Well, I probably wasn’t going to vote for anyone besides Sanders, to begin with (well, Warren before things went hard south– that all seems inevitable now, I’m still pretty salty about her, but I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t inevitable, maybe that’s too much to say), so all this isn’t some new dealbreaker for me, but it’s…

But if we’re already seeing refrigerator trucks outside of hospitals to collect the dead and shit… The level of death we’re possibly about to see is not really something I think Americans are prepared for.  And other countries have handled this badly too, but enough has gone wrong that an awful lot can and has to get chalked up to that guy, and it’ll be a lot to swallow to see that guy get reelected (which was already true for me before with the rest of the last four years but jesus, especially after this shit).

But the people “against” him are just so vile– the idea that you’re just going to fix things for coronavirus but leave the rest of the health care system alone is insane-making, and they’re screaming at poor Briahna Joy Gray instead just screaming abject nonsense for pointing out that none of what they’re saying makes any sense, and they’re just vile vile vile.  If you go and look at Pam Keith’s other tweets, it’s all these liberals screaming that “200,000 dead is more than 30,000 of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails” … Who does that mean anything to???  On the one hand we’re about to see a massive number of Americans (disproportionately minorities, disproportionately poor, same as ever) just whoosh right off our mortal plane, but on the other hand, the real victim in these assholes’s heads is still fucking Hillary Clinton… Fuck them.

Trump has to go but … A party where Neera Tanden has even a shred of legitimacy??  A party that has descended to this level of idiocy getting anywhere near power?  The party’s just lost its mind to me, it stands for nothing and it’s getting rewarded for it, it’s running the election this badly AFTER what happened in ‘16 (which is jaw-dropping) and I don’t know … What happens if they lose their minds and then still win in November?  What does that look like 5, 10 years from now?  There’s no party unity bullshit happening– I don’t really think they have a real plan to even try, except shouting at people or having the Pod Save America jackasses trot out every so often to mutter “we’re on the same team, guys– shape up” or some horseshit like that.  I do not want to see them attain power, full stop– that’s scary to me too, in a bunch of different ways.  But then … the alternative is just going to be… this grinning racist clown cackling in front of a mountain of corpses???  I mean, fuuuuuck.  Fuck.  They’ll always have some right wing scare person– remember when Mitt Romney was this enormous threat to America?– that they use to scare people into putting up with bullshit, but the current scare person will literally just be drenched in American blood like fucking Carrie.   

black and white morality wherein anyone who doesn’t believe/think/live exactly as I do is a dirty sinner Problematic and probably a predatory monster

everyone is a sinner Problematic but true believers people who activist the right way according to my worldview are still better than everyone else, and I will act in accordance to this belief in my own superiority to let everyone else know I’m better than them because I found Jesus am the most woke

casual and fucking omnipresent equations of womanhood with softness/goodness/purity/nurturing to remind every woman who isn’t/doesn’t want to be any of those things that they’re doing it wrong

aggressive desexualization (particularly of women’s sexuality, to the point where it may as well not exist at all) accompanied by pastels [not a criticism directed ace ppl having a right to sex-free content and spaces but specifically targeted at a wider problem resulting from the previous point]

YOU’RE VALID AND JESUS LOVES YOU and neither of these platitudes achieves a goddamn thing

historical context is for people who care about nuance and we don’t have time for either (see: black and white morality)

lots of slogans and quotes and nice little soundbites to memorize but does anybody actually study the source material with a critical eye to make their own informed analysis

the answer is no

I’ve been to bible study groups don’t @ me I know what the fuck I’m talking about

Good Christians™ Nice Gays™ don’t fraternize with/let themselves be influenced by non-Christians those terrible queers

all the media one consumes must be ideologically pure or it will surely harm the children

it is Our Sacred Duty to protect the children from Everything, thus ensuring their innocence/purity/etc until such time as they are idk probably 25 years old

literally just “think of the children” moral panic y’all can fuckin miss me with that

people who don’t conform to the dominant thinking WILL be excommunicated/driven from the social group, and any wrong treatment they suffer will be seen as a justified consequence of their wrong thinking

It's funny, because a generation ago, it was *black* names that were mocked with the allegation that they were "just made up". Don't get me wrong -- it's a good thing that people are now more aware of their origins and cultural context. But I think it's unfortunate that we seem to have capitulated to respectability politics. If black names *were* "just made up", they would still be perfectly acceptable names. You shouldn't have to appeal to culture or history to have your harmless personal choices respected.

The blog post linked is Gaiman’s explanation of why he supports freedom of speech and does not support censorship. The essence of the article comes down to him saying, “Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost”.

Meaning, even if something is terrible and morally repulsive, such as child pornography, one must still defend the right to have stories about it published, because what one publication could be considered porn, could be what another person considers art, or a retelling of trauma, or a cautionary tale that happens to use explicit langauge or content that, to the untrained eye, looks like porn. He is saying, if we want to see stories and art that examine content that may be questionable, no matter what it is, then we have to allow the gross stuff too, because in the eyes of the law, it is all the same.

And Gaiman is not saying to be silent about the bad stuff, to let it just pass by unscathed. He states that part of the beauty of free speech is that if something comes up that you don’t agree with, you can choose to either not support it (either by not reading it or financially supporting it, etc), or you can choose to speak out against it. The idea of free speech protects YOUR voice too, so that when some creep publishes his perv manifesto, you can speak up and say hey, that’s gross, we shouldn’t support this guy because his ideas are nasty.

That is what any of this means.

censorship is not a fucking joke. look at the Comstock Act, which forbade “obscene materials” being shippped through the mail, including but not limited to contraceptives, abortifacients, sex toys, and anything otherwise deemed “obscene” by the government….and you want to know who was hurt by that? The queer community. poor people. women. as in, censorship laws helped queer people be prosecuted by the government because they wrote about their homosexual relationships in a private letter  and was considered obscene. 

Do I want to read books with graphic descriptions of rape? No! Do I want to read books that talk about how vaccines cause autism and how diet can cure it? FUCK NO!! Do I want to read Ann Coulter’s latest opinion on who is fucking up America? Absolutely not!

But you know what I do want? Books with queer romance. Sex-positive books. Books that describe history, inaccurately and in all its gory detail, books critical of government and war and sexism and ableism, all sorts of offensive and terrible things so that people can read and learn and grow.

look at what happens when so-called obscenity laws are in place. look at what happens when governments start to dictate censorship. look at what happened with the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.

this is why the whole anti thing is concerning. It’s one thing to not like something. it’s one thing to avoid making, reading or consuming a piece of media that does such a thing. it is another thing entirely to state that your abhorrence of something gives you a moral imperative to eradicate it. because do not, for one second, doubt that censorship and obscenity laws will be used to remove things that you think are ~okay~ or ~good~. 

Also good to keep THIS SHIT in mind:

The Litmus test for any of this absolute nonsense, and really any of the constant pragmatic/empiricist “call to reason” by liberals, is to ask their opinions on the revolutions in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, etc and see how goddamn nuanced they want to be then. When it’s the lives of brown people the world over, their sensibilities are far more in line with the right than they will ever be with the left.

That is the difference between progressives and the left. Anarchists, Marxists, and people with ideologies anywhere between those poles are expected to jump through liberals’ hoops because they don’t understand we aren’t the same. It’s funny to me how the left is both “so important” to their voting block, but also talked about as if we are just an absolute inconvenience because we are not going to accept their “business as usual” response to everything. Democrats want to use the left the way they use people of color and unions, their crucial demographics. They’re courted because they generally can be counted on for votes and they are as quickly discarded when it comes to actions in Congress.

Just because Democrats are contextualized as the left doesn’t mean they are and when we look at their policies and voting records, we see very little in the way of the pro-labor and anti-war ideas expressed by the left. We see tacit verbal support for unions and rolling eyes at the idea of a middling 15$ minimum wage, while protections for workers are scrapped. We see calls to limit war or increase proxy warfare and invest automated or robotic weapons systems, by never to end it.

I’m not even going to dive into that 4chan post, whether real or imagined, because Donald Trump became president by playing the electoral college. You don’t need to be a dialectical materialist wizard to understand that. Did we forget that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote? Did we also forget that Brexit happened?

As an aside, I live in Massachusetts. Go peak into how Elizabeth Warren did in her recent senate race. Yeah, she won, but I’d examine a lot of other factors in that race and really how poorly she did in comparison to previous election cycles before declaring her the best candidate for 2020. All the optics in the world can’t help you if people are genuinely excited for your candidate.

So I wanted to make a statement.

I’m asexual and I think that the porn policy is fucking awful. It higly misogynistic, because of the entire female nipple thing. It’s making already vulnerable community of sex workers even more vulnerable. It fucked with furry tags, with top surgery and LGBT+ tags. It scared a lot of good artists. And it’s not even everything.

Is being with one person not enough? Why do you need to be with multiple people? Is it a need or a desire?

I’m not trying to start a fight or anything, just genuinely curious. I cannot wrap my head around wanting to be with more than one person. I’m sure it’s just not for me but I’d like to understand.

I'm autistic, aro and ace spec. So is my partner. They really like kissing and aren't always into expressing romantic feelings verbally. Terms of endearment and confessions of love make me melt, but I'm often touch averse. We have a wonderful dynasty, but our needs aren't constantly in sync, because people are people.

We've both been poly before we were poly. I maintain that I'm a bit in love with all of my best friends and maintain intimate connection with all of them. My partner has said the same. I just read about emotional cheating, and don't understand it in the slightest. Do people really get upset if you have a Big Conversation with a friend before a romantic partner? I know there are people who count I love yous. I can't imagine not being able to share those with everyone, or talk with my partner about how hot a mutual friend is and then take them out to dinner when they come to town. I like that we're dating, but allowed to live separate lives without jealousy. That they can excitedly come to me about a date they had, and I can flirt with a coworker, and if it goes farther we communicate openly and honestly.

I really like that neither of us have had to end friendships because we've had crushes on those people. I like that despite my romantic connection being long distance, I have places to put all the love there is in me. I like that if I met someone else who made me feel a spark, I wouldn't have to forgo that, embroiling myself in what-ifs. Not everyone needs to be Like this, but it works really well for me.

Like, not that we should ever *have* to pass as NT, but it is, at its core, acting. So learning to act is what helped me, and put me in a social environment, and there are interesting lessons there about empathy (like, figuring out what other people should be feeling absent of social cues because the other person is a character who may be vastly different to you) and wearing masks while still being authentic and stuff…

Again, the fundamentals of social skills training that is really just “passing as NT training”* aren’t great - we shouldn’t have to mask, but we do live in a society that makes it easier, so where you end up on the wanting to or not wanting to scale is individual and ever changing and I def don’t think that learning to mask should be codified into how we approach educating autistic kids - but if autistic people are struggling and want help…

Well, acting classes seem the better way to go, not least because the stated goal is not “make you normal” but “learn this skill”.

Don’t get me wrong, some people are just shitty, but like, especially for people who aren’t heavily involved in the discourse, I think this might be true.

I mean, REG ideology is much harder to sustain in the long run, because you need to constantly keep adjusting it when new proof that you are wrong comes up (and that happens constantly), and eventually you end up arguing that things are so and so, “just because”; which is partially why I never stuck with any of it (also, I am not a naturally bigoted person), but I mean in the initial stages I think it sounds perfectly reasonable, especially if you can’t fully grasp abstract thinking.

To be an inclusionist (and intersectional feminist, in which I am also including anti antis) you need at least baseline knowledge of intersectional theory, liberal feminist theory and queer theory, where as to be a REG you don’t really need to understand much more than simple cause - effect.

Eg. “Straight people hate gay people, there are laws against gay people getting married, gay people get harassed if they appear to be too gay, therefore gay people are oppressed under homophia.”

REG arguments often deal with some sort of privileged/oppressed binary and function of a (neo-)Marxist definition of oppression, where the privileged individual explicitly benefits from the oppression of the other class. REGs like to twist this to imply that lack of representation in the social world does not count as a true axis of oppression, and therefore it is privilege… and also that in lateral aggression, there is always a privileged side and an oppressed side. And while (neo-)Marxism serves a function in almost all contemporary sociology, it’s inherently tied to modernism and has been critiqued for leaving out multiple marginalized classes of people in an effort to make everything about class warfare. So to people who believe that economic oppression is the true root of everything, “identity politics” (including even racism) is just a way to distract us all from achieving class consciousness.

Queer theory (and other theories of postmodernism) suggest that capitalism perpetuates injustices and strengthens ruling classes, but it is not the inherent root of all oppression. It questions whether individuals actually have power (ie privilege is for describing groups and patterns, but functions less strongly on an individual level), and whether or not anyone benefits from the oppression of others (like how ~2013 tumblr used to be super big on how toxic masculinity hurts men and why men would benefit from feminism).

Another thing is that it’s not as simple as just “liberal feminism” (probably not what you think it means) and “intersectional feminism” (not actually its own branch of feminism). Postmodern theory requires a lot of introspection to realize just how far biases permeate into your everyday assumptions; science is racist, identity is fluid, and individuals do not have power (as opposed to in liberal thought). Multiple groups can be affected by the same marginalization (see: ageism) and factions within the same group an do harm to each other (see: truscum and colorism). In fact, groups as a whole concept don’t have much weight beyond solidarity, since membership into any group always comes with grey fringe areas and intersectionality makes every human experience unique. You have to accept that norms themselves have power, including norms we rarely think about, like amatonormativity or normative sex acts or singletism or perisexism. Everybody is going to have conflicting access needs and the best we can do is provide resources to everybody to function. (Neo-)Marxists strongly dislike this identifying of more-and-more pervasive norms because recognizing that many axes of oppression and marginalization means more differences to divide the proletariat. So even pointing out the existence exorsexism or fatphobia is going way too far. REGs accuse others of having an “oppression fantasy” because they themselves only choose to recognize the structures that hurt themselves personally.

Like obviously sociological theory is way more complicated than any of these generalizations, but “discourse” is ultimately just two different schools of thought hashing it out, where inclusionists approach REG ideas with “here is why you’re fundamentally misunderstanding something” and REGs respond with “that doesn’t exist in my school of thought so you’re wrong.” The reason why radfem ideology is so pervasive is because most people come into it through (neo-)Marxism, which can be easily entered through critique of (neo)liberalism, whereas postmodernism has much fewer easily-accessible points of entry (it usually begins as a result of real-world experience).

you're right that if you're (general you) an evangelical christian and you make genuine non-christian friends and you want to bring the gospel to them so that they're saved, that can be an act of love. it must feel like a terrible burden to worry that most of the world might be damned; as an ex-evangelical christian, i imagine my immediate family's secular life fills my aunt with great sadness. i don't have belief in as fixed an afterlife as the christian heaven, but i'm an irish polytheist and my partner is a hellenist raised catholic, so i guess it'd be a bummer not to see them in tír na n-óg. it means accepting death of a loved one as final, and gods know humans have trouble with that.

but back on track, the thing about friendship is that healthy friendships aren't just built on acts of altruistic love or a drive towards the "greater good" of saving someone. those kinds of friendships are the kind that burn out really fast.

respect of boundaries and personal independence/autonomy are just as profound expressions of love, and the thing is, even you believe with every fiber of your being that you're saving someone for eternity, if you push your religion on a friend, you're not respecting them as a person. they might already be pretty confident in their religious beliefs or lack thereof. heck, they might even feel that you're the wrong one! many religions, despite not proseletyzing as much as evangelical protestants, are just as earnest in their beliefs.

and it can touch upon old wounds, too! you don't want to do that to a friend. for many folks, there's been centuries of historical precedent to be wary of folks trying to convert you, whether it ends in pogroms or forced boarding schools. and on the flip side, i personally have a lot of serious trauma surrounding my childhood church as a queer person. if someone kept pushing that with me, even if they believed it was the good and kind thing to do, i don't think i could be friends anymore, for my own mental health.

(i'd say in this day and age, when evangelical churches show up in voting blocs that sway elections and strip people of their rights, that there's a very current justification for this worry, unfair as it may seem.)

a big part of friendship is built on another kind of faith, too- the faith that a person we love will do what's best for themself. you can encourage someone to seek therapy or end a relationship or quit their soul sucking job, but you can't do it for them. and likewise, i don't think you can change someone's religion for them without sacrificing this idea that they're their own person. that doesn't mean you can't say that praying helps you deal with stress if they ask! or even that you can't go to church with them if they want to come. though i'd make sure the week's sermon isn't gonna be on how awful nonbelievers are, cause a conversion through fear and manipulation isn't the best conversion, or the best friend move.

i once got accused during my bible study program that i didn't love my jewish best friend enough because i didn't want to evangelize to her, knowing her religion was just as important to her as mine. my instructor (one of my heroes) told me it'd be on my conscience if she went to hell. so this question feels really personal to me. i guess i want to challenge folks to treat friendships as multidimensional. knowing when to back off should be just as much an act of love as many envision sharing the gospel to be.

nblw that aren’t lesbians? excellent, amazing

nb lesbians? fantastic, inspiring

NBLWs who also love men?? Outstanding!! You’re not less radical or less queer for being multi-attracted instead of “gay”!

NBLW demiboys, NB men, partial men, etc? Wonderful!! Your love for girls is not oppressive or gross!!

NBLW demigirls, NB women, partial women etc? Perfect!! This goes double for those who feel alienated in the sapphic community for their NB identity, or reduced by it to their woman associations — you’re a perfect NBLW!!

NBLW with no binary associations? Stupendous!! You don’t have to fit binary paradigms to be a radical queer!!

NBLW who feel pressured to identify as lesbians? Immaculate exactly as you are.

Hey, I was wondering if you had any advice for someone who came out as gay over a decade ago and has been worried she might be bi for a while. Like, how do I even go about trying anything with a guy without feeding the “converting the lesbian” fantasy? Or if I am bi then, like, I feel like I’m feeding the “being gay is a phase” BS. I don’t know. I’ve followed your stuff since before I came out and I don’t really feel comfortable talking about this with my friends because it’s embarrassing. Idk.

It’s so terrifying, right? Like, “lesbian” is such a commitment and then to be something different later feels like divorcing an entire community. It was a somewhat devastating loss for me that still stings years later, but it’s my truth, and it feels better to live in my truth. This is kinda why I hate the “born this way” rhetoric. If the only way you can justify the fight for your rights is to claim everyone like you is solid and unwavering in their sexuality, it completely falls apart when people turn out to be more complicated than that. People are so complicated! People can and absolutely do change. And it isn’t always a case of you discovering something that was always there. Sometimes these things develop, and I think that terrifies a lot of people to think about. Like, I was just minding my own business one day and suddenly, boys were on the table. What is this feeling, so sudden and new?

So anyway, here are my tips.

1: Super sexy secret experimentation. Nobody has to know what you’re getting up to! Much in the way so many of us LGBTQ people experiment with the same* gender in secret before we can come out, you can totally experiment with the opposite* gender in secret before coming out about that. It’s a vulnerable time, and you are allowed to do it without a peanut gallery. It doesn’t mean you’re doing something shameful. It’s just allowing you to feel your feelings without contamination from others’ judgment. (*I’m so sorry to use words like “same” and “opposite” for gender, which does imply a binary that doesn’t actually exist.)

2: If you can, find bi/pan/queer guys to experiment with! One, as fellow queers, they’re usually less fetishy about queer girls and they’re not gonna think they’re converting a lesbian. They also know how scary it can be to go from “I just like girls” to “Oh jeez now that I think about it I also like guys holy shit wtf? How do I even talk to boys???” Bi/pan/queer identities don’t exist as a mixture of gay and straight. They’re their own thing, and it’s nice to have someone who understands more of the specifics. I’m at the point where I mostly just want to see bi/pan/queer people, no straight boys or lesbian women, because I’m most compatible with queer people of any gender.

3: Give yourself permission to feel embarrassed! You get used to it and it ends up not being the end of the world. I know, easier said than done. I promise it gets easier over time. You start to convert “I don’t know what I’m doing and surely everyone is laughing at my naivety” into “Wow, I am learning so much new stuff about myself and that’s cool and exciting.”

4: A warning I wish I had gotten: OMG you’re gonna be exposed to so many gender roles that you got to ignore before and it’s wild. It’s a constant battle between bucking all these expectations and intimidating or even offending men with your wild gay ideas such as “I can hold the door open myself” and “let’s go dutch.” Verses conceding to expectations and ending up with a bunch of insecurities about your body and personality. “Am I too loud? Too boyish? Too forward?” It stinks, but being aware that it’s happening keeps it from being too terrible.

5: A lot of lesbians might be irrationally mad at you. They will say you’re playing into stereotypes, they’ll say you’re tainted, a hasbien, a secretly straight double agent. But they are being irrational. Your sexuality is a completely distinct thing from their sexuality. Your sexuality cannot and will not affect theirs. If any guys who see your journey decide that that justifies sexually harassing some lesbians, the problem is with the guys that are sexually harassing women, not because you ended up not being a lesbian. Whatever your truth is, you’re allowed to find it. You are not hurting anyone. I can’t say that enough. You are NOT hurting anyone. let me also say that there are so many GOOD lesbians out there who WON’T be shitty to you about this, and they will be happy to see you live your truth. I know so many wonderful lesbians. I’d say most WLW are in solidarity. It’s just that the shitty ones are often very loud.

You might go through all of this and decide you’re actually still a lesbian. And then you can lez it up with more resolve. Or you might be bi and let me tell you, it’s a very welcoming community. There are also identities that are a blend. When I was young, terms like “bi-dyke” and “lesbian identified bisexual” were ubiquitous. You might be homoflexible. And keep in mind too that sexual identity and romantic identity aren’t always the same.