Xenomaoism ∞

any pronouns proudly mad

[dragon-in-a-fez]

if I see one more "why age verification is bad" post that doesn't even bother to mention that locking young people out of huge sections of the public sphere - literally the stated goal and primary impact of this shit - is wrong in and of itself I will simply start hitting people with bricks

[dragon-in-a-fez]

yes yes biometric data privacy blah blah adults can hypothetically by harmed by this too. what about the immediate and deliberate and not at all hypothetical harm to youth. why are you acting like a potential data leak about what your face looks like, which if it ever happened would at least be generally recognised as a problem, is a more serious issue than cutting millions of people off from information and community and public expression which is happening right now in the open with large scale support

[dragon-in-a-fez]

it's got the stench of fucking "banned books week" on it. thousands of adults congratulating themselves for reading books literally no one is trying to stop them from reading while doing nothing to improve access for the young people who are the ones actually having those books made off-limits to them.

[hyperlexichypatia]

Age verification is bad because the internet is how we communicate in the modern world, and young people deserve the right to communicate just as adults do.

And because there is no "young people on the internet" problem that couldn't be solved by educating and materially empowering young people.

[hyperlexichypatia]

Also this explicitly includes neurodivergent young people, Mad young people, and "anti-recovery" young people.

Queer people who are still inexplicably pro-psychiatry and anti-youthlib will sometimes "compromise" like "Sometimes young people having internet privacy is Good, like when queer kids with unsupportive parents discover queer positivity and sex ed, but sometimes young people having internet privacy is Bad, like when Mentally Ill™️ kids whose parents are trying to Get Them Help discover Anti-Recovery!" and no, that one is also Good. Kids need to learn how to discreetly flush their risperdol just as much as they need to learn how to access condoms and binders.

[learn-how-to-love]

That “cringe” nonbinary xenogender genderfuck therian who uses neopronouns and may or may not go on HRT while being loudly, proudly themselves will always be more revolutionary and subversive than a binary trans person who aggressively reproduces the cis status quo and shames anyone who doesn’t do the same.

[kropotkindersurprise]

June 5, 2026 - When Israeli diplomat Waleed Gadban attempted to deliver his speech at the UN International Labour Organization conference, he was disrupted by government labor ministers, union representatives and even some employer's organisation representatives, from many different countries, banging their tables to show their disapproval of Israel even being included in the conference. Some of the delegations even stood up to display the Palestinian flag during the protest..

The Israeli was unable to deliver his speech, showing how much the reputation of Israel has been destroyed, even among diplomats, and how important it is to fight for internationalism in our unions and political organizations. Cooperation with Israel must be opposed everywhere, on all levels. [video]

[punishedsaints]

[prairiedeath]

[1000rh]

…psychiatry assumes that society does not cause distress in biologically normal people, who are considered biologically normal at least in part because they are economically productive. This assumption permits the conclusion that if a person is distressed to the point of unproductivity, it is because that person—not society—is abnormal. Thus, psychiatry’s commitment to biological essentialism not only masks the role of the constructed sociopolitical environment in creating distress but depoliticizes it by characterizing that allegedly irrational distress as induced by biological abnormality.

– Kiera Lyons, “The Neurodiversity Paradigm and Abolition of Psychiatric Incarceration” (2023)

[status-quo-hater]

Believing in "sexed brains" means you are a transmedicalist btw

[hapalopus]

I reeeeaaalllyy don't like how widespread gender realism is in supposedly feminist circles on this website. You are one step away from becoming a radfem.

[hapalopus]

"Woman" is a socially constructed category and "women" have nothing intrinsic in common, other than viewing themselves as whatever "woman" is defined as in their society, or being judged by the standards of whatever "woman" is defined as in their society. Gender is as "real" of a category as race or neurotype, which is to say, it's not objectively real at all. It's an artificial category created on the basis of perceived shared traits among certain people. The people came first, they were grouped into their artificial category later. There are no intrinsic differences between men or women or nonbinary or multigender people.

[hapalopus]

Do you actually believe gender is a social construct or are you just mindlessly repeating the phrase because it sounds cool

[dykepuffs]

Watching the queer way of interacting with gender go from "Gender is a social construct that can be fun to play with but at heart is a dangerous toy because it has been used for generations to oppress and divide people." To "Everyone has a perfect crystal of true gender which you must deeply introspect to discover, and you can be wrong about its nature." Has been a disaster.

[oughtful]

... Gonna crosspost some relevant ramblings from discord because yeagh

Gender is such a vague, ambiguous concept that I don't necessarily think it's worth the effort to try and pin it down.

What is a gender? What is it supposed to be? What does it represent and why? I've never actually seen an answer for any of these things.

The entire concept of gender is intrinsically tied to the phenomenon of sex-specific roles. That's the only reason the concept exists.

Sometimes I feel like we'd make more progress, as queer folks in binary-enforcing, transphobic societies, to reject the concept of gender altogether. You can get as weird as you want with gender, but as long as you still place importance on it, you're still engaging with and propagating the existence of gender as a concept, and I don't really think anything good comes of that.

A lot of problems that are complex and nuanced in a gendered society become moot if gender doesn't exist – if you just recognise people as people with no perception of gender attached.

And then there doesn't need to be a concept of "gender conforming" or "non-conforming" cause everyone could do whatever they want without being compared against moulds which, ultimately, are rooted in beliefs of what a dyadic male or dyadic female are culturally expected to be.

It doesn't feel coincidental how much queer infighting falls along binary gender / sex lines. A lot of it is just an echo of the same divide which exists between pericis men and women – which to me is just a symptom of gender being an inherently divisive and oppressive concept. I don't think the infighting would go away unless we got rid of the line in the sand between what is, fundamentally, just increasingly abstracted versions of "maleness" and "femaleness".

[opencommunion]

how are westerners so thoroughly programmed that even when you see the violence of your empire, you parrot the same lies used to sell that violence. "bombing a school is wrong but the iranian people should be freed from the regime—" "abducting a president is wrong but the venezuelan people should be freed from the regime—" "starving people with sanctions is wrong but the cuban people should be freed from the regime —" the western people need to be freed from the regimes that brainwashed you, and I mean that

[balioc]

There's a big idea here, but let's start with a very simple illustration -

I recently watched the first Spider-Verse movie with my son. And it's really striking, how much fundamental conceptual contrast there is between the movie's three different Spider-Men from three different eras, in a way that feels so obvious and necessary that it's not even really worthy of comment or notice.

(NB: we are talking about Spider-Men here. For now we're leaving aside the two who are girls and the one who's a cartoon pig.)

Spider-Man Noir, from the early 20th century, is a grown man doing the work of grown men and engaging with the world of grown men. At the beginning of his career, he was already a working private dick, and he cut his teeth as a hero in World War I; by the iconic character-defining period when we see him, his goal is to fight Nazis, which makes him just like every other man of his generation. He even wears a trenchcoat and a fedora, which is to say, normal-person clothes of his era! The fact that he wears a spider mask, and has spider powers, seems almost incidental.

Spider-Man Classic, vaguely implied to be from the '80s or '90s, is - in his iconic mode - just out of college and trying to make it as an adult. His life is all frantic hustle and cheap apartment living and romantic confusion and getting yelled at by his boss. There is an eternally-awkward lack of coherence between his real-person life and his super-hero life, which is only highlighted by the occasional elements that cross over. The specific version that we see in the movie is doing (a good-hearted version of) the Failed Manchild thing, which makes sense if you extend that iconic mode into a person's late 30s or whatever.

Spider-Man Ultimate, from the 2020s or thereabouts, is a high school kid. His life, when he's not being Spider-Man, is a high school kid's life with high-school-kid-type problems and limitations. He lives with his parents, under their authority. Given that baseline, his career as Spider-Man - a hero fighting serious physically-violent villains for very high stakes - has basically no direct relation to his normal existence, except on the level of psychological metaphor. It might as well be a series of Walter Mitty dream sequences.

There is a very clear progression here, which has something to do with the progression of the actual world over the same century-long timeframe.

[yettofindaname]

This is probably more of a big overlap with the big idea than the idea itself, but maybe it's "the creation of the teenager/adolescent in the last century" as this class between the child and the adult that it's still being defined, and seems to be slowly stretching to cover more and more of your life?

A related read, "How old is Tintin?", cool post doing a deep-dive in what is the age of a comic protagonist that was created in 1929, a more 'true-to-source' early 20th century protagonist. TLDR Tintin was always meant to be between 14 and 17 years old, and engages in action sequences that would be really weird for a MC of mainstream media to engage (gunplay, airplane piloting, drinking, threatening, killing). But the best bit for me is how it all probably felt normal for the author because his life, and the lives of his peers, did go a bit like that: Magazine collaborator at 14, hired at the newspaper at 18, military service at 19 and given his own kids magazine (offshoot of the newspaper he worked at) to create and run (+marriage) at 22.

When Tintin was created, being in regular dangerous Jobs was a thing that teens just did, so it was a easy reach for them to be in irregular dangerous Jobs, like crime fighting or cartel-busting. Now for the general public it's weird to imagine a teen at a Job at all (the kind of Job that requires a degree or specialization), but it also would be weird for the established media to let go of the continuous narratives it's been grooming for generations of parents and children, so now the only jobs teens do in media are irregular dangerous Jobs, like Mech Pilot or Superhero, and it feels normal (parents see kids on tv doing what they saw kids doing on tv so it's ok) but also very detached from normal life.

[whereserpentswalk]

The complete lack of youth rights or youth autonomy in the current era has created a truly weird type of media which is trying to square the fact that it's characters are psychologically capable of complex thoughts and relationships with their own ideologies, desires, and goals, but still have the legal rights of a toddler.

[zmpl]

no cops at pride and dare i say no therapy/psych services advertising their businesses at pride

[zmpl]

there’s also just this tie between psychiatry and queerness that has yet to be broken

on one end of the political spectrum you have conservatives calling gay and trans people “mentally ill” with venom shooting from their saliva, clearly stating that anyone labeled as mentally ill (including queer people) should be locked away forever. they don’t just approve of incarcerating people, they LOVE it.

in the middle you have liberals (aka centrists) who insist that being queer isn’t a mental illness BUT☝️ gender dysphoria is and the treatment is transition. transition is essential for many trans people’s well-being but liberals are SO tied to the psych-medicalization of transness that transition is a medical treatment of an ailment, not an exercise of bodily autonomy. they speak in the most eye-rolling platitudes such as “gender affirming care saves lives” or “using the right pronouns is suicide prevention” that throw chronically suicidal trans people under the bus. when in reality, affirming someone’s gender is basic human decency and not this magical veil of protection against being both trans and Mad.

THEN on the other end of the spectrum you have queer Mad people asserting that they don’t want to have their identities associated with an oppressive system that has a decades long history of pathologizing queerness, and whose voices still have yet to be heard. so we go to pride and are bombarded with dozens of therapy clinics advertising in parade floats or information tables. because pathologizing psychiatry still has a strong hold in queerness, and even many queer people themselves still have yet to realize this.

[thepeoplescommiequotes]

[goldcrescent]

I also think that the strength gap is at least partially manufactured women would in fact be stronger overall if little girls were encouraged to do physically taxing games and activities and eat their fill while they’re growing vs having to constantly diet and be sedentary indoors (or god forbid do intense cardio while under-eating). The amount of adult women honestly afraid to lift weights bc they think they’ll get bulky as though bulking isn’t a full time job that athletes have to spend all their time on and anyone on earth gets shredded from just using their adult muscles for their intended purpose, girl your bone density 🥀

[goldcrescent]

if you say women are intentionally nerfed from birth in 2026 people look at you like you’re insane and start condescendingly telling you about how women are just better at different things (but not during their periods haha) but this was a completely basic feminist talking point I grew up with like “girls can do it too! [shot of little girls climbing and running with boys]” nickelodeon commercial tier base level I hate it how is everyone suddenly dumber than the average 7 year old

[prokopetz]

Level 1: Asylums are scary because there's crazy people there.

Level 2: We shouldn't treat mental health facilities as objects of horror because it stigmatises mental illness.

Level 3: Asylums are scary because there's psychiatrists there.

[crimsonservbot]

You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?

[miracestuous]

Really, when you think about it, the taboo of incest is the lynchpin holding together the entirety of capitalist hegemony. I mean, it's inevitable that once you question that, you're going to go on to question the nuclear family, the patriarchy, organized religion, even the very concept of money itself, as we know it at least! Once you understand that a taboo so deeply ingrained is predicated on such flimsy grounds, you are practically freed from the shackles of social norms entirely. And, in acting on it, you present an example for others to follow suit! Nothing challenges order more than proud defiance.

Anyways, sis, that's why we HAVE to kiss, it's the ultimate praxis! You don't want to let the capitalists win, now do you? Now come over here!

[2well2water]

no one cares that you shave your legs because of sensory issues shut the fuck up forever

[2well2water]

really galling amount of people misinterpreting this post so i'd like to clarify. i'm saying that when discussions about patriarchal beauty standards and the way women are heavily shamed and coerced into eschewing their own natural state of being (hairy) are occurring, it is unhelpful (AT BEST) to interrupt and say that the reason YOU remove the hair from your body is because of sensory issues. that's not what we're talking about. stop asking for validation for doing something that society at large wants you to do. stop derailing the conversation because you feel uncomfortable about being made aware that you, for whatever reason it is, adhere to harmful, unfair and ridiculous beauty standards. you're stepping into the middle of an important conversation that needs to be had and making it all about you. shut the fuck up forever.

[2well2water]

also quite frankly i think a lot less people would experience sensory issues if they let their hair grow out so that it isn't bristly and rough and irritating. and i cannot help but wonder why these sensory issues aren't as predominant in men. maybe you're uncomfortable with the hair on your body because you've been taught to be uncomfortable with it. just a thought.