Isaac Dressen

Person who exists, white, tme, cis.

[smashingorpassing]

if you are unable to donate financially to help palestine, you can donate your time by protesting, boycotting, and putting up posters!

if all you have is your device and internet access, you can put your clicks to good use on arab.org. they use the advertising revenue generated by your clicks to help good causes.

and i would urge those able to spare a few dollars to donate to one or more of the following organizations:

eSims for Gaza

Direct aid for Gaza

Care for Gaza

Women for Women International

Institute for Middle East Understanding

Medical Aid for Palestinians

Palestine Children Relief Fund

Muslim Aid USA

Direct Aid for Gaza

Palestinian American Medical Association

Urgent support for medical professionals in Gaza

Emergency Relief for Gaza

Anera

Taawon

[sissa-arrows]

In France if you suffer from hair loss as a teenage girl and cannot afford a real hair wig the school will try and force you to go to class bald. The school will make you buy a chemotherapy turban, you will buy two different so that the school can choose which one they prefer and you will prove that they are chemotherapy turban and not hijab but once you wear it they will change their mind and say it looks too much like a hijab and insist on you going bald or buying a real hair wig that you cannot afford.

If your doctor makes multiple documents confirming that you suffer from alopecia because of stress and the medicine you have to take for your epilepsy and that wearing a bonnet or something is recommended for your mental health as you’re not ready to go out bald in high school as a teenage girl, instead of admitting they are wrong the school will accuse the doctor of lying and report him to the Ordre des Médecins (equivalent of the General Medical council). Your doctor will find himself asking you for a document stating that you are not Muslim in order to defend himself and prove that no he wasn’t colluding with you so you could wear a substitute for hijab.

Source

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In France if you are a North African nurse at a public hospital and wear a fabric surgical cap they will try to make you remove it because apparently it’s a hidden hijab. They will accuse you of going against secularism and when you’ll argue that they are discriminating you by assuming you’re Muslim for a surgical cap on your head they will change their angle and claim that you should wear nothing on your hair because you wear the same surgical cap in multiple bedroom which is unhygienic apparently (which is a bullshit argument cause you wear the same scrub/uniform in different bedrooms as well). They will go as far as claiming that disposable scrub caps (you know the thin papery ones?) are not okay to wear in a hospital even if you change it regularly. And then they will fire you for a lack of hygiene because you wear a surgical cap.

Source

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All of that will be done in the name of secularism and women’s right despite having nothing do with either quite the opposite.

The teenage girl’s story is also not just about racism and Islamophobia it’s also about ableism as the girl is convinced that the real reason the school is trying to push her out is because she had an epilepsy crisis in class and nobody knew what to do and the school nurse was absent. It could have ended badly had her best friend not known what to do to help. Apparently it was bad enough to cancel class for the rest of the day and the teacher was shocked to the point of ending on sick leave.

[marzipanandminutiae]

oh and don't forget that many parts of France mandate by law how much skin women must show in swimsuits, which they claim is about not getting street dirt in public pools but which is disproportionately enforced on Muslim or even just Middle Eastern/North African women

(and of course is also some forced nudity misogynistic bullshit in general, to boot)

[prettyinpinkcatgamer]

I didn't really care too much about the french government previously, but now I want every one of that scum dead almost as much as the american government.

[sissa-arrows]

What if I tell you that the guy people (internationally) were fawning about because he was the youngest and first openly gay prime minister we had in France is remembered for one thing that he is still very proud of. He passed a law making “abaya” illegal at school. Except there is literally zero way to distinguish a “abaya” from a summer dress or any long dress. So what happened is that Arab and Black girls ended up being profiled at school and school staff ended up deciding that if a Arab or Black girl says that this is not a “abaya” one way to know for sure was to ask them what they were wearing underneath…

So we have grown adults asking underage girls what they are wearing under their dress and if they wear shorts and not just underwear they have to remove the dress and stay in short or they get send back home… grown ass ADULTS checking what UNDERAGE Black and Arab girls wear under their dresses and making them undress or lose access to education. That’s where we’re at in France…

(And you can’t wear a headband either if you’re Black or Arab but that’s an other subject.)

P.S: For the white French people who will be disingenuous and claim that these laws don’t target Arab and Black girls they actually do because it’s only illegal to wear these stuff if you’re Muslim and because Islam is a racialized religion in the West, France assume that all Black and Arab folks in France are Muslim so white girls are not affected by these laws.

[marxistlesbianist]

Hundreds of activists across the U.S. demand “U.S. Out of Korea” and “Stop the Pacific War”

Hundreds of activists across the U.S. demand “U.S. Out of Korea” and “Stop the Pacific War” Korean and Filipino organizations Nodutdol for

On August 15, anti-war and progressive organizations held rallies across New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Minneapolis, bringing together hundreds of people in opposition to the U.S.-ROK joint military exercises known as Ulchi Freedom Shield and the U.S. escalation toward war in the Pacific. These mobilizations coincided with major protests in the Republic of Korea (ROK), which saw thousands of people mobilizing across the country to oppose Ulchi Freedom Shield and the continued presence of the U.S. military on the Korean Peninsula. These rallies were a part of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development’s “U.S. Out of Korea” campaign.

[prokopetz]

My problem with the term "hubris" in literary analysis is that folks like to toss it around in contexts in which it just plain doesn't apply. The notion of hubris inherently presumes that humans have assigned stations beyond which it's morally – and, often, metaphysically – wrong to reach. Most modern fictional milieux simply lack such an implicit hierarchy. That character isn't guilty of hubris; they're guilty of negligent risk management.

[prokopetz]

Folks will analyse a fictional character who accidentally blew up half a city and act like the resulting seven-digit body count is purely ancillary to the real crime of aspiring to exceed one's God-given place in the Great Chain of Being.

[fairycosmos]

IDK it pisses me off the way people act like murderers are some sort of great puzzle to be solved when 90% of the time its literally just a boring freak that hates women

[raydrawsdaly]

Kira and Shaxs during the resistance for @something-boring. Had a lot of fun with this commission!

[forgivenessissupposedtobeearned]

call me crazy but I think it'd be easier if surgeons learned how to operate on fat bodies instead of expecting every single fat person to lose weight before getting surgery

[dumbpuppyfag]

okay fine let's start over from the top

lesson 1: you have to respect women

[dumbpuppyfag]

lesson 2: yes, even the ones you don't want to fuck

[dumbpuppyfag]

lesson 3: also you have to respect the ones you do want to fuck. even if you don't get to fuck them at the end.

[dumbpuppyfag]

lesson 4: sometimes (not always but often enough) respecting women means shutting the fuck up. whether you like this or not is immaterial. you will likely find that this is something of a cheat code for respecting women because so few people do it. this is because we live in hell.

[dumbpuppyfag]

lesson 5: the fact that you say you respect women does not automatically mean that you do. there is no incantation that makes the cultural effects of misogyny disappear.

[dumbpuppyfag]

lesson 6: your position relative to misogyny is a political concept and not a moral one. whether you are a "good person" is irrelevant. if you do not actively seek to understand and account for your position of relative privilege then you will exploit it without even noticing. this is harmful to women.

[dumbpuppyfag]

lesson 7: whatever objections you currently have to the previous 6 lessons are definitely not new and there are entire academic libraries going over them. this is part of lesson 4.

[dumbpuppyfag]

lesson 8: in some ways privilege, be it gendered or racialised or otherwise, is like walking through life with a hammer duct-taped to your hand. you didn't ask for the hammer, there are few (if any) personal consequences for using it and when you're pissed off, it can be really really tempting to swing it. you must never do this, even if you have one million ways to justify it to yourself. even if you hate a particular woman, you must resist the urge to weaponise misogyny against her. there are no exceptions to this.

[nonbino-chaos-fox]

Lesson 9: respecting women includes trans and intersex women

[dumbpuppyfag]

[punished-venom-solitair-e]

spider-woman (petra parker) villains react to her coming out as trans

kingpin: ...this changes nothing.

electro: [very clearly uncomfortable but not willing to interrogate what that says about himself] so is this, like, a permanent thing?

rhino: you are...AH!! [drops the bags of money he's holding and gives spider-woman a bone-crushing hug] MY FRIEND!!! YES!!! my cousin's wife, she is like you as well! beautiful woman. maybe you know her? you do not? is not how that works? i see. you two must meet. we will arrange dinner after i break out from raft again. uhp--no arguments. i have decided.

vulture: this is exactly what fox news warned me about...

green goblin: good for you, bug! though don't think i'll go easy on you because of this. after all, you and i both know i don't have a problem killing girls! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

sandman: [after five minutes of failed explanations] oh, like the thing rhino's cousin's wife has

white rabbit: girl!!! me too!!! no way!!! you know, this is perfect timing actually, beetle and i have been looking for a third, if you're interested...

lizard: [really not getting it] ssssso you have to inject yoursssself with girl DNA how often? seemssssss inefficient. you know, connorsssss only injected himself with lizard DNA the once. maybe you ssshould assssk him to make girl DNA for you.

doc ock: [known the whole time] so...you finally figured it out.

mysterio: [trying to fuck with her] so...you finally figured it out.

mr. negative: [gives a single, curt nod and doesn't say anything but makes sure to gender her correctly during their fight]

morbius: HISSSSSSSS!! spider-man!! vhat brings you to zhis dark corner of the city, at so late an--vhat? spider...woman now? [drops the accent] oh hey that's sick. listen if you need an endocrinologist i know a guy. he's over in brooklyn so it's a bit out of the way--oh you're going to diy? no that makes sense. hey, i really appreciate you telling me. no it's no problem at all. thanks! [starts doing the accent again] NOW BEGONE!!! FROM MY LAIR!!!!

electro again: [still really uncomfortable] i just don't think it's an unfair question to ask. remember that time you were like all mean and had the four extra arms and you said shit like "the die is cast?" how do i know this isn't another one of your phases?

carnage: [sprinting down the street on all fours holding the first syllable of a slur like piccolo charging his special beam cannon] fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffFFFFFFFAGGOTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!

black cat: don't get the surgery

[yookay-times]

[duchessvongooseberg]

[theobule-caul]

Just because a demographic is privileged along one axis doesn't mean it is an unmarked identity, it simply has accompanying cultural constructs built into it that we're accustomed to viewing/treating as a "neutral" default. But there is no identity that is a "neutral" blank slate!

To start simply: M/F stories are not neutral, they are usually built on a scaffolding of gender roles and tropes that almost always center romantic monogamy and allosexism. To write an m/f story, you must choose whether you will engage with /subvert / challenge some (or all) of that. Whether that's an active choice or a passive/unthinking one, it's still a choice.

Likewise, male characters are not neutral, they are usually constructed around ideas of masculinity (sometimes toxic) and gender hierarchy, making them more dominant in our shared cultural consciousness. To write a story centering men, you again must choose whether you will engage with that baggage or unquestioningly include the default assumptions that come along with contemporary gender constructs.

See also: other identity axes. White characters are not neutral blank slates! Able-bodied characters are not neutral blank slates! Slim/conventionally-attractive characters are not neutral blank slates! Etc etc.

And things get even more complex when multiple identities intersect. Writing a romantic story between two white men doesn't "erase" any baggage from gender or race - it may challenge heterosexism, but the author must still choose whether that story replicates or engages with the other identity constructs involved (whiteness, masculinity, monogamy, allosexism, alloromanticism, etc).

There is no identity you can write about that is a "neutral" blank slate, even if you set your story in a different world/era without our contemporary hierarchies of identity, because you can't erase the cultural constructs and assumptions that you - and your readers - have inherited from our parent cultures.

This does NOT mean that you can't write stories about characters devoid of contemporary cultural constructs, just that doing so means making a ton of active choices, not unquestioningly replicating the hierarchy we've been steeped in all our lives and calling it "normal"/"neutral."

[micro-usb-deactivated20230625]

[amazoogle]

this is nothing like a cage you guys. its a chain-link enclosure

[lalatongzi]

Not the first time snopes has defended bullshit on a technicality. They also claimed cops popping the hoods of their patril cars wasnt actually to block the dash cam but rather just to cool off the engine. Don't trust snopes

FACT CHECK: Are Police Allowed to 'Pop Hoods' to Block Dash Cams?

Two images of three Danville, Virginia, police vehicles with their hoods raised led to incorrect claims the practice was sanctioned to obstr

[boringkate]

If you say that you wanna see estrogen sold in vending machines then everyone assumes that's a joke and would have like major societal implications and cause all kinds of problems etc if it were allowed, but in a bunch of countries you can legit just like buy estrogen at regular normal pharmacies without a prescription or anything and it's fine. It's no big deal. It isn't even newsworthy.

[sunscratched]

like genuinely if you're a usamerican living within the american empire in the heart of the imperial core posting about how usamericans are the Most Affected by american imperialism & no one hates the us more than americans you not only have zero business calling yourself an anti imperialist, you have zero business calling yourself a leftist or even having an opinion on anything more important than which cis white guy blorbo of yours is more attractive bc that's the extent of the serious discourse you can handle lmao

[tvguts]

something about Toy Story toys is so strange to me. versions of animated characters based on real world toys, turned back into toys that are slightly different than the actual toys. slinky dog with a rubber spiral instead of a classic metal slinky. the porcelain bo peep and cloth woody turned into jointed plastic action figures. when toy story 4 came out and i saw a $30 talking action figure of forky, a character made out of a spork and a pipe cleaner, i stood in the walmart toy aisle staring at it like cameron from ferris bueller's day off staring at that painting in the art museum

[txttletale]

i know i'm just rehashing something that people have been saying about movies and video games for decades but it's crazy how a ttrpg having sex moves is widely seen as bizarre and automatically gets it described as "niche" while a ttrpg having rules for how to kill other people is so normal that players and pundits will treat their absence as notable in and of itself

[txttletale]

imagine a german going "haha we all have that friendship we remember with the stoicism of an operation barbarossa veteran" thats literally what that post and any other post deploying the 'vietnam vet' as an unermarkable comedy archetype sounds like if you know anything at all about the invasion of vietnam