oozey mess
YOU ARE THE REASON
blake kathryn
tannertan36
we're not kids anymore.
@theartofmadeline
Today's Document
Jules of Nature
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
RMH
pixel skylines
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Origami Around
Mike Driver
One Nice Bug Per Day
Kaledo Art
titsay
KIROKAZE
No title available
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
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@reflect-force
hi, i’m saia! this is my main account and i reblog a whole lot on here. mostly stuff about my favorite games but also just whatever else i feel like posting about
i make pixel art on @saiasprites if you're interested in that instead. that's also where i follow and like from because i did not understand sideblogs when i made my account here
franz kafka’s writings are often analyzed in a trans lens the person who wrote that was almost definitely a trans person who related. people who call kafka a trans woman are almost entirely trans women. there is also a huge subset of literature shitposter girls who use kafka and the metamorphosis specifically to talk about their experiences with womanhood. so while i agree that the trope you are talking about is antisemitic i don’t think that applies here. he’s not being called a woman in a disparaging way.
It. Literally. Doesn't. Matter.
Spoiler alert: trans people can be antisemitic!
Franz Kafka was a real person who died not too long ago, and just because a trans person relates to his writings doesn't mean they can claim he's trans. It's not the same as relating to a fictional character. You can't 'headcanon' an actual person. I don't care how much you relate- he wasn't trans, don't call him a woman. He was an actual person, not a fictional character you can project on. An treating Franz Kafka like a fictional character you can project any label onto and separate him from his actual life is dehumanization and *also* antisemitic.
It's no different than queer people co-opting Anne Frank's memory and erasing her story to just herald her as a "bi icon" when she never had the chance to live long enough to label herself. Queer gentiles need to stop dehumanizing Jewish people and turning them into blank slates they can project onto.
Kafka's Metamorphosis and writings about his depression are from the viewpoint of a disabled Jewish man who was watching as antisemitism was slowly escalating around him and Jews were becoming insects in the minds of society. And "he's not being called a woman in a disparaging way" is the dumbest excuse ever- antisemitism is antisemitism. I've seen trans people infantilize Jewish men, calling them "different breed of man" or "scrunkly" and then insist they meant it positively. Intent doesn't matter. Calling a Jewish man, who never ever indicated having any gender identity otherwise, a woman, or implying he's somehow not a full man, is antisemitic.
I hope I'm not derailing here (please tell me if I am and I'll delete this), but I'd like to especially call attention to this line (which I love, btw):
I don't care how much you relate- he wasn't trans, don't call him a woman.
At some point relatively recently, people seem to have come to the conclusion that you can't empathize with a character (or real fucking person, in this case, and I cannot stress how gross that is) unless you're just like them. "Oh, I, a nonbinary person can identify with this cishet man? He must actually be nonbinary!" "Oh, I, an autistic person, can identify with this Ambiguously Quirky™ person? She must actually be autistic!"
Being able to relate to a person--real or fictional--who isn't just like you is a good thing. It's good that you see yourself in the writings of a cisgender man! Maybe it will teach you that cis people aren't the enemy. It's good that an autistic character resonates with NT people! Maybe they'll gain new insight into their autistic friends and family!
It's called empathy, and it's so important to understand that you are going to see your experiences reflected in people who are unlike you. Those connections are important. Deciding that Kafka must be a trans woman because you're a trans woman is missing the entire fucking point. It means that you do, in fact, have some things in common with a cisgender man, and conversely, it means that cisgender men have things in common with you. To flatten them out so they're just like you is missing out on so much of what they have to say.
People are beautiful and rich and layered and the fact that we can connect with other people and share experiences despite how different we are? That's the whole fucking point. That's what makes life worth living.
OP, I'm sorry I only spoke on being transgender and autistic. Those are the only two points that I could speak on from experience. Talking about real people like they're fictional pisses me off, and I sort of... got off on a thing.
I'm not OP, but one thing that's frightening about this from a Jewish perspective (especially in the context of discussing someone who was alive in the interwar period) is the recurring idea that Jews only matter as lenses for other people's stories. That we can be empathized with, but only if our narratives can be twisted to someone else's.
Because we've seen that before. We see it very often because it's a fundamental premise of some incredibly antisemitic forms of Christianity, and when it turns out that we're real people with real opinions and real beliefs and real feelings who don't just exist to validate someone else's perception of who and how we could be, people don't just abandon their pretense at allyship, they get violent.
It's also a common failing in how the Holocaust is taught. People like to present this lens of "it was random violence that came out of nowhere and could've happened to anyone. It could've happened to you! Imagine if you'd been one of the victims! That would've been a tragedy wouldn't it?" And the thing is, that's bullshit. If you were just a random German citizen at the time? You would've been one of the perpetrators. And it was a tragedy in and of itself; it doesn't become a tragedy by imaging a scenario in which people who were perfectly safe would've actually been potentially in danger (never killed, of course, because Holocaust education is also commonly sanitized, which is a different rant).
Edited to take out a rant that was in drafts and got added to this by mistake, but. Well, the Tl;dr, since that's been reblogged
Well. I'm a cis woman. GNC, perhaps, but cis. And I get misgendered (and degendered) a lot because of how people read Jewish features. And... when friends insist that any discomfort I have with feminine stuff is because I'm an egg... I get that they're trying to be helpful for a journey of self-discovery. But I've done that introspection. I check in with myself periodically just in case. And "oh, you're really nonbinary/a trans man because you're [insert list of stereotypically Jewish features//personality traits commonly ascribed to Jews [whether or not I have them]" -it hurts. Because not only are they minimizing my actual identity and my self-knowledge, and deciding that they're the experts on my life, rather than me, they're doing it in a way that's constantly used to hurt me.
another thing! Jewish men are (pretty often) seen as feminine/unmasculine and like they could never be 'true men'. In a lot of media they're the awkward nerds, the virgins, the weirdos. Point is this is not just misgendering anybody (which would be awful enough), this is misgendering a group that's known to be seen as less masculine than a white man for example
*this is a bit of derailing but it reminds me of how black men face the opposite issue of being seen as hyper masculine & in turn hyper violent. None of us can win in this racist ass society my g-d
“he’s not being called a woman in a disparaging way.”
No, but everything in his writing that gets commented on is something that speaks to feeling out of place in society, or something that conveys emotional or social vulnerability.
So for someone to say “because of these things I think she was a trans woman teehee!” they are implicitly 1) denying that any other aspect of identity might cause these feelings, and 2) asserting that if someone feels these things, they must be a woman.
Ignoring his Judaism AND implying that men can’t feel alienated or vulnerable and if they do they must actually have been a woman. Doesn’t seem very respectful or deconstructing of gendered norms to me.
People need to either start recognizing that you can empathize and identify with jews on our own terms or you can stop fucking talking about us.
Circling back to the important point that misgendering Jewish men as women is specifically racist. Same as considering black women inherently masculine, same as considering Japanese women inherently submissive.
That is not an idea which just popped de novo into your head, anon. That is a long standing aspect of racism against Jews, and you responded to detecting the presence of a Jew by immediately applying those racist tropes to them. It does not become un-racist if you responded with immediate racism unthinkingly. That would, in fact, mean that your racism is therefor internalized, and you need to work to start even identifying it accurately.
Please don’t let fandom ruin something you love. Walk away and unfollow the fans and enjoy the thing by yourself, or find a limited circle of people who ignore the discourse, or get your irl friends into the thing and collectively ignore the Internet community, or blacklist from here to the moon if you need to and only ever scroll through your rarepair ship’s tag on AO3. But don’t let fandom distort a show or a movie or a book or a comic you used to love so badly that you can’t enjoy the original anymore. Please. It isn’t worth it.
My most millennial opinion is that the art of Rick Rolling is lost. A Rick Roll isn't any time you put Never Gonna Give You Up in someone face. Anyone can do that in the middle of any video. Lazy. There's no art in it. The target that gets rick rolled has to be an active participant by clicking a hyperlink. The game teaches you an important lesson o internet safety: 'before you click a link, look at the url that it's going to direct you to. Do you want to go there? Is the link malicious?'
A true master Rick Roller made people so eager to see something that they would click the link immediately and skip their usual caution.
Unfortunately, recent studies show that approximately 35% of Gen Z internet users and 67% of Gen Alpha users don't even know what Rickrolling is. It truly is a dying art. One of the greatest cultural losses of the 2020s.
people are so allergic to the concept of just saying “i don’t like this” instead of making up incoherent arguments as to why you don’t like it / why it doesn’t work. you can just say you don’t like something. not every opinion needs to go to trial.
or why its problematic and anyone who likes it should be arrested or something.
hurr hurr I'm a human body hurr hurr I'm gonna solve all my problems using mucus
"i require more fluids" well what did you do with the fluids I already gave you. hmm? did you make more mucus with them? you made more mucus with them.
canon event
little fairy bugs!!
Just realized that the reason I love making friends on tumblr is because it’s exactly how you make friends on the playground as a six year old. No, I don’t know their name but they love mermaids too and built this awesome sand castle. No, I don’t know their age but their imaginary cheetah is friends with mine. You like this show? You like this character?? You can sing the theme song really loud??? Here is a flower crown. Here is a juice box. You can share my time and I might never see you again but part of you stays in my soul forever. In my mind we’re still on the swing set and the sky is blue and nothing will ever be wrong again.
would anyone's imaginary cheetah be friends with mine...
my imaginary cheetah would be friends with yours
okay!
devastating: artist who has not practiced fundamentals enough to execute high concept idea eats shit
One of the best things about being a writer is thinking of something small you can add to your work that’s just. Devastating. Like you’re sitting there going. Oh. That would be diabolical. People would get really riled up about that. Exquisite. Let’s do it.
being a kid and hearing adults say stuff like "woah 2011 was 4 years ago haha" didn't really convey the fucking horror of a youtube video crossing my recommended labelled "9 years ago" and it's from 2017. that's not true. 9 years ago is 2010 or something. don't lie.
hello leftist. in front of you is the state of israel. your challenge is to not use its governmental wrongdoings to slsnder the name of random israeli citizens or the jewish people as a whole. your time starts now
like i quite literally have never been more passionate about anything than i am about the human race’s invariable desire to tell stories and the fact that we always find a way to do it, through spoken language and written language and body language and visual art and theater and poetry and oral tradition and a million other things. there are so many things we take for granted about the human experience that we never stop to think about but i really want you to take a step back and consider how fucking amazing it is that our need to tell stories transcends all boundaries of time and geography and borders and language. it is one of very few things that is legitimately intrinsic to human nature and i will never stop being completely in awe of humanity for that.
I really love when cats use their front legs to hold something in place while they use their back legs to kick the absolute shit out of it
Destruction. Annihilation, even
This kills me every time
