answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:
tl;dr:
israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.
with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.
the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.
as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.
the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.
ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.
and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.
all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!
long answers under the cut!
if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks
not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices
i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.
unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.
this was posted on abc a few days ago
it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.
even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.
with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.
plugging gaza soup kitchen for those with the means to donate! it's another gazan-led initiative currently providing food, water, classes for children, and medical care across the north and south. you can donate through their website or their gofundme, or follow them on instagram for news about their projects
Argentinian racists are coping so hard right now 🤣🤣🤣 they try to delude themeselves into thinking that their team played a fair game when they were pushing and being brute towards the Spanish team all the fucking time. Not to mention the two goals that were discounted for lno reason. The match was clearly manipulated so Argentina could win but at the end It backfired lmao.
I've never seen the planet come together so much to root AGAINST a sports team lmao. Like I don't think anyone wanted Spain to win, as much as Argentina had to lose. Especially playing like that, every game? Please. Everybody was sick of the shenanigans.
Had my husband explain to me that "no, they can't just play dirty back, because it'll get them in trouble." I was like okay well, I just think that they should train for this sort of conduct. Like, if you know the team you up against literally flips people over like burgers, it's time to practice how to counter that shit. (That flip was CRAZY.)
And so many people here, myself included, had never been involved with international soccer (yeah yeah I know, the US and its weird ass names for shit) this up close before. Next time this happens imma be seated! I had folks that didn't know what was going on, but we all DID see that damn racist video and all the poor sportsmanship from team and fans throughout, and that was enough. Had me devoted to a game on principle. What an introduction to the World Cup lmao.
And it lost Drake betting money, Trump and Netanyahu lost. That's three major losers on TOP of everything else. What a day.
The tma and tme discourse is so fucking draining man, trans men are not your oppressors, trans women are not your oppressors, please genuinely go outside. I’m going to be blocking the tags so consider this my thesis statement.
Transmisogyny and transandorphobia are not exclusive types of oppression for certain groups. They are multifaceted complex and both are experienced by almost all trans people in one way or another. We already have robust ways to talk about these types of discrimination, and we as a community should be working together to fight against violence towards our brothers, sisters and siblings. We already in the middle of a genocide, Oklahoma has made hrt FUCKING ILLEGAL, trans women ARE BANNED FROM SPORTS ON A FEDERAL LEVEL, a man, Sam Nordquist, was kidnapped, tortured for days, violated and then murdered, a trans women (unnamed at the moment) was fatally stabbed to death at a college IN WASHINGTON STATE!!
AND THATS JUST 2 OUT OF DOZENS OF REPORTED DEATHS THIS YEAR ALONE! Please, I beg and plead with all of you, stop drawing lines in the sand, stop trying to talk down to each other, stop hating your fellow queer people. Please.
We need each other, we need to work together, irl and online. Your trans siblings need you, I’m begging you all to stop.
I think arguments like "everyone loves gnc girls until we transition" is correct in identifying (temporary) preference but wrong about the conclusion. These bigots HATE gnc women, it's just preferable to being a man. Easier to keep in line. Bigots love to suddenly "love" a lot of groups when they can use them to reel you back in.
Bigots will throw binary trans people at nonbinary trans people. They don't love binary trans people, they don't wish you were binary trans, they wish you were a step closer to "normal" until they move the goalposts again.
"everyone loves tomboys" they fuckin loaaathe tomboys, but if they can convince you you're not trans, you're really a gnc girl, then they've got you back to "girl" and then they can go after the GNC part next.
There isn't an actual hierarchy in gender minorityship where ones are championed and others are loathed. They just know that 1. if you think each other are enemies you'll help tear each other down 2. if you moved back closer to their goal they can move you again because it's not about your specific path of gender transgression, the transgression itself IS their problem
you can be a trans man, trans woman, nonbinary person, xeno stargender, multigender, gnc man or woman, or just a person who identifies with cisheteronormativity but is getting flagged anyway because hyperscruitiny encourages us to find why someone doesnt belong
A cishet girl cutting her hair short gets immediately investigated for being gay or trans, we don't gotta pretend there is some threshold where True Minorities exist and others are permanently safe from scrutiny
the reason that i'm so passionate about the separation between androgyny and neutrality is because of the way all things about black people be inherently gendered. white transneus and transandrogynes have a sort of privilege in bein' able to achieve their presentation easier. i look in the mirror and see an amalgamation of incoherent features, things that's to be feminine to one yet masculine to another. i'm lightskin and regularly get called "pretty", so i know black people see me as a girl no matter what. but i also have natural muscle in my arms and legs. if i even try just a bit to lean toward masculinity or stud territory to "even myself out" suddenly i feel too masculine. i have dark body hair yet prominent curves, a higher pitched voice with a "masculine" accent, a Pretty smile but an androgynous restin' face. this fine line of neutrality for black people is quite literally non-existent. and because this "evenin' out" be the only way people speak about how to achieve Real neutrality, it seem neutrality might just be impossible for me too.
And people who supposedly support people like me believe it is so. They equate neutrality to whiteness and white thinness, talk about how neutrality is better received and treated than androgyny without the mentionin' of race, but never examine how to fix it, because they view neutrality period as an impossibility; some white, bigoted standard imposed onto black transneus to make themselves more white, because androgyny is truly what's right for black people. because bein' black is inherently masculine. the darker you is the more masculine, the lighter you is the more feminine. black people don't just be inherently masculine to the world, we inherently binary period.
i forgot to mention this, but black people be so binarized and masculinzed that even the literal hair. that. grow. out. our. head. be seen as inherently masculine. mind you, an afro/afro styles that ain't twisted, braided, loc'd, etc is the most unisex thing in the world, so you'd think we'd have the upper hand in such cases...
everyone rightfully complains about how the r word is back in vogue now but I think the people talking about how using ChatGPT makes you a small brained lazy degenerate are getting off way too easy
Every single thing labeled "sign of emotional maturity" is something millions of children worldwide have to do for the sake of survival, and every single "childish behavior" is overwhelmingly characteristic of rich, successful, and respectable people in their 60s.
I want more movies about black main leads becoming crazy and killing people… I want more movies about black women surviving in some crazy situations and being final girls… i want more movies about black ppl committing horrific acts to survive and becoming so changed at the end…
It is a damn shame that is god is and I love boosters aren’t getting the same attention that phm and iron lung did. And it’s because people are not ready for black feminine rage. So please listen to the wonderful people telling you to see these movies IN THEATERS and for the love of god have a little media analyst in your brain asking you why these movies have the themes they do!!!!
already can't pretend to care about the male loneliness epidemic because it isn't real but listening to the way men actually talk about their friends/what they think friendship entails makes me care even less sorry
read an AITA earlier today about a guy who would walk his female friend home to her dorm very often UNTIL she rejected his romantic advances*, then when she asks him to walk her home bc she's drunk and feels unsafe he says no. Men in the comments were clamoring to insist he "didn't owe her anything" and that she was a deceptive harpy who wanted to use her #femaleprivilege to get "special treatment"
and idkkkkkkk that could never be me sorry!! wym you don't care about your friends safety and are willing to mildly inconvenience yourself to ensure they are okay? no compassion or care for the people in your life but its an "epidemic" when you don't have friends? lol
#my favorite thing about every invented problem men have that is dire and world ending #is that it's none of their responsibility to fix it #'if men can't talk about their feelings are you making an effort to do that and check in with your friends?' #'no I'm acting exactly the same but now when I'm called out on being a dick I have an excuse that says it isn't my fault :)' #and now men being bad friends is women's job to fix not theirs lmao
⬆️ i've only ever seen the "male loneliness epidemic" used as a means to scold women. never as an encouragement for men to be better friends to each other
i have another hot take i think full grown adults who have to insert themselves into every media they consume and can’t enjoy things they can’t directly relate to are just deeply self obsessed but don’t think they’re capable of being self obsessed because of self esteem issues, when truthfully self hatred is a form of self obsession. being self centered doesn’t have to be narcissism, it can be severe self hatred too. it just means you think about yourself more than is healthy or normal. and i see that so fucking much on this website it actually is crazy
"So why do you think i, an official representative of the DoD, am talking to you today at your home"
"It can't be be due to when I tried to win an argument on tumblr dot com by divulging information sensitive to national security about a secret Chinese PLA infowar ring dispersing the dangerous idea that you don't need dysphoria to be trans can it?"
We had Russians pretending to be African-American, so why not Chinese people who pretend to be trans? Maybe they’re right and you don’t need dysphoria to be trans, but a lot of the stuff the Russians posted was factually true, just contentious. But this guy’s probably exaggerating the amount of it, because if it’s his job, he deals with it enough for it to seem like the majority.
well tumblr said so do you think tumblr would just lie to provide cover to a free speech crackdown on political speech at odds with democratic party messaging? conspiracist much?
