thefaceless-man

[thefaceless-man]

[thefaceless-man]

Supernatural forcing men to talk about their feelings about their toxic, codependent family dynamics once again

#supernatural #sam winchester #dean winchester #wincest #how i screamed!

[thefaceless-man]

so the average american is not aware of the controversy surrounding jk rowling, like this is a very online kind of knowledge to have. I mean that there are people who fully know I'm trans who talk about harry potter to me and there's no awareness of any of the discourse surrounding the work that's been going on for years, and idk where I'm going with this but sometimes there's a huge gulf between what we expect people to naturally know by virtue of us being on tumblr versus people who are not

#i mean most normies in britain don't know or care about jkr being a terf either #my mother isn't transphobic at all and has been very supportive of family members coming out as trans #and yet she still told me about setting up a display about Harry Potter in the school she works at for World Book Day #because jkr's tweets just... aren't on her radar

[thefaceless-man]

That “Shh, dont fight it” when whumpee is being drugged is. Perfect.

#whump #drugging

[thefaceless-man]

A worrying number of people took away from privilege discourse not that 'it's important to recognise the relative power dynamics between actors when analysing situations' but rather 'the ability to harm and the ability to be harmed are inherent qualities that some people have and others do not'.

[thefaceless-man]

#autism #ableism #this is why it's not silly to get upset about people mocking the Cringe Fandom Du Jour #it is utterly unbearable to go through life afraid to experience genuine joy. it deadens the soul

[thefaceless-man]

I think one of the reasons that polyamory was a catalyst for my disaffection with large segments of the left and my suspicion (beyond just the demographic reality of people on average becoming more conservative as they get older) that most progressives are just republicans a generation ahead of their time, was because of the way it illustrated the mechanism at work in a lot of people's thinking about these issues. Not just their specific thoughts on polyamory and their treatment of poly people, but they way that in a more thoroughgoing sense they indicate a brazen embrace of prejudice.

There isn't usually a whole lot of deep reflection leading people in our circles to negative conclusions about polyamory and those who practice it. Most people in the LGBT community will admit if pressed that there's nothing intrinsically unethical about non-monogamy. Poly people just happen to be a group that mainstream society doesn't like in ways that trickle down even to people who think they're all "radical queer" and shit, because as it turns out nearly all of us are influenced by mainstream culture to some extent. Just a group of easy targets who are subject to plenty of negative stereotypes but aren't on the official list of protected categories. When people make jokes about how all poly people are ugly, or insinuate that we're all sexual predators, they're demonstrating that they would probably have done the same thing to similarly precarious groups they weren't a member of in the past, like trans and ace people last generation, or bisexuals the generation before that, and that they'll probably do the same thing with similarly precarious groups in the future. And they form rationalizations about this, about how poly people "aren't really oppressed," how it's just a bunch of cishet people trying to break into the cool kids' clubhouse, but by and large these are ex post facto justifications for prejudices they already held.

I'm not sure we can get away from that in a purely identitarian model of social justice, as opposed to just continuing to bolt on categories we recognize that we shouldn't be prejudiced against, always a bit too late. I'm not saying we should go back entirely to '90s big tent salad bowl cultural liberalism, it had its share of faults too, but if we could bring back the expectation that we judge these sorts of prejudices guilty until proven innocent I think it would go a long way to curing many of our present social and political dysfunctions.

[thefaceless-man]

:’)

#cute girls as well :)

[thefaceless-man]

Finally watching Supernatural after absorbing it mainly through dashboard osmosis was... an experience

#supernatural

[thefaceless-man]

[thefaceless-man]

literally me every single night

[thefaceless-man]

A lot of people in fandoms have convinced themselves that 'bad people can never be redeemed, experiencing ACEs doesn't mitigate people's moral guilt, and the only correct response to people doing harm is the harshest punishment possible' is a politically progressive stance.

#obviously people's responses to fiction are no direct reflection of their rl politics #but it's strange to see people acting like their cathartic revenge fantasies are inherently politically progressive #rather than the opposite...

[thefaceless-man]

finally some acknowledgement of the fact that nobody hates autistic people more than other, higher-integrared (into nt social mores) autistic people

#yeah this is the main cause behind a lot of the toxic social dynamics in fandom spaces #but nobody realises this - they just think that a bunch of nts suddenly 'invaded' fandom and started bullying autists #when in reality the problem is that the superwholock autists hit post-college age and suddenly faced great pressure to mask #to survive in the 'adult' world #so the sight of anyone exhibiting traits they are desperately trying to repress in themselves fills them with irrational fury #it'd be sad if they weren't so annoying and cruel

[thefaceless-man]

I really hate how tumblr has changed my perception of queer community. When I was a young teenager, I would get so excited about the prospect of meeting other queer people and building a better world where we could be ourselves, but the toxicity of queer communities on tumblr means that I've become thoroughly disillusioned with that idea.

Now, when I hear that someone is queer, I no longer think 'brave, free-thinking member of a minority group', I think 'emotionally stunted with a severe, untreated personality disorder, proceed with caution'.

It's that feeling of being part of a community of freedom fighters, of that shared sense of higher purpose, that I miss.

#i realise that this process of becoming disillusioned with the reality of queer spaces did not start with social media #but my *goodness* has tumblr cultivated some of the most toxic aspects

[thefaceless-man]

ngl though, seeing Contrapoints make references to the anti/proship discourse feels a bit like the iCarly revival casually using terms like 'genderqueer'. It's incredibly jarring to realise that the creators of those pieces of media are familiar with those concepts

#I knew intellectually that natalies entire job is commenting on extremely online discourse #but i kind of thought that she was apart from this particular form of discourse

[thefaceless-man]

#sorry but its true #contrapoints is the only leftuber I trust to handle this topic with nuance

[thefaceless-man]

Grandfather/granddaughter where the grandfather has dementia and his granddaughter looks exactly like his late wife did when he married her. The granddaughter doesn't want to deprive an old man of the joy of having his wife back, even if she knows it is wrong... but she's just helping her grandfather out, right?