this blog is for the things i cant post in my kink blog

okay

Christine Canigula Youre so plural ily. "me and the voices in my head have made up our collective mind"???? okay i see u guys .......

is this rhe right blog to send this to?? I DONT KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! but we ball

Link to the petition: https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/ice-accountability-justice-for-carlos-mendoza

Link to support the Mendoza family: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-for-carlos-cindy-daughter-after-tragedy

Ian has also made a longer video going over more details about Carlos and what happened according to his sister-in-law and fiancee.

empathy

love

intelligence

romance

friendship

art

things that do make you human:

belonging to the species Homo sapiens

defining humanity by the things we do or feel rather than what we are is always going to exclude someone. maybe someone you care about. not all humans love, not all humans have or want partners or friends, not all humans are nice, not all humans feel empathy or remorse, not all humans make art, not all humans will make sense to you. they're still human. they're still human. they're still human.

All links are going to be in my bio, but I'll writte them here in case is easier

GoGEtFunding

Kofi

(I'm holding your hand while i say this)

You might be right.

You might have opinions that you feel have veered off into unacceptable territory. You might have come to feminism with a "fuck all men, we should start treating them like shit, see how they like it" mentality. You might have come to anti-christian nationalism with a "christianity is so patriarchal and imperialistic, anyone who practices it hates me and i hate them" mentality. You might have come to environmentalism with a "there are too many people on this planet, we need a new plague" mentality.

You might have noticed your opinions slipping further and further into radicalization but you might also feel like you started on that path from a genuinely good place and you've had only the best of intentions.

But (and this is the part you need to internalize), it is not too late to course correct.

Whenever I worry that my desire to make a better world has led me to accept opinions, beliefs, rhetoric etc. that I don't actually agree with, I take a step back and ask myself three questions:

First, am I assuming that other people are not people in the exact same way that I'm a person?

The root of all evil is the incredibly tempting tendency to treat other people like they're not exactly as much of a person as you are. So take a beat and ask yourself if you're treating them like they are.

(This can go in both directions by the way! Treating someone like they're less than a person is obviously harmful and dehumanizing but treating them like they're more than a person can lead to objectification, tokenization, and more. Not good stuff.)

Second, am I thinking from a place of love or hate?

The saying "you have to love the oppressed more than you hate the oppressor" will untangle you from so many impossible ethical dilemmas, I promise you.

And third, am I putting my anger somewhere useful?

This is actually a two part question because the first step is asking yourself, "Am I directing my anger towards the person or institution I am actually mad at?" If the answer is no, then you are effectively yelling at a Walmart employee about how evil the Walmart corporation is and expecting them to be able to do something about that.

Then you move onto the actual question, "Am I putting my anger somewhere useful?" If the extent of your civic engagement is getting into fights on social media, I can assure you the answer is no.

So for example...

Let's say you are a girl in your early-mid 20s. You learned about feminism from your friends and maybe a teacher or professor or two and you've accepted the fact that patriarchy is real and harmful to women but you find yourself repeatedly thinking "Ugh, I wish all men could just fuck off and die. I should be able to treat them exactly as terribly as women have been treated since the beginning of time."

This is an understandable thought. I see how you got there. Misogyny is incredibly exhausting to deal with, many men have done exactly zero work to become less misogynistic, and living your life with the crushing weight of "a significant portion of the world's population do not think of me as a full and autonomous person" is very very difficult.

So what do we do about it? What is our response.

Here is where we pause and ask the questions.

First, am I assuming that other people are not people in the exact same way that I am a person?

Am I treating "men" like a monolith in the same way that misogynists treat "women" like a monolith? Yes? Okay then what's the reality? (Hint: it is always more complex than you first think).

For me, the reality is that "men" includes my best friend from college who loves me and the world so much he's spent 12 years learning about feminism and gender theory just so he could be a better person, a better friend. It includes Brennan Lee Mulligan (and Lou Wilson and Zac Oyama and more) who prove to me that it is possible to be a public figure without promoting toxic masculinity. It includes my favorite professor who still checks in on me and my career, even years after I stopped being his student. It includes trans men I want to celebrate and love, both for their trans-ness and their maleness. It includes so many men whom I love and who love me. Which brings us to....

Second, am I thinking from a place of love or hate?

When I have the knee-jerk thought "I wish all men would just fuck off and die" what am I actually saying? I'm saying I wish the world were safer and kinder and better for women. I'm saying I want women to live the lives they want to live, regardless of whatever a hateful man might think about it. I'm saying I want a higher quality of life for women.

And so....

Third, am I putting my anger somewhere useful?

Do I actually think all men should die? Do I think men should be violently eradicated from the planet?

No, that's ridiculous and not useful at all and certainly not coming from a place of love.

So instead I'll ask myself "How can I make my anger work for me?"

Well, what do women need to have a higher quality of life? They need to be paid a fair wage, they need access to high-quality health care, they need subsidized childcare and birth control and abortions and education. So those are the things I will fight for. Those are the things I will talk about.

these are good additions i think. someone being a horrible bigot doesnt change the fact that theyre human. theyre capable of change. theyre capable of learning. and even if they dont end up changing, they still have human rights

if you believe the prison systems are inhumane, you shouldnt say "i wish all __________ gets incarcerated"

if you believe the death penalty is inhumane, you shouldnt say "i wish all ___________ dies"

but like…Becky, of course LGBTQ+ people existed before Stonewall. We’ve all existed since the beginning of time. But the movement got a shock to its senses, a jump-start, a rocket-into-space when that glass shattered via Marsha P. Johnson, and when Sylvia Rivera was up on-stage protesting guess who was on the sidelines heckling her?

Without a trans black woman, LGBT+ rights would not exist. Never forget. Never “pay it no mind”.

Their parents are leftists, open minded, pro LGBTQ+, learned to use the right pronouns (to their face at least) all that jazz.

Their Auntie grew up in a remote area, little old fashioned, doesn't really "get" the non binary thing, and hasn't quite got the hang of the singular 'they' yet. But she tries.

When my cousin got injured and couldn't drive their parents shrugged and told them to quit their job.

Their Auntie drove them to and from work every day until they got their cast off.

Which family member do you think they'll ask next time they need help?

I am once again begging people to realize that AI checker doesn’t work. it’s never worked. it’s notoriously known to have flagged human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made. and by feeding it people’s works, you are feeding more works to AI, because apparently the machine itself is AI.

family

"but i thought you were attracted to men" (dad)

*dead silence* (parents)

immediately using my correct name and pronouns (12 year old cousin)

genuine curiosity (sister)

"i'm not calling you that, your name is the name you were born with" (grandma)

schoolmates:

"how did you come to that conclusion?" (troll question)

"i admire you"

"so i could just come out and say i'm a dog?"

"you're so brave for coming out"

teachers:

"okay, i changed your name in my notes"

"how should i address you?" *proceeds not to put any effort in using gender-inclusive german*

"what does this mean?"

"but i can still call you "you", right?"

doctors:

so you can't make up your mind about your gender"

"ah, so you're female but want to be neutral, got it"

*calling it my "sexuality"* (therapist)

and how it went in practice/in the long run

family:

some people are still genuinely clueless

my cousin who immediately used my correct name and pronouns actively corrects other people

my grandma who said they won't call me my new name has gone through a second name change with me and does her very best with not using gendered language for me

my sister's curiosity has turned more into genuine understanding and questioning the status quo

my parents are still generally passive

many people misgender me or very awkwardly avoid pronouns

i live in a different country now so i don't have to deal with this most of the time

schoolmates:

the people who said some bs would still say general transmisic edgelord shit

they were mostly quiet to me specifically, except for one guy leaving a transmisic comment on a social media post but he never dared to say it to my face

one gay guy i came out to before anyone else essentially low key outed me to some other people and started talking shit about self-ID laws

most of the people who said something positive never said anything again, one person later asked me about my pronouns

teachers:

the lack of effort never changed

they never said anything when other students would say shit to me in front of them

there was exactly one teacher who even remotely had my back

doctors:

both of the doctors who misrepresented my gender as neutral or undecided actually wrote me letters to (try to) help me legally transition

Source:

The reason you aren't aware of this is mostly because a lot of the Black people using the og meaning of the acronym were harassed off the internet.

If you want to shorten the word non binary, say "enby." Those two extra letters make all the difference.

omg ty sm i did not know at all

I can be aware of the privileges i have, but that doesn't make them go away. No amount of me being aware is going to make society give black men the same benefits of the doubt that it gives me, a white man. If me having privilege is viewed as a personal sin, how do I get forgiven for it so that God doesn't punish me? I can't pray it away, i can't repent it away, i can't even do good works to make it go away, because it's not in my control. If me and a brown guy are both speeding, and the cops pull him over and not me, am i now guilty?

It just doesn't match with this view that right and wrong is entirely about personal intent, and individual guilt. If that's how you understand morality, then privilege does feel like personal condemnation for things that are beyond your control. Rejecting it as lefty nonsense relieves a lot of anxiety.

And look, people on the left who absolutely know better also use "privilege" as an individual sin that carries personal guilt. It's thrown at people as a personal accusation. Puritanism is not limited to the religious right. No matter how much we say "systematic" or "social construction", we have a very strong tendency to come back to this image of the sinner who loves to sin because they're Bad and only punishment can fix it.

I don't know how we get past this problem. I guess part of it is taking the time to say what you actually mean instead of just using the jargon that your group already approves of. Also resisting the urge to use these ideas as personal attacks would help, no matter how good it feels in the moment.