the field in which the bunnies grow their plots

getting ready with the girrrlllss

Hey artists, C. Spike Trotman, founder of Iron Circus Comics, just posted an invaluable thread on depicting different types of black hair. I’d do the thing where you screencap the whole thread and post it but it’s just too long (which is great because it’s a whole lot of useful information!) Give her a follow while you’re there.

If you can understand what real world racism looks like, and how and why it exists, it is so much easier to see what the badly-done fantasy equivalents look like, And more importantly, what makes those fantasy equivalents *badly written.*

Because nine times out of ten, badly-written fantasy racism is written by people who fundamentally, at a core level, do not actually *grasp* the basic levels of what racism is, and why it exists.

This is why you will endlessly see series after series where the badly-handled fantasy racism is based on cold hard facts, where the fantasy racism is justified by atrocities committed by the people being fantasy racially profiled, why series after series perpetuates racist propaganda on a deep, inescapable level while on the surface painting itself as 'progressive'.

People who do the work of reading essays and perspectives from activists of color, who listen to speeches, both current and historical about the Civil Rights Movement, who actually engage with Black Authors and creators, and listen when Black people talk about the racism perpetuated in media, are going to be much better at avoiding racist stereotypes and tropes than someone who just shrugs and says

"I'm not an Evil Conservative™ who vocally hates Black people, therefore I'm not racist and can't possibly do anything racist, because racism only exists as a deliberate act, and not as unconscious bias!"

To be actually Anti-racist, you have to actually put in the work and listen to first hand accounts and lived experiences of people who experience racism. You have to acknowledge that we live in a racist society that has anti-Blackness baked into it to the core, and that just because you have Black friends does not mean you're incapable of being racist.

Even other marginalized groups who "should know better" are not immune to being racist, which makes it all the more hurtful.

You have to be aware and acknowledge the harm of racist tropes, even in your favorite media, if you want to avoid perpetuating those in your own works.

You have to be an actual, active ally to the marginalized groups around you, and listen when they criticize media -- especially your favorite media-- instead of burying your head in the sand and insisting your favorite media can't possibly have anything racist in it because the author Isn't An Evil Conservative™ .

An author or show runner doesn't need to be marching in the streets in a white hood to be racist; racism is not a personality trait, and if you convice yourself that only Bad Evil People™ are capable of racism, you're probably going to end up writing something very alienating in your story without even realizing it.

example (from Sharyn Graham Davies's Gender Diversity in Indonesia: Sexuality, Islam and Queer Selves)

The array of restrictions and regulations exacted on women’s behaviour is a key reason why so few females identify as calalai [roughly, a female man], as Puang Sulai, an elderly Bugis man expressly notes: There are so few calalai because women are more nurtured (dipelihara). If a woman goes anywhere she must have a companion (pendamping). A woman’s behaviour is much more strictly controlled than men’s.

also on the Bugis society (from Michael G. Peletz's Gender Pluralism: Southeast Asia Since Early Modern Times)

It is well to bear in mind that Graham encountered only a half dozen or so calalai in the course of her two years of fieldwork—and clearly, she was looking for them—but over a hundred calabai [male women]. This is to say that male-bodied individuals involved in transgender practices and same-sex relations outnumber their female-bodied counterparts by about twenty to one. Non- or potential calalai’s perceptions of the real and imagined psychological stigma, social costs, and divine retribution involved in (or resulting from) adopting the role undoubtedly help explain why it is of such limited occurrence, especially in relation to its male-bodied (calabai) counterparts. [...] In Bugis society and in most other cases for which we have relevant information, males tend to enjoy more power and prestige than females (although considerations of social class and related variables may trump gender in any given context). They do, moreover, typically display their power and prestige in gendered arenas and in specifically sexual contexts, the latter being among the quintessential settings in which we see displays of power and prestige in any society. Displays of male power and prestige are frequently manifested not only in the socially recognized ability to transgress and transcend gender norms with relative impunity (albeit within limits), and to define the terms of and otherwise control female transgression and transcendence in these areas. A second, related set of dynamics has to do with the fact that female transgression is more often noticed, regulated, and disciplined (through gossip, ostracism, explicit censure, and, in some contexts, more focused, physical sanctions) because the relative status honor of families and more encompassing kin groups is often heavily dependent on or otherwise keyed to the perceived moral purity and overall comportment of sisters, daughters, and other female relatives, as is certainly true among the Bugis. These dynamic go a long way toward explaining why, in terms of gender and sexuality, male-bodied individuals are allowed more “play” than their female-bodied counterparts, and why, as a consequence, they are more likely to outnumber them in terms of involvement in transgender practices and same-sex relations. These dynamics also suggest that even when notions of same-sex desire as illness and sin apply equally to males and females, they are more likely to be mobilized against women than men and thus more likely to be internalized by them.

wow thats crazy its almost like that's what i've heard verbatim from various different transmasculine people from intensely patriarchal places where people classed as women experience a high degree of social control. i'll literally never forget that one post of mine where someone commented that the reason there's less overt explicit lesbophobia / anti-transmasculinity in a lot of places is because systemic misogyny already exists to exert control over those groups' gender performance and sexuality, whereas people who are classed as "male" who are gender-marginalized create the need for specific ways of attacking perceived-male gender-sexual deviance.

couple of recent style experiments, having a lot of fun with bright colours and chunky shapes! this is a lil closer to how i used to draw, way back when, and it's been very freeing to go back to something more stylized!

I think she means that radical feminism theorized gender as a social phenomenon in resistance to bioessentialism, which is actually true (although nuanced).

Radical feminists did challenge the idea that gender objective and innate, arguing that much of, if not all, gender in society was socially constructed for the sake of oppressing women. Many radical feminists wanted a society where gender was completely abolished (although only after women as a class could unite and defeat patriarchy). Andrea Dworkin, a very popular theorist amongst radical feminists and anti-sex-work advocate, wrote in favor of sex reassignment surgery (and actually said it should be community funded).

However, many radical feminists (such as Janice Raymond) came to view trans women and men as supporting gender-the-social-construct. Trans women and trans men were seen as adhering to the idea that stereotypes around gender were real and innate. Radical feminists fixate on biological sex as an extension of seeing gender as socially constructed; the argument is that "womanhood" is a tool of the patriarchy used to oppress females, who are bonded together by their shared biological and social reality as a sex and oppressed group. Trans women seemed, to them, to promote the idea that the identity of women was reducible down to dresses and makeup and breasts (thus threatening a sex-based class uprising), and trans men seemed to promote to women that they could escape the burden of female oppression by rejecting the sisterhood believed to be necessary to defeat patriarchy, and attempting to join it.

Even Andrea Dworkin's trans-supportive statements reflect a belief that the categories of "female" and "male" are still real, and also that under an ideal, androgynous society, transsexuals will not be affirmed in their gender identities but rather transsexuality will stop meaningfully existing:

The discovery is, of course, that “man” and “woman” are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models they are reductive, totalitarian, inappropriate to human becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the female, dead-ended for male and female both. The discovery is inescapable: We are, clearly, a multisexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete. [...] I have made this distinction . . . in order to enable me to say something very simple: that while the system of gender polarity is real, it is not true. It is not true that there are two sexes which are discrete and opposite, which are polar, which unite naturally and self-evidently into a harmonious whole. It is not true that the male embodies both positive and neutral human qualities and potentialities in contrast to the female who is female, according to Aristotle and all of male culture, “by virtue of a certain lack of qualities.” And once we do not accept the notion that men are positive and women are negative, we are essentially rejecting the notion that there are men and women at all. In other words, the system based on this polar model of existence is absolutely real; but the model itself is not true. [...] There is no doubt that in the culture of male-female discreteness, transsexuality is a disaster for the individual transsexual. Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency . . . as a transsexual. There are three crucial points here. One, every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means that every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions. This is an emergency measure for an emergency condition. Two, by changing our premises about men and women, role-playing, and polarity, the social situation of transsexuals will be transformed, and transsexuals will be integrated into community, no longer persecuted and despised. Three, community built on androgynous identity will mean the end of transsexuality as we know it. Either the transsexual will be able to expand his/her sexuality into a fluid androgyny, or, as roles disappear, the phenomenon of transsexuality will disappear and that energy will be transformed into new modes of sexual identity and behavior.

Ultimately, radical feminism shifted increasingly towards bioessentialism often as a result of frustration and exhaustion with the fight against patriarchy, and constantly raising awareness of the violence done by males to females. Many radical feminists were socialists and involved in other radical movements, and were dealing with misogyny in those spaces, leading to a general sense that women had to place their own oppression above all others in order to ever achieve justice. Their major contribution to feminism, "the personal is political," also meant seeing society in general as having a "male culture" where women were constantly suppressed, and that women needed to develop their own culture as a class - and their own spaces, free of men.

And when that is your focus, no matter how much theory you write or read about gender being a construct and males and females being equal and the abolition of gender... you need to be able to divide males from females. When you are still forming a sociocultural identity around sexual characteristics and what you feel symbolically represents those characteristics, you are just doing gender again. And I hope its easy to see how, especially amongst white middle class cis women, especially with a focus on porn and sexual violence and the Penis Of It All, how this critique of gender as a social construct failed to escape bioessentialism.

I honestly don't really quibble with her claim that transfeminism owes a lot of theoretical groundwork to radical feminism. Radical feminism did genuinely contribute a lot to feminism overall, bad and good, and no one should ignore that. But I think transfeminism, properly done, is radical in and of itself, having moved on from the place we were in the 70s. Me personally, my goal for a post-patriarchal world is not necessarily that gender will be abolished, but that social constructs in general will not be reified (treated and believed to be objectively real) like they are now. I hope that, with the material and ideological structures that keep us oppressed removed and new ones focused on justice implemented, we can have our little human games with symbols and feelings and enjoy them without believing they control our lives and are weaponized against each other out of greed.

And, ultimately, if anyone can make trans radical feminism work in a way that meaningfully fixes its problems especially with gender polarity, I do not think it is Talia "calls other trans women straggots" Bhatt. In my opinion, the kind of "trans radical feminism" we need is one which places intersex and nonbinary people at the heart, not in terms of "being the most oppressed" but rather because the next thing feminism needs to fundamentally reckon with on the gender level is letting go on the "gender polarity" and the need to base feminism around a woman- or female-identity and intrinsic nature, which can also then open feminism up far more to cis men and lead the way for a multi-gender resistance to kyriarchy.

I highly recommend Ellen Willis' essay "Radical Feminism and Feminist Radicals" (accessible on JSTOR). She herself was a radical feminist at one point and goes over the history of the ideology in detail, and how it ended up driving away so many feminists who otherwise identified strongly with the "radical" part.

As someone who watched multiple people have their "why I left the left" moment over being asked to include transmascs in medical language...

As someone who watched transmascs be told to "shut the fuck up and quit whining" when asking for it to be called literally anything but "women's healthcare"...

As someone who watched terms like "chestfeeding" be treated as an utter laughingstock, even by "allies..."

As someone who had my cautions that abortion bans paired with corrective rape are tools to forcibly detransition trans men, be met with an accusation that I was the transphobic one for "implying pregnant men aren't men anymore..."

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

Terry Pratchett, in a letter to J. R. R. Tolkien, 22 November 1967

Thank you very much for your letter. The first one that I have received with regard to Smith of Wootton Major. You evidently feel about the story very much as I do myself. I can hardly say more.

Sharing for reach.

Cover photo courtesy of NAAFA Newsletter, 1979. Vol. VII, Issue No. 2 & 3.

Fat Rights? Fat Chance! A History of Fat Liberation In The United States From 1967-1974

by @fatliberation

During the height of the Vietnam War, two months before Woodstock, one month before the moon landing, and just two weeks before the Stonewall Rebellion took place merely twenty miles away, another thread of U.S. history was quietly being written. On June 13th, 1969, an engineering student with no prior experience in political organizing and his fat comrades gathered in Westbury, N.Y. and ratified a constitution for a new human rights movement that was deemed shocking, laughable, and entirely unheard of.

Hey, everybody! My new article is finally finished and available to pre-read on ko-fi for $5. This is a dense history of organized fat activism in the U.S., focused on the late 60s to mid 70s. Learn about the Central Park Fat-In, the beginnings of the world’s first-documented fat rights organization, and the concurrent movement of feminist fat resistance led by queer practitioners of Radical Therapy (and more).

Like always, this article will eventually be unlocked for free, most likely in two or three months, depending on pre-sales. If you benefit from my work and are feeling resourced, consider making yours a recurring monthly tip so you don't lose access to my articles after 30 days.

I hope you enjoy the article and learn something new about fat history!