Did You Know: Rajhin is the most successful thief in Elsweyr history? One notable example of his accomplishments in larceny includes stealing the Amulet of Kings from Alessia herself.
stop letting miserable people on the internet convince you that you must have a concrete, well-constructed opinion on everything that has ever existed.
Biden previewed the shift in a Zoom call Saturday with the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
“I’m going to need your help on the Supreme Court, because I’m about to come out — I don’t want to prematurely announce it — but I’m about to come out with a major initiative on limiting the court … I’ve been working with constitutional scholars for the last three months, and I need some help,” Biden said, according to a transcript of the call obtained by The Washington Post
Four days after that debate, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump was immune from prosecution for official acts during his first term in office. Less than an hour later, Biden called Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, to discuss the ruling and the arguments for and against reforming the court.
Biden continually works with really smart people in the background, quietly, until he's ready to do or announce something. He uses these tactics in negotiations with other countries as well. He's not bombastic nor does he make the media happy because he's boring, but he's effective.
Whether you like him or hate him, he's actually good at this job and he gets shit done and often times it's actually good shit.
re: that last post, ive said it before and ill say it again: no one deserves to die (deserving is fake and death is bad) but some people need to be stopped and choose to make death the only way to stop them
denying the humanity of people who do horrible things accomplishes exactly three things:
give cover to people who haven't been caught yet by allowing them to use their humanity as "proof" of their innocence
silence any criticism of societal structures and institutions that facilitate those horrible things by putting the focus on individuals who are assumed to be so uniquely monstrous that the ways it was made easy for them are irrelevant
provide a shortcut to dehumanize anyone you feel like killing: simply accuse them of doing a horrible thing
3.a. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could kill a child, then all you have to do to get people to burn down the jewish quarter is say that jews kidnap christian children to bathe in their blood
3.b. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could commit rape, then all you have to do to get people to string up a black man you don't like is find a white woman who's willing to point at him while she cries and babbles
3.c. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could molest a child, then all you have to do to get people to drag gay people behind their trucks is say that since gay people can't have babies, the only way they can make more gay people is by following a nefarious Agenda to "convert" children by molesting them
3.c.a. meanwhile if you try to address the rampant sexual assault of catholic altar boys, you're met with "don't be ridiculous, he's a priest!" (see #1) and with assertions that even if it does happen sometimes, those priests are just infiltrators who don't represent the church and there's no reason to make sure priests and altar boys are never alone together (see #2)
tl;dr: your disgust-based violent politics are not less reactionary than any run-of-the-mill homophobe or racist's disgust-based violent politics
I realized how bad of a take this was after I added my last bit, i apologize for the idiocy i portrayed in my half thought out statements. And I appreciate the way you rebutted this with reasonable statements rather than going hog wild because I said something you didnt agree with.
hey no worries. we've all been there, and anyone who says they havent is either 11 or afraid of their social circle
unlearning our kneejerk reactions is a process, and it's not a linear one. its good to practice thinking before we post, but sometimes thinking after we post just has to be good enough
something you said has been on my mind for a while - "kink is not inherently sexual". good faith! I don't understand that at all, could you explain it a bit?
This post is educational, hooray! Extensive discussion of kink under the cut. Nothing explicitly sexual is described in detail.
Please note that in this post, I use the terms top and Dom/me interchangeably. This is because I personally identify as a "top" and not a Dom. Some communities draw sharp lines between these two terms, and it's useful to make sure that you're using the same definition as other people when you're talking. Some people use "top" solely to refer to the giving or penetrative partner, which is not synonymous with the dominant partner. Topping subs, power bottoms, and all other permutations exist. I just use that term for myself because I don't like being called a Dom. It sounds like a guy's name to me, I don't like it.
When I text my wife in every morning, "Please bring me my coffee," and she answers, "Yes, Sir!" is that sexual? I'm surely not feeling sexual when I'm barely awake. When I hold my other wife's hand when she's having a depressive fit and tell her, "Daddy's got you, it's okay," that's kink, but it's not sexual. In that moment, neither of us feel particularly sexy, and we're surely not engaging in sex, but it's kink that - forgive the pun - binds us more strongly together.
One of my girls wears a 24/7 collar that I locked in place. (She can ask me at any point to take it off, or she can take it off herself if she wants to, but she chooses this.) That's kink. It's also... a necklace. That's not any more inherently sexual than her wedding ring, though it - for us - certainly symbolizes part of our relationship that happens to sometimes include sex, exactly the same as a wedding ring.
There are a lot of types of kink that don't include sexual contact in any way or which might include sexual contact but don't need to. One of my friends is a sex-repulsed ace bootblack. They literally take care of the boots of tops, usually at play parties. For them, this act of service and submission allows them to go into a particular headspace that's very fulfilling for them. They are explicitly serving the people whose boots they clean and polish. The Dom/mes receive that service and not only get really great-looking boots out of the deal but also get the feeling of power from having someone eager to take care of them and serve them. For some of us, that kind of service allows us access to a feeling of power that can be hard to access in our daily life, and that feels really good.
Sometimes, it can feel good in a sexy way, and sometimes it feels good in a "makes lizard brain feel powerful but not sexy" way. Neither one is inherently better or worse or more or less kinky than the other.
Sometimes, people who like being whipped like it because the line between pain and pleasure is like a wave on the ocean, and they want to surf it. Sometimes, that involves mashing squishy bits together, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, it's just about riding that endorphin wave and then having someone take care of you afterwards.
Sometimes, people want to be tied up in elaborate shibari knots and fucked. Sometimes, people want to be tied up in elaborate shibari knots because that process requires a lot of trust and is an intimate ritual that takes a lot of time. Sometimes, it's both. Sometimes, people want to tie up others because it's a beautiful work of art, because that ritual of binding is a ritual and accesses something sacred for them. Sometimes, they want to be tied up because it's playtime, and that's fun for them! Sometimes, they want to be tied up because when they're tied up, they are 0% in control, and they want to just surrender control to someone whom they can trust.
Some people want to go into sub space - that headspace I talked about earlier - because in their everyday life, they have a lot of responsibilities and stress, and going into that space where nobody can ask anything from them, where they have no responsibility to make any decisions at all, is a relief to them. That might involve squishy bits, or it might not. Some people like going into that sub space because being someone's Good Boy, Sweet Girl, or Good Pup is gender-affirming for them. A friend of mine only feels really safe when he's got his pup hood on, because that means he's With Master, who will protect him.
Some people get gender affirmation out of being in control, being someone's Daddy or Mistress, Sir or Boss. It allows them to access a power that helps them to square their shoulders and take on the world.
All of this entirely skips over the fact that a person's primary sexual organ is between their ears, and some people do get sexual fulfillment out of kink even when no genitalia are involved at all, but I cannot stress enough that the reasons that people enter into the multitude of kink situations in the world are as varied as the people involved. People gain access to comfort, to feelings of stability and order and control over their lives, to gender affirmation, to endorphins that are or aren't sexual in nature, to release from responsibility, to ritual and intimacy, to the ability to provide for others and take care of others in a way that their outside lives may or may not permit. For that matter, they may simply gain access to a paycheck, and that's fine, too. That's no more or less "selling your body" than when I used to run my ass off for 13+ hours a day at my retail job, and I guarantee they're making way, way better money.
The fact that so many people see kink as only and purely sexual means they're missing out on so much of what kink can offer, and narrowing down the experiences of others to this tiny little sliver of what actually exists. Yes, it can be sexual, but it doesn't have to be. The reasons that people engage in kink are as varied as the reasons that people engage in any other kind of interaction, and the fulfillment they get from it is as varied, too.
This post helped me make sense of something that has been nagging at me for ages, but I haven't been able to put words to until now!
I consider myself to be a kink positive and sex positive person, but I've had this ongoing issue of finding myself very uncomfortable with what I've come to think of as "kink-adjacent" communities. These are communities that practice a lot of the same things as the kink communities I'm familiar with, but without the sex.
Somehow, even though I'm on the asexual spectrum myself, I have always felt more comfortable interacting with people in the explicitly labeled "kink" communities, while the non-sexual communities that are often labeled "no kink!" make me very uncomfortable.
What I've just realized is that OP is completely right! It's all kink because it's not about the sex. It's about the power exchange and the power dynamics.
Inside kink communities, that's usually all spelled out up front and there is no hiding it. We all know that this is about power dynamics etc. We all know that this is kink.
But in those communities where people are screaming "No kink! SFW only! No sex!" all the stuff about power dynamics and power exchange tends to be obfuscated and/or denied. Maybe this is because I'm neurodivergent and I struggle with ambiguity, but I really dislike this obfuscation!
My perception is that when things are clearly called kink, as they should be, it's easy to define my boundaries around them and let people know what I am and am not comfortable with. But when people won't recognize that something is kink, just because it doesn't include sex, then it feels so much harder to maintain those boundaries. I just want to know what I'm getting into before I show up somewhere (virtual spaces included). It's important for me to be in the right headspace when I'm encountering certain types of power dynamics.
OP, I really hope this doesn't derail your post or I'm not intruding on a larger conversation that I've missed. I'm genuinely so grateful that your insight helped me make sense of something that I've been struggling with.
No, that's a great point, and thank you for making it. A lot of people don't talk clearly about power exchange and boundaries outside of sex, and they should. Kink communities are often good at that in ways that others are not.
Also, acknowledging that non-sexual and non-romantic content can still be KINKY content is important in a fandom sense sometimes, in that if you have a fandom very full of those "SFW only! no sex!" types, you don't get things that I would 100% consider kink appropriately tagged and labelled in fanworks.
I'm adjacent/mildly in a fandom that is RIFE with stuff that is very much kinky content, of various stripes, some of which I don't enjoy at ALL, but none of it's tagged, because the fandom is also very averse to shipping or sexual content. Which gets kind of uncomfortable especially when characters who are minors are caught up in kinky/kink-adjacent dynamics with adults that I personally don't want to read about, but it's okay and doesn't need tagged for because it's a "SFW no sex no shipping" fandom for them. And while the rest of us in the fandom can kind of spot when that stuff's happening and avoid it, we're worried about them leaving this fandom for other fandoms that expect better tagging standards and acknowledgement of kinky content and having a really bad time.
If you can understand and internalize that kink =/= sex or romance, you can better identify when maybe you've written something that is playing with power dynamics in a way that probably needs tagged for, especially if it's a teenager and an adult involved in those dynamics in your fic. Which is so two steps to the side of the OP's point so hopefully this isn't obnoxiously derail-y, but it IS adjacent to both OP and @maemaybe's points so.
This is all very important to talk about, and I appreciate that you did. If these dynamics aren't recognized, they can't be acknowledged and tagged for, either for those who enjoy them or those who want to avoid them.
Tumblr's love of the liege/faithful knight dynamic, for example? Not-necessarily-sexual kink, potentially.
I want to also caution people against forcing a label of kink on other people's writing or activity. Not that I'm saying what's happening above, but that it can be really fucked up to have someone telling you, "your relationship/ship/etc. is non-sexual kink." Telling someone "this makes me uncomfortable because it feels too close to that for me, so can you please tag for it?" is one thing, but saying, "This is that thing" is another.
People say "You have to draw the line somewhere, and Biden has crossed it-" and my response is "Trump has crossed way more lines than Biden".
These categories are based off of actual policy enacted by both of these men while they were in office.
If the ONLY LINE YOU CARE ABOUT is line 12, you have an incredible amount of privilege, AND YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT PALESTINIANS. You obviously have nothing to fear from a Trump presidency, and you do not give a fuck if a ceasefire actually occurs. You are obviously fine if your queer, disabled, and marginalized loved ones are hurt. You clearly don't care about the status of American democracy, which Trump has openly stated he plans to destroy on day 1 he is in office.
if you want to vote for a third party, what you are going to do is vote for biden in november 2024 and then as soon as that’s done, start trying to get ranked choice voting in your state
we will ALWAYS be a two party system until voting reform happens, and voting reform won’t happen if project 2025 happens.
suck it up and vote biden, then put the next four years to good use
TIL that there is journalism equivalent to the Bechdel Test. An article about a female scientist fails the “Finkbeiner Test” if it mentions one of seven topics regarding her womanhood
Okay, one quote, and then you absolutely have to read the whole thing.
Still, the virtue of some rules in Aschwanden’s test is difficult to see at first. Take the rule of “no firsts.” In the comments section below her post for Last Word on Nothing, Finkbeiner explained that no sooner had she taken the vow to ignore gender, than she caught herself writing that the astronomer she was profiling was the first to win a certain award. After a reader urged her to stick to her pledge, she removed it.
“The fact that she’s the first woman to do that says a lot more about the prize-giving committee than it does about her,” Finkbeiner explained in our interview. “So if I were going to put that into a story, it would be a story about prejudice in that prize committee.”
It blew my mind, because she’s right. The fact that there’s some many firsts left is the result of bias in the committees NOT IN THE WORK WOMEN DO
Please be coherent about this and recognise that what this headline means is:
Poor and marginalised people are being kicked out of the houses they worked decades to secure, just at the time in their lives when they are the most vulnerable
And the ones kicking them out aren't of a specific age either. Soulless assholes come in every generation, and the ones born with too much money are the worst of the lot. Right now, a guy your age is authorising an eviction against someone the age of your grandma. Pop culture generations cannot explain that.
Here are some truths about the upcoming United States election.
Either Trump or Biden will win.
Our political system is designed around ensuring that either the Democrat or the Republican win. There is no "but if everyone rallies around a third party candidate..." argument, because...
Grassroots campaigns can't work. There are areas of the country that don't have internet or television. Congress just allowed the Affordable Connectivity Program to lapse, denying internet to even more people. There is literally no way for some candidates to get their message to huge parts of the country.
The Republican and Democrat candidates are backed by huge donor machines that enable them to tour a campaign trail. Independent candidates do not have this luxury.
Our country still uses a First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system, which is specifically designed to support only two candidates.
Our country uses an electoral (all or none) system, which is why you hear that voting for a third party candidate "takes votes away" from one of the major party candidates. For example, if Trump gets 48,999 votes, Biden gets 50,000 votes, and a third party candidate gets one single vote, Biden takes all the electoral votes in the state. All of them.
I really hope you make your peace with this now. Please, vote how you want, but with one candidate saying he will essentially outlaw transgender people, I can't imagine NOT voting for the only other candidate who can possibly win. Right now the polls are 50/50, which is absolutely insane to me.
In my experience, it's usually younger people who talk about either voting their conscience, or not voting at all to "send a message." I assure you, not voting doesn't send a message to the candidate who loses. Your message is only received by the millions of Americans who will suffer as a result.
I don't want to argue. I have no desire to fight with anyone over this anymore. And if you want to ask me "so I have to choose between two killers?" as a gotcha, then I'm sorry to say... The answer is yes. Those are the choices we've been given. And because the United States is no longer a true democratic republic, there's not a whole lot we can do to change that right now.
With no national support or attention, Arkansas women (and a few good men) did what everyone said couldn’t be done. On July 5, organizers tu
With no national support or attention, Arkansas women (and a few good men) did what everyone said couldn’t be done. On July 5, organizers turned in enough signatures to qualify an amendment to restore access to abortion in Arkansas. The amendment will restore access up to 18 weeks for any reason and thereafter has exceptions for rape, incest, fatal fetal anomaly, and life and health of the mother. The amendment had no support from national groups like Planned Parenthood or the ACLU because it didn’t allow for abortions up to the point of viability. However, polling showed that anything over 18 weeks simply wouldn’t pass in deep red Arkansas, and the amendment will cover 99% of abortions that do occur.
Abortion rights will be on the ballot in Arkansas, thanks to a 100% unfunded volunteer effort! Amazingly good news.
This is a really, really good example of not letting perfect be the enemy of the good.
Because yes it fucking is better to restore some reproductive rights and abortion access to people in Arkansas even if it's not perfect. Even if it's not as much as it should be (which is total), this will make such a fucking big difference to so many people, especially with "life and health of the mother".
You don't necessarily stop there. You keep educating; you keep doing outreach and explaining and pushing and teaching people in Arkansas that the fearmongering and misinformation they're fed by Certain Interest Groups is wrong, and maybe one day it will be perfect.
But literally every person who manages not to have an unwanted, unviable, dangerous, non-consensual pregnancy forced on them to term because of this is still worth that effort, imperfect as it is.
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