At the edge of peace there is nothing but war

A rework of a graph I came up with a long time ago that describes my idea of gendered privilege vs oppression.

The idea I am trying to express here is that trans people typically start transition in the "bad [assigned label]" category and then drop down to the gender failure zone. Those few who are very lucky can eventually come out on the other side in the "bad [other label]" category. But nobody makes it to the top, and most still stay in the gender failure zone.

I think it explains some phenomena rather well, like all trans people regardless of identity being affected by all types of transphobia, or conditional male privilege that a certain narrow sector of western trans men is talking about. It also differentiates between the concepts of the bottom of the hierarchy and an underclass of womanhood.

I still feel like the graph is lacking in certain aspects, because I like the terminology "good man" vs "bad man", but I need to make it more clear somehow that it refers to social roles rather than gender identities.

Has anyone ever coined a term that refers to being judged by norms of a certain gender, rather than identifying as that gender?

She proposes rejection of an identity model of gender as one of the principal parts of her vision:

Gender, like all "identity categories" relevant to a materialist analysis, is a class structure. Or rather, the model of gender being used for this analysis views gender as a class, rather than a feeling, an essential spiritual characteristic, or any other idealist notion.

and I can't really tear that out of her work and cite only the parts I like.

I do find her essay remarkable for acknowledging that the society has more than 2 distinct gender norms. It was nice to see from someone else, because back when I first started talking about it, it felt like I was alone.

Okay, let them stay up till 5 in the morning and feel like shit for the next day, eat a bag of candy in one go and have a huge stomach ache, go out without an umbrella and catch a cold, watch a violent movie and get scared?

if you scribble on your toys with marker, you're gonna have scribbled toys, and they'll be ugly. if you break your toys on purpose, you wont get new ones. if you refuse to get dressed in the morning, then you'll be dragged to school in your pajamas. if you don't clean up your room, i wont come tuck you in.

Children should be allowed to draw on their stuff without it being considered ugly and break it without that being a reason to not buy them anything. Safe destructive actions are necessary for development. That's part of what toys are for.

And nobody should be dragged to school, period.

Anything that involves "because I did that, my parents did this" is now a consequence of the parent's actions. Negative consequences of parent's actions designed to coerce obedience are punishments.

These are the necessary definitions you need to understand before entering this conversation, so that you can understand why your parents' actions here are being described as punishment.

There are appropriate ages for a child to develop a complex understanding of others' thoughts and begin grasping that they can "cause" others to act in particular ways by impacting others' internal thoughts (not just by completing an input-output pattern). And there are safe ways to encourage developing that type of meta cognition.

Neglecting your young child's need for ritual and affection before the difficult task of being in a dark space alone with no way out is neither age appropriate nor safely encouraging development.

If a child is young enough that they need the emotional support of rituals like being tucked in, they are also young enough that their understanding of others' thoughts is limited. That's the developmental stage they are in. So, all they are learning is a pattern. They are learning, "my safety network is contingent on obedience to rules no one has explained to me or allowed me to explore. If I want the output of safety, only the input of obedience is accepted."

That is a punishment. It is a coercion to obedience caused by applying negative stresses on a child.

You can understand what your mother was trying to do now, thanks to your more complete social and neurological development. But you literally could not understand it then. All she was doing was hurting you in a way that made you obey.

Okay, let them stay up till 5 in the morning and feel like shit for the next day, eat a bag of candy in one go and have a huge stomach ache, go out without an umbrella and catch a cold, watch a violent movie and get scared?

if you scribble on your toys with marker, you're gonna have scribbled toys, and they'll be ugly. if you break your toys on purpose, you wont get new ones. if you refuse to get dressed in the morning, then you'll be dragged to school in your pajamas. if you don't clean up your room, i wont come tuck you in.

Children should be allowed to draw on their stuff without it being considered ugly and break it without that being a reason to not buy them anything. Safe destructive actions are necessary for development. That's part of what toys are for.

And nobody should be dragged to school, period.

Some of yall may have heard some of the shit that has been going on right now. I'm gonna give a quick run down of some of the stuff that has been happening. Note, this is not all, and it may never be all as much as I will try to update this.

(I am going to try and compile and briefly explain these as much as I can. There may be misinformation. Please inform me if I got something wrong.)

(This will also be updated with additional information and new topics added.)

1) Racist Chinese Dolls.

There are these dolls in China that are being called "Natasha" baby dolls. These dolls are not only very obvious caricatures of black people, but they are being advertised as a "stress relief" in which the people who buy these abuse it in various ways.

This links to a video of a compilation of the various "uses" of the doll. There are more in the replies of the tweet. (Another link to the same tweet just incase)

2) The Mocking, Abuse, and Dehumanization of Black Children.

Apart from the aforementioned doll, there are apparently people going around mocking, abusing, and dehumanizing black children.

Some people have compared black children to the doll.

Others have been going into African countries and have found ways to mock, abuse, and dehumanize black children for clout.

(Source 1 + Full Video) (Source 2)

There are more videos surfacing.

3) Black people are going missing.

Black people, especially children and teens have recently been going missing at an alarming rate. Some of these same people are turning up dead, deaths being ruled as "suicides."

While it generally unknown why many of these people are going missing, many suspect that their disappearances, deaths, and even lack of coverage is rooted in anti-blackness.

The following is a list of black people that have been reported missing as of recently. Please note that this is not a complete list (it may never be completed due to the fact that many of these disappearances will still occur as time passes) this may contain inaccurate information. Please inform me if that is the case.

By the time you see this, some of these people may have already been found either alive or deceased. This post will be updated overtime.

It is also heavily encouraged that you reblog this with more links to recent cases of missing black people if you are aware of any that aren’t included on this list.

Alexis Shaver

Payton Diver

Nasir Tacuma

Ka’Laya Cooper

Makaila Monae Adam

Moriah Kerre Smith

Uchechi Chijindum Nkemdirim

Victeria Uriah Spear

Rilen Wade (Found. Is Safe)

My nine-year-old neighbor: *crashes mom’s car into my yard*

I’m aroace, not just ace, so this doesn’t really impact me as much, but to be honest I find it a bit confusing (could just be I just haven’t seen any posts by the creator about why they included it in a flag that otherwise seems to solely be about asexuality) but I was wondering what you think of it?

Here’s a link to the post by the creator about the new alternate flag

https://aceingrace.substack.com/p/new-asexuality-flag-a-community-conversation

Or just search up new asexuality flag a community conversation in your search engine if the link doesn’t work.

I mostly don't have thoughts on it given that I'm not asexual. Being aroace I feel like you do actually have a lot more skin in this game than me lol.

I think the attempt is earnest & the redesign seems to be about wanting to emphasize inclusivity and intersectionality, which is a noble goal. It seems like the creator of the flag has been dealing with racist harassment over it, which is fucked up. I think people should be allowed to propose flag variations if they want, and the community can decide what they want to do with it. Just as with the lesbian flags and the many rainbow flag variations.

In terms of that specific stripe, it does feel to me a bit like the aro part is an afterthought? Not to say the intention of inclusivity isn't real. But like, "aromantic" isn't a kind of love, and there are a lot of aromantics who I'm sure do not want to be represented by a pink stripe explicitly representing love. I know a lot of people aren't aware of how the aro community relates to the concept of "love" and how to meaningfully include loveless aros outside of just finding new kinds of love to throw in, which is why it can feel like an afterthought. Like trying to add aromantic people into an equation that wasn't built to consider us, you know?

“I would hate for this interest in 4B outside of South Korea to somehow feed and revive the most regressive part of 4B,” Ju Hui Judy Han, an assistant professor of Gender Studies at UCLA, tells Them. “I would actually hate for the interest in 4B in the US to then somehow make this TERF [movement] grow in South Korea.” [...] But the conversation about 4B in the U.S. is rife with misconceptions about the movement, including false assertions that 4B accounts for the majority of feminist thought in South Korea. It’s important to note that despite the global attention, 4B is a fringe movement in South Korea, and Han says the vast majority of South Korean feminists do not abide by it. “I just want to make sure that people understand that 4B does not speak for Korean feminism,” Han tells Them. “4B is not representative of Korean feminist politics. A lot of us see something a lot more diverse and a lot more intersectional than what 4B calls for.” [...] Han says that they hope this blip in interest about 4B fades into the next news cycle, as there are so many other forms of intersectional South Korean feminism that do include queer and trans people. Ultimately, many of the current discussions about 4B are coming from a place of privilege that queer people don’t have the luxury of accessing.

old post & tags but i just was talking about this with someone & then this post came up in my notes again, & i wanted to highlight these because this is so true.

its very orientalist & reminiscent of the "noble savage" and so much western radical feminism engages in this. they love the idea that South Korean feminists are all into 4B and female separatism, and more broadly all feminists from the Global South, because then they can fetishize the real and imagined suffering of women in these countries.

i think there's this need for the symbol of The Eternally Suffering Silent Black/Brown/Asian Woman, who of course agrees with everything white radical feminists from Euro-colonial countries believe. it very much is the "noble savage" idea. like how during America's "First Feminist War," there was so much emphasis on how Muslim countries were in the "dark ages" and "practically medieval."

so feminists from these countries are perceived as like, primitive feminists, pure of the petty bourgeois corruption of western feminists (aka intersectionality & being pro-sex). they are the Ur-feminists from the radfem Garden of Eden, and thus also fundamentally two-dimensional. we have to ignore the existence of trans people in these countries, act as if the same feminist discussions and conflicts that happen in Western feminism aren't happening in feminism in the Global South. we have to play up how violent, savage, animalistic the men of their countries are, have to deny these women's husbands and brothers and sons and friends humanity and complexity. and we also have to pretend they exist somewhere out of time, untouched by modern degradation.

that's why i find it amusing how a lot of people acted like the 4B movement was something that came purely out of the unique situation of Korean women, when in fact the movement traces its roots to translations of Western radical feminist texts. we literally already did the whole female separatism thing and it didn't work out. but if the 4B movement is imagined as this mass movement of Eternally Suffering Silent Asian Women reacting to the unique savagery of Asian men (white males are bad but Black/brown/Asian men are worse, less control over that innate male violence), then it lends female separatism more legitimacy. that South Korean feminists have a lot more diversity of perspectives, that South Korean feminism also discusses intersectionality and trans inclusion and seeking solidarity with men and all of those petty bourgeois distractions, ruins that fantasy.

so, here is the situation.

Slowly, my household has been able to crank our monthly bills down through judicious use of Beans and Rice. i thought we were in a good place and that would be the last i would need to bother the internet for donations in a while.

then, my cat got very sick forever. last week (plus a couple days) we discovered she has very early onset hyperthyroidism, which means she has small tumors inside her thyroid glands that are causing her metabolism to skyrocket - we noticed her getting dangerously thin about two weeks ago and now she is 4 pounds. we have medication and lots of delicious yumular cat food for her, but;

each vet visit is 500 dollars (minimum two vet visits, we've already had one), and insurance does not want to cover it fully because she had high thyroid levels before we got her. medication and extra food is an expense we have not prepared for in the realm of 100 dollars a month or so. and local radioactive iodine surgery will cost us anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 dollars that we absolutely do not have. while radioactive iodine treatments have an extremely high success rate, even if insurance fully approves the treatment that puts us 300-600 dollars on the hook that we can't afford (we're on razor thin margins as it is), but if we don't, then over the course of her lifetime the medication and extra food will cost us vastly more.

this is not my usual "call to help a transgender person pay her paychecks". we simply cannot afford treatment and if we can't afford treatment she will waste away and die. and i really would prefer that not happen, because she's four years old and deserves to have a long full life.

cat tax from when she was healthier

i may set up a gofundme later. i may not because i don't know if there's a way to do it without doxxing me. in the meanwhile, feel free to donate at https://paypal.me/bstdev.

i am also available for freelance work as a writer, copyeditor, and programmer/software developer, specializing in video games and websites. rates are negotiable.

$600/$4,000

We have had her second vet appointment, which insurance covered this time and thus will only cost us like $120 dollars. She is cleared to have the Very Expensive Surgery. However

She has a heart murmur, and needs an appointment with a cardiologist a month from now or so to clear her for surgery first. This appointment is almost certainly more money but I honest to god have no idea what to expect on that regard, so I guess I will throw it on the total once it's done?

She still hates all non-human life forms.

The cardiologist took a look at my cat and we found scar tissue and significant fluid buildup around the lungs. She has congestive heart failure, restrictive cardiomyopathy, and an AV block. She cannot do the surgical treatment, so the only treatment for her hyperthyroidism long term is radioactive iodine, which they also won't let us do until her heart conditions are under control.

Additionally, her heart conditions mean that she likely has on the edge of around 18-36 months left to live, according to the veterinarian. I would like to try and stretch that time as much as possible. I feel like a huge sack of shit asking for financial help on tumblr but I can't... afford treatment right now and I can't even really afford good wet food because I am living paycheck to paycheck, and the cardiologist appointment ended up being another $1140 that I am unsure if insurance will cover and even if they cover it they won't cover the whole thing.

I am trying to hold it together but I am pretty inconsolable right now. Anything you could offer would help at least in that regard.

Thanks,

She still has fluid around her heart but significantly less. She is being put on more medication. Still unclear if she will be able to actually take the radioactive iodine treatment but the prognosis is better. Now please pay us 600 dollars that insurance will refuse to cover for some reason.

That being said, I'm actually not in super dire financial straits because of tax return season, so please do not feel a strong, pressing obligation to donate. Thanks.

this might be the clearest distillation of how a politics of disgust detaches you from consequential reality.

When judging which of two things is worse, which is more harmful, and only one of the two has an actual victim that was materially harmed, that one has to be the worst of the two, regardless of how distasteful you find the other.