Janaina Medeiros
Not today Justin
#extradirty
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Origami Around
$LAYYYTER
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oozey mess
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Three Goblin Art
DEAR READER
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blake kathryn
Cosmic Funnies
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
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JVL
@theartofmadeline
Stranger Things
Today's Document
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@flamingwell
it’s so special to me that so much of fan culture is textual analysis for the love of the game. like thank god there are people in my phone who are also thinking about this thing i love so much that they are writing transformative fiction as character studies and setting clips of the show to music with theme-relevant lyrics and writing long text posts analyzing every line of dialogue like!! yay!!!
i no longer respect the hustle i want universal basic income and dignity for everyone
Modu book cover
having a process for people who have done morally horrific things to make amends, rejoin community, and do right going forward is actually fundamentally crucial for the left. having a clear and accessible pathway for people to be socially (if not interpersonally) forgiven is how you get people radicalized against capitalism and imperialism and white supremacy and patriarchy. its how you turn "these people think i am a bad person" into "these people think something and someone coerced or forced me into doing bad things, and these people want to help me do something about that."
if you want more revolutionaries, you must have a system to turn guilty, traumatized, angry bystanders and collaborators into revolutionaries. and I say a system and process because its not "oh the drone operator said they were sorry and felt bad so its all good now :)" there is no shortcut here. but it is absolutely necessary. no revolution is comprised of morally pure people. in many cases, the most devoted revolutionaries are the ones who know exactly what it is like on the other side.
Okay, but are they willing to take the biggest risks to make things right?
Like, if these people have done the most damage to society, to the safety and dignity of minorities, to the basic decency upon which the world functions, are they willing to stand at the front of the effort to fix that damage?
As a trans person, I'm not particularly inclined to forgive transphobes unless they've put themselves in harm's way instead of us.
Part of the issue is for that sort of thing to happen, people have to want to change and do better.
Many don't.
And many do. Why would we waste that desire? Just because many people don't? It's a pessimistic perspective that only hurts the goal of meaningful progress. Progress will not happen because all the Bad People just stop existing.
I am genuinely begging people on this post to realize that our current system CREATES the issues y'all come onto this post to use as proof restorative justice won't work. There are many reasons people resist change, but one very relevant one is that a system where accountability is inherently tied to suffering does not motivate people to put in the effort to change. A deeply hurt person who has developed a lot of very toxic habits, who struggles to imagine a life for themself where they don't rely on those habits to have a sense of identity and safety, may seem like someone who "doesn't want to change." If we assume that is true, then no one tries to help, then there is no reason for that person to believe change is possible or that they could ever be cared for by society given what they've done, so why try?
I am truly fucking begging y'all to talk to like. Any poor white person from the rural US South who realized how evil and systemic white supremacy is, and becomes extremely personally invested in fighting that in their community. This is not some abstract hypothetical. & there are MANY people who would very much be willing to change, if change actually seems feasible. If you see yourself as unforgivable, because everyone around you seems to see you as unforgivable, is it not easier to just dig your heels in?
We NEED!!!!!!! people to be willing to come over to our side and that simply will not fucking happen if your every reaction to "we need to have a process that allows people to make amends and which incentives meaningful change" is "ohhhhhh but that's hard tho :("
Compassion is a practical revolutionary necessity. It's not a thought experiment. Yes, it will be hard, and complicated, and cause a lot of discomfort for everyone on a lot of levels. It will take a hell of a long time to get where we actually want to be. We will fuck it up a lot along the way. There is still no other choice. Pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy and it does nothing for anyone.
You're moving the goalposts and I'm starting to lose my patience. Your original post started with this premise:
having a process for people who have done morally horrific things to make amends, rejoin community, and do right going forward is actually fundamentally crucial for the left
Then, when me and @magicrainbowkitties rightfully pointed out that people who do the worst things have to both accept that they've done those worst things and also that to make amends they'll have to accept the greatest amount of risk in making things right.
You then promptly shifted entirely to
Any poor white person from the rural US South who realized how evil and systemic white supremacy is
Motherfucker, I'm not fucking talking about some guy from Biloxi who said slurs a couple of times - and neither were you, until it became useful to completely misrepresent our caveats.
"people who do the worst things have to both accept that they've done those worst things and also that to make amends they'll have to accept the greatest amount of risk in making things right."
That is literally what this post is saying we need to have a process for. What exactly are you caveating here????????????
I'm not moving any goalposts. I didn't say "someone who said slurs a couple of times." In the notes of this post, I have elaborated on how this post was prompted by reading about a woman who worked as a fucking drone operator for the US military. I have also responded to people talking about child rapists.
I am really frustrated and annoyed by your "caveats" because they make no sense. I do not fucking understand what you people think I am saying with this post. Like, genuinely, what the fuck did you think I meant by this section:
I say a system and process because its not "oh the drone operator said they were sorry and felt bad so its all good now :)" there is no shortcut here. but it is absolutely necessary. no revolution is comprised of morally pure people. in many cases, the most devoted revolutionaries are the ones who know exactly what it is like on the other side.
Did you think I was just fucking around and smashing random keys when I wrote this? By "process" and "there is no shortcut" I meant "people who did the worst things don't need to accept they've done anything bad and don't need to accept that making amends means accepting a great amount of risk"? Is that what you think I meant?
Its not just y'all. Other people keep coming on this post and adding "caveats" because, as far as I can tell, y'all cannot see a person talking about restorative justice without immediately assuming that they don't understand that bad things require actual effort to amend. The point of this post is that it is necessary to have systems for people to make amends, that actually facilitate and incentivize people to do that hard work, rather than providing zero support or clear pathways to actually go about doing that.
Not a SINGLE part of this implies anything remotely like "you should just forgive anyone whose done anything horrific even if they have done nothing to make amends simply because they said sorry." In fact I LITERALLY included a part of the original post where I explicitly said that's not what I'm saying. So why do people keep feeling the need to come onto this post and just restating the things I already clearly said as if its something that I left out of the post? Why is there this need to keep reiterating, on a post about how it is important to provide mechanisms for people who caused harm to make amends, that people who caused harm need to make amends?
Okay, having calmed down a little bit, I want to make myself clearer. @vexwerewolf blocked me (after coming onto my post calling me a motherfucker unprompted, but whatever) but still:
My original post is about the need for a formal, explicit process that facilitates people making amends. These caveats seem, to me, to suggest that people want those who have contributed to harm to make amends, but then get defensive at the suggestion that communities need to put effort into actually allowing that change to happen, making it clear how it needs to happen, and having that change actually matter, rather than simply talking about it in the abstract but doing nothing to facilitate it.
I will never disagree that people need to actually make amends and take on responsibility. I am saying that we need to make it clear what we expect from people and actually let that change matter and reintegrate them into our communities. What is best for victims is what actually works to prevent harm, not just in the moment but on a systemic level. If we want people to change, we have to actually make change possible, we have to make the mechanisms for change explicit and accessible, and make it actually matter.
We can talk all day long about how people need to take responsibility and it needs to actually matter and they need to be willing to take risks etc etc, but we do at some point actually need to grapple with what that means. If someone does harm, we need to be able to actually say "okay, this is what the process for taking accountability looks like," and then we need to live with the fact that the end point of this process is that person is still a part of our community. I see a lot of people talking about wanting folks to take accountability, but then also don't seem to want to discuss what that would actually practically mean, don't want to imagine being in a community with people who have done harm, don't want to imagine what social changes would need to occur for this process to be as productive as it could be. And then you end up with this fixation on people who don't want to change, itself a product of a system which does not incentivize meaningful change, used as a cudgel against any discussion about how to incentivize meaningful change.
I understand why people immediately go to "but will they actually take accountability? but will I be expected to personally make a person who harmed me a better person?" but there is a reason I distinguished between social vs interpersonal forgiveness and emphasized this being a process with no shortcuts. Trauma causes an aversion to nuance, because nuance is discomfort and vulnerability and risk, and that's all entirely understandable. But we can't just sit here in our trauma responses forever and talk about how much we want a better world while also being viscerally uncomfortable with what getting to that better world actually involves.
Once again: Yes, it will be hard, and complicated, and cause a lot of discomfort for everyone on a lot of levels. It will take a hell of a long time to get where we actually want to be. We will fuck it up a lot along the way. There is still no other choice. If we cannot hold multiple concepts at once and synthesize them productively, then our great-great-grandchildren will be dealing with the same trauma and horrific systems we are right now, because we want the fruits of a better world without doing any of the labor to get there.
What is frustrating to me most is not people pointing out that those who have done harm need to really take on the burden of accountability and repair. It is the attitude that this is not inherent to the restorative justice ideal I am describing, that clearly I must be forgetting that harm is real and serious or that accountability needs to be equally real and serious. Its the reading into my post some innate dichotomy between being victim-centered and try to keep our community pure of all perpetrators of harm, or being perpetrator-centered and utterly naive to what harm actually means and how it occurs, when the entire point of restorative justice should be that this dichotomy is fake and unhelpful to actual, long-term healing.
#you people will do Anything to avoid even the thought of potential future discomfort i s2g#i think people see ''we need clearly defined processes for people to make amends & reenter the community''#and read it as ''MY community? My PERSONAL friend group?? you want me to go out for beers w/ my abuser & be besties & let them move in???#why would you say that?!''#nobody is saying that you personally ever have to want that person back in your life#what people ARE saying is that after they've participated in a process of restorative justice & made amends you don't get to-#-demand that they be fired from their job bc seeing them exist in public makes you uncomfortable#in a world where restorative justice has been successfully implemented sometimes your childhood abuser is going to be a teller at your bank#and that has to be okay. you don't have to go through their line! but you do have to accept that they have a right to be there.
This, exactly.
In a world where restorative justice has been successfully implemented sometimes your childhood abuser is going to be a teller at your bank. And that has to be okay. You don't have to go through their line! But you do have to accept that they have a right to be there.
"absolutely fucking wild shit" and its the idea that people who have abused others will have jobs and exist in the world, as opposed to idk being stood against the wall and shot. because that's working out so well for everyone right now. 99% of punitive justice advocates stop just before the emotional catharsis of violent revenge actually leads to meaningful safety and prevention of harm!
You’re completely correct. Out of my way, able-bodied losers. Fuck you.
Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”
Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.
#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)
i think one of the worst things the left wing internet ever did was push the idea that oppression is basically a virtue, and being oppressed is a sign of your morality. it has made it like…impossible for some of you to hold the idea that most people are privileged in some ways and oppressed in others. AND a lot of you seem to have it in your mind that terrible people cannot be oppressed, and that oppressed people cannot do terrible things, which is a dangerous rhetoric to hold imo.
summer sufferers poll: would you rather have…
the ability to repel all bugs so they can’t touch/bite/sting you
the ability to always be at a comfortable temperature while outside
no chafing ever again
The bugs one bcs I'm immune compromised and bugs carry diseases 👍
Everyone is fighting a tough battle so reblog to give previous a sword 🗡️
Meng Zhi: Doing his job, helping with the plots and schemes, generally being a solid dude
Meng Zhi’s bestie, his boss, his secret boss, his bestie’s secret ex(?)-fiancée, the horses probably: By God, Meng Zhi, you are the Stupidest Man in the whole great Liang
I've reached the point where cynicism is a major turn-off for me. You're not smarter than idealists, and you're not helping.
Funny that the stereotypical cynic is an idealist who aged out of it. In my experience, the reverse is true. I was an extreme cynic as a teenager and then I noticed how profoundly limiting it was, and also that "cynics are cool and smart" was a message that was being constantly reinforced by corporate media for some reason.
#yes! cynicism reads as very juvenile to me#and yes prev often stemming from teen pain
Yeah, like I see black-pilled people on here and my default reaction isn't "oh, these must be world-weary old warriors who've lost their faith in humanity", it's "these people are in their 20s and need a hobby"
I also think that the present era has proven that authoritarian leaders don't actually want a population of wide-eyed idealists, they want a population of jaded assholes who are convinced that everyone is lying, any resistance is either a scam or doomed to failure, and nothing can ever get better.
I feel like, for the people who were once more idealistic and became more cynical, it's never "they aged out of it", but often "they got hurt and are afraid of being hurt again", "they were ignorant (often due to privileges they didn't understand they had) and as they learned more they got so horrified they overcorrected", and/or "they were proven wrong over and over and are afraid of feeling humiliated again."
Whatever the case, there are absolutely a lot of people who are just on a high horse looking down on those 'naive' idealists, but there are also a lot of people for whom it's rooted in fear. Sometimes the latter use the prior act as a mask, and sometimes it's just sincerely both. Sometimes it's also the clinical depression with or without the others, but yeah.
But the thing is, cynicism isn't inherently pessimism. Idealism isn't inherently optimism. As often as those overlap, they can be swapped. Mix idealism and pessimism, and you get... people with impossibly high standards incapable of finding joy in anything for what it is, who believe Perfect is not only possible but mandatory. You get people criticizing all representation for not being good enough, etc. Even those people can be motivating, but an oversaturation... isn't great.
The cynical optimist, on the other hand, is "expect the worst, hope for the best." And sometimes that hope is too passive, especially when surrounded by other cynics and especially too many pessimists. But the attitude inherently does believe things can get better, does want and will try to trust people, even expecting to get hurt more often than not, because sometimes they won't and that's still worth trying.
And we absolutely need idealistic optimists! We need the people with the most motivation to dream big and chase those dreams. The widest eyed idealists are so intensely powerful and we need so many more.
All I'm saying is, there's a solid step in between the misanthropic critics and the shining beacons. Often it's even beneficial to have both kinds of optimist. The cynic can sometimes help foresee and plan for problems, or help keep the scope of a project more attainable and sustainable. The idealist is more likely to see and take opportunities and motivate the cynic to act, providing direction. Just in broad stroke trends of course, but the point is, as long as it's rooted in optimism, in genuine hope, it can still be effective.
If people—if you, person reading this reblog—are skeptic and afraid and can't just let go of that, fighting through that fear is still good. The exhausted "fuck it, I may as well try" is still trying. "I know the odds are slim but they're Not Zero" is a workable mentality. "If I don't try I definitely won't succeed, where if I do I only probably won't succeed, and some chance is better than no chance" is a workable mentality.
And sometimes, if people can pick themselves up out of the pessimism pit and work on doing more of that, even just sometimes, then... they will start seeing things work out more. They'll see more things fail without it being the end of the world, more ways they can get up and try again or learn from it for something else. And the world starts to feel a little less scary. And obviously it's not a hard dichotomy, but maybe they keep getting even more optimistic, maybe they start leaning idealistic in some regards, too.
I fully agree that full misanthropy is ultimately a very immature attitude, regardless of anyone's actual age. Just, while some people will have a vivid wake-up call, others will need to work on it gradually, so I wanted to offer advice to them on how to do that. Start with hope. Out of exhaustion or even sheer spite if that's what it takes.
If morale wasn't important or powerful, there wouldn't be multi-billion dollar industries dedicated to trying to crush it. Don't let them win.
Shout out to trans women who aren’t computer scientists or musicians or avant-garde artists or whatever.
Shout-out to tgirls who work at Taco Bell. Thank u queen, society would collapse without you
Over twenty years ago my big brother got me a job at a Taco Bell in the St. Louis suburbs-West County. He warned me that it was the “gay Taco Bell”, but since I was coming from the “gay Howard Johnson’s” I wasn’t shocked. It turns out it was the black trans women Taco Bell complete with black trans women in management. And they’d worked out an arrangement with the local teen Narcotics Anonymous group so that twice a week we would shut down the drive thru and the dining room and exclusively serve 60+ teens in various stages of recovery. And many of the women I worked with were in various stages of being out or transitioning and they were from all generations from teens to over 50. One woman I worked with had a regular corporate job presenting as a man 9-5 Mon-Fri and then came to Taco Bell and worked 6pm -2am Friday and Saturday night so she could be herself surrounded by other black transwomen in those stolen weekends. And we had customers come from all over the metro area because they knew they could be themselves in the dining room. I only worked there from 1999-2001 but for young me, this was a vital, formative experience. Some of the girls came from north city all the way out to the “gay Taco Bell” on Manchester in west county because they heard it was safe to work there. Like- I know times have changed but they haven’t changed much in 20 years. I’m still convinced that for lgbt youth, finding a job at your city’s version of the “gay Taco Bell” is key to survival.
Thank u for sharing this with us
comfort check
lounging in an ouch position?
haven't taken a deep breath lately?
hungry? thirsty?
need to use the toilet?
too much sensory input?
this is your reminder to get comfortable! go do what you need to do!
This is Sloan. He is the cuddiest doggo you’ll ever meet.
USians, find your reps and call them. This is yet another book ban bill targeting transgender people and anything that mentions race, civil rights, or historical figures of color.
HR 8705 text if you want to dig into it.
Sample script for blue reps:
My name is [_____] and I live in [zip code/district/neighborhood]. I'm calling about HR 8705, the latest attempt by the GOP to erase entire communities from the story of the United States. If passed, it will have a suppressive and damaging effect on our schools and libraries. Teaching a full and honest picture of U.S. history is not indoctrination. Editing and sanitizing that history in favor of patriotic propaganda and white nationalist talking points, however, is. Please do everything in your power to block this horrible bill.
Sample script for red or purple reps:
My name is [_____] and I live in [zip code/district/neighborhood]. I'm calling about HR 8705, the so-called Civics and History Advancement to Restore Learning, Integrity, and Education Act. That's a lot of words being thrown around to say the federal government should get to decide what our local schools teach and how they teach it. If it passes, it will be such a huge waste of time and money. I am opposed to this kind of big government overreach, and I hope Representative [____] opposes it too.
no more historic events this decade that is ENOUGH, i’m putting my foot down
History is not done with us yet my friend
I have received all manner of threat, up to and beyond “I will play a flute carved from your femur,” and yet this is the first time I’ve felt truly threatened
i knew posting this in 2022 was risky but holy fucking shit
@staff
