Gaelpol Yammerings

I reeeeaaalllyy don't like how widespread gender realism is in supposedly feminist circles on this website. You are one step away from becoming a radfem.

"Woman" is a socially constructed category and "women" have nothing intrinsic in common, other than viewing themselves as whatever "woman" is defined as in their society, or being judged by the standards of whatever "woman" is defined as in their society. Gender is as "real" of a category as race or neurotype, which is to say, it's not objectively real at all. It's an artificial category created on the basis of perceived shared traits among certain people. The people came first, they were grouped into their artificial category later. There are no intrinsic differences between men or women or nonbinary or multigender people.

Do you actually believe gender is a social construct or are you just mindlessly repeating the phrase because it sounds cool

Watching the queer way of interacting with gender go from "Gender is a social construct that can be fun to play with but at heart is a dangerous toy because it has been used for generations to oppress and divide people." To "Everyone has a perfect crystal of true gender which you must deeply introspect to discover, and you can be wrong about its nature." Has been a disaster.

As a trans person this view I feel is deeply harmful and wrong. I do believe gender is a real and not socially constructed concept. I feel no one “gave” me my gender and people telling me my gender is a construct is insulting to who I am and how hard I worked to discover myself. Not everyone has the same experience as I do but to say as an objective that gender is made up is extremely presumptuous and rude. In my personal spiritual beliefs I feel every person’s soul comes with its own relationship to gender that isn’t given by society. Do not try to tell me my religion and my relationship with myself are made up. That’s not your place. Believe your beliefs and let others believe theirs. It harms no one.

in the immortal words of maria nevada, stop signs are social constructs, but you can still get hit by a taxi if you ignore them

can you put that thing on a leash?

today's gog newsletter was. certainly interesting to have pop up in my inbox

god remember when there were no ads AND you could post dick on here. take me back i'll be grateful this time

There's a recurring online tendency to aestheticize consensus itself. The imagined future village is full of emotionally compatible people who enjoy communal gardening, conflict resolution circles, acoustic folk music, mutual aid potlucks, and repairing bicycles together at sunset. Which is nice for the people who genuinely enjoy that lifestyle. But plenty of humans are solitary, prickly, obsessive, urban, nocturnal, sensory-seeking, technologically attached, contrarian, novelty-seeking, private, or just plain difficult. Those people do not evaporate after the revolution. They do not get Left Behind while you are Raptured into the Utopia. They become your neighbors.

The part about it being envisioned specifically as a "village" is relevant, I think, in that these kinds of people romanticize small rural villages as this ideal form of close-knit community to which we must retvrn, in contrast to the hard, alienating city life. But I'd argue that sure, dense urban environments can be alienating in certain ways, but they're also in many ways more utopian simply in that they force people to learn to peacefully co-exist as a community with others very different from themselves. The rural village appears to live in idyllic consensus because everyone who did not fit in has either been ostracized away, worn down into conformity, or has voluntarily fled to the nearest big city as soon as they were old enough.

the utopian character of the city is not only in that it teaches coexistence but also in that it fosters the development of communities within its community. a city is a thousand villages you can visit and join and leave without abandoning the comforts of your home and the stability of your lifestyle and the fundamental sense that you still ultimately belong. you can have even more tightly knit communities of maximally compatible people when more people have the opportunity to self-select and be accepted into them, and to self-select out of them without the coercive force of exclusion from your entire societal context. you can also have looser communities that benefit their members without them having to holistically get along with each other! people can be in multiple of both of these at the same time!! social butterflies can flourish to the greatest extent their own bodies and brains can handle, and the most closed-off self-sufficient loner in the world can still benefit from cooperation without it being predicated on connection. the community of the city itself is simply that of sharing space, but sharing space means sharing the myriad resources and opportunities that occupy it

forced caretaking as a trope i think is like cocaine to people who know they need to be taken care of but have mental blocks in the way like yeah please do gently force me into a state of vulnerability so my body learns it is a safe thing to feel around you

This has gotta be a hit with the girlies who have always wanted something terrible to happen to them just so people realize they're in more misery than their outward appearance lets on

theres like a yuri cambrian explosion happening

was going to further explain how in the cons ive been to over the last few years theres been a dramatic increase in yuri (both ship art and art of actual yuri manga characters and even original w/w comics from artists) and it is excellent to see us progress towards more of a balance between yuri and yaoi but tbh the phrase yuri cambrian explosion just made me think like what if an anomalocaris and an opabinia were girlfriend

the worst thing about those fancy pears is that you think “there’s no way a pear could be worth that much” but if you actually make the mistake of tasting one you will be forced to confront the fact that what you thought was pleasure is but a shadow of a shadow and there is a world out there more real than real that your senses have been waiting for, where the colors are richer and the water is wetter and sleep is refreshing. and you’re not invited.

you want to be mommy’s adjective noun, don’t you, pet name? you want to verb and verb for mommy like a good gender