sassyphantomkoala

and we will say "When I was YOUR age, fruits and vegetables came from a supermarket and they were bred to get shipped 1000 miles in a truck and sit on shelves for weeks, and they tasted so sour and watery it was like eating paper compared to these ones. It wasn't even legal in some places to grow your own food"

and they will roll their eyes like yeah yeah just because everything was miserable in the 20s doesn't mean I have to have a smile on my face standing in the hot sun while you listen to that one guy talk about his bees FOREVER

And many other people have been just spitting, foaming at the mouth fucking FURIOUS. How dare I have the audacity to imagine a future where things get better?

Don't I know how BAD things are? Am I not aware of the TERROR and DEVASTATION of climate change and fascism and biodiversity loss? How dare someone be so bold, so callous, as to imagine something other than misery and suicide. How dare someone suggest it will get better. How dare a person propose that there is a future where we will be okay, in the face of so much terror. Hasn't she seen the abyss opening its jaws before us?

Well? What do you think?

Why the fuck are you still here? Seriously, why? If you think defeat is inevitable why do you fight? Why fight if you think victory is not possible? The point of activism is to improve the world, it does not exist to fuel your martyr complex.

The age of eligibility for an ABLE account, allowing USAmerican disabled people to save up money without losing their government assistance for having “too much,” is going to go up to cover disabilities diagnosed by age 46 (currently it’s age 26), meaning a much larger number of people will be able to access them. As the article notes, many Americans don’t know these accounts exist, let alone whether they or someone they care for could qualify for one, so please share this information around.

So every time I go to look for him, I see this:

The thing about anti-pornography as its own stance is that I've yet to encounter a cogent argument distinguishing between pornography and erotica that isn't just "One makes me feel bad and is gross while the other appeals to my particular sensibilities," which is just a roundabout way of getting into the tiresome argument of "There exists a nebulously defined group of Reasonable Individuals to which I belong, and this group is identifiable largely by their enlightened agreement with me, and anybody outside of this group is a blithering savage who's too busy jerking off to be Reasonable."

But like, idk dude I think It Depends. I've seen "tastefully erotic" things I've found so repulsive it made my hair stand on end. And I've also seen tasteless porn that ended up making me think in ways I did not anticipate. There are sexual materials I'm interested in that do nothing to turn me on and there are non-sexual materials that really do it for me. If the only kinds of sexual works you've been exposed to are like "ANAL BUKKAKE - EVERYONE FUCKS MY BARELY LEGAL STEPMOM" versus some literary novel containing arch depictions of sex, then like, yes, I can see how it can be difficult for you to imagine how categorizing between porn and erotica might be tricky. But-- and I concede this is likely a self-selecting group-- most people I know who are interested in sexuality in art tend to agree this is an enormous spectrum with a lot of gray area. Of course, it's easy to dismiss such people as selfish perverts (whatever that actually means) who are too busy jerking off to have thought things through like Reasonable People have, etc. (Never mind that we live in a society that very nearly precludes the possibility of anybody genuinely adhering to that imagined legal ideal of the Reasonable Person when it comes to sexuality...)

I dunno. I simply just do not see any particular reason for distinguishing between porn/erotica versus other forms of art and consumer products except in that we live in a society of enormous sexual hangups and so the former appears particularly morbid due to its prurience. This is not to say "porn/erotica is beyond criticism," (I can't help but roll my eyes at anybody who says shit like this, whether in defense or in petulant whining about how they're "not allowed" to say things), but rather that I think people need to be more critical about like, every other aspect of society, including art and consumer products as a whole.

Like, a lot of mainstream porn is revolting about women. That is because society is a grim fucking place for women. A lot of mainstream porn is nauseatingly racist. That is because society is nauseatingly racist. I have personal opinions about psychosexual repression and the way prescriptivist views towards proper sexuality makes porn significantly worse that I won't get into because I don't think there's much there wrt material arguments, but ultimately I do think porn in itself is not "worsening" things on a broader scale so much as expressing an already dire fucking state of things. The problem, as always, is capitalism, the commodification of bodies and the complete disinterest our country has in protecting the vulnerable, especially when their torment is profitable and when the victims are associated with "lower" or "more degrading" forms of labor.

The thing about anti-pornography as its own stance is that I've yet to encounter a cogent argument distinguishing between pornography and erotica that isn't just "One makes me feel bad and is gross while the other appeals to my particular sensibilities," which is just a roundabout way of getting into the tiresome argument of "There exists a nebulously defined group of Reasonable Individuals to which I belong, and this group is identifiable largely by their enlightened agreement with me, and anybody outside of this group is a blithering savage who's too busy jerking off to be Reasonable."

But like, idk dude I think It Depends. I've seen "tastefully erotic" things I've found so repulsive it made my hair stand on end. And I've also seen tasteless porn that ended up making me think in ways I did not anticipate. There are sexual materials I'm interested in that do nothing to turn me on and there are non-sexual materials that really do it for me. If the only kinds of sexual works you've been exposed to are like "ANAL BUKKAKE - EVERYONE FUCKS MY BARELY LEGAL STEPMOM" versus some literary novel containing arch depictions of sex, then like, yes, I can see how it can be difficult for you to imagine how categorizing between porn and erotica might be tricky. But-- and I concede this is likely a self-selecting group-- most people I know who are interested in sexuality in art tend to agree this is an enormous spectrum with a lot of gray area. Of course, it's easy to dismiss such people as selfish perverts (whatever that actually means) who are too busy jerking off to have thought things through like Reasonable People have, etc. (Never mind that we live in a society that very nearly precludes the possibility of anybody genuinely adhering to that imagined legal ideal of the Reasonable Person when it comes to sexuality...)

I dunno. I simply just do not see any particular reason for distinguishing between porn/erotica versus other forms of art and consumer products except in that we live in a society of enormous sexual hangups and so the former appears particularly morbid due to its prurience. This is not to say "porn/erotica is beyond criticism," (I can't help but roll my eyes at anybody who says shit like this, whether in defense or in petulant whining about how they're "not allowed" to say things), but rather that I think people need to be more critical about like, every other aspect of society, including art and consumer products as a whole.

Like, a lot of mainstream porn is revolting about women. That is because society is a grim fucking place for women. A lot of mainstream porn is nauseatingly racist. That is because society is nauseatingly racist. I have personal opinions about psychosexual repression and the way prescriptivist views towards proper sexuality makes porn significantly worse that I won't get into because I don't think there's much there wrt material arguments, but ultimately I do think porn in itself is not "worsening" things on a broader scale so much as expressing an already dire fucking state of things. The problem, as always, is capitalism, the commodification of bodies and the complete disinterest our country has in protecting the vulnerable, especially when their torment is profitable and when the victims are associated with "lower" or "more degrading" forms of labor.