It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

check out https://riotmedicine.net/ and stay safe “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere" - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

[greatlyunknowablenumbers]

It doesn’t have to be the way it is. -Ursula K. Le Guin

“It doesn’t have to be the way it its. That is what fantasy says. It doesn’t say, “Anything goes” -that’s irresponsibility... Fantasy doesn’t say, “Nothing is” -that’s nihilism. And it doesn’t say, “It ought to be this way”- that’s utopianism, a different enterprise. Fantasy isn’t meliorative. The happy ending, however enjoyable to the reader, applies to the characters only; this is fiction, not prediction and not prescription

It doesn’t have to be the way it is is a playful statement, made in the context of fiction, with no claim to “being real.” Yet it is a subversive statement.

Subversion doesn’t suit people who, feeling their adjustment to life has been successful, want things to go on just as they are, or people who need support from authority assuring them that things are as they have to be. Fantasy not only asks “what if things didn’t go on just as they do?’ but demonstrates what they might be like if they went otherwise- thus gnawing at the very foundation of the belief that things have to be the way they are.

- No time to spare, Ursula K. Le Guin

[marisatomay]

Happy Pride

[captain-price-returns]

[danikriatura]

The FBI cut the phone lines during the 1977 disability rights sit-in. Then they turned off the hot water.

They locked the doors from the outside. One hundred and fifty people were trapped on the fourth floor. Half of them used wheelchairs. The government assumed they would leave.

Kitty Cone was thirty-three. She had muscular dystrophy. Her muscles were failing, but her logistics were flawless. She knew how to organize people.

The federal government had promised to sign regulations protecting disabled Americans from discrimination. The policy was known as Section 504. They printed the promise on paper. Then they stalled. Without a signature, it was just typography.

The protesters entered the regional Health, Education, and Welfare building in San Francisco on a Tuesday morning. They took the elevators to the director's office. They brought sleeping bags and catheters. They informed the staff they were not leaving until the law was signed.

By sunset, the police surrounded the exits. Kitty sat near the windows. She organized the floor plan. She assigned committees for security and sanitation. She kept her medication in a small cooler.

According to federal memorandums released decades later, the strategy to end the occupation relied on medical attrition. The building was not equipped for long-term habitation. The FBI calculated that a population requiring ventilators, specialized diets, and daily medical aides would voluntarily evacuate if the environment became sufficiently hostile. They instituted a blockade.

The blockade went into effect immediately. No food deliveries allowed. No medical supplies permitted through the lobby. Guards stood at the main doors checking identification.

Kitty's muscles deteriorated faster under the physical strain. She couldn't walk. When the phone lines went dead, the fourth floor lost contact with the press. The government waited for the quiet.

Kitty dropped to the floor. She realized the barricades were designed for standing adults. The police had blocked the hallways at waist height. They hadn't blocked the linoleum.

The floors were covered in cigarette ash and spilled coffee. She dragged her body through it. She crawled under the barricades to reach the restricted elevator shafts and unguarded offices.

She carried notes in her pockets. She found a single working payphone the FBI missed. She called the local news desks. She called the mayor's office.

She crawled back. When her arms failed, someone pulled her by her ankles. The Black Panthers heard the news reports. They crossed the police lines with hot meals. The FBI could not stop them without a riot.

They shut off the elevators, so she crawled.

The occupation lasted twenty-five days. It remains the longest non-violent occupation of a federal building in American history. On April 28, the Secretary of HEW signed the regulations without a single alteration.

The protesters left the building the next morning. They went back to their apartments. The Rehabilitation Act regulations laid the groundwork for every accessibility law that followed. The HEW building still stands on United Nations Plaza. The elevators run on a schedule. The doors are heavy glass.

Kitty Cone: the woman who crawled under the barricades.

Source: Kitty Cone's oral history, Bancroft Library.

Verified via: National Museum of American History.

(Some details summarized for brevity.)

[beemovieerotica]

did y'all know that the US had a commemorative quarter for a Black transgender saint

[iowiymiw]

reading this i realized that i was cleaning out my stuff and found one of these quarters literally an hour ago cleaning out my room. huh!

[beemovieerotica]

yoooo

[boomer-mythology-destroyer]

[poligon-sticker]

sketch book scan

last one is photo ref study

[quasi-normalcy]

I do think that anyone could have become a fascist if their life circumstances were different, but I also know that, when I was five years old, my mother briefly explained the history of slavery, emancipation, segregation, civil rights, and apartheid to me, and I think overt racism would have been an instant turn-off for me from any political movement after that point.

[quasi-normalcy]

#that's why they're trying 2 take it out of the curriculum YUP!

[tk-duveraun]

I met someone at like... Age 10? That was almost a copy of me. Adults that had known me for years got the two of us mixed up. We only looked passingly similar, but we ACTED identically. My own brother mistook that person for me once.

I heard after the fact that it was extremely unsettling.

Anyway we went to different schools blah blah, fast forward to I'm 18. I'd run away from home and grown up some and who do I run into? My copy! I recognize them, but I was going by a different name so they don't recognize me.

I was waiting for the funniest time to reveal our connection when, uhhhhhhh, they revealed they were a neonazi.

It was a striking and terrifying realization of what I could have become.

[mortalityplays]

I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter was one of the best works of sci-fi of our generation and one of the best works of transgender fiction ever written, and there are world renowned authors who still have successful careers after they publicly assassinated the nascent woman who wrote it. I don't think they should ever know peace.

[mortalityplays]

Isabel Fall is the patron saint of works unwritten and art unmade by a culture that cannot tolerate trans women

[mortalityplays]

I think this constantly and then I get angry for thinking it, because trans women should not have to be martyrs or saints to animate our politics and our art. that work should have been her debut, not her epitaph. I should be moved by her career, not her absence. I could spit.

[mortalityplays]

read it again

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

If slaying monsters in DnD is built on racism, does that make videogames about killing creatures racist too? Doom, Final Fantasy, Dark Souls, Zelda, even Mario?

I understand You’re asking this in bad faith, but there is a whole thing on how fantasy settings code their races. Zelda, Doom, and to some extent final fantasy are all actually guilty of this (See: Zelda’s horrible treatment of the Gerudo). The primary issue w/ D&D and the fantasy genre as a whole is a general coding of Monsters as ‘inherent evil’, the tieflings are literallt described as ‘paying for the original sin of their forefathers’ (and if any of you liberals try and call and say ‘oh but tieflings are supposed to be seen positively’ please remember what the book says, not what you imagine it saying)

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

boiling down “D&D is written by a white man who deliberately coded the races in his fantasy setting to racial groups he dislikes” to “so you think killing EVIL DISGUSTING CANNIBALISTIC SAVAGE MONSTERS is bad?” is truly a Tumblr Moment

[girlballs-archive]

we need to get more normal about nonsexual nudity i think

[girlballs-archive]

kind of missing the point pretty badly actually

[girlballs-archive]

i mean i kinda think insisting on not seeing boobs at all is kind of lame weenie behavior is the thing

[girlballs-archive]

this might sound harsh but imo that's just not a realistic accommodation to expect in a scenario where we're trying to destigmatize naked human bodies

[wolfertinger666]

people will come up with 10 thousand excuses on why they don't actually agree with something when they pretend to do so. anyway I hope people realized that a lot of the stigmatization against nudity/nude bodies is quite literally the result of colonization/imperialism and overall fascism.

what I mean by that is colonizers viewed the nudity of black and indigenous people as "obscene" and inherently sexual because of the avid dehumanization of them. it's literally just fascist bullshit spread in people's brains SPECIFICALLY AMERICANS. (my European gf has told me many times that America's weirdness about nudity was strange and I agree)

another point: second hand dysphoria, while it is a thing, is entirely on you and is 100% manageable and saying other people's bodies, especially if they are other trans men with breasts, makes you "dysphoric" you need to genuinely push pass that and grow up and stop getting uncomfortable over other bodies. as harsh as that is I'm sure other people don't like being told they're dysphoria inducing.

[the-whateverchild]

Whatever my body makes you feel (aroused, disgusted, dysphoric, etc) it's actually on you to manage your own emotions. No feeling gives you the right to regulate my body. You get to set boundaries for yourself, not for me.

We're not gonna let "protect the trans" be the new "protect the kids", in which neither party is protected and actually all parties are harmed.

Bodily autonomy means I get to do what I want with my meat vessel (and you with yours), and it remains the most fundamental right. Lose that, you risk everything.

Frankly, if a body makes you uncomfortable: good. Sit with that feeling. Assess your discomfort (do you dislike nudity, or are you being fatphobic? Do you dislike nudity, or are you being racist? Do you dislike nudity, or are you being transphobic? Do you dislike nudity, or do you need to silence your inner fascist?). Then realize you aren't being harmed. And move on.

Someone being naked near you, in your line of sight, does not harm you. There is no argument that holds water against this. Discomfort is not harm. Do not moralize your disgust.

Have a lovely day.

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

[beadyeyes]

Where's it made? Who brought it here? How much were they paid? Who makes it? Is it made in separate parts and put together? How much were they all paid to do this? Where do they get the materials? Who paid for that? Who brings it there? How much were they paid? Who streamlined the base materials? How much were they paid? Who gathered the base materials? Where? How much were they paid? Is it good for them? Is it good for us? Is it good for the land? Is it necessary? Is it biodegradable? How much does it hurt? Do I need it? Do I even want it?

[kropotkindersurprise]

June 7 2020 - A Black Lives Matter protester in Brussels is less than impressed by a mounted police charge. [video]

[shesgonnachangetheworld]

it's baffling to still see people be like "you can convince white conservatives to like socialism if you don't use buzzwords! and then work on racism later" in the united states. like yeah, it probably is really easy to convince people that having things is good. how are you going to convince them that the people they hate having things isn't a problem?

[persephinae]

#any analysis of class issues in the us that doesn't take anti-black racism into account is a fairy tale#if you haven't come around to the fact that republicans hate black people more than they love god i don't know what to tell you

republicans hate black/brown/poor people with the white hot intensity of 10,000 suns

we are NEVER going to advance, make any progress, or get anything nice like other countries until white people actively dismantle racism. it's just never going to happen.

[queeranarchism]

In my limited non-US-based experience, the more racist someone is, the more sense it makes to find some common ground first.

If you are a stranger or opponent to someone, why would they do the very uncomfortable work of questioning their deeply held beliefs? If you are that coworker who helped everyone get paid overtime, someone whose opinion on workers' rights they already respect, then there's more incentive to at least consider your opinion.

& I'm not saying 'go be nice to racists', or that you have to do the work of convincing racists to be less racist. But if you do want to convince racists to be less racist, finding common ground first is a way to do it.

There are other ways, like creating an environment that's so socially hostile to racists that there is a social and material incentive to at least act like they're not racist. But that does require a group, preferably a majority, of people willing to create that environment. If you're in a space where most people are racist, you're unlikely to be able to create that environment on your own.

[ledsastray]

^ it is imo very specific to place. In the US class is FORMED out of racism. Genocide of Native Americans got the land and Anti Black racism is how anyone else got to be a working class because 'working class' depended on chattel slavery then Jim Crow. Although a minority of the left that wasn't Black acted from solidarity most did not included in organised struggle - instead cementing white solidarity in gradual layers of becoming white American. From most unions being white supremacist to redlining and property theft, educational exclusion, trades, white people and most other people of colour (though this varied by time and state) the whole idea of 'having' anything - a decent job, basic rights, was built off anti Black racism and race hate.

The UK where I think we both are @queeranarchism is different. The white working class here has had waves of being mobilised by fascists and the far right using antisemitism, racism and xenophobia, we (I'm white working class) gained materially from colonialism giving us an inflated idea of where concessions to basic material stability came from - global majority labour and enslaved people's work, but we did not cohere as a class in contrast to enslaved people or those emancipated living in the very same place and the very intimate knowledge of the treachery of asking for a living because of being white workers not Black workers. We relate (simplistically) as a class to Black and Brown people as incomers and takers of our stuff - not as like how we proved we were human because they were not.

It is not a lesser racism but it is just very different and so the intervention type conversations will be.

[queeranarchism]

I (not from the uk) have a lot of reservations about this analysis, but assuming for the moment that all that you just said was true:

If you were in the US and you wanted to get your racist co-worker to start questioning their white supremacist worldview and take a first step towards learning all that you've just explained: how would you go about becoming someone that they're willing to listen to?

[geniusbee]

these are getting weird

[tamabula-rasa]

​

[tamamoland-with-a-gun]

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH EVERYBODY*

here's the lgbtq tag trending as it does regularly due to multiple porn bots catfishing using the same stolen pictures of the same trans woman on the same page

remember the year in review? this was one of the featured tags. note that despite neither the image nor video in the posts in this screenshot being marked as mature content, this screenshot of them is going to mark this post as mature content as soon as I post it

here's some of the lovely messages of positivity you can expect to get if you're a transfem on this platform! I cropped the real-life gore images out of the first one, the person in the second one has made multiple posts like this + pedojacketed me and still has that same account and does that same shit, and the the person in the third took weeks for tumblr to do anything about, because:

here's tumblr staff stating that making explicit death threats towards transfems is not a violation of the ToS or user guidelines!

and here they are stating it again! and while we're on the subject of who the user guidelines apply to:

here's SPECIFICALLY AND EXCLUSIVELY MY CONTENTLESS REBLOG of a year-old post with 15,000 notes being flagged as sexually explicit (over 100 times in case you thought it was maybe a fluke) despite the image in the post not actually showing anything, SPECIFICALLY AND EXCLUSIVELY MY CONTENTLESS REBLOG of a heated rivalry gifset showing two fully nude dudes fucking center frame getting flagged as sexually explicit, which it is according to tumblr's definition, but despite that it has tens of thousands of notes and in fact is so popular and shared that if you look over to the third image you can see that same gif as one of the trending tag thumbnails! and on that note:

here's an episode of an anime available on youtube with a TV-14 age rating that I posted a screenshot of that got flagged as sexually explicit, had the appeal denied twice, got fully nuked off the site, and then got my entire blog marked as mature for posting!

and here's that same already-marked-as-mature blog curiously being marked as mature a second time out of the blue 15 minutes before they dropped the age verification update that would hide mature content!

and here's my first blog of 13 years getting a SPECIAL type of mature flag that marks all of my posts as mature content individually and separately from the actual mature content label!

you don't get to appeal these terminations btw! they automatically and instantly deny your appeal and send you the rejection before you even get the email telling you they got the appeal and will carefully review it

not that appealing will do anything anyways! here's tumblr staff terminating me for explicit content when I appealed the explicit flag on a post that they accepted the appeal on after terminating me for it,

and here's tumblr staff denying my appeal on that termination, lying about why i was terminated, terminating my already-and-still-terminated blog a second time to change the termination reason to one i can't appeal, which they then upgraded from an account deactivation into a postmortem full account nuke! isn't that wild?

here's them doing it to me a second time

and here's tumblr staff terminating me FIVE TIMES in multiple weeks it took them to do anything about a burner blog and a post pedojacketing me and encouraging people to harass me forever over completely fabricated claims that everyone spreading it around admitted were false on the post itself by the way! note also how only the burner blog got deleted - but the main account? just a post removal. after weeks of it being reported and spread around. the fastest of my terminations during this period was three hours after making the account by the way!

which isn't an isolated occurrence, either! they'll pass over multiple open, avowed nazis posting swastikas and slur-filled nazi race science shit about how they think black people are biologically inferior subhumans for months on end to nuke some random transfem off the site in as little as 10 minutes after account creation, then take MULTIPLE MONTHS to respond to your report of someone sending you harassment messages to tell you that the content you reported has already been removed (because it's an ask in the inbox of an account they already terminated along with four others in the time it took them to respond)!

And to really send a clear message about where they stand, they've REALLY ramped up the termination of transfems since the start of pride! And everybody will act like you deserve it and are a subhuman unworthy of life if you don't openly support the multiple ongoing harassment campaigns against transfems, all enabled and quietly endorsed by tumblr staff and moderation!

*except transfems

[tamamoland-with-a-gun]

[tamamoland-with-a-gun]

if you had a reblog of this from my original reblog queued or in the drafts this will have broken it btw you will need to queue/draft it from literally anywhere else except that original reblog