“Is Drama More Exciting Than Beauty?”

they were ignored.

instead, their work was taken and held and published and thrown to be gawked at. instead, an emperor, a pope, a friend, took from within the cavities of them their choices; their art.

tumblr rolls out post+. twitter rolls out tip jars. youtube takes half of what creators earn. on social media, there is a ko-fi or a patreon and a polished face in every bio. i show my poems to my mother and she asks if I will publish them before she says anything else. emily dickinson instructed her sister to burn her poetry.

her sister did not listen.

we are a community, says tumblr, we should give back to creators. my last poem had 50 notes. six of those were reblogs that weren’t mine. i lie in bed at 2am and stare at my bright phone screen and the way netflix’s library grows thinner and thinner. the first ad on tumblr that i can reblog is for amazon. amazon takes more than half of what authors earn.

kafka’s friend took barely finished work and hammered it into structure. he is the only reason we know of him.

my father wrote a book and a play when I was barely big enough to reach his knees. when i try to talk to him about writing, he shrugs.

no one wanted to publish it, he says. so i don’t write anymore.

i am filled with poems I have never published, books I haven’t written. There are little snippets of them scattered throughout my life. I link to my ko-fi on my tumblr.

-

asked capitalism of the artist: what is art, if not for consumption? who does art benefit, if it is not consumed? why create at all if you do not market it? who are you, frothing at the mouth about someone publishing someone else’s poems? who are you to hate your magnum opus? what is art, if not in relation to its reception? if no one sees it, how is it art?

Most movies are so afraid of being “cheesy” that whenever they say something like “friendship is the most powerful force in the world” they quickly undercut it with a joke to show We Don’t Really Believe That! ;)  Even Disney films nowadays have the characters mock their own movie’s tropes (”if you start singing, I’m gonna throw up!”) It’s like winking at the camera: “See, audience? We know this is ridiculous! We’re in on the joke!”

But Lord of the Rings is just 12.5 hours of friendship and love being the most powerful forces in the world, played straight. Characters have conversations about how much their home and family and friends mean to them, how hope is eternal, how there is so much in the world that’s worth living for…. and the film doesn’t apologize for that. There’s no winking at the audience about How Cheesy and Silly All This Is; it’s just. Completely in earnest.

a child 10,000 years ago left a handprint on a wall. they were fingerpainting. a viking climbs up a rock just to carve the words "this is very high" 10ft off the ground. somebody centuries... milennia... ago burned their dinner so thoroughly that they buried the ruined pot in the backyard rather than attempt to clean it. shakespeare got drunk and wrote dick jokes. tutankhamun was a little boy who liked ducks more than anything. a roman carves his name into a monument in another country saying "i was here". a prisoner, centuries ago, in the tower of london scratches lines into the wall as a tally marking the days. a medieval monk scrawls in the margins bemoaning the boredom of his work.

but all of us, every one, has a deep primal need to persist. we leave handprints on the wall, scratch our names into stones, carve initials into a tree, mark our growth as children on a wall, bury little time capsules. write in the margins of a book. hide notes behind the wallpaper.

reaching out into the future to some unknown human long after we're gone to say

Short answer: Yes. 

Women creating life, nourishing life was the original act of “magic” 

their knowledge of berries and spices and medicinal salves were the first instances of “witchcraft” 

The female intellect and resilience were the first sign of “wickedness”

THEY were burned at the stake, stoned, drowned, executed publicly because they dared to have agency and knowledge, and were disgraced and exiled (best case scenario) for their craft. 

Witchcraft is a woman’s gift. The goddess imparted it on us. 

You want to be a druid? Cool, go for it. But don’t pretend that our craft can be co-opted as your own. You are not a male witch, you are disrespecting centuries of blood and sweat and tradition. Men cannot be witches. 

So, clearly this post is specific to England and America if it’s saying men can’t be witches. To which I repeat, uhm, yes they could and they were tried and executed for it as well, just in smaller numbers and. No one was ever burned at the stake. Majority of witches who burned, did it in Germany. But again, a lot of the time they had already been beheaded and it was just their bodies burning. Some people burned in France, and in Spain, but a lot of the people who actually burned alive were men.

Women are all different. A woman born of a poor family in a rural village in a poor country and a woman in a wealthy country with wealthy parents have certainly very different experiences, but they have one fact in common: They have the body of a woman (and I mean that they are born like a woman) and therefore are woman.

We are of the sex that is oppressed all over the world due to our reproductive capabilities. Often woman´s movements were/are restricted (high heels, corsetts, tight revealing clothes) or they were bodily harmed (like the astrocity that the genitals of women in some countries are still mutilated even today, they get hormones to restrict their growth, they get aborted before they ever see the light…ect there are countless examples of our oppression). We could not vote, we could not even open a bank account without the signature of a men, we were the property of men and in some countries these conditions still continue.

Men will never know the fear of being impregnated, will never have to suffer during menstruation, will never carry a child and are  far less likely to be raped.

Tell me how can they claim to “feel like a woman” if they have not the body, cannot suffer mysogny and are socialised like a male who are so used to being the more privileged sex that the oppression of women is hilarious to them or they completely deny it?

It is not possible. They merely can put on the outer layers of our oppression and parade it like it is the greatest thing when many women suffer if they don´t conform to their gender.

Yeah there are men who like feminine things without being women.

They are not the same thing as women.

You are very uneducated if you don’t understand the CONSTANT ever present threat to transwomen’s lives BECAUSE of shit like the stuff you are saying.

And if you fear being getting pregnant that’s a you thing, not a woman thing. There are plenty of infertile women around the world. Does that make them not women?

Not only that but women(yes TRANSWOMEN. When I say woman I am always including transwomen. So bare that in mind but this is referencing transwomen in particular)walk around not knowing if that person on the street wants them dead. If they can tell their friends, or if that will get them raped and brutalized.

And corsets were not to restrict movement. In fact, men hated them and they were important to women of that time. So, again you’ve proved yourself uneducated.

Transwomen can and do suffer under misogynistic laws and views. And in fact the argument you are using right now is rooted not only in transphobia but misogyny itself. You are a equating a women to nothing more than her body, specifically her vagina and her reproductive organs.

Women are not baby factories. They are more than breasts and ovaries. “The body of a woman” does not exist because women are different. Every woman is different.

But besides that you seem to not understand what being transgender is at all. “how can you know if you were socialized as a man”

How would you feel if someone told you you had to use the boys bathroom, the boys locker room, you had to dress a specific way, you couldn’t cry(still tryna figure that one out), KMOWING that you are a girl, but the half the world tells you otherwise because they think they have a right to dictate that based on,,,,your body. Of all things.

Often times transwomen will be picked apart and ridiculed by their male peers far before they ever come out. Because they are women, and they act like women, and their peers WILL inevitably pick up on that difference. And then, for a lot of them, it is only a matter of time before they ARE attacked, raped, or even murdered. Sometimes all three at once.

It is more dangerous for a transwoman of color to walk the streets than it will ever be for a cis white woman.

And yes, there are plenty of women who suffer for not conforming to their gender, but again, these are not the same as trans people. They suffer for being women. All women suffer that. Believe it or not, transwomen are expected to fit even MORE into that gender stereotype for people to even recognize them as well, themselves.

But even more than that, why are you measuring who is a woman by their body, and their suffering? Is it a requirement to suffer to be a woman? Our gender is hinged and in fact, dependent on our abuse?

Bad and uninformed take.

They tried to kill us, but they did not succeed. And we owe so much thanks to the other oppressed peoples, in particular the Choctaw Nation and the Masai, who sent money and grain to us.

Let me repeat that. The Choctaw Nation who had just gone through the Trail of Tears sent us money to try save Irish lives. It’s led to an understanding between Irish people and Native American tribes, most recently when we donated to the Navajo and Hopi fundraisers for COVID-19 relief, because while it may be a different tribe, Irish people will never forget those who helped us and we’ll help back.

The entire population of the island is less than seven million people. We’re still a million less on this island than pre famine. And it’s not that long ago. My grandmother’s grandparents lived through it. We’ve told the stories, it literally changed the DNA of the country. We have a national fear of renting, because so many people were evicted. People joke about Irish people always offering loads of food, but it’s because there’s that cultural memory of not being able to.

Short answer: Yes. 

Women creating life, nourishing life was the original act of “magic” 

their knowledge of berries and spices and medicinal salves were the first instances of “witchcraft” 

The female intellect and resilience were the first sign of “wickedness”

THEY were burned at the stake, stoned, drowned, executed publicly because they dared to have agency and knowledge, and were disgraced and exiled (best case scenario) for their craft. 

Witchcraft is a woman’s gift. The goddess imparted it on us. 

You want to be a druid? Cool, go for it. But don’t pretend that our craft can be co-opted as your own. You are not a male witch, you are disrespecting centuries of blood and sweat and tradition. Men cannot be witches. 

So, clearly this post is specific to England and America if it’s saying men can’t be witches. To which I repeat, uhm, yes they could and they were tried and executed for it as well, just in smaller numbers and. No one was ever burned at the stake. Majority of witches who burned, did it in Germany. But again, a lot of the time they had already been beheaded and it was just their bodies burning. Some people burned in France, and in Spain, but a lot of the people who actually burned alive were men.

Women are all different. A woman born of a poor family in a rural village in a poor country and a woman in a wealthy country with wealthy parents have certainly very different experiences, but they have one fact in common: They have the body of a woman (and I mean that they are born like a woman) and therefore are woman.

We are of the sex that is oppressed all over the world due to our reproductive capabilities. Often woman´s movements were/are restricted (high heels, corsetts, tight revealing clothes) or they were bodily harmed (like the astrocity that the genitals of women in some countries are still mutilated even today, they get hormones to restrict their growth, they get aborted before they ever see the light…ect there are countless examples of our oppression). We could not vote, we could not even open a bank account without the signature of a men, we were the property of men and in some countries these conditions still continue.

Men will never know the fear of being impregnated, will never have to suffer during menstruation, will never carry a child and are  far less likely to be raped.

Tell me how can they claim to “feel like a woman” if they have not the body, cannot suffer mysogny and are socialised like a male who are so used to being the more privileged sex that the oppression of women is hilarious to them or they completely deny it?

It is not possible. They merely can put on the outer layers of our oppression and parade it like it is the greatest thing when many women suffer if they don´t conform to their gender.

Yeah there are men who like feminine things without being women.

They are not the same thing as women.

You are very uneducated if you don't understand the CONSTANT ever present threat to transwomen's lives BECAUSE of shit like the stuff you are saying.

And if you fear being getting pregnant that's a you thing, not a woman thing. There are plenty of infertile women around the world. Does that make them not women?

Not only that but women(yes TRANSWOMEN. When I say woman I am always including transwomen. So bare that in mind but this is referencing transwomen in particular)walk around not knowing if that person on the street wants them dead. If they can tell their friends, or if that will get them raped and brutalized.

And corsets were not to restrict movement. In fact, men hated them and they were important to women of that time. So, again you've proved yourself uneducated.

Transwomen can and do suffer under misogynistic laws and views. And in fact the argument you are using right now is rooted not only in transphobia but misogyny itself. You are a equating a women to nothing more than her body, specifically her vagina and her reproductive organs.

Women are not baby factories. They are more than breasts and ovaries. "The body of a woman" does not exist because women are different. Every woman is different.

But besides that you seem to not understand what being transgender is at all. "how can you know if you were socialized as a man"

How would you feel if someone told you you had to use the boys bathroom, the boys locker room, you had to dress a specific way, you couldn't cry(still tryna figure that one out), KMOWING that you are a girl, but the half the world tells you otherwise because they think they have a right to dictate that based on,,,,your body. Of all things.

Often times transwomen will be picked apart and ridiculed by their male peers far before they ever come out. Because they are women, and they act like women, and their peers WILL inevitably pick up on that difference. And then, for a lot of them, it is only a matter of time before they ARE attacked, raped, or even murdered. Sometimes all three at once.

It is more dangerous for a transwoman of color to walk the streets than it will ever be for a cis white woman.

And yes, there are plenty of women who suffer for not conforming to their gender, but again, these are not the same as trans people. They suffer for being women. All women suffer that. Believe it or not, transwomen are expected to fit even MORE into that gender stereotype for people to even recognize them as well, themselves.

But even more than that, why are you measuring who is a woman by their body, and their suffering? Is it a requirement to suffer to be a woman? Our gender is hinged and in fact, dependent on our abuse?

Bad and uninformed take.