Yeah. No.

sometimes you just need to say something but don't want to turn the place you spend your precious free-time on into 24/7 Discourse™ Central

[yeah-how-about-nope]

ngl i am so very very tired of the word normalize

i want normies to get tf out of fandom, no stuff that you could market to the general public anymore, only freaks and freaky shit allowed

[nymph1e]

On Discomfort and Morality

My father finds gay men uncomfortable.

He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.

In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.

When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.

My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.

I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.

The next time you see something and you automatically think it's disgusting, or wrong, or immoral, I invite you to ask yourself: is this actually wrong or does this just make me uncomfortable?

[wowbright]

Friendly reminder that you're not required to publicly take sides in any geopolitical conflict you don't understand.

[minyardlumberyard]

tags too good to leave in tags @hyperrbolic-orange

[anxiette]

also way too valuable to leave in tags! from @carolinanadeau

[tobermoriansass]

saying this as mildly as possible but the anti ai posting tenor on this website (not last post, but in general - i have been biting my tongue for a long long time) is one generally oriented towards a maximal amount of self-righteousness. in my experience, self-righteousness only ever produces martyrdom and a punitive desire for "justice" that can never quite be quenched. none of it is actually conducive towards good politics around the matter in question, least of all ai, which is frankly poorly understood and thought about on here. a little more compassion and thoughtfulness and a little less solipsistic self-absorption perhaps is in order.

[caracalliope]

finally! a type of pollution i am not complicit in

finally! proof my art is innately virtuous in at least one way

finally! a perceived theft of which i am invisibly the victim

finally! a perceived laziness which i can avoid falling into

[stjohnstarling]

The social forces that prevent you from being able to admit to your own desires in the safety of your own mind are far more evil than any desire you could have.

[stjohnstarling]

Unacted desires are fundamentally neutral, and you can't decide what to do about the things you want unless you can admit to yourself what they are in the first place. Everyone has desires that would hurt other people if they acted on them, but most people would not actually go out and do anything they know would cause harm. Far more harm is done in this world by people who are trying to pretend they can't possibly want anything they think is bad than people running around going "ehehehe I love hurting people!"

[stjohnstarling]

Providing people with a way of exploring the dark parts of ourselves in a way that cannot hurt anyone is one of the purposes of both fiction and kink.

[stjohnstarling]

All of us have a hungry, horny, angry, scared animal inside ourselves. You do not need to excuse or justify what that animal wants, it simply is. You cannot escape it. Lying to yourself about the animal that you are will only give you less control over it, not more.

[unthinkablearchives]

Delphine Lecompte, Belgian poet

[r2x2]

The Amnesty International report that JK Rowling is trying to censor through legal threats.

It can also be found on Google Drive here and on Bluesky here.

[cbarc]

Please save and share this info where possible. This report has since been removed by Amnesty International due to legal threats of libel from JK Rowling. This information is no longer easily accessible.

[nonbinary-wrath-month]

The reason why so many of y'all's feminism sucks is because you still believe deep down in your hearts that there are only two kinds of people in the world: precious, ethereal, fragile dollthings called "women", and violent, lustful, rage-fueled apes called "men". Until you throw that idea away, 3rd-grade-tier "girls rule boys drool, girls are princesses and boys are stinky :(" is as feminist as we'll ever get-- and I hope it's obvious that that's lightyears away from the bare minimum of where we need to be.

[nonbinary-wrath-month]

I don't know how I'm supposed to explain to ostensibly trans-friendly feminists that "women are beautiful soft things made of glass, men are obsessed with violence and sex" is exactly what the patriarchy wants you to believe. Patriarchy wants you to believe that being a woman and/or having a vagina (patriarchy generally believes those two things are synonymous) makes one shatter on impact with reality. It makes you easier to control if you are scared shitless of the other half of the population, and it makes you more compliant with your lot in life if you believe it is in the nature of the other half of the population to rape and kill rather than realise those were choices those individual rapists and murderers made. There is no way to make gender essentialism progressive and feminist, because it is one of patriarchy's tools of subjugation. Stop trying to make it progressive.

And I can scream all of that from the rooftops over and over again, and what I hear in reply is "Trans men really are men because no woman would ever decide to become an inherently evil repugnant rapist ape", and "You're so right. Trans women are women because they too are pretty delicate little objects I can fuck", and "You're non-binary? So are you fucktoy non-binary or sexpest non-binary?", and my patience runs ever thinner.

[danceundersparklinglights]

i’m going to be really honest with you guys i think the tendency to read the absolute worst possible intentions into every action you don’t agree with is getting too automatic and it’s eating you from the inside out

[caspercryptid]

I would actually go as far as to say that MOST abuse is unintentional. I think most people will go through their lives without ever experiencing intentional abuse. People are abusive because they're selfish, because they're stressed, because they care more about what society thinks they should do than the impacts of their actions on their children and partners, because they think what they're doing is correct, because they've made it make sense in their own heads, because they think they can fix their victims, they think they can fix their relationships, they think they can stop you from leaving, they think they can make you a better partner to them, they think that means you need to do what they want. We've sort of constructed mental illness in a way that doing this shit to other people counts as a form of mental illness because it is anti social behavior in the literal sense— it is behavior that causes social harm.

I don't say any of this to excuse it. I think everyone needs to be more aware of this because if you think abuse has to be intentional you will never realize you are capable of abusive behavior. You will never realize you are being shitty to the people you love, because YOU know what you mean, YOU know you don't mean any harm. But you're doing harm. You need to pay attention to the impact you have on other people, and you need to do it all the time, Especially when you feel least capable of doing so. Sorry! You live in a society. Get your head out of your ass.

[caspercryptid]

This is SUCH an important point, thank you for the phrasing.

A lot of the language around abuse creates "Abuser" as a sort of Category of person. If you avoid anyone who falls into this category you will be Safe, and as long as you are a Good Person you will never fall into this category and so do not have to check your behavior.

This is not the case. Abuse is a thing people Do— it is an action, it is something that happens. It is something that WILL happen. You will be shitty to people you love at at least one point in your life.

When I was in high school I punched my boyfriend in the arm a lot— it was something I saw in media and I thought I was a girl at the time and he was a guy and I didn't think I could hurt him. It was a While before he managed to work up the courage to say "Hey stop, that hurts." And I stopped when he asked! But it's still something I'm deeply ashamed of. It started playful and then I did it when I was frustrated with him and like. That's Fucking Bad. It's Really Bad. I was 17 and just out of an abusive situation myself but THAT WAS BAD. If I just told myself that I am a Good Person and social justice aware and therefore couldn't be abusive then I'd put myself in a position where if someone else described doing the same thing I might not be able to get my head out of my ass and go "no you need to fucking stop doing that". You need to be aware of yourself so that you recognize the harm you do to others, even in hindsight, so that you don't get defensive and let that blind you. You need to look at the world with your eyes open. If you militantly avoid guilt and admitting fault you will continue to hurt the people you love, and excuse behavior that you shouldn't from others.

I had a very dear friend i was genuinely heartbroken to have to stop speaking to— they would demand I schedule a whole day of my week to be on call with them, even if I was sick or busy, and got very aggressive if I answered messages from other people or did other things during the Hours long block of time they wanted me on call. They would get mad if I woke up late on Their Day. No matter how many times I tried to explain that they were making me uncomfortable, they insisted that THEY were uncomfortable because I wasn't prioritizing them. Ultimately what made this dynamic unhealthy was that they prioritized their comfort over mine. It didn't matter that I was disabled and sick and couldn't give them what they needed, they were sure they weren't doing anything wrong because they were sad and uncomfortable. There was no compromise from this viewpoint. This person was an abuse victim themselves! They had suffered from serious neglect, and I knew it, and it took me a long time to accept that that didn't excuse the way they were treating me.

Do I think my friend was a Bad Person? No! I loved them so much, and if they had been just a little bit more ready to take accountability for their actions I would have been their friend forever. But I was a happier person when they were out of my life, and I can't regret taking care of myself. And I only accepted that I needed to let them go because I could separate the person I loved from the behavior and internalize that what they were doing wasn't acceptable. It didn't matter why they were doing it. It mattered that they couldn't, or wouldn't, stop.

[respectissexy]

Having experienced a lot of it in my 20s, I think some of the worst, pettiest, most straight up this-is-just-bullying-you're-passing-off-as-praxis incidences of Queer Infighting endemic to young people can be best understood as attempts to exercise power by people with very little power.

Like you're 22, you're queer, you've just become a Marxist, the scope of World Suck is overwhelming and you have $30 in your bank account. What can you do to feel like you have any power? Well, you can try to get your frenemy cancelled for cosplaying a character from a problematic show. You can write a public callout post over someone's obviously friendly use of a slur you don't think they technically have the right to reclaim. Doing this stuff can make you feel like you have power and your actions have an impact. Unfortunately the impact in question is a negative impact on other marginalized people. But that often takes some maturity and self-reflection to notice.

[drtanner]

I'm reminded of this post from 2017. To paraphrase, OP took part in community service via their university and part of that was cleaning the bathrooms at the local homeless community centre, which would frequently get trashed, not because the homeless people using them disrespected the work of the people cleaning them but because they had so little control over other things that happened in their lives, and the bathroom was something they could affect.

This, too, is a trashed bathroom; young queer people living through hell and having precious little control over their circumstances or the world in which they exist can affect something by using the language of social justice as a cudgel on their would-be allies, as well as getting a brief feeling of power over someone else by doing it.

It's not worth it. Don't trash your community bathrooms.

[lgbtranswoman]

Ice cold takes from a Transgender Woman:

Men are not inherently Evil

Everyone has the capacity for evil

Transgender Men are men

Transgender Women are women

Excluding Cisgender Men from your spaces requires Transgender Men to out themselves if they want to engage (Same for Women)

Anyone can be Non-Binary, there is no "look" or requirement

Non-binary masculine presenting people should be welcome in queer spaces, many are just treated as men and predators

Non-binary feminine presenting people should be welcome in queer spaces without being seen as "Woman-Lite"

Edited the wording on the first point because too many terfs keep thinking I'm their friend.

[lacefuneral]

the word empathy is WIDELY misused, even in mental health spaces. 

empathy:

is responding to a person’s emotions by experiencing the same emotion as them (i.e. feeling sad when something sad happens to that person, or happy when something happy happens to that person.)

is an automatic response that cannot be controlled

cannot be learned

sympathy:

is recognizing that another person is in pain, even if you do not experience that pain, and offering comfort to that person

is something a person must actively choose to do

can be learned

compassion:

is showcasing care and support via words and actions

is something a person must actively choose to do

can be learned

if you need an example of a person with no empathy who practices sympathy and compassion, look no further than data from star trek: the next generation. he doesn’t have emotions at all, but he’s still kind to people and wants to help them.

stop telling people that they’re evil because they don’t experience empathy. stop equating empathy with morality. stop equating empathy with caring. stop saying that cruel people “lack empathy.” stop throwing neurodivergent and mentally ill people under the bus. 

[probuccalfat]

the highest recorded wet bulb temperatures in the world occur in india, jsyk. in odisha, they’ve hit 34.6 degrees celsius. the human survivability limit is 35 degrees celsius but the body faces significant risks, potentially fatal risks, even at 30 degrees as it starts failing to cool itself, like i’m talking organ failure levels of risk. climate change isn’t coming to peak, it’s been in the global south where you can’t see it or feel it.

[probuccalfat]

imagine temperatures that high and humidity as high as 75%—you make more heat than you can ever cool. your sweat cannot evaporate fast enough. you literally boil alive. heat deaths in india are underreported and they already hit the thousands. there is no plan, for a nation of almost 2 billion people. no plan. nothing.

[cybergirl2006]

To show how important humidity is may I present the heat index:

[mediasideblog]

[exquisite-peculiarity]

In the last few years, I moved from the southern US to the northern US. People always joke that people in the south can't handle the cold, or that people in the north can't handle the heat, but I would argue that while upbringing affecting preference is a factor, the more important factor is infrastructure. In Texas, we had lighter, draftier houses that breathed. This helps with heat, but in the winter, if it got down around 15⁰ f (like it usually did up to a couple of times a year), the houses couldn't keep up. It was impossible to heat the indoors over 60⁰, even with blasting the heat. Alternatively, buildings up north don't always have air conditioning, so if it gets up over 95⁰ it is really difficult to handle, especially for prolonged stretches. Climate isn't just personal preference. We have architecture from over the past 100 yrs that is adapted to handle the temps it was before global warming. The architecture in Europe is even older. If people say the temp is untenable, believe them.

[sluttynurse]

probably the worst attitude tumblr unintentionally cultivates is "the world out there is completely dangerous for you and no one can possibly understand you, so you should isolate yourself from it and avoid interacting with it as much as possible"

[nothorses]

I cannot stress enough that I fundamentally distrust callout posts, and I will distrust you if you send them to me.

Don't get me wrong: I investigate warnings, and I act on them if they're true and relevant. But callout posts are, on a very fundamental level, not about what people say they're about. There are exceptions, but generally speaking they're made for one or more of the following reasons:

OP didn't like the subject to begin with (often for bigoted reasons), and they wanted a reason, and a following, to justify and validate that.

OP wanted to gain popularity, so they made themselves look like either a victim, a hero, or both.

OP wanted to claim victim status in a private falling-out in order to preserve good standing with their own friends/their community.

OP didn't like what the subject was saying, and wanted to silence them (often for bigoted reasons).

OP genuinely just wants "revenge" on the subject, or otherwise wants to ruin their reputation and have them sent harassment.

Again, there are exceptions: there are "callouts" that just unravel a subject's lies, or point out problems in already public actions. If OP is claiming to have been personally victimized in a legitimately serious way, and especially one that indicates the subject might be a danger to others, I'm definitely more willing to believe it- one obvious example being sexual violence.

But oftentimes, callouts are incredibly personal, misleading, emotionally manipulative, blatantly untrue, or all of the above.

This person came to me on anon; I have absolutely no way of knowing what their motives are or how trustworthy they are. There is no credibility or accountability here.

And I did read the post. Lo and behold, it's riddled with emotionally manipulative language, false accusations, and the biggest reaches I've ever seen:

"DON'T READ THIS CALLOUT, IT'S SO TRIGGERING TO EVERYONE, JUST TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. But the proof is here if you REALLY don't believe me"

"Proof" is a scarce handful of screenshots taken out of context that contain emotionally evocative language, but do not support the accusations at all.

Some accusations are genuinely just weird logic leaps with no support, others are matters of personal opinion obviously driven by bigoted motives.

OP themselves expresses very publicly that they believe people who are marginalized in the ways the subject are, who speak on that marginalization, should be silenced.

I try to assume good faith here, and I want to believe this anon was just guilt-tripped and manipulated by the post in question. I don't hold any ill will here.

But anon, I want you to ask yourself:

Are the accusations you're making something you have personally investigated and found to be true?

Does this person deserve the harassment and ostracization they will likely receive as a result of your accusations?

Will you hold yourself accountable for the damage you've caused if you're wrong?

And if you're absolutely certain you're right, come off anon and talk to me as a human being; because I can't believe you're ready to be accountable for these accusations if you won't even put your Tumblr blog behind them.

[nothorses]

I've had actual, honest-to-god callout blogs reblogging this post like "yeah I research all the claims here!! they're real and you can trust me (:" as if the entire purpose of their blog is not to encourage their followers not to check those claims themselves, not to think critically about why those claims are made in the first place, & to just rely on random strangers to tell them how to think and who to completely ostracize from potentially vital communities, support systems, and resources.

I cannot emphasize enough that if you spread "callout posts" as a fucking hobby, this post is explicitly about you.

[nothorses]

[silvaurum]

"i would kill a pedophile to protect my child" ok but would you teach your child how to say no? even to adults? even to adults you like? would you teach your child the words "penis" and "vulva" and then use them? would you let them ask questions about their body? would you answer them honestly? would you learn how to cope with your feelings when you talk about human bodies, so they don't feel ashamed? would you set a positive example for how you talk about your body? would you tell your child they don't have to hug or kiss anyone? would you tell your family the same? would you stand by them when they refuse to hug someone? even someone you know has never done anything to hurt them? would you let your child avoid food they don't like? would you let you child avoid people they don't like? would you believe them? would you sit in the discomfort of not knowing all the answers and not take it out on them? would you love your child the same if someone did hurt them? would you make them feel valued just as they are? would you let them talk to doctors or nurses in private? would you let them express their feelings? would you show interest in their life? would you let your child say no to you? would you help your child feel safe coming to you when they make a mistake? would you apologize to your child? would you believe them? would you put aside your anger to focus on what would make your child feel safe and loved? would you put your ego aside for your child? would you take your child's concerns seriously? would you listen to your child? would you believe them?

[shychick-52]

I would both do all those things AND kill a pedo to protect my child, if I had to.

[thecourtofcaligula]

Yesss

[silvaurum]

i'm gonna add this comment by @papercrane:

"Maya angelou's family killed a pedophile that raped her, and that just traumatized her more. "I thought that I had caused the man’s death, because I had spoken his name. That was my seven-and-a-half-year logic. So I stopped talking for five years." Read I know why the caged bird sings."

and here is my comment:

the fantasy of killing a pedophile to defend your child is... an escape from reality. as with all fantasies where a single act of violence stands for a lifetime of effortful care. it lets us off the hook for the day to day labor of actually protecting the human beings around us. it gives us an excuse to look away from what abuse actually looks like.

it allows us to ignore that setting boundaries is a daily practice. it allows us to ignore the subtle ways in which we punish children for having boundaries. it allows us not to think about things we can do, the effort we can put in, in smaller repeated ways, to be kind and caring. to be safe to talk to.

it is a grand gesture that, were you to actually go through with it, would neither prevent the harm that you fear nor help your child to heal from it. it is an idea with no bearing on reality for 99.99% of people, while rape and abuse are a reality for a large fraction of people.

it is not useful to imagine killing a pedophile. it is not useful to claim you would kill a pedophile. it wouldn't be useful to actually attempt to kill a pedophile in almost any situation.

it is useful to think about how you can help your child know they can get help. they can say no. they can tell adults to stop. they deserve to be comfortable. they deserve to be informed.

the entire point of the post is that your child will not be saved by your imagined wrath. the entire point is that your day to day actions, and your attitude towards children as people, are more impactful to your child's well-being. far more realistic. more important.

not least because your child doesn't need you to be wrathful. they need your love. they need care. they need attention.

meanwhile, the public performance of wanting to kill child abusers doesn't do anything to child abusers. most child abusers believe they are doing the right thing for their children.

saying you want to kill abusers doesn't signal anything good to children, either. as others have said, it makes children more afraid to speak up and ask for help. that might be their mom, their coach, their troop leader. it gives those abusers leverage; the children cannot tell if they want things to be stable.

and it makes it harder for adults to BELIEVE children, too! because if their child was really abused, then they've staked their honor on committing that violence, even if it was against their brother or spouse or grandpa or pastor or neighbor or their other kid's favorite babysitter. and if they don't want to do that, well... then they must decide whether they believe completely their child, or whether their child's boundaries must really be respected, or... if maybe it's impossible to know.

how many abuse survivors have tried to disclose, only to be told that so-and-so wouldn't do that, or they didn't mean it, because so-and-so loves you and we all like so-and-so. this dichotomy goes both ways, psychologically. if a child abuser is entirely evil and has to be killed, then someone who's not entirely evil and i don't want to kill can't be a child abuser. this must be something else. there must be a mistake.

you can not adequately protect your children from abuse if you hold on to this idea. i am telling you. your insistence that killing pedophiles will protect your children is holding you back. it is not useful. it is not cute to talk about how much you want to do a single act of violence to abusers as if that would ever be enough to outrun the culture of abuse and the dehumanization of children in our society. you cannot cling to this like a talisman that would ward off any harm your children may come to. you cannot escape reality by telling yourself you'd be a total badass and kill that bad guy dead. this is not helpful.