"The Great Turning" (?)

am i writing a book?.holy fuck? tears of joy rn.

[ellewantsrevenge]

aadam jacobs's archive

[paradoxkin]

Sexing & Gendering Are Trauma. Here's Why.

The System Decides Before You Exist

You aren’t born. You’re anticipated.

Before you take your first breath, the system has already decided who you are. Ultrasound blurs, blood tests, a glance at genitalia—none of these are confirmations. They’re guesses dressed as facts. And the moment that guess is made, the gendering begins: names, colors, toys, expectations. By the time you’re born, the script is already written.

The Assumption Cascade

Sexing assumes your body will fit neatly into a binary. Gendering assumes your personality, your emotions, your entire life will follow that script.

These aren’t descriptions. They’re instructions.

If you’re sexed female: You’ll be nurturing, emotional, submissive. You’ll have a vagina, a uterus, the capacity for pregnancy.

If you’re sexed male: You’ll be strong, stoic, dominant. You’ll have a penis, testicles, the capacity for impregnation.

If you’re intersex: You’re a problem to be fixed.

The system doesn’t wait for you to prove it wrong. It shapes you to fit.

The Trauma Is Structural

This isn’t about you. It’s about the unilateral imposition of identity before you can consent, before you can even exist.

Lack of consent: You didn’t agree to this.

Foreclosure: Possibilities are closed before you can imagine them.

Institutional enforcement: Medicine, law, and society collude to make it seem inevitable.

Retroactive naturalization: The system points to your life as proof it was right all along.

Everyone is traumatized by this. Even those who benefit.

The Weight Never Lifts

Even if you diverge—even if you’re accepted—that acceptance is conditional.

It demands you erase parts of yourself to fit the script.

It will never be equal to the power of those born into hierarchical privilege.

It can be taken away the moment you stop performing.

You can leave the category. The category never leaves you.

The Illusion of Benefit

Yes, some people benefit from this system. But the benefits are traps.

Assigned male? You get power, but at the cost of your emotional range, your vulnerability, your personhood.

Assigned female? You get protection, but at the cost of your autonomy, your agency, your safety.

Assigned intersex? You get erasure, violence, and the message that your body is wrong.

The system doesn’t care about you. It cares about its own survival.

The System Always Wins

Conform? The system validates itself.

Diverge? The system contains you.

Resist? The system punishes you.

Resistance doesn’t break the system. It exposes it.

Abolition Is the Answer

This isn’t biology or destiny, it’s architecture.

Sexing and gendering are decisions, not discoveries. They’re impositions, not observations. And they’re traumatic for everyone.

But here’s the good news: The system is fragile. It depends on our silence, our compliance, our belief in its inevitability.

We don’t have to be silent. We don’t have to comply. We don’t have to believe.

The system is a lie, and lies can be unlearned.

TL;DR:

Sexing and gendering are violent, unilateral acts that script your life before you’re born. The trauma is universal, the benefits are traps, and the system survives by keeping us divided. Abolish it all.

I've worked on writing this post and arranging the charts for many hours, but the thought behind it has been brewing for some time now, the thesis that sexing and gendering are traumatic events for everyone is something I have been meditating on for many months now, and I have finally acquired the words to articulate them. Still, my language is not the best, and I know I cannot possibly be inclusive of every experience. If you have your own thoughts and/or experiences to share, please, add them to this post in the reblogs or replies.

This is a heavily simmered-down version of a longer article I wrote on substack, which you can read here. If you want to continue to hear more of my thoughts, you can support me on kofi. I am a disabled and impoverished queer artist and writer who could use any help you are willing to spare. Thank you for reading.

[feyburner]

99% of fanfiction is absolute dogshit bathwater and that’s beautiful, I love that, I love that the barrier for entry is nonexistent, I love that anyone can do it, I love all the badly written porn, I love that it’s just creation for creation’s sake, I love it. Except when it’s something I’m into. When it’s something I’m into, then I’m gonna need everyone to step it up.

[sarakipin]

Hello, Avatar Pavi!

Made this little print in preparation for SDCC 💜 every day that goes by brings everyone closer to meeting her! I'm so excited 😭

[quietwingsinthesky]

like the betrayal’s always going to be worse if they cared about you and it didn’t matter. someone discards you because they didn’t give a shit, then you can be angry about that, you can feel vindicated in that, you can get over it. but if they can look you in the eyes and say “I love you. I would make the same choice again.” You will never sleep peacefully again, is all.

[quietwingsinthesky]

“I thought they cared about me, but they were lying this whole time.” <- tired. boring. removes all the nuance of this relationship to make it easier to move on from.

“I thought they cared about me, and I was right, and every minute they were there for me, every time they said they were proud, every laugh we shared leaning against each other bruised and breathless, all of it was real. and they still left me behind. They could put their love aside. I couldn’t.” <- insane. will never leave you alone. reminds you that even the worst people are still people and can still care about even the ones they hurt the most and that undoes neither the harm nor the love.

[kyoshi-lesbians]

my controversial opinion is I don’t think Zuko was confused by “my first girlfriend turned into the moon”

[kyoshi-lesbians]

he was there during siege of the North. he infiltrated the spirit oasis. he has an uncle who studies spirits and the spirit world. he watched the sky go dark then the moon suddenly reappear like everyone else in the entire world did. and most importantly he watched zhao get eaten by a giant godzilla fish spirit.

[kyoshi-lesbians]

his entire life since he saw that beam of blue-white light in the south pole has been ‘this day has already been so goddamn weird’

[edgar-allan-possum]

The only really new information was that that was Sokka’s girlfriend

[library-graffiti]

Important opinion in the tags that I need to have be part of the post:

[clearascountryair]

Also, Iroh was there? He literally watched Sokka make out with the moon spirit. And you want to tell me that a romantic sap like him would not have immediately told Zuko about this romantic tragedy? Please, Zuko has known about this for ages, he just knows that this is not an acceptable situation in which to say “yeah, I know.”

[terriwriting]

Sokka: “My girlfriend turned into the moon.”

Zuko: “I know.” “Yes.” “She sure did.” “Uh huh.” “Tell me something new.” “Are we still talking about that?” “That’s rough, buddy.”

[alexseanchai]

[image: tags by samwisethebold: #it’s not that he doesn’t get what sokka means #it’s that how on earth do you respond to that]

[uberguber89]

When you put it like that, this is actually a legendary display of tact on Zuko’s part

[yagamimi-aka-mimi-deactivated20]

tweet

Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.

[ama-kitkat123]

>:)c

May I present to you, nationalclothing.org?

It doesn't have everything, but it's still my first source when researching traditional clothing from other cultures.

[penanatomy-studies]

There's also this resource on historical fashion: Claire’s Historical Fashion Reference & Resources

[zheida]

another addition as far as physical media goes there is the encyclopedia of national dress (that i still need to buy myself bc this kind of thing is super important to my sort of fantasy designing) but yes i do agree i wish there was EVEN MORE documentation on this

[iascus]

Reblogging to spread awareness

[my-art-tutorial-blog]

the goldmine folks

[counttwinkula]

hey did you know that uhh

i. the monster's body is a cultural body

ii. the monster always escapes

iii. the monster is the harbinger of category crisis

iv. the monster dwells at the gates of difference

v. the monster polices the borders of the possible

vi. fear of the monster is really a kind of desire

vii. the monster stands at the threshold… of becoming

[counttwinkula]

oh shit i didn't expect this to actually get notes lmao

these are all direct quotes from jeffrey jerome cohen's "monster culture (seven theses)" (full pdf linked) i highly encourage you to read it yourself!

that said, while i think cohen's writing is evocative, it can be a little dense, so while i'm here, here's my capsule summary (you can also hear me talk about this in the first episode of my podcast) (listen to @ghostswerepeopletoo)

i. the monster's body is a cultural body - The monster is a work of fiction to be analyzed through tools of literary and sociological theory.

ii. the monster always escapes - As long as the cultural fear from which the monster stems persists, the monster will reappear in retellings, reimaginings, and sequels.

iii. the monster is the harbinger of category crisis - Monsters defy binaries and challenge easy comprehension or categorization.

iv. the monster dwells at the gates of difference - The monster represents the Other.

v. the monster polices the borders of the possible - Tales of the monster exist to discourage unacceptable or taboo behaviors.

vi. fear of the monster is really a kind of desire - Subjects can vicariously participate in the disruption of the social order through the monster.

vii. the monster stands at the threshold… of becoming - Within the monster we find information about the self.

[iphigeniacomplex]

if everything is going to gradually become outrage marketing can we at least have some fun with it and do the movie remakes with all-women casts again

[headspace-hotel]

disney's 3D animation is so ugly it pisses me off just to look at it. my sister says Frozen is actually a good movie but i can't see it through how Ugly the character designs are

[bedrockfactory]

My take on Na'vi redesign

Plus some characters. Jake was the hardest to draw as I wanted to keep his human features and now he looks cursed but ehatever

[the-great-turning]

"Congratulations, Katara. You're a blood bender."

She bolted upright in bed, pin needles of cold sweat firing off her skin and shattering against the walls like glass.

The screaming woke me. "Katara!" It came out of me like a bellow on accident, shocking myself. My robe gets tangled around my knees, only further startling me. "Nightmare," I choked out, grasping the doorframe. "Katara, nightmare, its me," I said trying to keep the whisper from turning into only a rasp. "It's me, you're dreaming."

She recoils at first. "Sokka?" Her head turns and in the little moonlight I see she's crying too. She reaches out.

"Yeah, its me. C'm'here." I sit on the side of the bed and I pull her to my chest in a hug. Its like she's 14 again, instead of on the verge of 30. My powerful and independent team mate, reduced to my achingly 6 year old baby sister. How could I have let this happen to her?

Katara's breathing calms and she leans back against her pillow. Her eyes ask me, 'Where's Aang?' but she knows the answer as well as I do. He's being the Avatar.

[the-great-turning]

"Zuko?"

Immediately the I stood back from his desk, a bright smile rising as I did. "Katara! Its wonderful to see you! How have you been?" I crossed my chamber to welcome in the waterbender and offer her a chair.

She took the plush, red armchair. "Thanks! It's good to see you, too. I'm... okay."

I could tell something was off. There was something in Katara's nervous smile, and the way she was playing with her hair. I could tell right away something was bothering her. "That's good, I'm very glad. Would you like some tea?"

"Oh, uh, no thank you. Actually Zuko, I... have sort of a confession."

I couldn't help the confusion that tugged at my eyebrows and she noticed. I came to rest on a matching seat across from her, but only perched on the armrest.

"And I'm so sorry."

My eyebrows deepened.

She took a big gulp of air. "Zuko, I lied. I didn't catch Azula in ice, like I told everyone. And please, Aang can't know!" Her eyes darted to mine and she gripped her knee furiously, then her gaze dropped again. "And you were shot full of lightning just on the ground and I couldn't do"- she paused again and breathed, "I bloodbended her."

[the-great-turning]

"Congratulations, Katara. You're a blood bender."

She bolted upright in bed, pin needles of cold sweat firing off her skin and shattering against the walls like glass.

The screaming woke me. "Katara!" It came out of me like a bellow on accident, shocking myself. My robe gets tangled around my knees, only further startling me. "Nightmare," I choked out, grasping the doorframe. "Katara, nightmare, its me," I said trying to keep the whisper from turning into only a rasp. "It's me, you're dreaming."

She recoils at first. "Sokka?" Her head turns and in the little moonlight I see she's crying too. She reaches out.

"Yeah, its me. C'm'here." I sit on the side of the bed and I pull her to my chest in a hug. Its like she's 14 again, instead of on the verge of 30. My powerful and independent team mate, reduced to my achingly 6 year old baby sister. How could I have let this happen to her?

Katara's breathing calms and she leans back against her pillow. Her eyes ask me, 'Where's Aang?' but she knows the answer as well as I do. He's being the Avatar.

[tahioxaaa]

Dragonized Gloink Qween

[inconveniently-discorporated]

Me: *agonizing over whether a semicolon goes here, what the proper dialogue should be there, other assorted rules and semantics*

Terry Pratchett: "!" said the stranger.

THAT'S ALLOWED?

[serricoj]

Writing is for communication. Sir Terry knew very well that anything's allowed if it helps you communicate something effectively.

[rpepperpotshipssciencebros]

[thatlittleegyptologist]

"Using an Oxford comma is a sign of AI"

bestie boo, let me fill you in on something: if you're going to take any part of 'good grammar' and randomly assign it to She's A Witch! AI, you might as well give up. It's over. You're cooked. Anyone who has spent the last decade or more learning to type properly, anyone who has spent any time writing articles/papers/essays that require you to use 'good grammar' is going to fall into that 'oh no it might be AI' trap.

Stop hunting like it's 1692. You're not going to find Goody Proctor at the ChatGPT sacrament. What you're going to do is exactly what happened back then: harming people who've done nothing wrong.

[arviyya]

can I reblog this a million times

[the-great-turning]

this goes triple if you're someone who actually knows how to use a semi-colon.

[headspace-hotel]

Weediness as a quality of Art?

something i wrote down while I was at work

When I was walking in the town I saw some cool graffiti, and I thought, Hmm. Graffiti is a lot like weeds. It pops up in neglected and overlooked places, and thrives until someone destroys it in routine maintenance.

Like an ecosystem, art is a living system.

I quickly began to think of ways that graffiti and weeds are alike.

It is perceived as worthless or threatening economic incentives.

There are active efforts to destroy or eradicate it, which are eternally futile because of the aliveness of the system.

It appears in areas of active, violent neglect, disruption, and abandonment.

Its absence or presence can be a visual signal of class.

I thought, what are some other "weedy" artforms?

Fanfiction could be a weedy artform.

Huh, I thought. Are there domesticated or cultivated artforms?

It became clear to me that the answer was yes.

There are two types. One type is the crops: those plants that have daily necessity for all people. They are often monocultures, often highly exploitative, but they are a daily part of existence.

In art terms, this is pop culture and mass media: popular music, movies, tv shows.

The other type would be the ornamentals: those that are cultivated because they are perceived to have intrinsic value or beauty. These are the poems, paintings, sculptures, the arts that are seen as more intellectually important and more restricted in who has daily access.

Well, I thought then, are there "wild" artforms? And I thought that the answer once again had to be yes: that's textile arts, woodworking, pottery, basket making, arts that are often considered according to their practical value and not given the same consideration as fine arts. They are often romanticized and thought of as artifacts of the past to be preserved, and sometimes they are brought into cultivation (appreciation as fine arts), but they can lose their context and everyday usefulness. They are considered as threatened by economic incentives and efforts to protect them are perceived as wasteful.

Graffiti and fanfiction are weedy artforms. Are there others?

In addition to the qualities of weediness I listed up above, there is another quality: They get some of what they are from their antagonistic relationship with the mainstream view of what has value. They emerge in a space that is "owned" by another entity and thrive because there is no economical way to destroy them all faster than they can emerge. Likewise, Weeds are inherently (by some definitions) disrupting the intent of a space: they exist in defiance of what that space is "supposed to" be.

Fanfiction could be compared to weeds in an agricultural crop field: they spring up in the monoculture of popular media franchises and become more powerful and compelling than the environment that created them, even though many people will overlook their value.

Graffiti could be considered like lawn weeds: its presence has intense connotations of class, and the extermination campaigns are intense, but lawns that are neglected long enough (just like the walls of an abandoned building) can become places of diversity and thriving.

Weedy art could also be any art you create for yourself without special skill or economic incentive to do so, purely through intrinsic motivation. Many people kill these weeds before they grow into flowers, thinking that a common weed without any cultivation could never produce a beautiful flower, but if you let them grow you are often surprised. Doodles, drawings, anything you create could be weedy art.

Weeds are invincible on the evolutionary timescale, impossible to fully eradicate. They are our friends and have sustained us in many ways throughout human history. I read in a paper once a theory that true monoculture is only an idea in the human mind, never able to be truly realized, because weeds will always emerge and disrupt this false idea of perfection.

Certainly, our ecosystems are held together and sustained with life within this gap between how we imagine the world should be (clean, perfect, without weeds) and how the world really is (weeds! weeds! WEEDS!). Without weeds, the biodiversity in the world around us would crash dramatically.

Is this also true of weedy arts? Is the art we value the least and often actively try to eradicate, necessary for sustaining us as creative human beings?