Rabid Mongeese

[txttletale]

medieval peasants actually had access to far more Doritos than we do nowadays

[jennamoran]

oh! Is this the thing where they hid their Doritos in a secondary "hidden village" to dodge the sumptuary laws like in Dorito Shippuden?

[atrusovaartist]

I always thought Reddit was a place where people could share things they created.A few days ago I posted one of my original paintings. People loved it. We had wonderful conversations about art, emotions, and how everyone saw something different in the same sunset.

About two hours later I was permanently banned from r/MadeMeSmile for “self-promotion.”

I accepted that different communities have different rules.But then something even stranger happened.Soon afterward, a moderator from r/pics started going through my account. Not just the new post—many of my older painting posts disappeared as well. One after another. Then I was permanently banned there too.

Maybe it was the same moderator. Maybe it wasn’t. I honestly don’t know.

What surprised me wasn’t even the ban itself. It was realizing how much power individual moderators have over what millions of people are allowed to see. One decision can erase years of posts from a community and instantly cut off your ability to participate, even if those posts had been happily sitting there for months or years.I’m not saying moderators shouldn’t have rules. Communities need moderation.But it does make you wonder where the line is between protecting a community and allowing a single interpretation of the rules to completely reshape what people can share.

The funny part?

I wasn’t advertising anything in those posts. I wasn’t posting prices or asking anyone to buy anything. I was simply sharing my original paintings because I enjoy discussing art with strangers from around the world.

Anyway…

Here’s the painting that apparently caused all the trouble. 🎨

[grickle14]

Wake up call.

[xoverit]

Montréal, Québec. (1960s)

[strictlyquadrilateral]

i read an anecdote ages and ages ago from a gay person who grew up with gay parents, and struggled to find any kind of belonging in the gay community because everyone else there was bonding over having homophobic parents. everyone else was defining themselves by their suffering and oppression rather than by their sexuality, leaving this gay person to feel like they weren't really gay because they didn't have the right experiences. they wondered whether more gay people would feel this way as more children grew up with gay parents, if the gay community would leave them behind for not having suffered enough. i think about that anecdote a lot.

a lot of the current rhetoric around gender reminds me of that anecdote. a lot of people are willing to go "transgender people are oppressed for their gender presentation, therefore if you're not oppressed for your gender presentation, you're not trans." but i don't think we should be defining ourselves by our suffering and oppression. what will we do, in a few years, in a few decades, as there start to be, say, adults who were supported in their transition as children? what will we do when a stereotypical trans person can genuinely say they didn't suffer hardship for being trans?

i'm afraid i know the answer. i'm afraid that people are going to close ranks as they've already started closing ranks against intersex people, against nonbinary people, against double binary people, against closeted people. as some people have started closing ranks against people who transitioned in the opposite direction from them. as many people have closed ranks against people with edge case gender experiences. "i don't consider you to be oppressed, therefore you are not welcome to share in this community you might otherwise belong in."

i wish people would understand that we shouldn't do this. i wish people would understand that we benefit from a broader, more inclusive community more than we benefit from whatever purity testing oppression olympics it is that i keep running into.

[tater-tot-pot-dish]

my parents are lesbians. there was no "coming out" for my sisters and i. (me as Queer, my youngest sister as bi.)

and i think it made me safer, for those who struggled. in college i was THE person to come out to. my parents changed so many of my friends lives by showing yes, you can be gay and you can get married and you can have 2.5 kids and a minivan and a mortgage. like, you can be queer and have a "normal life."

i think, because i had the security of a supportive family, that it made others feel more secure in a way? in who they are? they knew around me they were going to have unwavering support. that for our time together they didn't have to worry about rejection or physical danger. being gay or trans or whatever was just...a part of my everyday life. and it meant that that girl who came out as trans in 2008 in small town montana could have that too.

i guess, what i'm saying is, i think-as things go on and being under the lgbtq+ umbrella becomes just as normalized as being left handed or having green eyes-there will be space to share joy. that community can be built around the bliss that comes with embracing who you ARE rather than what has been DONE to you.

[goodpark]

Jungsun Jung: Garden Nasturtium quilt

[xavidotron]

Also, even if we could prove/agree on who's the worst off subgroup wise, focusing just on that subgroup would neither be the best way of helping that subgroup nor of helping people overall. We need solidarity and taking action on many fronts if we're going to get anywhere.

[genderkoolaid]

also the thing about "we need to focus on the people most vulnerable, and transmascs may be vulnerable but not more than trans women!" is that it doesn't consider transmasc erasure as an active force.

its a take from the perspective that trans men are "vulnerable" is some vague abstract generalized way, not in a way which would behoove anyone to adjust their behavior or take action on their behalf. its the erasure of erasure; the assumption is that trans men probably have enough resources and support anyways, which could not be farther from the truth. some local communities may have more transmasc-focused resources, but many others do not. transmasculine people are left out of vital conversations, are excluded from vital resources, are ignored and forgotten when they are abused and killed.

it treats transmasc erasure as something which is passive in itself and which can be solved passively. which is erasure itself in action. i do not really give a fuck about "who has it worse," it is not about that. it is about the fact that if YOU do not make an ACTIVE EFFORT to advocate for transmascs, to make transmasc suffering and oppression visible and legible, it will not happen. it simply will not happen.

erasure is an active force. we all internalize transmasculine erasure and we can all easily contribute to it; we are expected to contribute to it. trans men&mascs cannot afford the model of "well we only need to raise awareness for the most vulnerable" because our vulnerability is defined by being ignored.

this is why unlearning anti transmasculinity has to start from (un)learning erasure. once you start to see it as an active force/tool of the patriarchy you realize it is the lynchpin that holds so much (especially intercommunity) anti-transmasculinity together. transmaculine absence is so normalized people experience our presence as an intrusion, and people genuinely do not understand why we would ever need to be more visible than we are. it is fucking everywhere.

[genderkoolaid]

like idk i remember reading about a trans man in India who, after he came out to his family, was literally locked in a room in their house. just shut up in a basement somewhere, out of sight and out of mind, until he managed to escape (and even then, there's also a trans man in India whose parents sent the police to track him down and kidnap him from a shelter meant specifically for trans people).

or trans men like Sophie Lederer, who was only 19 when he was arrested for "talking silly and claiming to be a boy" in the early 20th century, and the only other thing I know about him is that he spent the rest of his life, over a decade, institutionalized for his transmasculinity. god only fucking knows what was done to him in those years by his wardens.

that is the image of transmasculine erasure. it is boys and men locked in closets and basements and prison cells disguised as hospital rooms for years until they are dead and buried as women. if they even get a headstone at all. it is dead-eyed mothers with three children who have no income or job experience and are married to a cis man ten years older than them who they know would kill them, and possibly their children, if they even mentioned being trans. if you think of transmasc erasure or "invisibility" and imagine a white cis-passing guy working stealth at his office job, congrats! transmasculine erasure is already living like a fungus in your mind. i am trying to make you feel the horror the patriarchy has trained you out of feeling about the state of transmasculine oppression.

[genderkoolaid]

if you've followed me for any length of time you've likely already seen this quote, but i wanna talk about it in this context again:

"Unless they present hyperfeminine, butches don’t have access to the job market. You will not be considered if you don’t wear nice women’s clothes. If you set up catering, you will get told, “I am disgusted; a woman who thinks she’s a man is cooking for me.” So butch lesbians normally have an assistant, or their femme partner if they have one, who is more feminine-looking to run the front so customers don’t know a masculine-presenting person is cooking behind the curtains. Many of us become sex workers [due to lack of job opportunities].… But then when police raid brothels and homes, the masculine lesbians get treated “like men.” This means more forceful handcuffing, kneeling, and stripping their shirts off." – Rosa, lesbian and sex worker rights defender El Salvador

i was thinking about this when it comes to how we describe vulnerability in our community, specifically mentioning someone is a "femme" to indicate their need for extra support. i don't know i've ever seen the same be done for butches. i genuinely cannot remember ever really seeing people talk about butches and their economic and social vulnerability, the way i see people talk about femmes.

its not that being feminine doesn't cause genuine vulnerability! but because people have such a binary attitude towards gender (and more broadly), the way we talk about gendered vulnerability leads to this view that feminine people are always more vulnerable than masculine people, that "this femme needs help" to many queers and feminists feels more urgent than "this butch needs help."

the erasure of anti-transmasculinity is so pervasive and harmful and the erasure itself is then erased. and the thing is, the nature of benevolent sexism has always made it that femininity (mediated by race and class and social belonging, amongst other things, Its More Complicated Than That) is seen as inherently vulnerable. people seen as masculine lesbians are "treated like men" in the sense of being treated harsher with more physical violence, while still being subjected to sexual violence out of both misogyny and queerphobia, and also being economically vulnerable because of the disgust aimed at people perceived as masculine women. and who talks about it? not the people who refuse to understand gender oppression through anything other than a binary lens (while pretending that's not what they are doing).

[genderkoolaid]

honestly i think on a broader level, we have been seeing the erosion of genuine queer/trans theory for a while in favor of this idea that queerphobia is reducible down to misogyny. & i do think all queerphobia does innately involve misogyny. but i feel there's been this growing aversion to attributing anything to a hostility to gender non-conformity/genderqueerness itself, in favor of attributing it to a hatred of femininity. there is no true analysis of transphobia or misandrogyny as their own forces, its just a side effect of the hatred of femininity.

this is where we get the constant refrain of "the patriarchy likes masculinity, so masculine people are always seen as better than feminine people" & why people may find it incomprehensible that there may be situations where being feminine may be a protective factor in comparison to being masculine.

another example of this from this article:

The trio made their way down a busy street in the Santiago suburb of Pudahuel, close to where Carolina lived with her mother and father. Carolina and Estefania chose not to hold hands to avoid offending anyone. Suddenly, Carolina felt a force to the back of her head. Then darkness. She had fallen unconscious, and would remain in a coma for a week. She suffered a fractured skull, a broken nose, internal bleeding and permanent damage to her hearing. There were two male attackers. One had used a large wooden pole to hit her repeatedly on the back of her head, only stopping when Estefania threw herself on top of Carolina, using her body as a shield. This is significant, says Carolina's mother, Mariela. Because unlike Carolina, who identifies as a camiona and dresses accordingly, Estefania is femme - a more feminine lesbian identity. The attackers targeted Carolina and not Estefania, says Mariela, because she represented an "unacceptable" face of womanhood. It was not just her sexual orientation that prompted violence, it was her appearance as a camiona. "I want to make it very clear they were trying to kill her," she adds. "There is no other way of looking at it. The fact that she is here is a miracle." Carolina knew one of her alleged attackers. "Before this attack he threatened me. He said, 'I am going to kill you.' He said he was going to shoot me with a gun. He called me a lesbian and swore at me. He said, 'Why do you dress like a man?'"

there are people who have been nearly (or successfully) violently murdered for being seen as a masculine woman, while their femme girlfriends were not targeted or were not the main target. but if you reduce everything in patriarchy down to "m > f" you will miss this. and

even in this article, the discussion of violence focuses on lesbianism and misogyny - which, while clearly central to the violence, one has to wonder what becomes of transmasculine individuals who are targeted by this same transphobic lesbophobia, the same transphobic misogyny, whose experiences with violence cannot be made legible through the same narratives as those who identify as women? who cannot appeal to the terms "femicide" and traditional feminist narratives as easily?

[genderkoolaid]

i feel like the fact that there is virtually no discussion of how trans men are affected by femicide even when including trans women in the conversation, and how basically every study or systemic review of studies looking at violence against trans men will discuss how little research has been done on this topic, and how the largest global review of studies on violence against transgender people (94 studies, 65,608 participants) found that while nearly all (96%) of the studies included transgender women, just half (49%) included transgender men and less than half (37%) included nonbinary people, should lead us to understand that the picture of how transmasculine people are impacted by transphobic and misogynistic violence is itself violently incomplete.

[0xygenth1ef]

Froggy art by Linnea Sterte <3

[templeofshame]

[witchern]

before i forget!!! cool thing we heard last night at the sinners Q&A: MBJ decided to wear different sized shoes while playing smoke and stack. for smoke he wore a size too large, the explanation being that when you're wearing shoes that are too big, you're less likely to want to move around because of how uncomfortable and clunky it is. as a result, smoke as a character is very still and purposeful with his movements. and then for stack he wore a half size too small because it makes you constantly shift around on your feet trying to find a stance and a position that feels right and takes the pressure off your feet. that makes stack more fidgety and restless. so MBJ said that wearing the different shoes made it a lot easier to embody the twins because he was just reacting naturally to what his body was telling him, rather than overthinking his movements. just the coolest shit. such a neat acting choice. i love movies, man.

[serafino-finasero]

Miffy and Mondrian, from the book Nijntje in het Museum (Miffy at the Museum), 1997 | illustration Dick Bruna (Dutch, 1927–2017)

[schmergo]

The summer between the end of high school and the start of college, I wrote a ridiculous play about pirates and put on a staged reading with some friends at an amphitheatre at a local park before a small audience of friends and family. It was never published or staged again. But I just got a message from an old high school friend I haven’t seen in years. He accidentally quoted the play in a conversation with friends, was asked what he was quoting, he couldn’t remember either, and wracked his brain until he finally remembered it was that silly play reading that we did one day in the park over 10 years ago. It made me happy. (The line was, “Huzzah for mercantilism!” by the way.)

A very tiny percentage of creators go on to be famous, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t remember little things you did for years and years. Who came up with most of the world’s most famous jump rope rhymes? Who coined some of the famous idioms we use in daily speech? Who made up ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?” Somehow, all of these things stuck and spread around.

When I was a small child, I saw a high school put on a production of the musical HONK. In one song, the mother duck describes various dangers that her baby should avoid in the water, including fishing line, which could strangle him. A member of the ensemble played the role of fishing line, doing a maniacal laugh and over-the-top strangling motions, and I found it hilarious– and to this day, that’s an example I often think of when talking about how ensemble members can still stand out in theatre. The guy who played the role might not even remember that he did that, but I do.

I took Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. The teacher made up lyrics to some of the songs, and she let her students make some up, too. Now whenever I hear the instrumental of one of those pieces, I always remember these ridiculous lyrics about a skunk that we sang in violin class. I don’t even know which student invented them!

In middle school, I found a video about atoms parodying Bill Nye made by some kids for a school product. It probably had less than 1,000 views, but I think of quotes from that video all the time. They had a parody of “We Will Rock You” with the chorus, “Protons, neutrons, electrons” that I think about a lot.

I just love that this is part of human life. Our memories don’t just pick up quotes from great art, literature, and music, but little things, too.

[questionableadvice]

~ Social Customs, Florence Howe Hall, 1887

[innerchildabortionclinic]

there is something very sad and humiliating about having to desperately beg doctors and family members to understand that involuntary institutionalization does not in fact help your mental health, knowing your perspective will always be dismissed at the end of the day

it's such an awful existence to be a psychiatric patient as a teenager, there has to be another way to help aggressively suicidal teenagers, such as addressing the circumstances that make them want to die so much in the first place! you can stop suicide by locking someone up, sure, but they will not want to live

[doe-eyed-disaster]

it's awful that researchers are only now starting to take this perspective seriously, but there is a small but growing body of study supporting exactly what patients have been saying about psychiatric incarceration. one study in particular, from Allegheny county in Pennsylvania, offers a damning analysis of involuntary psychiatric commitments:

For individuals whose cases are judgment calls, where some physicians would hospitalize but others would not, we find that hospitalization nearly doubles both the probability of dying by suicide or overdose and also nearly doubles the probability of being charged with a violent crime in the three months after evaluation. We provide evidence of earnings and housing disruptions as potential mechanisms. Our results suggest that, on the margin, the system we study is not achieving the intended effects of the policy.

[nateconnolly]

These days, lots of public libraries have a "library of things" collection where you can check out kitchen appliances or yard tools or toys, and, as a children's library assistant, the most popular library of things item that I handle regularly is a plastic scepter thingy called like "unicorn princess magic wand". And whenever I check it out I make a big show of looking at the little kid and being like "do you solemnly swear to use your unicorn princess magic powers only for good and never for evil?"

And pretty much without fail, the little kid will get the world's most mischievous grin and go "I'm gonna use it for EVIL!!!"

[prokopetz]

Honestly, a big part of why I'm excited about @jdragsky's Seven Part Pact is that it'll be nice to have a baroquely maximalist tabletop-RPG-meets-board-game actually available in print that isn't Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine.

[prokopetz]

(Like, not that I'm sick of CMWGE by any means, but it would be good to have an example of the type I can recommend to people who would prefer to at least occasionally roll dice!)