Genderless Chivalry

Tumblr @staff have been silent about the use of this site by white nationalist bloggers, while numerous other sites (see this post) have made actions to ban nazis/white nationalists/”alt-right”/fascists. Tumblr needs to know their lack of action is unacceptable. I love my tumblr community and want to stay, but if this continues, I will have to considering leaving.

Let’s also let @staff know that as they’re trying to increase advertiser spend, they should be well-aware of most ad tech companies (on the buy and sell side) have explicit rules against hate speech. You can tell Tumblr is aware of this because they’ve doubled-down on trying to locate the NSFW posts (quite badly based on how their technology fails so often) for what I imagine is brand safety for advertisers.

Given groups like Sleeping Giants has been successful in amplifying the voices of users protesting brands appearing on Breitbart, any other platform could be next in having their advertisers signaled with a screenshot of said posts where hate speech is proudly displayed against an ad served… well, you get the drift.

1.) Boycott

I had to give a ten minute presentation on gender and a) how it’s different from sex, and b) whether or not there’s such thing as a “male” and “female” brain.

I found COUNTLESS studies supporting the idea that the brain itself is unisex- there is very little, if any, difference between “male” and “female” brains, with one exception. I’m by no means a neuroscientist but this is what I understood from this particular article: there’s this tiny part of the hypothalamus (a small part of the brain) that has neutrons in it, and the number of neutrons varies. HOWEVER, when the brains of cis men and women and trans men and women (who had not taken hormones for years prior to the time of death) were studied, it was found that the cis men and trans men had almost identical average neutron counts, and the cis women and trans women had almost identical average neutron counts. So if you’re DMAB but realize at some point that you’re a trans woman, as far as your brain is concerned, you ARE a woman! The same goes for DFAB trans men (intersex/nonbinary individuals weren’t studied, unfortunately).

Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum (via jack-in-the-dark)

@wearepaladin Think you’d approve.

(via wearemercenary)

Charles Kingsley

(via

sonofban

Sorry, took me a while to find these.

Female Knight by Tatsumi-Aza

Solare Eclipse by Aituar Manas

Atonement by jcbarquet

eclipse by len-yan

“above all shadows rides the sun” 

But we will not be kept grounded. We will leave no one behind. Should you find yourself unable to fly, we will be each other’s wings.   

So stay with us. Your voice is needed. You are needed here and now. This is your call to action. 

We will uplift the voices that need it most. We will be the “helpers” so sorely needed. We will prove that one act of kindness outweighs 1000 atrocities born of hate.

We will not be stopped in this endeavor. We will not lose hope. We will continue to love and help wherever it is needed. There is nothing that will change who we are. We will be forever proud. 

And no matter your gender, race, sexuality, ability, creed, class, country, religion, or age, you are loved and you are wanted. We will do better to prove this to you. 

Casablanca takes place in, well, Casablanca, the largest city in (neutral) Morocco in 1941, at Rick’s American Cafe (Rick is Humphrey Bogart’s character you see there). In 1941, America was also still neutral, and Rick’s establishment is open to everyone: Nazi German officials, officials from Vichy (occupied) France, and refugees from all across Europe desperate to escape the German war engine. A neutral cafe in a netural country is probably the only place you’d have seen a cross-section like this in 1941, only six months after the fall of France.

So, the scene opens with Rick arguing with Laszlo, who is a Czech Resistance fighter fleeing from the Nazis (if you’re wondering what they’re arguing about: Rick has illegal transit papers which would allow Laszlo and his wife, Ilsa, to escape to America, so he could continue raising support against the Germans. Rick refuses to sell because he’s in love with Laszlo’s wife). They’re interrupted by that cadre of German officers singing Die Wacht am Rhein: a German patriotic hymn which was adopted with great verve by the Nazi regime, and which is particularly steeped in anti-French history. This depresses the hell out of everybody at the club, and infuriates Laszlo, who storms downstairs and orders the house band to play La Marseillaise: the national anthem of France.

Wait, but when I say “it’s the national anthem of France,” I don’t want you to think of your national anthem, okay? Wherever you’re from. Because France’s anthem isn’t talking about some glorious long-ago battle, or France’s beautiful hills and countrysides. La Marseillaise is FUCKING BRUTAL. Here’s a translation of what they’re singing:

Arise, children of the Fatherland! The day of glory has arrived! Against us, tyranny raises its bloody banner. Do you hear, in the countryside, the roar of those ferocious soldiers? They’re coming to your land to cut the throats of your women and children!

To arms, citizens! Form your battalions! Let’s march, let’s march! Let their impure blood water our fields!

BRUTAL, like I said. DEFIANT, in these circumstances. And the entire cafe stands up and sings it passionately, drowning out the Germans. The Germans who are, in 1941, still terrifyingly ascendant, and seemingly invincible.

“Vive la France! Vive la France!” the crowd cries when it’s over. France has already been defeated, the German war machine roars on, and the people still refuse to give up hope.

But here’s the real kicker, for me: Casablanca came out in 1942. None of this was ‘history’ to the people who first saw it. Real refugees from the Nazis, afraid for their lives, watched this movie and took heart. These were current events when this aired. Victory over Germany was still far from certain. The hope it gave to people then was as desperately needed as it has been at any time in history.

paul heinreid, who played laszlo the resistance leader, was a famous austrian actor; he was so anti-hitler that he was named an enemy of the reich. ugarte, the petty thief who stole the illegal transit papers laszlo and victor are arguing about? was played by peter lorre, a jewish refugee. carl, the head waiter? played by s.z. sakall, a hungarian-jew whose three sisters died in the holocaust. 

even the main nazi character was played by a german refugee: conrad veidt, who starred in one of the first sympathetic films about gay men and who fled the nazis with his jewish wife. 

there’s one person in this scene that deserves special mention. did you notice the woman at the bar, on the verge of tears as she belts out la marseillaise? she’s yvonne, rick’s ex-girlfriend in the film. in real life, the actress’s name is madeleine lebeau and she basically lived the plot of this film: she and her jewish husband fled paris ahead of the germans in 1940. her husband, macel dalio, is also in the film, playing the guy working the roulette table. after they occupied paris, the nazis used his face on posters to represent a “typical jew.” madeleine and  marcel managed to get to lisbon (the goal of all the characters in casablanca), and boarded a ship to the americas… but then they were stranded for two months when it turned out their visa papers were forgeries. they eventually entered the US after securing temporary canadian visas. marcel dalio’s entire family died in concentration camps. 

go back and rewatch the clip. watch madeleine lebeau’s face.