e e e

Anyway here are my favorite notes

Exhibit A: The very feminist take that people socially/medically/legally classed as female aren’t oppressed on the basis of being socially/medically/legally classed as female.

Exhibit B: Seeing a non-sexual image of a trans man and immediately thinking about him bottoming. Because sexually objectifying random people for no reason is, again, very feminist. 🙄

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

Supporters of India's youth-led Cockroach movement said Tuesday they will continue their protest in New Delhi, refusing to leave their sit-in site a day after police used tear gas and batons to disperse thousands of them as they tried to march toward Parliament. Hundreds of protesters camped at Jantar Mantar, a designated protest site, under heavy police presence, saying they would stay until Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigns over alleged failures in India's examination system. "We are going to continue our protest," said Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, which emerged just two months ago. The movement, drawing students, professionals and families, marks a rare public challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi 's government in its third term, reviving criticism over its handling of dissent and its use of force to respond to protests. [...] Sona Bisht, a 20-year-old student who was part of the protest, said the confrontation strengthened her resolve. "If the government thinks that doing this with Gen Z, they can stop us, then that won't happen. We are here talking about education, talking about securing our future. And till the time our demands are not met, we will not move from here," she said.

"Definitions developed thus far about youth, like the Gen Z narrative, have largely been linked to roles attributed by the dominant system. The rulers have invented a whole range of terms — rebellious, irresponsible, apolitical, extremist, consumerist — not to understand youth, but to neutralize it. They know as well as we do that whoever wins over the youth wins over society. [...] Thus the question is not whether youth is powerful, but in whose interest this power is directed. Today’s uprisings — such as those in Nepal, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, and beyond — demonstrate that youth continues to emerge as a decisive actor. Young women like Deniz Ciya have proven this with their lives. These uprisings are not expressions of generational temperament. These „Gen Z uprisings“ are expressions of a social force confronting structural crisis inherent in the current system. [...] Recent youth uprisings — whether in the form of environmental justice protests, labor movements, or uprisings against authoritarian governments — are proof that youth worldwide are not only responding to a set of circumstances; they are consciously and collectively rejecting the narratives that seek to define them. Thus, it is crucial to analyze what transpired, and draw lessons from these uprisings, particularly in the context of building a global youth democratic confederalism. For the power of youth movements is interconnected, despite being geographically distant." — "Beyond "Gen Z": Defending Revolutionary Youth Spirit" by Lêgerîn

He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"

"What?"

He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"

"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."

Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.

I’m in my mid-thirties and I have never had sex. I’ve thought about it and could have had one or two opportunities if I put in more effort, but I always decided against it because I just wasn’t into it at the time.

I can safely say that I do not feel I have missed out on anything. I was perfectly capable, by myself, of learning about my own body and boundaries without anyone else there to muddy the waters. The immense pressure that was there in my teens/twenties to Have Sex Just Do It is basically gone. I’m vibing. I’ve got my routine by myself in bed that I enjoy, and that’s enough for me.

And in the unlikely event that I ever decide to have sex with someone in the future, I don’t feel at all like I’m lacking some essential Knowledge or Skill that would “make it good” for someone else. I fully expect to ask my partner out loud what they like and to receive an answer clearly communicated and to relax and have fun. And if it’s a disappointing experience, I’m fine with that too. It is what it is.

this post is like 11 years old

hey

[id: reply by @isabeau276 reading "When exactly did the last movie about the Holocaust, which is for historical purposes as well as to inform people, including idiot people, about what happened—The stories are endless and need to be told. How bizarre and offensive to label it a fetish—come out and what was its/their name/names. Please help clear my memory; the last I remember is Schindler's List and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Both were extremely important productions. I guess *you* "forget." Thanks. 🙅🏻‍♀️💜🌷🩷🌷" /end id]

hi! thank you for your reply. in my response, i'm going to be pretending i didn't notice the smug, sanctimonious, and sarcastic tone in this reply, and will instead be addressing these points as though they were being presented in good faith:

When exactly did the last movie about the Holocaust

well one recent example was the zone of interest from 2023, which won an oscar. [x] if you need more examples, might i recommend this wikipedia page: [x]

which is for historical purposes as well as to inform people, including idiot people, about what happened

i have some bad news for you about the movies you mention later. i want to bring up an important book that i think will be very enlightening in this conversation: people love dead jews by dana horn. i've already taken the liberty of transcribing and posting some of my favorite quotes, which i will be linking: on the sanitization of holocaust narratives and which narratives end up successful [x, x (oh hey look this one mentions one of your examples), x], on what current holocaust media and education is actually teaching [x, x]

The stories are endless and need to be told

nobody is denying the importance of the preservation and education of these stories. however, it's important that we discuss what narratives are most popular and why (hint: some answers include antisemitism and capitalism)

How bizarre and offensive to label it a fetish

i'm assuming this is referring to @baroque-hashem's reblog containing the phrase "i want goyim to stop fetishizing our trauma." fetishization as a term refers to the act of ascribing value to an object (in this example, a group of people) not because of the object itself, but rather because of what it represents. in this instance, the meaning of this phrase is found in the second half of the sentence: "i want goyim to stop fetishizing our trauma as if we exist solely as a moral allegory for goyim"—meaning, goyim don't actually care about jews or jewish trauma, they only care about their ability to use it as a metaphor for their moral education. refer to people love dead jews to learn more. (also, the sexual meaning of the word "fetish" came after the original meaning [x], which has a very anti-indigenous slant to it but that's for another post. either way, baroque-hashem's usage of the term was correct)

Schindler's List and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Both were extremely important productions

important, maybe, but anything but representative of the holocaust, and they're honestly piss poor education tools. the latter is especially criticized for the literal harm it has done to holocaust education [x, x, x], however that certainly doesn't mean that the former was without rebuke [x (this one lists more films for your list), x, x]

Read here: