Rose (The Dumbass)

Most of the critical complaints have been about the tone; in a review from 2005, Professor Victoria of Spagonia University said, "The constant self-aggrandizement undercuts the idea that its subject ought to be taken seriously. Also, wasn't the 'feminist' line from the Sonic Heroes manual a mistranslation of 'womanizer'?"

The right wing is constantly doing vigilante shit and imposing life, interpersonal, economic, and mental consequences on marginalized folks and those who support them for the crime of existing and being oppressed. They’ll publicly lynch 16 year old Black girls, 19 year old trans girls, burn down abortion clinics, shoot up literally anywhere, destroy/damage houses, and so much more.

And we.. protest and maybe do graffiti. Organize to “vote blue no matter who” type bullshit. We don’t even punch Nazis anymore lmfao. A lot of the non-white organizers and activists who became publicly known for stuff like taking down confederate flags, action in 2020, etc. in the past decade are dead or in jail now, often likely because of vigilante/cop action.

Iunno. I’m one Black tranny cripple and my literal ability to do.. anything, anymore is minimal. But I feel like I’m losing my mind watching almost nothing happen here while elsewhere resisters are literally dismantling weapons factories piece by piece until they can’t function.

“Paris was loved, remembered as “unapologetically Paris,” and deserved to be named with dignity.”

Opened Twitter, scrolled for 27 seconds, learned about Jor’Dynn Duncan, a 7 year old Black girl who was tortured to death over months with 90 stab wounds, by three white women (step-grandmother, step-mother, and step-sister) in Long Island after courts granted the step-mother custody over her.

"we" refers to anyone who is fighting beside me. self inclusion and self exclusion are copacetic concepts.

i understand the danger of generalizations but if you lean too far in the other direction you get people trying to establish a literal gay card and set of criteria that is Queer Enough.

here's some examples of how these phrases are used that i don't like:

"the queer community needs to remember our history!" which history? in practice, on tumblr at least, almost always the american lgbt movement. i think its wrong to imply that american queer history Is queer history, and not just the history of queerness in one corner of the world. i think expecting any and everyone to both know and be deferential to the history of the american lgbt movement just because they are queer and speak english, regardless of whether or not thats actually their history, is weird nationalist behavior.

"the trans community has too much infighting" this is a statement that serves to imply that trans people are not allowed to have or capable of having legitimate ideological conflict with each other. it's frequently used to paint trans women specifically as instigators of meaningless internet drama, and completely discredit the critiques they have of the way they're treated by people who are supposedly 'in community' with them

i think pretty much every time "the lesbian community" with no further qualifiers is rhetorically used in a discussion it's been at best meaningless but often actually harmful, because understanding of lesbian identity has long been pretty heavily split between people who are using bioessentialist ideas about who actually Counts as a lesbian and people who aren't. i am not in community with twerfs and never will be, and i think trying to understand or portray lesbianism as a "community" without factoring in these peoples' presence just throws trans women under the bus.

For example:

Black Americans put forth a simple demand that we, and ideally everybody else, not be executed by armed members of the state without trial. In a word: equality. Liberals can't answer that demand because it is antithetical to their project of maintaining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Instead they give a bunch of shit that nobody asked for which annoys everyone and the right wing of liberalism is able to capitalize on that annoyance to generate a backlash to a demand that was never met.

Instead of dealing with the scourge of killer cops, the democrats kneeled in Kente cloth. This did nothing for Black people and only served to fuel the grievance of white people. Instead of dealing with the effects of redlining, the liberal hegemony got rid of Aunt Jemima. This did nothing for Black people and only served to fuel the grievance of white people. Instead of dismantling white supremacy, the liberals coopted, recuperated, and sheepdogged every movement they could while stoking dissatisfaction and grievance that was then blamed on the "far left"

In essence, the "far left" was blamed for the tactics the liberals used to suppress us.

This pattern can be seen across what are now being attacked by the leadership of the democrat party as "groups"

Whether it be women, queer people, black people, the dreaded "Latinx" (remember that "discourse"?), trans people, disabled people, or any other marginalized group: we asked for equality. Liberals can't answer that demand because it is antithetical to their project of maintaining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Instead they give a bunch of shit that nobody asked for which annoys everyone and the right wing of liberalism is able to capitalize on the annoyance to generate a backlash to a demand that was never met.

As a result, the left wing of capital can convince itself that it needs to move even further right to win because the spectacle of them fighting against the actual left caused them to do stupid shit that nobody liked that was unpopular and they blame on the actual left whereas the right wing of capital can point at the stupid shit that nobody liked as proof that they are being oppressed by the mere existence of the stupid shit that nobody liked.

The ratchet only turns one way.

But how they actually worked was manipulating racist policies to cause as much of a delay as possible. They'd sit down at the bar to order (that's how those restaurants worked, you had to sit down to order and there weren't many tables) and when the waiter said they couldn't serve them, they'd respond that they would wait until they could be served. And then all their friends who they organized this with would do the same, and they would sit there at every seat until they're holding up the whole line. Then nobody could order and the restaurant was forced to either close, serve them, or try and fail to work around them. It wasn't just to make a point, it was to cost them money and time.

Does this look quiet, peaceful, nondisruptive?

And the struggle didn't stop after formal integration, once the Civil Rights act had passed. Because even when they are legally required to serve you, they can make you really fucking uncomfortable and threaten you and the cops probably will take their side.

For one example, there was a cafe that would serve Black people, but would then publicly break the dishes so that no white customer would ever have to eat off a dish a Black person had eaten off of. This was done publicly, right as the Black diner was done eating. The waitress takes the plate and smashes it. This is a signal both to the white diners "see, we hate them just as much as you do, you're safe here" and also a threat of violence to the Black diners. "If you're not careful we'll smash you just like we did this plate."

But at the same time, if Black people go there and eat every day ... how long before the cafe can't afford to do that? How long before they have broken so many dishes that it's eating into their profits? How long before the white diners start getting used to eating alongside Black people and simply don't care as much any longer, or start getting annoyed at the noise and fuss and mess?

1. Folks in these movements trained. They were disruptive and they were strategic about it and they trained so that they could stay calm in terrifying situations and create the targeted disruptions they wanted to create and not get goaded into deviating from that. Absolutely badass.

2. Not at all a criticism of OP because I think their description of people thinking it was "quiet self-sacrificial non-disruptive christ-like activism" is dead on, but I think that description itself speaks to the same kind of revisionism re: the Christ of the Gospels and how disruptive he was and why, and it's important to remember that, especially in this era of renewed christofascism. Rev. Dr. King was a prophet and you will never convince me otherwise.

Nonviolence is not a goal, it is a strategy. A deliberate strategy at a calculated time in response to violence of the oppressor, which can be effective if it shames the perpetrators. See: why Selma or Montgomery was chosen by the SCLC (they had the most racist unhinged sheriffs who would deploy maximum force, which got shown on nationwide broadcasts and finally moved the public).

Nonviolence doesn’t mean you don’t carry weapons if necessary, as many organizers in Selma did. Nonviolence doesn’t mean that you accept that people will throw bombs into your family’s home, as they did to MLK.

And yes, the absurd simplification and bastardization of this strategy is deliberate. It went from being a tool for fighting for liberation to being a justification for more violence and oppression used against future generations of protestors who didn’t meet the standard of perfectly obedient nonviolent non disruptive protestors. Which of course there is no such thing.