haven’t hurt yourself.” You nodded, only half listening gazing at your savior, he had black skin, with darkly tinted brown eyes to match and a shaved frizzy hair style, he looked absolutely gorgeous, like a beautiful dream that had come to life.

You barely even noticed the change of place until he sat you down on a chair in an emptied out cafe and started to check you over. “I don’t think you’ve broken anything, there seems to be a bit of bruising though” You looked down and saw what he meant “It still stings but not as much as it did, thank you Mr.” you looked at the man hoping he would get the prompt “Sandy” he responded “Sandy, well I’m Y/N, thanks for helping me out.” “No problem Y/N.” The two of you placed orders and started small talk, you learnt he was steeped in political knowledge as he learnt about your journalism. “So I figured if I went, I’d have something to write about this week for my column.” “Yeah, ‘PROTESTERS: practice spacial awareness at events’ should be your headline” Sandy quipped back, leading you to laugh and grin, usually sarcastic comments would be retorted against, but something about his delivery worked so well.

“So why were you there? Something Trump tweeted about John Lewis? The ‘First Black President’ statement during Black History Month?” You asked, having had the ‘President’ blocked on Twitter for years on end “No, I’m actually a Republican.” Midway through your handful of chips, you choked. Sandy rushed over to hit you on the back, clearing your airways. “You keep running into trouble Y/N!” Sandy exclaimed “Yeah” you subtly said, if Sandy was a Republican, what was he doing at a Democratic event? You posed the question to him after he returned to his seat “Well whilst some of my views are Right Wing, like the right to own guns, I think my party and the world deserves better than Trump.” “Absolutely, but guns? When they contribute to massive deaths?” “So do knives but you don’t see people calling for a boycott.” Sandy responded “And it’s more complex than that, the amendment even if it could be changed, would take a while to pass by, rednecks could refuse to give their blessed weapons over, pandemonium potentially breaks out. I’m not saying anyone should be allowed to own a gun, but there are things people need to consider regarding our constitution.” As much as you wanted to stand very against his viewpoint, you knew he had points “I guess, cutting gun passage and starting proper screening processes could help minimize the amount of deaths in America, I get the whole defense thing, but it’s a shame that this country has turned into a place where Ultraviolence is an art form. Where sex is bad but violence is the new black.”

Sandy stared at you, taking it all in “I like how you debate your issues & how you didn’t storm off or make a big deal due to the side of politics I’m on.” “Well I probably would have tripped over my chair and hurt myself more.” You countered making him grin “And also when a big threat to our world is posed, people on opposing sides have to meet in the middle, or else the threat picks at our weaknesses and plays us against each other.” Sandy nodded “Very true. Geez, at least this went better than the last conversation I had about this.” “I hate to ask but what happened?” You grimaced slightly, worried about what it could have entailed “It was my ex girlfriend, Hannah her name was, she initially saw past my views and we had a decent relationship, and then it came back up because I didn’t like her essay and even when we broke up, she still wanted sex.” Your mouth dropped open, you felt bad for the poor guy, whilst being Right Wing wasn’t the best thing in the world, this Hannah sounded like a right piece of work “Shit Sandy, I’m sorry you had to go through that.” “And it always happens, people like her are like ‘Oh I’m in my 20s, I’m gonna move to New York, be a free spirit, date a black guy and go to a dangerous part of town.’” “It’s like they want to date black men because of the societal view of thugness or thrill that comes with it!” You exclaimed “You took the words right out of my mouth” Sandy quipped.

You soon finished your meal, and you reached for your wallet to pay “Nah Y/N, let me.” Sandy started “No Sandy, you’ve done enough for me today.” “Seriously, my treat.” He responded to you. You abandoned your attempt to get your wallet “Well I have to pay you back somehow.” “You don’t have to, unless you wanna go back to mine.” He subtly grinned your way, and you wondered was there a trace of a flirt in his grinned gaze? You decided to take the chance “Yes I will.” You said “Good. I thought you might.” Sandy responded. Having rested in the cafe for a while, you were able to stand on both feet and you followed Sandy past the crowds to his flat.

His flat seemed like any other that you’d come across, everything neatly arranged, his political books all stacked on a shelf & his bed tucked away in a corner. “Mind if I rest my leg up against the table so I can see how my bruise is doing?” Sandy nodded and having his ascent, you sat down and tentatively stretched your leg out, the black and blue colour now starting to stand out stronger than what it did “Oh that’s bloody great, people are gonna fucking notice that, it’s as clear as day.” “What if you stayed in with me?” Sandy offered “What would we do, streaming and cooking is great, but that can get tiring, no offense.” You quickly turned to see if Sandy was alright and found his face studying yours, much like how you did on the way up to the cafe “None taken, babe” and before you could react, he moved over & kissed you deep.

His lips felt so pleasant yet dominant, you moved further in, letting a moan fall out of your lips, making him laugh “And I haven’t even got your clothes off yet” “Well you better take it off then” you countered. Sandy proceeded to take off each garment “Fuck, you look real sexy when you’re naked man.” He exclaimed with a lustful tone in his voice. He lusciously stripped his shirt off for you, his sculpted pecs and four pack made you moan out in pleasure “Pants. Now” you got out as Sandy laughed and quickly disposed of his pants & underwear, his big cock flopping out. He moved your leg from table to lounge and moved his dick in front of your face “Suck my dick babe” he said softly & not wanting to waste another second, you lowered your head & began to suck. Sandy threw his head back breathing out an “Oh fuck!” you moved further down, tracing his veins. Louder groans filled the room as he grabbed your head and guided you “Oh fuck, you’ve got an amazing mouth, so fucking good!” He leant down and gave you a kiss “Fuck, I taste good on your mouth!” 

"Sandy I want you to fuck me.” you got out. Sandy not wanting to prolong you, made his way to the other end of the couch & began to shove his cock in your ass “Oh-Oh Fuck!” You moaned out, "You alright? If it hurts too much I’ll stop.” You nodded at Sandy and he stopped so you could steady your breathing “Keep going” you told him and he finally bottomed out balls deep. “Guess it’s true, black men have big cocks.” You said, causing Sandy to laugh “Babe, if you think our cocks are big, wait till you see how we fuck.” He started a passionate fast pace fuck into you, moans filling the apartment. You ran your hands down Sandy’s chest & tweaked his sensitive nipples, making him cry out in pleasure “Yeah Y/N, keep going!” You continued whilst running your hands down his four pack, getting to grips with his defined muscles while Sandy continues to fuck you.

“You wanted this” he moans out “Yeah I fucking did.” You responded, the adoring pretty gaze you had given him on the streets was gone, replaced by a look of lust. “And now you’re getting it, such a good fucking slut!” “Yeah, I’m your fucking slut Sandy!” You responded, the dirty talk flowing naturally “Yeah, good sluts like you get rewards.” Sandy gripped your cock & began to stroke it in time with his pace “Fucking come for me, shoot all over me baby boy!” It felt so sudden, like your load had been brimming up this entire time, but you hadn’t noticed because of how good Sandy was fucking you. “OH SANDY!” You screamed aloud as you shot your load all over him “Oh fuck!” Sandy laughed out “You blew a lot! I must be fucking you real good then.” “Y-yes you are.” You breathed out “Well then, I better keep going.” And he thrust in harder than before, drawing another lust toned scream from you, you didn’t know how he could have gotten faster than before, but he did, despite that, you knew that even the strongest man has limits.

And this was proved right after a while, as Sandy’s pace got sloppier “Fuck, I’m gonna come!” He groaned “Yeah Sandy! Give me your cum!” You moaned out, riding him hard, meeting him with every beat. “You want me deep in you?” He groaned out “Yeah fill me up please!” You yelled out. Sandy continued go rut inside you, gazing deep as he did so “Fuck babe, I'm cumming, God I'm cumming! Oh Fuck!" He finally cried out as you felt his cock pulse, load upon load squirting inside you." "Y/N babe, that was fantastic!” He kissed you, you returning with the same amount of passion. You rested up against him “Fuck, you’re amazing!” Sandy grinned “Nice to know Y/N.” He picked you up and led you to his bed “Now, we have two weeks and a bunch of positions to do & this time I’m gonna show you the blacked the berry, the sweeter the juice. And by berry, I mean my balls” You grinned up at him “Bring. It. On.”

#Sandy #Male Reader #Sandy/Male Reader #Sandy Smut #Girls #GirlsHBO #Girls Smut #GirlsHBO Smut

[titaniumelemental]

I’m not really a fan of the argument that “LGBT+ community is a different thing than the queer community” and that you can be part of the former without being the latter... because while it neatly sidesteps the issue of people who say queer is a slur and don’t want to be called that, but it’s at odds with the way a lot of people actually use “queer” as a convenient umbrella term to avoid having to use a bunch of words for the thing. I don’t plan to give up on using the word that way.

But mostly my problem is with the idea that being queer means you’re more radical and being “just” gay or bi or whatever means you’re probably an assimilationist or something. I consider myself queer, and I’d rather not have to pass some vaguely defined litmus test of radical-ness before getting to use the word. Regardless of which side of it people think I come down on.

(And judging that is not trivial. Let’s see, I’m nb but I don’t fucking talk about it most of the time around normies, so that’s not very radical of me. I’m pretty incementalist in my actual politics, so that’s gotta be a strike against me. I’m kinky, that could be anti-assimilationist. Unless you’re of the school of thought that says kink is actually “normative” and supporting oppressive power structures. Hmmm, I guess ditto for poly. And so on.)

This line of thought reminds me of that thing I see from time to time where people wax poetic about what queer means and say stuff about how queer isn’t about who you’re attracted to it’s about how you move through the world, etc. etc., and I hate those definitions because they don’t really mean anything. The meaning is so slippery it’s basically just whatever someone feels like at any given time.

I think the idea is supposed to be that with a less concrete definition, you’re not leaving people out. But to me it seems to be the opposite. When there’s a concrete definition you can understand, you can judge for yourself where you fit (for ex: “yep I sure am attracted to women, guess I am the thing.”) Without one, it’s easy to feel like you have nothing to hold on to and end up at the mercy of whoever has the social power to decide What Counts As Queer. (“Sure, I’m attracted to women, but am I moving though the world in the right way? Who fucking knows.”)

Avoiding a restrictive definition is supposed to be like “everyone’s valid if they feel that they’re queer” but having a maximally vague definition has the failure mode of “you’re only valid if you meet our gut feeling standard of what’s queer” and that to me feels way worse.

#queer discourse #only the regular amount of pride

[to-be-deleted-soon-just-wait]

What is Transmedicalism?

● What is Transmedicalism?:

Here is a Transmedicalism flag made by @spill-the-gender-tea

■ Allow me to explain to the best of my ability. I have sources for everything I say. If you want to see them then, please send in an ask/anon.

○ Transmedicalism is the belief that you need some type of dysphoria, (social, gender, body, etc.), to be Transgender. This belief is backed up by studies, science, and statistics.

■ A Transmedicalist is someone who supports Transmedicalism. Transmed or Transmedic is short for Transmedicalist.

Tucutes' just call them "Truscum" or "Trumed"

:This is an explanation of Transmedicalism/Transmed beliefs below:

● What is Transgenderism/Dysphoria?:

○ Dysphoria is Neurological Mental Disorder/Illness that is defined as a disconnect, discomfort, or disstress with ones Assgined Gender At Birth, or AGAB. The severity of Dysphoria varies between person to person; It can range from very minor to very severe. Euphoria, (gender, social, body, etc.), is a side affect or result of Dysphoria. Dysphoria does not mean hating yourself or your body. You are required to be medically diagnosed with Dysphoria to be Transgender.

● Brain Sex/Gender?:

○ Brain sex/Gender is a neurological part of your brain, “brain sex”- sexual differences between men and women in the brain- definitely doesn’t extend to a length such as “lady brains like dresses and makeup, dude brains like sports and beer”, it’s more just a highly variable framework for how parts of the brain perceive itself and carry out certain tasks. Basically, gender roles are a social construct, but gender itself is neurological. When someone’s brain is disconnected from their assigned sex, that’s how we get gender dysphoria.

Gender isn't chromosomes, or genitalia. Brain Sex Studies have been known to prove this. There are only two brain sexes/genders and that is Male & Female.

● What is Gender Non-Conforming, or GNC?:

○ GNC, Is when someone, cis or trans, doesn't follow their socities "Gender Norms." Or Gender Roles. GNC is not a gender, but anyone can be GNC.

● Intersex people?:

○ Intersex people are not LGBT. Intersex is not a third sex, it is a sex disorder. If they are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender then, they are LGBT. If they are CisHet, then they aren't. Just like CisHet Ace/Aro people.

● LGBT?:

○ The full ancroym is LGBT. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender/Dysphoric. If you aren't at least one of these, then you are not LGBT.

● Cisgender & Heterosexual Asexual and/or Aromantic people, or CisHet Aces/Aros?:

○ CisHet Ace/Aro people are not inherently LGBT. Asexual isn't a sexuality. If you're Ace/Aro the only way you could be LGBT is if you're Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Dysphoric/Transgender.

● Non-Binary, or NB?:

○ Transmeds' beliefs or standings on the Non-Binary identity vary between person to person. Some are Anti-NB, Some are Pro-NB, and Some are just NB Skeptic/Neutral on the subject until more information or studies are found about it.

● Who can be a Transmedicalist?:

○ Anyone who believes in Transmedicalism. Cisgender and Transgender people. As long as you support Transmedicalism and Science, You can be one.

● Cisphobia? Transphobia?:

○ Transmedicalist don't support Transphobia or Cisphobia. Transmeds do not support the hate of all Cisgender and/or Transgender people. It's not Transphobic to be a Transmed. Most, if not all Transmeds hate Cisphobia and Transphobia. Transmeds defend and support all Cisgender and Real Transgender people.

● Sources?:

○ Most, if not all Transmedicalist have sources and citations for their beliefs. Most, if not all prove their beliefs. (If you want my sources just scroll through the blog or ask me for them.)

● MOGAI, or Marginalized Orientations, Gender Alignments and Intersex?:

○ Most, if not all, MOGAI people are Trans-Trenders. MOGAI is not LGBT. MOGAI is a separate community of people who use Tucute ideology to make up fake genders and sexualities. Most of these "genders and sexualities" are made, or "coined" based off of aesthetics, feelings, mental disorders/illnesses, kins, animals, objects, etc. The list goes on. These people should not be compared to, or considered the LGBT community because, the LGBT com. & the MOGAI com. are two completely separate communities. Don't confuse them.

● Trans-Trenders?:

○ A Trans-Trender, or Fake Transgender person is defined as a Cisgender person/Person without Dysphoria faking being Transgender because, they either;

1) Think it's cool, trendy, or will give them attention.

2) They were misinformed about what dysphoria/being Transgender, and GNC meant.

3) Or they took the MOGAI's fake "Genders and Sexualities" seriously and were misinformed by Tuctes/MOGAI.

■ These people are not Transgender, and shouldn't be put in the same catagory as real LGBT people. These people do not support the LGBT community nor are they a part of the LGBT community.

● Neo-Pronouns?:

○ Neo-Pronouns are not Real Pronouns. All Pronouns are gendered. There are only 3, singular use, pronouns; He, She, and They. He/Him Lesbian people & She/Her Gay people are not Valid or a Real thing; Males can not be Lesbians & Females can not be Gay, and the idea of He/Him Lesbians is Transphobic. It also erases the fact that real lesbians women used to have to say they were men to not be attacked or harassed. Gender Roles are a socail construct, But Gender is not; Gender is neurological.

● Tucutes?:

○ The polar opposite of a Transmedicalist.

○ Tucutes are people, mainly MOGAI (because most, if not all Tucutes hate Cisgender people), Who believe that you don't need some type or level of Dysphoria to be Transgender.

○ They believe that Euphoria isn't a part of Dysphoria.

○ They don't believe Trans-Trenders are not real, or a problem.

○ They think Dysphoria/being Transgender is a feeling.

○ Most make up their own "sexualities and genders" based off of feelings, objects, mental illnesses, stars, etc.

○ They view gender and gender roles as a socail construct.

○ They think pronouns aren't gendered.

○ Believe in, and use Neo-Pronouns.

○ Most, if not all are Trans-Trenders.

○ They believe GNC is a gender.

○ They support He/Him lesbians.

○ They keep expanding the LGBT community's acronym as if they can.

○ They think intersex people, and Cishet Aro/Ace are LGBT.

○ Most, if not all never have reliable sources, or citations to back their claims.

Etc.

These people are not Transmedicalist.

#transmedicalism #transmedicalist #transmed #trumed #truscum #transmedic #science #trans #transgender #lgbt #lgbt community

[selflife-hacks-blog]

Different Ways Your Childhood Shapes You

To realize the influence of our childhoods on the adult we become Like the foundation of a house, our childhood experiences are the foundation on which the rest of our lives are built. And if the foundation is not solid has emotional cracks and wounds these affect the structure of our adult lives.

Each of has a story that we walk out of our childhoods with  about the way our parents always argued, that our brother was abusive, that our sister was supportive, that our grandmother the rock that kept us stable, that school was hell. We fill in the story with memories of that awful argument when our father punched a hole in the wall, that time our bullying brother held us down on the playground until the teacher made him get off, the kind attention of our sister when we lost a toy, the way our grandmother listened when we were upset one Christmas, how we felt lonely when we switched schools in the 6th grade. The memories reinforce the story, and the story reinforces our sense of the story of why we are who we are now.

There are broader impacts of childhood that affect us all.

Birth order

There are decades of research on birth order and its impact on child/adult development. It has suggested, for example, that by and large the oldest children or an only child are likely to grow up and be good leaders, do well in school and be high achievers, be “good” kids, the ones who follow the rules. They can also often be anxious, can walk on eggshells around others, be sensitive to authority, can be self-critical.

Why? Because they bear the full brunt of the parents’ expectations and emotions. They have no siblings to serve as barriers. With this 2 against 1 scenario they adapt, are sensitive to what the parents expect, and to emotionally survive in the family, step up and accommodate.

The second child: Often rebellious pushing the boundaries, questioning authority, bucking the system. But just as the first-born is reacting to the parents and their expectations, the second born is bouncing off the first-born. Their identity comes from being unlike the first the anti-good child and from this stance they are able to grab the parents’ attention.

The middle child: The middle child often described as struggling to grab the parents’ attention at all. They are often labeled the forgotten child, the lost child, the one who gets overlooked in the shuffle between the first and second or the attention heaped on the baby. Where the first-born may leave his childhood sensitive to pleasing others, the second sensitive to power and objecting to rules, the middle child may be sensitive to being overlooked, not being appreciated, not feeling important.

The youngest : The stereotype of the youngest children is that they are spoiled. everyone in the family paid attention to them because they were…the youngest, so cute, etc. Getting used to having so much attention without much effort can lead to them feeling entitled as an adult and angry when they don’t get what they expect. But it can also lead to anxiety because others were always stepping in take care of them, they never were able to build up the strong self-confidence that comes from handling things on their own. As an adult they can get overwhelmed and then instinctively lean on others to bail them out.

Emotional Wounds

Emotional wounds are about what you particularly learned to be sensitive to in growing up. It is usually one or two of 5 things: criticism, micromanaging, feeling neglected, not feeling heard or feeling dismissed, not being appreciated. We all walk out of our childhoods with something.

As a child, your only ways of coping are to get good á la firstborn, get angry, á la second born, or withdraw, á la often the middle born. And like the birth order you bounce off your siblings —my brother is the good one, my sister the angry one, I’m the quiet one. The consequences here are that you bring these coping styles into your adult relationships and when you feel wounded, do what you learned. The problem is that this often triggers the other guy’s wound you withdraw because you feel criticized, the other get angry because he feels neglected and the cycle feeds off each other, with each feeling wounded and operating out a childhood brain.

And if these wounds come from trauma — abuse, severe neglect, grief, and loss — this adds another layer: When we are traumatized we instinctively, though often unconsciously, decide how we need to be in order to protect ourselves from such pain in the future. Here we decide not to get close to others, to not trust, to cling so others don’t leave, to try and be perfect, to put up a wall of anger.

Family climate

This is often the childhood default for growing up in an unsafe environment: your parents arguing all the time or your mother being anxious and yelling; your dad drinking and knowing his moods could change in a nanosecond; there never-ending tension though you could never quite figure out the source. And so your only defense as a child is to always be on guard — to stay on your toes and try and adjust to the emotional weather.

Role models

We usually develop a black and white reaction to our childhood role models. You either identify with the aggressor – I become my mom and can easily yell when I’m stressed or become aggressive like my dad — or I move towards the opposite: I decide sometime in my teen or early adult years not to be like them and instead I never get angry and hold things in, or if my dad drank, I don’t.

The problem here is that your solution is too simple because it is viewed through a child’s eyes. You don’t yell or drink but instead, internalize all your emotions and get self-critical and depressed. Or you don’t drink but instead, act like a dry drunk.

The point here is that all these come together to become the person you are. Your coping styles become your default when you become emotionally triggered, your sensitivities don’t go away and you easily fall back into your childhood feelings and coping styles, your hyper-vigilance doesn’t get turned off and you develop a generalized anxiety disorder, the decision you made to protect yourself from further trauma limits your adult life. You try your best to change your past, but find yourself falling back into the same potholes and behaviors as your parents despite your efforts.

Changing the pull of the past

The foundation that was laid down don’t have to be permanent and can be repaired. The coping styles you developed for a lot of good reasons don’t have to be your defaults now that you are an adult. The challenge for each of us to have ways of redoing and repairing our childhoods, repairing those cracks in the foundation, noticing the triggers, upgrading the software of our brains.

Ways Of Redoing And Repairing Our Childhoods, Repairing Those Cracks

Understand the impact

If you know why and how you became the person you are, you now have an opening to begin to change it. This is self-awareness, the counter to going on auto-pilot — that I do what I do because I do it. If you know you tend to walk on eggshells, can too easily flare up with anger, can withdraw or are sensitive to feeling overlooked or can become passive and feel entitled, you now have a key to unlock that door that is holding you back.

Change your reactions

Psycho-dynamic approaches help you do this by helping you unravel your past and gain insight into the sources of those old wounds. With this, you can begin to consciously separate the past from the present and then now make different and choices in the present. But you can also do this without all the drudging into the past. You can do it in the present, in your current relationships.

Here you notice and focus on your reactions or over-reactions. You use your self-awareness of your triggers, your wounds, and now proactively decide to do something different; this is what cognitive-behavioral therapy focuses on. Here you slow down and calm your automatic emotional reactions so that your rational adult brain can step in and help you see other options: that you need to speak up rather than accommodating; that you listen to your wants rather than your shoulds; that instead of being angry and rebellious and angry, you use your anger as information to let others know what you need; you move forward rather than retreating and avoiding, you tackle a problem on your own rather than waiting and expecting for others to take care of it for you.

You move against your grain; you do now what you couldn’t do as a child.

Take baby steps

And it’s important that you go slow; you don’t have to do the one-week makeover. Take small steps to redo your reactions: Start with those who don’t trigger you as strongly, whose reactions you care less about. The situation is not as important as your response. This is about rewiring your brain, stepping outside your comfort zone, building your self-confidence by finding out through experience that what your childhood brain is telling could happen doesn’t.

Decide on who you want to be

Often, we leave our childhoods only aware of negative space, who were don’t want to be: not the yelling mother, the drunk father. Instead go proactive, towards the positive, and as an adult define who you want to become based not on your fears, but your image of what a solid good adult can be. This is about defining your values, rather than just following the should s, about deciding what role models you want to follow or what role model you want to be for your own children, rather than just struggling to avoid becoming your own parents. Rather than thinking about how you need to be to avoid repeating history, instead think about the history you want to create, right here, today, right now.

Our childhoods are a part of us. While we can’t change the past, we can choose to look at it through a different lens; we can move forward in the present in spite of our childhood wounds, and in the process heal them. Step back, look at what you’ve walked out with, see what you’ve learned, decide what to keep and what to ignore (source). (source)

Conclusion:

While the experiences we have in childhood can greatly impact the rest of our lives, human beings are constantly in a process of development and change. If you are not happy with an aspect of your life that may be connected with your childhood, do not despair. Change can be hard, but it is almost always possible.

#childhood #childhoodaffects

[justbenice00]

“Safe Space” Discourse

Upon reading about negative experiences that some people had with “safe spaces”, I’m reconsidering that it’s a “soft” aspect of social justice - one that I wish rabid anti-SJWs weren’t always attacking.

In this post that I recently reblogged, violent-darts makes some very points on the the concept of “safe spaces” can actually be very toxic and alienating - and also demoralizing to those who are emotionally vulnerable. I hope they dond mind me re-posting it here for posterity.

My experience of “safe space” ideology, in general, has been overwhelmingly negative.

Which is not to say I have not experienced spaces in which safety, even safety of a particular group, has been prioritized and facilitated and worked very hard towards. It’s just those spaces do not use the term “safe space”, and don’t fit themselves into that framework.

What “safe space” has always ended up meaning, in my practical experience, is:

- we have decided that X Category are the people we care about

- we have decided what X Category people look like and need. We have also decided they all look like/need the same thing, that their experiences are the same, that they match our (that is, the facilitators’) experiences, and that we all value the same things.

- we know that X Category people are always victimized, and never victimize others; X category people never possess power, but are always disempowered

- in this space it will be assumed that institutional power is the same as interpersonal power: if someone’s institutional category has more power than someone else’s, this is without alteration reflected in their personal and small-scale social spheres

-   there is no method whatsoever to deal with anyone taking advantage of these assumptions; there is no recognized possibility of abusive interpersonal dynamics occurring within the Safe Space, or being perpetuated by people from X Category

- when/if conflict arises, right/wrong will be determined based on who most closely fits the understood Ideal of What Category X People are supposed to look like/think/have experienced. Those who are further from the understood ideal will be understood to be Less Valid/Less “Really” Category X than others, and their concerns will be deprioritized thru ignored thru framed as attacks.

- but we are a Safe Space. If you do not feel Safe, it is because YOU are the one making things dangerous by not adhering to what is understood to be Safe; if you feel unsafe here, it is an automatic sign that you yourself are bad and dangerous, and will be treated as such, unless/until you can prove that you are More Oppressed than others by Accepted Means (hint: this is not likely)

- the feelings of those who socially dominate the group will be interpreted to reflect reality. Ergo if a space facilitator feels attacked, you are attacking them; if they feel hurt, you are morally responsible for their hurt, and must accept that responsibility and be humble and contrite, regardless, unless likewise to above you can prove that you are More Oppressed via the Accepted Scale.

- we believe “safety” is something it is possible to achieve by Sticking Close Enough To Orthodoxy/praxy as determined by whatever theory of oppression/power dynamics/etc we like best.

- we believe that the way to balance out the fact that the harms done to Category X people are cared less about by general society than the dominant group is to stop caring about harms done to individuals from the dominant group.

So at this point the terms “safe space” will literally tell me “you’re about to walk into a minefield and you may be blown up at any moment; do not, for one second, even start to believe you are ever on safe ground.”

The places that have actually striven and more or less succeeded at being safer for various groups I am part of than Society At Large, in contrast, have mostly focused on finding mechanisms and specific behaviours to empower those who are threatened, to facilitate communication, to recognize that sometimes needs are literally irreconcileable and thus provide separate opportunities/spaces depending on need, are very well aware that while institutional and systematic oppression fucks some groups up more than others individual/small-scale interpersonal toxicity and abusive behaviour can come from anywhere and small-scale vs large-scale power dynamics are very different things, and in general have focused more on having people be less shitty to each other in the here and now than on anything else.

And they absolutely 100% have been, as OP notes, quite separate from spaces where the active and explicit purpose is to educate/yell at/make demands/etc.

Now, the same umbrella organization may run both programs. They may have their support wing and their advocacy wing! But.

(eta: oh god I also made the mistake of looking at the notes and I just have to say that every time someone says “yeah well SOME people are LUCKY enough to get to tune out because THEIR oppression doesn’t define their whole LIFE!” I laugh with bitter hysterical acid and work so, so hard not to go look up and find out what torture has been inflicted on a neuroatypical child today. It gets particularly hilarious - for values of black hilarity - if I’ve just gone through a new week of realizing the ways in which my neuroatypicality and mental illness have come within hairsbreadths of killing me.

Now, I wish I had seen an argument about “safe spaces” like this before. As it stands, I don’t seek out arguments against “safe spaces” - as most of them seem to amount to “lol kek triggered, immature overly sensitive babies who need nappies and bottles”. The aforementioned post from violent-darts, though - pretty much argued the exact *opposite* of that.

In summation: The problem with safe spaces is “not” that people who advocate for them are themselves are emotionally vulnerable people - but, rather, that they can do great harm to people who *are* emotionally vulnerable. This basically sums up why I have no more use for anti-SJWs than I do for SJWs.

Being emotional vulnerable is *not* a crime!!

#safe space #SJWs are cancer #sjw logic #sjw cringe #sjw stupidity #using these tags in hopes of reaching my target

[berniesrevolution]

Piers Morgan is a bully. From beefing with Lady Gaga over the veracity of her trauma to attacking gender-neutral clothing as a concept, Morgan has a reputation. That's why it might be no surprise that he got called out (again) on a live broadcast of Good Morning Britainfeaturing a panel discussing protests against President Donald Trump in the United Kingdom.

Ash Sarkar, a senior editor at Novara Media, was on that panel and ended up in an argument with Morgan that went viral. Morgan challenged her over her willingness to protest Trump by accusing her of not protesting former president Barack Obama. That sparked a shouting match heard 'round the Internet.

Challenged about deportation figures under the Obama administration, Sarkar said she did have a problem with the 44th president's immigration polices. But Morgan wasn't hearing any of it. Morgan repeatedly asked Sarkar where her Obama protests had taken place, speaking over Sarkar's efforts to answer. After Morgan's cohost, Susanna Reid, pointed out that you don't have to take to the streets over every issue, Morgan again refused to let Sarkar explain the work she had done to protest Obama's policies, calling Obama her "hero."

"He's not my hero," Sarkar replied. "I'm a communist, you idiot."

"Have you ever considered chairing a debate without straw-manning your guests, Piers, to make up for your own incompetence?" Sarkar continued after Morgan claimed there were zero protests against Obama's U.K. visits. (Morgan was wrong about that.) When Morgan again labeled her "pro-Obama," Sarkar responded, "I'm not pro-Obama. I've been critic of Obama. I'm a critic of the Democratic Party because I'm literally a communist."

Sarkar spoke with Teen Vogue about that moment with Morgan and what being a literal communist means when you're talking about U.S. presidents past and future.

Teen Vogue: 

You were on Good Morning Britain to discuss Trump protests in the U.K. How did those demonstrations go?

Ash Sarkar: 

There were at least 250,000 [people] at the Together Against Trump March yesterday, which makes it the biggest weekday protest in British history, and the biggest protest since the one in 2003 against the Iraq War.

It was a real mix of people. It was lots of young people, which might have been their first protest. Others were recognizable activists from anti-arms trade campaigns or Palestinian solidarity campaigns, so it put together a diverse range of political experiences.

Teen Vogue:

Have you seen an increase in youth activism in the U.K.?

Ash Sarkar:

Yes, certainly. I think that since 2010 especially, when there was a revived student movement, there has been a sense that street protest belongs to the young, and that's a really productive avenue of political expression.

I would think that when you put [on] something like an anti-Trump march, it's about a statement of values, right? And trying to define who you are through a rejection of the values that you find completely abhorrent. It's about defining yourself as the anti-Trump: being welcoming, outward-looking, and anti-racist.

Teen Vogue:

So can we talk about Piers a little bit?

Ash Sarkar:

Oh, yeah. A bellicose walrus himself.

Teen Vogue:

He accused you of being pro-Obama by virtue of being anti-Trump; why do you think that people make that assumption?

Ash Sarkar:

I think that the reason why he made that connection is because he really knew that if [he] got pulled into talking about Trump's policy platform, it would be completely indefensible. So then he had to do a bit of sleight of hand and set up what he thought the only anti-Trump person could be, which was a pro-Obama one.

What we know is that lots of the people who have protested Trump in the U.S. — for example, all the people of Black Lives Matter — were leading protests when Obama was president, too. And what they've done is highlighted a lot of the consistency of the kind of problems and issues that they've identified with Trump's presidency. So I don't think that it is a simple category error or accident that someone has made that conflation. It's a deliberate attempt to discredit opposition to ruling-class interests. That's all it is.

Teen Vogue:

How does being a communist impact your view of the U.S. presidency, whether it's Obama or Trump?

Ash Sarkar:

If you've got politics which are left of social democracy, it implies that you've got an understanding that the economic platform used by Obama, which was [also] advocated by Clinton, did dispossess a great many Americans, and this isn't just the "white working class" everyone loves to talk about in relation to Trump.

Those who have suffered the most are working-class Americans of color. To me, having those politics means that you can look at economic problems without making it identity politics in the way that Trump has. Also, being a communist means being a fierce critic of the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex. The expanded use of drone warfare and the expansive use of deportation under Obama. You can be a vocal critic of all those things, while also looking at how Trump [has done them] because, quite simply, he was able to build on a lot of Obama's legacy, particularly in terms of executive overreach. He's been able to pursue extreme, draconian forms of state violence.

I also think that Obama represented a possibility of change, of weakened forces of racism in America — pretty meaningful. I'm not going to be someone who's going to discredit his legacy entirely.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #teen vogue #ash sakar #communism #progressive #progressive movement #socialism #uk politics

[ktbensondc]

Subculture and the meaning of style

The term ‘subculture’ dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries and was often used to describe deviants of society - thieves and vagabonds. The word ‘sub’ refers to something of a lower rank.

Post World War 2, ‘subculture’ refers to youthful groups i.e. Mods, Rockers, Teddyboys, Skinheads, Punks etc... Subcultures are typically formed to resist the mainstream culture but they remain (at least at the start of formation) a minority group. They share beliefs and values, as well as lifestyles that oppose the norm of the mainstream society.

Mainstream is about hierarchy. It is the dominant culture shaped by popular/prominent political, media, social and corporate interests. It is found across all parts of society - wherever there is a structured entity, the structure follows. Subcultures questions these structures.

“A subculture ... signals a breakdown of consensus” - Dick Hebdige 

Subculture is the refusal to participate in the mainstream. Most look to subvert, parody, or disrupt the mainstream, for example, the popular family cartoon The Simpsons ran through the 90′s as a black stain on society. The Simpsons shows a dysfunctional family, an idea not common on television back at the time when shows such as The Brady Bunch or Full House aired. However, the influence of The Simpsons boosted it into the mainstream, and eventually, that is what it became. Once The Simpsons hit the mainstream, it came down to other such TV cartoons - South Park, for example - to mock the mainstream as The Simpsons became consumed by it.

Empowerment & Impotence.

Case Study 1: The Beats Subculture Elite - mostly male, young, educated, middle class, sexually ambivalent, white. Key people in the movement included Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. They were Post World War 2, lived during the 1950′s in America (Eisenhower’s America), and alienated themselves from mainstream society. The subculture was named after the idea of being ‘broken down’ by society.

Beat themes:

Anti-mainstream (Straight culture)

Anti-1950′s materialism

Anti-censorship

Opposition to the military-industrial machine

Emphasis on the individual - freedom, the journey counts not the destination

Underlying spirituality/ecological consciousness - Eastern religions such as Buddhism

Don’t alter or edit what comes from their heads as they write on the page

Square Values VS Beat Values: Square values:

Avoid Beat values

Deferred gratification - buy into capitalism and materialism

Conform to bureaucracy

Comfort in routine

Strong work ethic

Family is the moral centre - the nuclear family

Defined gender roles

Deference to religious beliefs

Beat values:

Hedonism - leads to personal enlightenment and shakes the cage of mainstream culture

Spontaneous action against the mainstream clock

Distain for work ethic

Anti-materialism

Looked to eastern cultures

Non-binary relationships

Non-comformity

Beat culture was seen as very dangerous to conservative values. The mainstream absorbs subcultures. Subcultures become mainstream. Beats were vilified in America - ‘beatnik’ was a derogatory term used against them but Beatnik itself also became a subculture - a caricature of Beat subculture and were typically categorised as:

Sloppily groomed

Turtle neck and sweater

Nonsensical slang

Furthermore, Beatchick became its own subculture:

Oversized sweater

Weird and spacy

Deviant/morally suspect

Sexually available

Beatniks became synonymous with the criminal underworld. Films were made with a story involving criminal Beatniks. Subcultures are cyclical. Through the decades, Hollywood became sympathetic towards the Beats and kinder depictions of the forefront individuals of the subculture began to be released on film. Moreover, the rise of the Hipster subculture has been described as ‘Beat caricature’.

Case Study 2: Punk (1970′s Britain) Hebdige described Punk with the thought that no subculture has tried with such ‘grim determination’ to detach itself from the norm. Punk articulated frustration of the young working class - the alienation of this group from mainstream society. Youth unemployment was high during this time and there were constant strikes. With no money, no job, and a boring day to day life as a result, Punk subculture began to rise. The mainstream told the public what to do with their time, but youths had no way to conform to these ideas with no money and no way of getting money.

The Visualisation of a Subculture Cultural Capital - the creation of stuff - zines, for example. People who make and do things.

The influence of the subculture elite - alternative ‘codes’

DIY culture

Detourenment

Demystification

Vivian Westwood and The Clash were part of the elite of Punk subculture. A manifesto on a t-shirt of what you should be into and what you shouldn’t.

Straight Culture (in the opinion of Punk):

Television

Clockwork souls

Dumb Popstars

Good fun entertainment that isn’t good or funny

Dress Code:

Very original

Took elements from cultures that came before - collage to create something new known as Bricolage.

Safety pins kept their clothes together and were a practical solution to real, working class problems. They became an aesthetic.

Anti-taste

Cross gender dress

Provocative imagery on t-shirts

Original and non-uniform

Pushed the boundaries for what censorship should be

Subculture Rituals:

Nihilism

Speed logic

Participation in the spectacle - blurring of audience/performer dynamic

The ‘Pogo’ - up and down dancing because it was impossible to move

Sarcasm

Demystification

Iconoclastic - destroy your idols

Anti-corporate - anti-elitism

Amateurism as a virtue - Debunked the idea of needing specialised knowledge in music, graphics, and image to create music, graphics, and image

Desire for authenticity -> The Slits were an all-female punk band who didn’t know how to tune their instruments

Production of zines

DIY culture:

Cassettes and tapes, music, fashion etc

Creative control, not going to a middle person

The primacy of the punk 45 single

Development of visual lexicon

Punk cultured differed locally and was encouraged by fury and spontaneity.

Semiotic code:

Anti-aesthetic

Urgency and energy

Cheaply printed

Deliberately crude (but well composed)

Photo-montaged - the photograph is clearer than the illustration

No rock star posturing - no one posing on the cover with their guitar

Random note style lettering. Stencilled

Themes:

Class and suburban (irony)

Anti-consumerism

Urban decay

Criminality

Subversion of the mainstream

Punk reached America.

Detournement - interference subversion:

The aping of parent culture

Appropriation and altering already lasting media artefacts

Situationalist International - Situationalism in 1960′s Paris was short lived but held the idea that if you can interfere with capitalism, you can influence things. Drawing on bill boards and graffiti, for example. King Mob in the late 1960′s London were a situationalist group, and pranksters. Jamie Reid - The Sex Pistols and his lexicon of ‘Do it yourself’. Punk graphics came from his worldview.

Punk gear became mainstream. They had to change it to retain it. Punk is reframed over the decades on television, in books, and graphic novels. It is now possible to cherry pick the best parts of the subculture for mainstream consumption. It is no longer dangerous or edgy - it can now be contained, monetised, and commercialised.

The art becomes curated.

#session 8

[rawloadstaken]

Oh, and Tumblr? One more thing.

I love the fact that you’re getting rid of adult content, but still embracing abuse, kink-shaming, white supremacy, harassment, death threats, animal abuse, neo-Nazis, conspiracy theories, and all kinds of hatred.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

And before you cry outrage, please allow me to explain:

You see, you say that you can ban all of the “female-presenting” nipples, eliminate sex workers’ safety, remove artists whose work focused more on kink than kittens, and consensual sexual enjoyment between one or more people simply by flipping a switch.

Simple, yes?

And yet, regardless of your claims of making Tumblr a more welcoming environment, I can think of at least fifty blogs focused on white supremacy, neo Nazi glorification, non-consensual degradation of the opposite sex, gleeful cackling about non-Christian hatred, and glorification of murder and violence that I’ve stumbled across in the last week alone.

And what was I doing with my kinky self that led me to finding those blogs?

I was looking for recipes

I was following some fantastic photographers

I was watching costuming videos

I was enraptured with makeup tutorials

I was reading memes

I was keeping abreast of up with the news

I was reading serialized stories

I was looking for Christmas gifts

I was weeping with a friend over the loss of her cat

I was delirious with joy when my favorite author released a new book

I was chatting with friends

I was reading about a new restaurant

I was rolling my eyes at various animal antics

I was learning more about foreign countries

I was snorting with laughter at some truly execrable puns

I was watching movie trailers

I was trying to figure out whether or not I could replace the base model dash unit in my car on own, or if I should leave that job to a professional (side note: I’m leaving it to a professional)

And yes, I have to admit that I was taking a bit of time to appreciate and enjoy some of the kink and carnality that makes Tumblr the platform it is.

Or, as of tomorrow, what once made Tumblr the platform it was.

After all,

Tumblr celebrates creativity. We want you to express yourself freely and use Tumblr to reflect who you are, and what you love, think, and stand for.

https://staff.tumblr.com/post/180758987165/a-better-more-positive-tumblr

And that was what I was doing.

But even ignoring my own situation, here’s the biggest problem I have with your claims, and how they don’t hold up to your actions.

Are there blogs that have both content that well may deserve being banned at the same time as having content that shouldn’t? Absolutely. And, that said, if your software and personnel were as on-point as you claim they are, you should be able to recognize them.

Are there blogs that have content that you’re now deeming should be banned, even though it’s completely legal, completely consensual, and completely focused on expressing ourselves freely, and using Tumblr to reflect who we are, and what we love, think, and stand for? Indubitably. And, that said, if your software and personnel were as on-point as you claim they are, you should be able to recognize them.

It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.

https://staff.tumblr.com/post/180758987165/a-better-more-positive-tumblr

Thank you for that, Tumblr. Thank you ever so much.

Thank you for telling us that we don’t belong. That we don’t need a place to call home. That we should go back into the closet, or onto the streets, or head to a place where there’s nothing but porn, because you think someone who draws hentai as well as kittens and flowers should be relegated to Xtube or PornHub rather than risk upsetting the delicate sensibilities of your investors shareholders other users.

Thank you for telling us that we have the choice of the wimple or the walk of shame.

What is "adult content?"

Adult content primarily includes photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.

What is still permitted?

Examples of exceptions that are still permitted are exposed female-presenting nipples in connection with breastfeeding, birth or after-birth moments, and health-related situations, such as post-mastectomy or gender confirmation surgery. Written content such as erotica, nudity related to political or newsworthy speech, and nudity found in art, such as sculptures and illustrations, are also stuff that can be freely posted on Tumblr.

https://staff.tumblr.com/post/180758987165/a-better-more-positive-tumblr

Thank you for telling female-presenting individuals -- regardless of their gender, and regardless of whether or not they’re choosing to go through with gender confirmation surgery -- that they’re to cover themselves up as long as they look like females.

Thank you for telling at least half of your membership -- or, to be more specific, at least half of the world’s population -- that they should be ashamed of their bodies, and they should cover them up because ... because of ... wait ... other than Puritanical nonsense and the notion that men can’t control their lustful thoughts should they catch sight of a well-turned ankle in a high-buttoned boot, why should they have to cover them up? 

As a global platform for creativity and self-expression, Tumblr is deeply committed to supporting and protecting freedom of speech. At the same time, we draw lines around a few narrowly defined but deeply important categories of content and behavior that jeopardize our users, threaten our infrastructure, and damage our community.

https://staff.tumblr.com/post/180758987165/a-better-more-positive-tumblr

Thank you for telling us that we -- the very community for whom you claim concern -- are creating content and practicing behaviors that jeopardize your users, threaten your infrastructure, and damage your community.

Thank you for telling us that we’re not allowed to be comfortable expressing ourselves because -- ironically enough -- you wanted to "have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.”

Thank you for letting us know that you’re more comfortable sending an eighteen-year-old to a porn site to try and understand their sexuality than you are telling a forty-year-old that a smile and a thong might be a touch too risqué for their profile photo.

Thank you for telling us that our very existence is harmful.

We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.

https://staff.tumblr.com/post/180758987165/a-better-more-positive-tumblr

Really? That’s why you’re doing this? To strike a balance?

A balance between censorship and ... what?

What balance, precisely, are you seeking?

You’re getting rid of the people who came here because of the community, and who helped make this one of -- if not the -- premier blogging platforms, attempting to fob off your actions as “we don’t think porn fits in with our current business model,” and then trying to claim that these steps you’re taking to marginalize, evict, and shame us are a means of striking a balance.

Really? Really? That’s the line you’re choosing to take?

Bollocks to that.

You see, if you were trying to strike a balance, you’d be a little more focused on how to make sure what you refused to allow was harmful, and what you chose to allow ... well ... wasn’t.

But thank you. Really, I mean that. Thank you.

Thank you for telling us that our self-flagging isn’t good enough.

Thank you for telling us that our choice to set our blogs to explicit isn’t good enough for you.

Thank you for telling us that you don’t screen your membership to prevent underage individuals from accessing explicit blogs.

Thank you for telling us that our lives are less important than your pocketbooks.

Thank you for telling us that we don’t matter to you.

And thank you for proving that -- for all your claims of being intolerant of behavior that you feel shouldn’t be made available at risk of offending others or making them feel unwelcome -- you’re more interested in keeping hatred alive than you are happiness.

Oh wait ... didn’t you claim that you were intolerant of that? Let me check ...

---

The new Community Guidelines will go into effect on September 10, 2018. After that, if we determine a post or blog is promoting hatred, glorifying violence, or is engaging in the unwanted sexualization of another person, it will be taken down. This includes (for example) posting Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, or anti-LGBTQ+ content to promote or incite violence or hatred; using symbols of hate movements to intimidate or harass others; and the glorification of mass murderers

https://staff.tumblr.com/post/177449083750/new-community-guidelines

---

Well will you look at that? You actually pretended that you cared.

Sure Tumblr. Sure.

Let’s face it: you’ve done a really good job of getting rid of the blogs that make people clutch their pearls as well as their sphincters, but you’re doing a piss-poor job of getting rid of the people who would love to bash the people you’re saying don’t deserve a place to be themselves.

Do you want to get rid of pedophilia and bestiality blogs? I’m behind you 100%

Do you want to get rid of actual sex trafficking? I support that wholeheartedly.

Do you want to get rid of the porn bots? For the love of all that’s holy, please do.

But here’s the thing: you’re not just hoping to get rid of them, you’re getting rid of all of the people who have used you in good faith for over a decade, and who are now being told that you’ve decided they’re not worth supporting because they believe in healthy sexuality, well-deserved self-empowerment, and the right to not only be who they are and who they want to be, but to be safe while doing so.

You’re getting rid of the blogs that help people focus on their sexual health

You’re getting rid of the blogs that help people understand that sex isn’t bad, or evil, or something to be afraid of

You’re getting rid of the blogs that help sex workers network, and reach out for support, and tell funny stories about their lives, and share with each other the best ways to stay safe

You’re getting rid of the blogs help people understand that their bodies aren’t weird just because they’re underweight, or overweight, or thinking about breast reduction/enhancement surgery

Bollocks to that.

You’re not just erasing our blogs, you’re doing your best to erase who we are, and to fit a number of oddly-shaped pegs into your startlingly square holes.

And you claim to be doing it because you care about supporting your base, many of whom have relied on you since your inception to not only support us, but to allow us to support one another.

Let me repeat something I quoted above:

We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

https://staff.tumblr.com/post/180758987165/a-better-more-positive-tumblr

Mmm.

Without that content you have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

It does make me wonder, though, why that content is so bad, when other content seems to hang about.

You know, sites like Good Night Zionist Parasite. Admittedly, it’s only been around for five years, reported a few dozen times, and had a number of other bloggers post their pleas begging you to do something about it, so it’s probably been grandfathered in.

And I can almost understand why you’ve left the three-year-old blog européenne alone. After all, it does showcase some truly some stunning photographs, and I’m sure you didn’t want to lose those even with the dozens of images of racially-charged and sexuality-based hangings and beheadings scattered through it, and its calls for nationalist pride weren’t too terribly prevalent.

And in your defence, you may not have known that Honour the 14 Words was a white supremacist blog: not many people know that it’s tied to the slogan David Lane wrote, even though it has been the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world for over a decade.

I do wonder, though, how White Warrior 1423 and Sieg Heil slipped through the cracks. Now they are only about two years old, and they only brag about the number of times they’ve been reported and cleared a few times, so I’m sure that wasn’t too upsetting to your team; and, once I realized that those blogs passed your litmus test, I really can’t complain about you allowing The Nazi Master, Snow White Pride, Conservative Kings, Nazifacista, Pasternak, Pride Makes us Strong, Eternal Hitlerian, Blitzkrieg Fritz, You Cant Stop Us [sic], and White Lives Matter to make the cut as well.

I do have a few questions about how My Beautiful Rocket -- which has some of the most stomach-churning images of death, gore, and dismemberment I’ve ever seen, and that includes the two autopsies I’ve observed -- is acceptable to you, but perhaps it’s being kept around as a reminder of how not to look when one’s been beaten to death, or had their skull split open, or had their tongue torn out. Hm. or was that another one of the half-dozen gore and mutilation blogs I had the misfortune of stumbling across? Well, no matter: I’m sure you have your reasons.

And really, with those being acceptable, I probably shouldn’t complain about the multitude of blogs focused on self-harm, or the ones showing men tying up and torturing other men by breaking their arms and fingers, or by leaving their significant others with bruises, visible contusions, and -- in one case -- broken stumps of teeth tearing through their gums. In those cases, I’m sure they would have liked to be able to reach out to the owners of the blogs where the users talk about the quantity of crystal meth they’ve purchased, and how they show the difference between smoking for relaxation and pain relief vs injecting it for a euphoric rush and burst of energy. 

Then again, I have to admit that those sites fit hand in glove with the ones filled with video after video of explosive regurgitation, those focused on squeezing pimples and evacuating clogged sinuses, and the ones where people are crying out for help and the majority of the comments are begging them to kill themselves, sending links to blogs about how they deserve to die and the best ways to do the deed, and offering to supply the rope or gun.

To be fair, though, the youngest one of those is only a couple of years old, so I’m sure -- regardless of the number of times they made it through the review process and a token time out or two -- that it wasn’t that much of a problem.

After all, none of them had any photographs of female-presenting nipples.

And so that brings me back to my original point: you claim that you’re kicking us out and saying that we are -- in essence -- unworthy of being on your site because our very existence jeopardizes your users, threatens your infrastructure, and damages your community.

Really? You want to make this a better place? You want Tumblr to be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community? You want to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves?

Prove it.

If you want us to even begin to believe that you’re doing this because you honestly care about making Tumblr a better place, or that you have even the slightest shred of integrity and self-awareness, then put your monetization where your mouth is and kick off at least another quarter of your user base, because if you’re forcing people off your platform because they dare to show a bit of skin or talk more freely about sex and sexuality than you would like, then you can be damn sure that we’re going to call you out on your blatant and unrepentant hypocrisy at not doing the same thing to the people you claimed to find distasteful well before you decided to kick the kink to the curb.

#hypocrisy #turning on your supporters #embracing hatred #lying #fomenting dissent #kicking us to the curb #money supersedes mammaries

[nonbinarypastels]

The issues with the recovery vs. anti-recovery discourse in a nutshell.

First problem: Nobody knows what anyone else is talking about (but they keep arguing like they do).

no one actually defines recovery the same way.

when we talk about 'recovery' half of y'all use that word to mean "doing what you can to manage better in your day to day lives" and the other half use it to mean "being totally cured, completely and utterly mental illness/neurodivergence/disability free" so we constantly end up with 2 or more people arguing about recovery thinking the people they're arguing with are defining it the same way as they are but in reality everyone involved is talking about a different thing entirely.

whether you define recovery as managing better or being cured there's also an issue of interpretation there because different people have different ideas about what managing better and being cured mean as well.

does 'managing better' mean simply doing what you can with what you have? or are we defining it as nothing short of getting out every day and living some 9-5 job, white picket fence sort of life? i've seen people define it both ways and a thousand ways in between. when you consider recovery to be about being 'cured', how do you define that? how do you see it happening? are you acknowledging that there are people who cannot or do not want to be cured and saying this shit anyway or are you only thinking about say, only depression, but simply not naming that thing in your post which brings me to

when we talk about mental illness, neurodivergence, and disability, people are STILL hopelessly vague.

take a sentence like "if you're mentally ill recovery is possible" and ask yourself what mental illness are we talking about? what is your definition of recovery? because we've already established that 'recovery' could mean any number of things and 'mental illness' tells us nothing. are we talking about depression or anxiety? or are we talking about personality disorders? psychotic disorders? what? saying you can be cured from depression is not the same as saying you can be cured from a personality disorder - tips people share to help manage anxiety are not going to be applicable to all mental illnesses. y'all are constantly saying 'mental illness' in posts when you're actually only talking about depression or something and people with mental illnesses that are not depression are reading that and thinking "what the fuck" because what's true for depression is categorically false for plenty of other shit.

people are constantly ignoring physically disability and chronic illness in discussions about recovery.

'recovery' is not only a term used in discussions WRT mental illness but also with physical illness and disability so when a person who is chronically ill or physically disabled sees a vague "recovery is possible" post even if you did not intend for it to be about them they have no way of knowing that when you're being vague as fuck about what you're actually saying and who it is your post is about. and i shouldn't need to explain to y'all why telling a person who is physically disabled and has zero chance of that ever changing that they can be 'cured' is on a whoooole other level than telling someone with depression they can be cured.

Problem Two: Y'all can't tell the difference between personal anecdotal posts and posts that are specifically addressed to/for other people.

raise your hand if you've been victimized by regina george had some "we can't all be neurotypical karen" comment added to a post you made about your own experience with some kind of coping mechanism or something you did that helped you with whatever is going on with you?

a lot of people involved in these discussions see a post that says "i tried yoga and it helped with my depression" and they think it's the same thing as "you need to try yoga because it will cure your depression" but...they are totally different. personal anecdotes are not personal recommendations, a person talking about something THEY did to help with THEIR self =/= a person telling YOU what to do to help with YOURSELF.

y'all also constantly misconstrue posts that are brainstorming different potential coping mechanisms and positive things to do with posts that are specifically instructing you to do something and assuming that these posts are guaranteeing you 100% that all the things on them will work or your money back.

example: y'all see a post that's like "here's a list of some positive things you can do to help with your anxiety" and you think the OP is specifically saying that all of them will work for everyone...but that's not what those posts are about. they're not instructions, they're ideas. they're not meant to tell a person what to do or even promising them that any of that shit will work, they're for brainstorming and coming up with something that might be helpful.

Problem Three: Some of y'all think too narrowly.

a lot of people on this site have an issue with black and white thinking.

nuance who? y'all don't get that not only are all mental illnesses, neurodivergencies, and disabilities the same but that people who have the same thing are not going to experience that thing in the same way. example: two people with bpd can have a WILDLY different experience with it and can have wildly different methods of dealing with it. what works for the one can have the absolute opposite affect on the other.

y'all assume that you can see one post a person made or even a couple of posts and you think you know everything there is to know about them and their experiences.

but a person's blog is only just a SMALL window into their life (even when they run a blog specifically about their mental illness, neurodivergence or disability you STILL don't know even the half of what there is to know about them). you can't see a couple of negative posts and assume that that means the person making them is "doing nothing" to help themselves or that they're "anti recovery" because those posts are just a small fraction of who they are and what they're doing. this is also even more ridiculous of an assumption because plenty of people use their blogs specifically FOR venting their negative shit and who someone is IRL is never going to be a living, breathing personification of who they are in their vent tag.

as much as people talk about "the mental illness community" or whatever, the fact is we're not actually a community.

we're a bunch of people with one common thing posting in the same tags and occasionally we form little connections when we all follow some of the same blogs and we see the same familiar usernames but we're not a community in the sense that there's a community leader or a set of community rules or a list of things unifying us together or, for that matter, any actual interaction between us. the fact is that tumblr is a website with MILLIONS of users and the view you have of certain groups of people on tumblr (the mentally ill, neurodivergent, or disabled for example) will depend radically on who you follow and what tags you're viewing. if you hate being exposed to negativity and people who are negative about their lives, you can prevent that from happening by simply not following those people, by blocking them, and perhaps by finding other tags to post in. saying "tumblr is anti-recovery" is much like saying "the city of new york is anti-recovery" just because you stumbled across some people in a back alley complaining about their anxiety. you can leave the alley and go somewhere else that's more suited to you, you don't have to stay and tell the people there to shut up because they're not being positive enough for you.

And problem four: Some of y'all are just assholes.

i think the majority of the recovery/anti-recovery argument could be solved if we were all a little less vague in our posts and made an effort to word them as specifically as possible and if we were all just a little less narrow-minded in both our thinking and listening but there are still people on this site who are just jerks because they will always assume that they know better than anyone else and, worse, that they know other people's experiences and minds better than those people do and will absolutely lose their shit if anyone tries to tell them otherwise.

this goes back to more black and white/no nuance thinking and it's a problem on this site that goes well beyond recovery discourse. the solution for this is for all of us to try and think more critically, listen more carefully, and consider other people beyond just our initial reactions. most of being an asshole comes down to not caring about other people---not caring about how they feel, what they think, what they have been through---and the rest comes down to caring so much for ourselves and what we personally feel and think about any given thing that it makes us ignorant to everything else, so obsessed with our own opinions that we're happy to fall face-first into the pond and drown in them. we all have to be cautious that we don't fall into that and that we don't end up creating our own little bubbles where our voices are the only ones we hear and we can do that by talking (not vaguely) and even moreso by listening to others when they speak.

#recovery #anti recovery discourse #mental illness #neurodivergence #disability #ableism #long post / #bolding / #bolded text /