deliciously delirious death

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56143249-tumblr-porn

Now if you’re wondering why I felt the sudden need to dredge up this post from 2022, it’s because of a couple other posts I won’t go into now that reminded me of it.

This post is a prime example of how casually and insidiously we can re-write history. When the OP made this post so many people in the notes nodded along, acting as though it were an obvious, incontrovertible truth that Tumblr in the late aughts/early ‘10s was a wholesome safe space for children, and it was therefore normal and natural in the tumblr culture of that time to treat adults as unwelcome interlopers.

But that’s not an obvious, incontrovertible truth.

It’s a complete rewriting of history.

It’s a brazen, boldfaced lie.

Or it would be, if I thought OP were lying intentionally. But actually I don’t thing they were. I think this might actually be how OP (mis)remembers tumblr. OP painted a pastel colored soft focus filter over their childhood memories without even realizing that’s what they were doing. And it’s fine if the way you like to remember something is different from the way it actually happened. But it stops being fine when you start using your fabricated whitewashed sanitized memories as “evidence” when crafting an argument, thinking no one will bother to fact check you.

I’m bothering.

And john green was clearly trying to connect with the teens here, because they were the intended audience of his fucking novels. he didn’t come here to hang out with adult sex workers

Also to be clear people back then did argue that Green was wrong for being in a space for teenagers, but they didn’t mean tumblr, they meant him being a YA author with a fanbase of teenagers, and they used that as evidence of his nonexistent pedophilia as well as the fact that there’s a laughably non-explicit sex scene in The Fault in Our Stars. The nerdfighter fandom has always been populated by teens because John Green is a YA author and he and his brother intentionally kept their content all ages, that’s also what they meant by youth spaces, their own fan space which they weren’t even involved in to an abnormal or unhealthy degree.

(If anyone is curious the evidence against Thomas Sanders was that he once accidentally shared some slightly sexualized fan art of him—something he did I believe on a separate 18+ account with other fans on the condition that they’re adults, which I think is perfectly fine, creators shouldn’t have to pick either 100% kid friendly or 100% 18+ for their content—because the fan in question did not tell him their age and once he found out it was a minor he took the art down and blocked that person, which is all that can really be expected, and also that he did outreach with his former highschool to help the drama students learn about acting and creating videos. One is an unfortunate mistake and the other is just a good thing he did?? But both were used to drum up pedophilia accusations which again, were cover for the true reason people hated him, he didn’t hate ace and aro people.)

People also accused Green of being weird about women for writing Paper Towns because there’s a girl who’s a manic pixie dream girl so obviously he’s a misogynist….but the book was directly and explicitly deconstructing and critiquing the manic pixie dream girl trope and the way men often see the women they’re attracted to as objects and not people—like I can point to the exact passage in the book that is just Green looking at the audience and saying “women are people and you don’t own someone because you like them” I have it highlighted—so anyone claiming that the book was the opposite just can’t read but even then, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t true, it could be used to paint him as a monster so it’s fine to lie about something as blatantly false as this.

The only real valid criticism I ever saw was that The Fault in Our Stars was antisemitic for the bits about the Anne Frank house, which I agree with, but that was heavily drowned out by the pedo stuff so not only did this movement nearly destroy a man over fucking nothing, it prevented a genuine criticism of his writing from being brought up and addressed. It was unfair to Green, who should be made aware of this and be given a chance to apologize and make it right in any way he can, and to his jewish fans, who deserved to talk about how they were harmed and have that harm addressed, but it all got ruined by a bunch of bigots being assholes for no reason.

Also this was ableist harassment on top of it all, John Green has never been secretive about his struggles with OCD and accusing a man with FUCKING OCD of being a pedophile when you know you’re lying is horrific ableist violence. That’s part of the reason he left and as someone with OCD I genuinely think people chose this to attack him with because they knew it would do the most harm to him professionally and mentally. It was extremely ableist and as far as I’m concerned the only person who should be able to make jokes about what happened is him. Everyone else should stop treating this situation like there was anything even remotely funny about it because there wasn’t, it’s not funny to harass a mentally ill man and YA author with false accusations of pedophilia, that could have legit ruined his career and life. I’m glad it didn’t.

So anyway, aside from the one extremely valid complaint that got ignored, the real reason people suddenly hated John Green was that he was an ally to aro and ace people and back then being an ally was a social death sentence, especially on tumblr. The reason no one remembers this is because former ace/aro exclusionists have done a marvelous job of convincing everyone that “ace discourse” wasn’t a big deal and didn’t really hurt anyone, especially not anyone irl, but that’s a blatant and bold-faced lie designed to protect them from the consequences of their actions and further erase ace and aro people and our suffering. We do not deserve to be remembered, and everything done to us and our allies was just dumb teenagers being silly and not a coordinated campaign of queerphobic violence designed to completely eradicate the existence of ace and aro people and anyone who supported us, and thus no one who took part in that coordinated campaign deserves to be held responsible for what they did.

TL;DR The cock monolog was the culmination of an attempt to destroy a man’s entire career for the crime of being a good ally and saying things that are true like ace and aro people are valid. I don’t even think he said they were queer I think he just said they were valid and he welcomes ace and aro fans, but even that was too much. The idea that it was just teens being teens is untrue, plenty of adults were joining in, tumblr has never been a space only for teenagers, and that wasn’t even the reason people were harassing him, it was because he was a good ally, and on top of all of that a genuine issue never got addressed because people cared more about destroying him than they did actual marginalized people.

> I ask whether it’s actually feminist, or whether it’s a story about how patriarchy is good as long as the patriarch is benevolent

> they don’t understand

> I describe the common trope in faux-feminist historical romance where the female lead is able to “escape” the sexism of her time simply by marrying the rare good man who respects women— as if patriarchy is a problem of abusive individuals, rather than an inherently abusive system. As if all the issues in patriarchy go away if the man you marry is Nice. As if “patriarchal systems can actually work well when the patriarch is kind and loves you uwu” is a bold feminist statement, instead of the cornerstone of inherently reactionary tradwife beliefs about gender roles.

> they laugh

> “it’s a feminist historical romance”

> look inside

if an gnc woman can experience misogyny, then a nonbinary person might be assumed to be a gnc woman and experience misogyny too.

the misogyny doesn't stop if someone's a nonbinary person people assume to be a butch woman rather than a femme one. as much as i hate it, misogynists often can't tell the difference between a non-fem nonbinary person and a gnc woman. some people actively clock people as nonbinary and decide we're basically women, too.

the idea that our gender or gender expression needs to be close to "woman" to be the target of misogyny is just incorrect. literally all it takes is for a random person to decide we're women or even just feminine. it happens to almost all nonbinary people. it can happen to trans men too.

it doesn't mean we're women or woman-adjacent. it just means we experience misogyny.

so next time you want to emphasise that not only women experience misogyny don't just go "nonbinary femms too though!". you can just say "some nonbinary people" or "many nonbinary people".

This is a man who is VIOLENTLY aware that when it comes to conservatives, he is a Muslim first, a Brown Man second, an Immigrant third, a Socialist fourth, and a human a very distant fifth, if considered at all. He was also a young adult during the Obama Years and will have seen Republicans rip Obama to shreds for wearing a tan suit instead of a dark one and use literally ANY excuse they could to try and degrade his image.

When 18-year-old Roberto first experienced menstruation, she was terrified. Born intersex and raised as a boy, she had never been taught about periods, let alone how to manage one. Before that terrifying day, Roberto had spent her entire life in a quiet village in Kisii County. Her parents never disclosed anything about her intersex identity, partly because they did not fully understand it themselves, and partly due to the stigma surrounding differences in sex development. Roberto grew up playing football with boys, dressing like them, and following all the expectations of male childhood. Yet, as she entered adolescence, she began noticing subtle changes in her body that did not match those of her peers. She occasionally experienced discomfort, mood shifts, and physical traits she could not explain. With no information about intersex bodies or reproductive health, she simply brushed these feelings aside. Conversations about menstruation were reserved for girls, leaving Roberto completely unprepared for what was coming. “I thought I was bleeding to death, but I could not tell anyone, not even my mother,” she recalls. “I used an old T-shirt and hid it under my mattress.” It was only years later, after meeting a community health volunteer who worked with intersex and gender-diverse youth, that Roberto finally shared her experience. The volunteer explained what it meant to be intersex, helped her understand her body, and connected her to a safe support group. Through these conversations, Roberto slowly began embracing an identity that felt more aligned with who she truly was. She chose to use she/her pronouns because it was the first time she felt seen, understood, and comfortable in her own skin. “It felt like breathing freely for the first time,” she says. “Like I could finally be myself without fear.”

The hidden reality of intersex menstruators