A Queer Person's Paradise

On the wrong bus, Earth

“white men can’t be oppressed” -> gay men

“heterosexual men can’t be oppressed” -> trans men

“cis-het men can’t be oppressed” -> intersex men

“perisex men can’t be oppressed” -> disabled men

“able-bodied men can’t be oppressed” -> neurodivergent men

“cis-het perisex white able-bodied neurotypical men can’t be oppressed” -> buddy let me tell you about wealth and class and homelessness and immigrants and minority languages and cultures and being a child and being an elderly person and and and

Privilege is also fluid and dependent on context. Most if not all people have ways in which they are privileged and ways in which they are not. Hold privilege over others in some contexts and not in others.

For fuck's sake, even Joe Biden, arguably the most powerful person on Earth, was run out of the Presidency mid-election by his own party because he was old and had a stutter.

His whiteness, maleness, cisness, heterosexuality, Christianity, Americanness, and relative wealthiness did not protect him from ageism and ableism (there was also a lot of indirect racism and misogyny in there, as a lot of the "OMG Biden's OLD!" stuff was actually just blatant code for "What if he dies in office and a woman of colour replaces him?")

Some people have more privilege. Some have less. Nobody is immune to having privilege. Nobody is immune to being discriminated against. It is context-dependent.

what i can tell you is that we have a holiday once a year where we hold the scrolls and hug them and dance around them. what i can tell you is that they are written with love by hand by trained scribes who take exquisite care to make sure each word, each letter, is perfect. when we read from them we do not touch the parchment directly so that it won’t be harmed by the oils from our fingers.

we make beautiful clothing for our torah scrolls, embroidered cloth coverings and shining worked metal crowns to sit atop them or carved wooden cases plated with gold and silver. the torah is to us the words of the living God, the tree of life, the record of who are and where we’re going, and the torah scroll is our most holy ritual object.

the torah scroll never touches the floor. if it is dropped accidentally, everyone in the room must fast for forty days in mourning. the desecration of a torah scroll is the utmost level of desecration that can be done to a jewish community, short of killing its members. nazis burnt and destroyed torah scrolls as part of their campaign of terror against the jewish people even before widescale mass deportations began. in ancient times, the romans wrapped the rabbis who led our community in torah scrolls when they burnt them at the stake.

this past shabbat, in the middle of the night, a synagogue in jackson, mississippi was intentionally set on fire. the library was burnt to ashes and seven torah scrolls were damaged, with two of them completely destroyed.

Phoebe Maltz nails it, discussing the creation of a late 19th century German colony established, in part, to keep good Aryans away from those meddlesome Jews:

Anti-Semites weren’t - aren’t - just people who think they’re better than Jews. They’re people who think they’re being oppressed by Jews.

This is part of the reason why anti-Semitism so easily finds footing among certain branches of the far-left. To be sure, it’s also why anti-Semitism finds footing among the far-right – the right certainly has no trouble imagining untrustworthy aliens who threaten Our Way of Life. But the left’s rhetoric of opposing “oppression” and “hierarchy” can easily incorporate anti-Semitic prejudices insofar as they buy into popular narratives of Jews and the quintessential oppressing class.

This also relates to some popular prescriptions of how Jews can end anti-Semitism (much like ending rape or ending racism, this is of course typically presented as the obligation of the victim rather than the perpetrator). Jews will cease being hated when they cease possessing power, whether it be social (control of Hollywood), political (“the Jewish lobby”), national (Israel), or what have you. See, for example, this piece of work (proof that finding yourself on a Google Book Search isn’t always a happy day).  A Jew who has the temerity to succeed (and in particular, succeed at persuading others) is a Jew who is playing to stereotype. A polity where Jews are successfully convincing non-Jews to adopt policies Jews find amenable is a polity that clearly,clearly, has been damaged or diseased in some way. How else could Jews possibly win but by dirty pool?

"simple," replied the master. "through patience and long practice."

"but master," said the student, bursting out with impatience, "every time i go online i see people my age getting 50k notes, 100k notes!"

the master chuckled. "the self-assuredness of the 22-year-old lends itself well to the occasional callow foray into posting, it's true. but for posts of true substance, one must turn to the mentally ill 30-something tgirls. observe."

she pulled up a post on her phone. the student peered at it. he did not laugh. he said, "but master -- this post only has 12 notes. and it's not even funny."

i love u transsexual women

i love u trans women

i love u transfems

i love u transfemmes

i love u tgirls

i love u dolls

i love u trannies

i love u nobinary trans women

i love u bigender transfems

i love u intersex transfems

i love u transfems who are boys

i love u transfem femboys

i love u transfem cross dressers

i love u transfem sissies

i love u transfem drag queens

i love u closeted transfems

i love u stealth transfems

i love u clocky transfems

i love u boymoding transfems

i love u transfem sex workers

i love u transfem laborers

i love u autistic transfems

i love u plural transfems

i love u schizo transfems

i love u disabled transfems

i love u transage transfems

i love u fat transfems

i love u underweight transfems

i love u paraphilic transfems

i love u transfem kinksters

i love u transfem furries

i love u transfem therians

i love u transfem other kin

i love u transfem addicts

i love u shy transfems

i love u outgoing transfems

i love u depressed transfems

i love u transfems who are pissed off

i love u transfems who are abrasive

i love u transfems who are loud

FUCK HARD

FUCK FAST

FUCK BADLY

NEVER USE GENERATIVE AI

CREATE JOY

MUSIC ALWAYS

PSPSPSPS AT KITTIES ON THE STREET

YUMMY SOUP

go see the doctor about that thing

BE TRANSGENDER

KISS YOUR FRIENDS

EAT CHEESE

NEVER KILL YOURSELF