vee // late 20s // they/them // anarchist // england // into lazy gardening, kicking ass for the working class, and obsessing over a different group of fictional queer rebels every few months
"You can’t stand up. But you don’t want to kneel down. Then you can only lie down flat."
Absolute baller move by Chinese millenials
“A new viral term promoting slow living has taken China’s cyberspace by storm, and authorities are moving quickly to stamp it out.
Tangping (躺平), or “lying down flat” is a counter-culture philosophy championing minimalism and anti-consumerism.
The “lying down flatist” believes that people are more than mere extensions of capital. The “lying down flatist” is in open rebellion against the hard-working, credit-hungry, striving existence promoted from the top down in China.
The idea originated from a short post, “Lying down flat signifies justice”, published on a mainland Chinese forum, Baidu Tieba, in April.”
Given that China(the gov’t)’s Imperialism (and its relationship to US/EU Imperialism & Finance) is literally a huge driving factor in Capitalism and literally destroying many countries in Africa and other continents, lying down is, indeed, literally justice.
“I haven’t been working for two years, I have just been hanging around and I don’t find it a problem. Pressure mainly comes from comparisons with your own peers and the conventional values of the older generation. These pressures keep popping up…Messages about “fertility” are pressed upon you by an “invisible organism”. But, we don’t have to abide by these (norms). I can live like Diogenes and sleep inside a wooden bucket, enjoying sunshine. I can live like Heraclitus in a cave, thinking about the “logos”. Since this piece of land had never had a school of thought that upholds human subjectivity, I can develop one on my own. Lying down flat is my philosophical movement. Only through lying down flat can humans stand at the center of the universe.“
Godspeed to ppl everywhere opting out of being used as tools of destruction by greedy assholes
On this day, 9 July 1959, the Wadi Salib riots were sparked in Israel when police shot and wounded Yaakov Elkarif, a Mizrahi Jewish immigrant. Originally an affluent Palestinian neighbourhood, it was largely destroyed in 1949 by the Israeli government, and the vast majority of the Arab population forced to flee. Poor Jewish people of North African and and Middle Eastern origin were placed into the derelict and overcrowded homes, and were told they would be temporary until they could be relocated. However they were not, and were left in poverty, crime and neglect by the Ashkenazi Jewish establishment which saw them as inferior. Years of simmering anger exploded on 10 July when local residents protested outside the police station, and eventually began fighting police, burning cars and looting shops. The following day, rioting broke out in other cities with significant North African populations, including Tiberias. At least one of the protest organisers, David Ben-Haroush, was subsequently imprisoned. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1757066317811844/?type=3
On this day, 7 July 1912, the Grabow massacre took place in Louisiana, leaving 4 dead and 50 wounded.
During a strike by the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World union, a few dozen timber workers demonstrated outside the mill owned by the Galloway family in Grabow. When union organiser A.L. Emerson began speaking, a man emerged from the office and fired at him, clipping the brim of Emerson’s hat. Then more shooting broke out, lasting for 15 minutes during which around 300 shots were fired.
While none of the bosses were charged, most of the strikers were arrested and tried for serious charges including riot and murder. However all of the workers were acquitted in a significant victory for the union.
One of the union gunmen, “Leather Britches Smith”, was murdered by vigilantes later that year.
Learn more about the IWW at this time in our podcast episode 6: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/05/23/wch-e6-the-industrial-workers-of-the-world-in-the-us-1905-1918/
Pictured: IWW prisoners after the incident https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1755794554605687/?type=3
Something I wish people on Tumblr would understand is that pro-war propaganda can be critical of the war in question and still work as propaganda. Propaganda doesn’t have to be all jingoism all the time–it can have nuance. It can be realistic about the injustice of the draft, about the trauma that soldiers suffer, about the disillusionment they feel towards their country and their cause. What makes it propaganda is how it encourages people to assume the perspective of the invading forces. We see these characters as complex, sympathetic people; we feel their pain and anger. We experience the war through their eyes. Very rarely, if at all, do the soldiers from the opposing army–or the civilians of the country being invaded, for that matter–receive the same treatment. Sometimes they don’t even appear on the page or screen. This is fine, because at its heart, no war story told by the invaders is ever about the people whose country has been invaded. It’s always about our guys. Our guys can struggle and agonize and writhe with guilt about what they do during the war, but at the end of the day it’s still their story. When we watch or read propaganda, when we adopt the perspective of our guys, we can easily forget that the war ever had an impact on anyone else besides us, let alone what that impact actually was and is. This is exactly what propaganda wants us to forget.
So, if you’re reading this and you are one of the many consumers of propaganda about the Korean War, let me tell you what you are being made to forget. My grandmother is Korean. When I think of the Korean War, I think of the stories she’s told me. I think of how she survived her homeland’s violent invasion by two different imperial forces before she turned sixteen. I think of how she and her family had to ration their rice when they lived in U.S.-occupied Busan. I think of how she had to learn English in her makeshift one-room school run out of an abandoned warehouse, just like she had to learn Japanese in the village where she was born: you’ve got to know the language of your colonizers. I think of how the U.S. dropped more bombs on North Korea alone than on the entire Pacific theater during World War II. I think of how the population of the North was literally decimated: 12 to 15 percent, over a million people dead, many if not most of whom were civilians.
I think of how lucky my grandmother was to get out of South Korea alive, before the U.S. installed a right-wing authoritarian government there that terrorized its citizens for the next several decades. I think of how the war technically never ended, how the U.S. still has military bases on the Korean peninsula, how some of my grandmother’s relatives disappeared and died in the North after the 38th parallel was drawn. I think of how South Korean and U.S. forces collaborated to coerce women into sex work near military bases, how those women are only in the past few years receiving acknowledgment of the cruelty they suffered. I think of how the stigma of simply existing as a Korean woman in the American imagination continues to this day, often with deadly consequences, as we’ve all so recently witnessed.
I think of how the grief and trauma that is the Korean War’s legacy reverberates down through my family and through me, as it does for literally every single Korean person alive on Earth today. I think of how the experiences described above are nowhere near unusual, and in fact my grandmother is incredibly fortunate compared to most Koreans of her generation. I think of how I learned nothing about the Korean War in my high school history classes, because to learn any accurate information about the war at all is to comprehend the full scope of the United States’ depraved brutality. I think of how people my age who think of themselves as intelligent, empathetic, politically aware consumers of media are choosing not only to get their information about the Korean War from a 1970s propaganda television show, but also to be entertained by such propaganda. What a huge gap there must be, between my life experiences and yours, if you can be genuinely entertained by propaganda about the Korean War. If you can look at the propaganda and see shippable twinks or gender envy or relatable humor, instead of a reminder of the horrific violence that the U.S. inflicted and continues to inflict on occupied land all over the world.
It is impossible for me to be entertained by propaganda about the Korean War, because I know what this propaganda wants me to forget. If you are entertained by this same propaganda, I would ask that you think about what makes that possible, and what exactly it is that you don’t know, or that you are choosing to forget.
jiang cheng and lan wangji’s ability to not bond is honestly astonishing. name any other pair of characters who could spend three months fighting at each other’s side, having both just experienced the destructions of their homes at the hands of the same people, while searching desperately for a person they both love, and end up with zero emotional connection at all. iconic
On this day, 25 May 1895, libertarian socialist author Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for two years’ hard labour for “indecency” for having sex with men.
Though many potential witnesses refused to testify against him, he was convicted, and upon sentencing judge stated: “It is the worst case I have ever tried. I shall pass the severest sentence that the law allows. In my judgment it is totally inadequate for such a case as this. The sentence of the Court is that you be imprisoned and kept to hard labour for two years.”
Wilde’s detention would cause him serious health problems which eventually contributed to his untimely death.
In his essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism, in which he expounds his political ideas, he declares: “Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”
You can read the essay here: https://libcom.org/library/soul-of-man-under-socialism-oscar-wilde https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1724421034409706/?type=3
I feel really stuck between being a butch lesbian and being transmasculine also and i dont know what to do about it cause like. Im bisexual. Im seventeen so this doesnt even matter for now, but god i was a lesbian for so long, and then i was a boy for a year and i realized i like boys, and now i kinda wanna go back to lesbianism but i cant anymore bc this cant be re-repressed. Transmasculine is good for now but i feel. Weird about it. I wish i could just be a butch on T in the 90s
I know this doesn't fix other stresses you have going on but you can.....just be a butch and transmasc. you can be butch and also go on T, I am 3 years on T and I've never been more at peace with my body
as for the other things you mentioned, for me my attraction to me tapered off soon after I realized I just didn't have the connection to manhood I thought I did, because of a variety of reasons, including 'i don't want to be in a relationship with a man with this specific dynamic/relationship to my gender' and following that I just didn't have the same attraction to men that I'd had.
and additionally......and someone may be very mad at me for this, but if you feel this much anxiety about attraction to men, if you feel this upset about being attracted to men, that's worth looking at. attraction is supposed to feel good. it's supposed to be nice and not fill you with uncomfortable feelings.
and while someone may be further mad at me, the thing that made me finally realize I was a lesbian was that im not interested in men, which is different than being attracted to them. if you aren't comfortable with being in a relationship with a man, if it's not something that you feel would make you happy, or give you want you need.....that's ok. you don't have to factor people into your orientation that you aren't interested in. you do not have to recategorize your entire orientation around possibilities or people you are not interested in. if you want.
it's up to you how you categorize yourself and I don't know your exact feelings so I'm just offering up my experiences and a final note:
you can be on T and not be a man, and you can be on T and be a lesbian. you can be on T and be bisexual as well. nothing you've said here precludes you from doing what makes you comfortable.
*I am not saying that this person is not bi and am more so relating to my own experiences that I have had that are similar in feeling and what happened with those feelings and the conclusions I drew from them. this person is obviously handling a lot of new different things and difficult problems to handle with their identity and I am offering the perspective that I have lived.
I know this is a whole thing, but for a somewhat opposite perspective for anon, it's also entirely possible for you to like some boys/men and still be a lesbian if that's what feels most comfortable to you right now.
A future-you may feel differently about boys or about the comfort of lesbianism as a category for yourself. Which is fine. That's really your journey to figure out, and to keep figuring out. No one else can be you to know what is most appropriate for you.
What @turing-tested is saying about T being irrelevant to essentializing your gender or sexuality is absolutely right. But I reblogged this from someone whose takeaway was how destructive and confusing the trend of labeling has been, and this takeaway seems entirely due to an essentializing and exclusionary tendency going along with the labels rather than the labels themselves.
This may not be a great comparison for everyone, but if you view these identities less as medicalizing, essentialist terminology and more as an ad-hoc tag system, they have a lot more utility and a lot less harm to anyone.
It's true that the way you feel about yourself at 17 may not be the way you feel at 25 or 40 or 80, but so what? Either the tag was useful or wasn't; everyone else is living their lives and terms will change or new ones will come along all the time. We don't need to slip into fear of contagion or complain that "words have meaning" or fret on behalf of poor young people who are "confused" when they're talking about what feels most right and is most helpful for them at that time.
Anyway, hopefully, the "tag" versus "exclusive medicalized category" distinction resonates with other people. But this paper by Taiwanese queer researcher Josephine Ho was really revelatory in terms of how long these conversations have been going on, how arbitrary most of the distinctions ultimately are when you drill down deep enough (see: the fisting discussion or judging forearms not genitals), and how little we've changed—arguably, we've regressed—in almost two decades since that was written.
It's downright depressing reviewing how a half-century since the issues of bisexuality and trans-ness became possible to recognize, we as a community remain ultimately stuck in place due to a lack of familiarity with queer history and an inability to identify what's the matter structurally with exclusionist arguments versus relying on in-group clues to reject specific TERFs, aphobes, etc.
Trans-Sexuality: Bisexual Formations and the Limits of Categories (2003)
The trajectory of “bisexuality” as an identity and a movement in the Anglo-American world had been closely entangled in the tension-filled intermingling of gender/sexuality movements and cultural re-significations in the turbulent years between the 1960s and the 1990s.
As such, bisexual formations afford an opportunity to observe how gender/sexual categories, and struggles against such categorization, could (if only unwittingly in the latter case) produce some complicated effects that undermine the original activist objective to build a world of inclusion and openness.
The contemporary history of bisexuality further cautions against a superficial and oversimplified inclusionary politics that may politely acknowledge the rightful existence of marginal subjects while leaving intact the gender/sexuality assumptions that constitute prejudiced categorization against the subjects in the first place. For the inimical effect of gender/sexual categorization lies not only in its refusal to acknowledge subjects whose gender/sexuality may be intermediate, ambiguous, indeterminate, or unrecognizable.
Even when newly emerged subjectivities have forced their way unto the scene with the help of dramatic social change and movement activism, the newly exonerated categories are always already imbricated by a wide array of existing gender/sexuality prejudices which, if not consciously resisted, would continue to poison the alliance. After all, gender categories and identities are not only deeply implicated in the ways in which individuals experience and present themselves, but are likewise deeply engrained in the ways in which individualsʼsexualities are understood and evaluated.
Considering the sex-negativity that still surrounds us, the path to gender/sexuality understanding is bound to be lined with numerous ungrounded assumptions if not age-old prejudices.
In the present paper, I hope to trace the emergence of the subject position of bisexuality in the Anglo-American context and investigate how this supposedly sexual category is infested with gender/sexual prejudices in all its social interactions, to the extent that the dynamic and power assumptions of “categories” are constantly invoked and applied whenever the presence of the trans-sexual (better-known as the bisexual) or transgender subject is felt.
Banks don’t belong at pride. Corporations don’t belong at pride. Cops don’t belong and pride. Fascists don’t belong at pride. The forces that have abused us, oppressed us, have murdered our brothers and sisters do not get to take part in pride.
“Following the 1992 LA riots, leftist commentators often opted to define the event as a rebellion rather than a riot as a way to highlight the political nature of people’s actions. This attempt to reframe the public discourse is borne of ‘good intentions’ (the desire to combat the conservative media’s portrayal of the riots as ‘pure criminality’), but it also reflects an impulse to contain, consolidate, appropriate, and accommodate events that do not fit political models grounded in white, Euro- American traditions. When the mainstream media portrays social disruptions as apolitical, criminal, and devoid of meaning, Leftists often respond by describing them as politically reasoned. Here, the confluence of political and anti-social tendencies in a riot/ rebellion are neither recognized nor embraced. Certainly some who participated in the London riots were armed with sharp analyses of structural violence and explicitly political messages - the rioters were obviously not politically or demographically homogenous. However, sympathetic radicals tend to privilege the voices of those who are educated and politically astute, rather than listening to those who know viscerally that they are fucked and act without first seeking moral approval. Some Leftists and radicals were reluctant to affirm the purely disruptive perspectives, like those expressed by a woman from Hackney, London who said, ‘We’re not all gathering together for a cause, we’re running down Foot Locker.’ Or the excitement of two girls stopped by the BBC while drinking looted wine. When asked what they were doing, they spoke of the giddy ‘madness’ of it all, the ‘good fun’ they were having, and said that they were showing the police and the rich that ‘we can do what we want.’ Translating riots into morally palatable terms is another manifestation of the appeal to innocence - rioters, looters, criminals, thieves, and disrupters are not proper victims and hence, not legitimate political actors. Morally ennobled victimization has become the necessary precondition for determining which grievances we are willing to acknowledge and authorize.”
— Against Innocence: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Safety
When you play the media’s language games, you give them power. If the media says “This was a senseless riot” and you convince people that no, it was actually a politically motivated rebellion, not a riot - then the next time something like this happens they can just say again “This was a senseless riot” and it will have exactly the same power. You’re saying that their criticism is legitimate, just not accurate, and so you have to debate every one separately
Whereas if they say “This was a senseless riot” and you respond that everything is political, and that even seemingly mindless revelry in the chaos can be traced back to a deep desire for freedom and autonomy that even some of the rioters might not personally recognize, and that actually, smashing shit and stealing shit is good - then they have no power anymore. Their arguments aren’t just unsound, they’re invalid
Stop playing by their rules and take back the narrative
On this day, 7 May 1945, Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered, leading to the end of World War II in Europe. But rather than be punished for their crimes, many Nazi and fascist leaders continued to hold onto power and wealth.
In West Germany, despite “denazification”, most Nazi war criminals went unpunished, and many were rehired in official positions as the Cold War with the eastern bloc heated up. For example, out of around 1 million people involved in the Holocaust, only around 600 received serious prison time. Even convicted war criminals like Hanns Martin Schleyer rapidly regained power: Schleyer himself quickly became president of Germany’s main employer associations, helping to break unions. Many Nazi scientists were employed to work in the US as part of Operation Paperclip, while others were put to work in the Soviet Union under Operation Osoaviakhim.
In Greece, the US and UK backed Greek fascists and Nazi supporters in a brutal civil war against the former resistance members. In Italy, the CIA intervened in elections in 1948 to prevent victory of the left, which had been the backbone of the resistance. And in Italy and across Western Europe, ex-Nazis were employed by NATO to form an underground anti-communist army called Gladio which carried out terrorist attacks in countries like Italy and Belgium.
In the East, in Romania, resistance guerrillas were labelled “bandits” by the new Soviet authorities, who put Petru Groza and Gheorghe Tatarescu in charge. Both men had previously been part of right-wing governments, and Tatarescu was minister of state during anti-Jewish pogroms in 1927. In Bulgaria, fascist leader Khimon Georgiev was made Prime Minister, and soon repressed striking coal miners. In Hungary, the man appointed to run the first government in Russian-occupied territory was Bela Miklos, the first Hungarian to have been awarded the highest Nazi honour: Knight Grand Cross of the Iron Cross. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1711283592390117/?type=3
It's amazing how people can just bold faced say "These greedy childcare workers want SEVENTEEN dollars an hour? I'm making twenty and barely getting by, how am I supposed to pay them that!" with no self awareness of what they're saying. Like sir if you are struggling at 20$/hr and the babysitter lives in the same town as you, pray tell how you think her life is somehow easier than yours when she's making even less than you per hour, while also needing to buy her own insurance and with no pension for retirement because you have benefits and she doesn't. Oh that's right, that kind of thing doesn't occur to you, because to you she's just a machine you extract value from.
This is what capitalism does to a mfer. Never think about making things better for anyone else, only cheaper for you.
Hi there, I’m writing fanfic and I was wondering if you could give me some advice. The city where my story is based has some ‘anti-homeless spikes’ and other similarly designed features. How would my character best go about removing these? Or would she be better off doing something else? Installing new benches, perhaps? Thanks, hope you’re having a good day
Sounds like a very heroic story! What the character can do will depend largely on what the hostile architecture is - some can be easily removed, some can be covered up, some can only be campaigned against. For the latter, your character could get stickers like the ones sold by Stuart Semple (yes, the very same) at hostiledesign.org, then post a picture of it as described on the site so it can be added to their database - as well as raising awareness in other ways locally
Some other things you could write your character doing include removing bars on benches that are designed to prevent people sleeping on them using a basic wrench or nutdriver (or even a hacksaw if that’s not an option), knocking concrete spikes away with a sledgehammer, covering metal spikes with a thick layer of spray foam and/or an old mattress, removing stuff like bike racks or boulders/large rocks that are conspicuously placed in spots with roofs above that would be good for sleeping (possibly with some friends if it’s big heavy rocks), and yes, building her own friendlier benches. And she could go further with even more friendly architecture, such as this DIY handwashing station
Obviously, all these scenes should take place at night, with your character explicitly described as wearing a mask, and only after she’s studied the site extensively and determined exactly what tools she’ll need to dismantle it as quickly and quietly as possible
I love seeing characters with so much compassion and desire to create change! I wish her luck in making friendlier spaces in her city ✊💕
clicking on ‘callout posts’ here is wild because there’s like, a 90% chance it’ll be something like ‘they once reblogged a post from someone who follows someone who drew amethyst as white’ and a 10% chance that it will be like ‘stole a human being’s kidney in an alleyway’
honestly though there is something very deeply and sincerely odd about making posts or google docs or entire blogs linking screenshots of every slightly questionable thing a person has ever said, sometimes stretching back to their early teenage years, and using this as a sign that they are a Deeply Bad Person and that anyone in their radius is tainted by being in their presence. like. this is abnormal behaviour, folks.
some of you will make post after post about the importance of kindness and community and then suicide bait someone for using a questionable word a decade ago when they were thirteen years old and i need you to understand that you are not the good guy in these interactions
Cornwall Letting agent with 100 enquires per home says she dreads advertising a place - Cornwall Live
The owner says it's heartbreaking and sometimes she gets off the phone and is close to crying herself
What this article doesn't quite say is that homelessness is already a problem in the county and is only getting worse. A lot of it isn't street homelessness, although that obviously exists, but people, sometimes with children, who don't have any fixed place to live. They might live in a caravan park for some of the year but have to find somewhere else for a couple of months, or they may be in temporary accommodation.
Rents are insanely high, too. I saw a one bed caravan advertised the other week for £85 with bills on top. That's about £400 a month to not even live in a proper house. A proper one bed flat will be over £600. And many people here are on low wages and/or only work seasonally.
The other thing this article doesn't mention is how this kills communities long term. I was talking to a friend the other week about the village where she grew up. It's a nice spot, by the sea, and overrun with second homes and holiday lets. Her generation have all moved out of the village because they can't afford to live there, but a lot of them go back for the rugby club or gig rowing, or just to the pubs, the village still has a soul. But as they have children, that stops happening, and the next generation won't be part of that community. So in ten, twenty years, it runs the risk of being one of those places that is utterly dead in winter, soulless, bleak and depressing.
Ultimately, at some point, I think parts of the county may cease to function, because low paid workers won't be able to live in the area, and won't want to commute in. (yes, then wages would have to go up, but it would be too late, I think).
So what's the solution?
In my opinion, squatting. In the winter, people should occupy these empty houses. Live in them. And if they do get evicted, then trash them. Make owning a second that stands empty a risk. Make it hard for those second home owners to enjoy it. Make it harder for holiday lets to make a profit. Make people think twice. But where possible, local communities should sieze empty houses and refuse to leave them.
To be clear, this isn’t just about people with more money moving into an area, which can cause problems too.
It is mainly about people buying houses that stand empty for (more than) half the year, whilst people are literally homeless or at best, forced out of the community where they have lived all their lives.
we really need to internalize "my own experiences can lead to blindspots that prevent me from recognizing something is racist even if i never intended to hurt people"
getting called racist is not a condemnation. and no one is asking white people adopt a catholic's guilt-driven mindset. its just a guideline to help u not hurt people of color.
[video description: an acapella arrangement of montero (call me by your name), performed entirely by lil nas x. as he performs the different parts, the screen splits into multiple videos showing the recording of each. the backgrounds are brightly colored and lil nas x is wearing different extravagant outfits in each video, with primarily sparkly accents/accessories like makeup, chokers, necklaces, a crown, and a grill.]
sister I'm not much a poet @veganvenom - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
