be gay - do crime

like a bright rhinoceros beetle shining through the darkness | queer | marxist | canada

[yidkirkin]

also i write fic

side blog i'm actually active on @arsed-again

[canadian-marxist]

Fatima is a Bahraini born immigrant seeking refugee status here in Canada to escape persecution. She grew up in Bahrain in an extremely restrictive religious household. Forced to wear the hijab for most of her life, Fatima was forced into Islam from a young age. Day in and day out, she had to pray and act the part of a faithful muslim despite not believing in Islam. Her entire life growing up was restricted and controlled. This included who she saw, what she wore, and what she said. 

Finally, at age 19, Fatima managed to immigrate to Canada to study. She spent five years studying at McMaster University, and graduated with a Bachelors of Liberal Arts in 2020. In Canada, Fatima found a sense of freedom she had never had in her home country. She was able to live without religious control and enjoy a secular life. She made many friends and has found a sense of community here. 

Unfortunately, Fatima has been fighting to remain here with her friends and community. In 2021, her Post-Graduate Work Permit was rejected. Compounding this, her family from Bahrain found out about her secular lifestyle. This resulted in horrible harassment from her family, including threats against her life. They have also cut off all financial support in an attempt to blackmail her into returning to Bahrain. If Fatima is forced to return to Bahrain, she will no doubt face horrible persecution and be dragged unwillingly back to a faith she does not believe in. Most troubling of all, her life may be at risk.

In order to stay in Canada, Fatima has applied for refugee status. The office of immigration has been challenging her case, citing a number of small discrepancies as an excuse to keep her from receiving refugee status. This has only made this whole process more challenging, and means that Fatima faces deportation.

In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith…diversity is our strength.” We only ask that the Canadian government live up to these words. Canada has fostered a reputation around the world of being a welcoming place for those fleeing persecution. It makes no sense that a woman fleeing for her life and liberty should be sent back to a hostile and dangerous environment. All we want is for Fatima to stay here, with her friends and partner, where she is safe to continue working and living life as she sees fit.

Please sign this petition demanding refugee status for Fatima! Spread the word and share this amongst your friends. We need your help!

[alanjamesart]

anything you can spare for Fatima's legal fees here, would go a long way to helping her stay in canada. Her hearing is in 4 days!

Immediate Support Needed For Bahraini Refugee, organized by Adam Zeinneddine

Hello everyone, First, we would like to thank you from the bottom … Adam Zeinneddine needs your support for Immediate Support Needed Fo

[yidkirkin]

love getting told i'm culturally appropriating my own culture. great job

[canadian-marxist]

Fatima is a Bahraini born immigrant seeking refugee status here in Canada to escape persecution. She grew up in Bahrain in an extremely restrictive religious household. Forced to wear the hijab for most of her life, Fatima was forced into Islam from a young age. Day in and day out, she had to pray and act the part of a faithful muslim despite not believing in Islam. Her entire life growing up was restricted and controlled. This included who she saw, what she wore, and what she said. 

Finally, at age 19, Fatima managed to immigrate to Canada to study. She spent five years studying at McMaster University, and graduated with a Bachelors of Liberal Arts in 2020. In Canada, Fatima found a sense of freedom she had never had in her home country. She was able to live without religious control and enjoy a secular life. She made many friends and has found a sense of community here. 

Unfortunately, Fatima has been fighting to remain here with her friends and community. In 2021, her Post-Graduate Work Permit was rejected. Compounding this, her family from Bahrain found out about her secular lifestyle. This resulted in horrible harassment from her family, including threats against her life. They have also cut off all financial support in an attempt to blackmail her into returning to Bahrain. If Fatima is forced to return to Bahrain, she will no doubt face horrible persecution and be dragged unwillingly back to a faith she does not believe in. Most troubling of all, her life may be at risk.

In order to stay in Canada, Fatima has applied for refugee status. The office of immigration has been challenging her case, citing a number of small discrepancies as an excuse to keep her from receiving refugee status. This has only made this whole process more challenging, and means that Fatima faces deportation.

In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith…diversity is our strength.” We only ask that the Canadian government live up to these words. Canada has fostered a reputation around the world of being a welcoming place for those fleeing persecution. It makes no sense that a woman fleeing for her life and liberty should be sent back to a hostile and dangerous environment. All we want is for Fatima to stay here, with her friends and partner, where she is safe to continue working and living life as she sees fit.

Please sign this petition demanding refugee status for Fatima! Spread the word and share this amongst your friends. We need your help!

[the-sunshine-cult-deactivated20]

Different person, but, I've seen some people who are older in the community claiming that kink and polyamory have historically been considered part of the community. I don't know enough about the history there, do you know anything on that? I've been on the "no" side with those two, but I mean, I don't really know anything that would go against those historical claims, so do you know if are they true?

I don’t know any history surrounding that but kinks and poly are not LGBT+. They deviate from social norms, certainly, but they’re adjectives, not subjects.

okay idk if that made sense im not an english major guys

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Okay so I’ve made about a dozen of these posts in the last month or two, so I’m not going to get as exhaustive as I sometimes do, but here’s the history that my mother and aunties taught me about kink and polyamory as queer.

When I was growing up, I was told that the kink community was the physical space in which the queer community existed and that non-monogamy/polyamory as the concepts that exist today were born directly out of queer culture and the environments that shaped it.

Basically, back in the early years when most of queer culture was an arrestable offense and people mostly only got to meet their partners in the backrooms of old speakeasies and nightclubs, kink spaces were doing the same thing and were one of the only non-mob owned options for gatherings. Kink communities themselves were almost entirely made up of queer folks already anyways because surprise surprise a community made mostly of abuse survivors is gonna have pretty high rates of queer folks in it. And because of the semi-public nature of the spaces and the limited safe dating options polyamory and related non-monogamous practices became common place.

They became so common place in fact that queerness and queer culture completely and foundationally shaped the discussions around consent, relationship needs, emotional connections, and ethical behavior that became central to kink and polyamory as practices. They became so common place in part because it made sense, in part because the cultures all needed each other, and in part because, as my mother always said, “if society had already damned you just for being queer, what did you have to lose by trying all the other things society was going to damn you for as well?” This, incidentally, is also why there have historically been such high numbers of queer folk in illegal occupations like sex work and why my mom and aunties also used to consider sex work as a culture pretty fucking queer too.

But the years went by and your average, “respectable” white gay and lesbian folks with their picket fence day dreams started making progress. They started kicking people to the curb in an effort to make queerness look less “challenging” and different. Bye bye, bisexuals, bye bye drag and trans culture, bye bye non-monogamy what do you mean you actually think the “slippery slope” to gay marriage also leading to polygamy might be a good thing? Bye bye all you sex freaks, sexuality is something your born with and you can’t help who you love, it’s not like all that disgusting talking-about-sex-and-building-the-entire-network-of-sex-ed-information-we-used-to-desperately-try-and-survive-the-AIDS-crisis-ew-you-perverts-our-sex-is-beautiful-and-pure-like-marriage! And so on and so forth.

See, when it was all about survival, the distinction that Straight people drew between gay, kinky, polyamorous, trans, ace, etc was irrelevant. They’d kill us all the same so we might as well band together and make a world in which the next generation might not just live but thrive. But once it became about gaining access to state acceptance and making room within the legal framework that already existed, those of us who were too scary to Straight society, who still needed the hierarchy destroyed, not just expanded, became dead weight. Our labor, our physical space, our intellectual efforts all became irrelevant and all that mattered was when the Straights looked at White Cis Gays they saw Us instead. So the White Cis Gays fixed that by making it clear they thought we were just as disgusting as the Straights thought we were. They abandoned us and took our history and our language and our fucking lives with them and said we weren’t ~allowed~ to have it. And because those of us who were marginalized in many ways or who were doubly or triply damned were more likely to have suffered massive losses during the AIDS crisis and to still be living in poverty, in crime, and in general destitution of social capital, we’ve been fighting an uphill battle not to be erased ever since.

So now you have a whole generation or two or three who grew up being told a sanitized history where a “drag queen” threw the first brick at Stonewall, Pride wasn’t started by one of the bisexual Queens of Kink, and non-monogamy hasn’t been the natural progression of so many of our communities for generations. And they tell us we never existed, we’re just secret straighties thinking our gross sex lives make us queer, we could just choose to be respectable and “normal” like everyone else and then we wouldn’t be “bullied” (because god forbid our actual oppression be recognized) and they completely miss the irony.

And as much as I hate that I have to list my credentials in order for there to be a chance in burning hell for this response to be considered legitimate, I am the nonbinary, bisexual, polyamorous, kinky, intersex child of a bisexual, kinky, polyamorous woman who spent all of my life and most of hers in the heart of Queer culture and politics to the point that she put me on the stand in front of the entire school board and a third of the state at age 10 to fight for our right to participate in the Day of Silence without fear of suspension, expulsion, abuse, or injury/death. I was on my mother’s hip at the state capitol protests with police in riot gear ready to do whatever it took to prevent us from entering the building. I am Queer in so many ways, including ones no one can dare fucking argue and so was my mother before me and my aunties before her, and this is THEIR history I am telling and will keep telling until I’m dead because I will rot before I let people erase their memories, blood, and joy from our history by claiming that kink and polyamory don’t belong.

I apologize for that all sounding angry and upset. It is not aimed at anyone in particular. I am just very very tired and it’s almost Passover which means that my auntie’s are a lot more on my brain than usual and I am just so exhausted by the way I have been mocked and belittled for months now over things that were simply Truth when I was growing up. Please understand how much history is denied and how many ancestors are dishonored by this rhetoric of “who REALLY belongs in the community?”

We were not supposed to be an exclusive club with a guard at the gate. We were supposed to be a role model by which society learned to better itself and treat us ALL with dignity and humanity. And I am tired of seeing people pretend otherwise.

[whovianuncle]

We were not supposed to be an exclusive club with a guard at the gate. We were supposed to be a role model by which society learned to better itself and treat us ALL with dignity and humanity. And I am tired of seeing people pretend otherwise.

[jenroses]

When I met my “First queer person ™” back in 1990, one of the things she said to me that I spent about 27 years unpacking was this:

“monogamous heterosexual relationships are patriarchal bullshit.”

I took offense at the time. But when you don’t let people use words like “queer” to describe “everyone who isn’t in this Normative Bubble of heterosexual serial monogamy”, you have to get pretty specific about the fact that STRAIGHT refers to this concept of being “normal” which in this culture has meant for many years “Straight, cis, monogamous (or doing your best to fake all of the above)” 

Quit fucking gatekeeping.

The people who hate us hate all of us. Joining them in their hatred doesn’t solve the problem. 

The way they win is if they get us to fight each other. 

[grace-and-ace]

I don’t reblog sensitive topics on this blog, but this is exactly what I had a long conversation about recently. I’m not young, and I remember shit like this as it was happening. polyamory is queer as fuck and learn to respect that

[penrosesun]

Relatedly, also – the legal fights for legal polyamory and kink are fundamentally tied to the legal fights for gay and trans rights.

Here’s something that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough: even today, most states have anti-kink laws on the books, and will sometimes prosecute consenting kink participants for assault and battery. And in places where this happens, it is pretty much exclusively used to target queer clubs and spaces, in almost exactly the same way that anti-sodomy laws once were.

When I was in undergrad, a queer nightclub near where I went to school got busted because someone was reportedly “hitting a patron with a wooden spoon”. The people arrested were charged with assault with a dangerous weapon – the alleged ‘weapon’ being the spoon – a felony punishable by up to 5 years in state prison and $1,000 fine. Turns out, there wasn’t any play happening in the club at that hour, and there were no wooden spoons found anywhere in the building… but you better believe that the proud queers the cops arrested for it had to find lawyers and make bail and go to court dates anyway. And even if the cops had found a fucking spoon in the club, would that have justified any of it? Make no mistake – this club, like so many other queer kinky clubs across the country, was targeted because it was queer. And separating out the queer from the kinky would do jack shit to help anyone arrested that night.

Anti-kink (and anti-poly) are weaponized in order to target queer people, specifically, and in significant numbers. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s enough to make them inherently anti-queer as political tactics, even laying aside all of the history above. Don’t do our enemy’s dirty work for them.

[moki-dokie]

god fucking thank you for thoroughly explaining this. i’m so exhausted by this argument and so exhausted explaining these points to people.

i am once again begging the baby gays to LEARN YOUR QUEER HISTORY

[roach-works]

we need to bring back the concept of being a fucking square. like, a complacent prude who mindlessly regurgitates social norms because they think everyone should be either normal or punished until they conform? fucking square. a heterosexual man involved in his local kink scene is more queer than half the proto-radfem baby lesbians i see on tumblr, freaking out because someone said the word transexual.  

straight used to be the counterpart of bent. it was the opposite of broken, crooked, twisted, queer. forget ‘queer is a slur’, ‘straight’ used to be like that, too. a derisive term for the kind of people who were square, who were rigid, who lived in boxes and did as they were told and who hurt you if you wouldn’t admire them for it. straight  as in straight and narrow. as in straight as a ruler. as in stay in line. 

ive seen an awful lot of self-professed LGBT kids who would qualify as really, really straight.

[renthony]

I'm not opposed to the Etsy strike but I think people have forgotten that a true strike doesn't end until some sort of resolution has been made. The Kellogg's strike, for example, didn't have an announced end date. The workers were on strike indefinitely until certain conditions were met.

I worry that giving such a clear, hard end date to the Etsy strike is probably just sending the message to Etsy that their profits will dip for a week and then go right back to normal.

I get that a lot of people can't afford to close their shops for even a week, but as a union member with the IWW, I really think the first step really should be to organize under a freelance artists' union so there can be shit like a strike fund, clear communication, and clear demands coming from a centralized force.

IDK, I'm not the most educated person in the world, so maybe I'm off-base, but from where I'm standing, the constant calls for a "general strike" that are really just a planned protest, not a true strike, feel like they're kind of kneecapping actual strike efforts at times.

[renthony]

I was catching up on my TikTok feed this morning and came across a video talking about the strike organizers "coming up with ways to support people during the strike."

That's...not something you should be figuring out after you call for a strike. That's like the first thing you figure out, before you even think about calling for a strike.

This isn't a strike, it's a scheduled boycott.

[renthony]

#that's true but a scheduled boycott can still be a labor tactic

Oh, absolutely, that's why I said in the OP that I'm not against the Etsy strike, even if I have my criticisms. I'm not going to tell people not to do it or that it's completely futile. I genuinely hope it catches Etsy's attention.

My issue is mostly that I think there's been a muddying of the waters about what strikes are, how they work, and how they're organized. It's why you see calls across social media every six months for a "general strike" that has no actual core organization, no strike fund, no clear demands, and absolutely no information about how to access support while striking. It's extremely wishful thinking that puts several carts before the horse.

Strikes can be a powerful and important tool for workers' rights, but calling every action a "strike" or trying to go right to striking without the right foundation feels like an issue that should be talked about, imo.

[crimson-chains]

Hey guys!

Kaizu and I will be participating in the Etsy strike coming up from April 11th to the 18th!

Our shop will be put on vacation mode so sales will not be possible.

The Etsy strike is to protest the recent increase in fees. Etsy has announced record profits but still increased fees by 30% and have over the last few years been making the site inhospitable to small creators.

Please help support this strike by not buying anything from Etsy during the week of April 11th.

Here's a link to a petition outlining the exact demands from the strike and also more information on how some changes have harmed small creators.

Thank you!

[kaizuart]

Please spread the word if you can! Crim and I are putting our shop on hiatus— and if you’re a creator on Etsy, and can afford to do so, we hope you do the same!

[yidkirkin]

crash

[angry-cryptid]

I took a screenshot if this from pearlsandwine on Instagram (they don't seem to have a tumblr, I checked). My etsy shop will be closed. Kofi shop will stay open (they don't charge me sales fees, which is a blessing).

If you have an etsy shop, please consider this.It might not do anything, but it's worth a try.

[wordwizards]

new tumblr people if you have a blank blog and you only like stuff but never reblog anything people are going to assume you're not a real person and block you

[mortalityplays]

also if you're hot and your name is jessica and the number 258563115 is emotionally significant to you I'm sorry for the discrimination you face here 😔❤️

[arsed-again]

I have a problem with the way writers pose Batman's no-killing rule so hear me out;

It's usually put as "I can't kill anyone, that would make the line too blurry -I would inevitably kill again because I would have a weaker excuse not to, and I would never stop," -which, don't get me wrong, I respect that reasoning. If Bruce knows what's up with himself and that he's not the sort of man who could stop at one death (no matter how deserving *cough* Joker *cough*) I'm certainly not going to be the one to make him do it and set him loose on the city afterwards.

BUT I was thinking about it and it would ring more relatable to me (worrying about becoming a murderous vigilante is not exactly on my daily list) if his dilemma were posed as "If I were to break the rule/moral that is most fundamental to my core, that I've built my entire self, life and goals around -that I refuse to take a life after two were taken from me -then what would be left of me? Why would I want to save Gotham from itself? Why would my reputation or my philanthropy matter? Why would I even care about my family or my own life anymore if I could bring myself to end someone else's life, no matter how horrible a person they were?" In other words, if he removes the foundation of his moral code, everything else goes with it.

I think "If I kill, then I won't stop killing," rings a little hollow because in the DC universe, it's regularly shown that people who have killed can and are still good, kind, loving people with family, friends, and a superhero career. Wonder Woman, Arsenal, Jim Gordon, Damian, Cass, even Nightwing! In this universe killing doesn't make you evil. And even villains who have killed a lot of people or enabled it, such as Harley & Ivy, Clayface, or Talia still get redemption arcs or sympathetic storylines. Batman's a narrative outlier in a lot of cases, even when the no-killing rule is handled well (let's not talk about when it's botched).

But if he were to say, "If I kill, then I would stop caring about everyone around me," which would draw attention to the importance both of his bond to his family and friends as well as his own moral code as a hero, I think that would make more sense and mesh better with how the DC universe has changed around him. Lots of heroes have gotten people killed, whether directly or not, but it's when they stop caring about the people around them that they stop being a hero altogether.

[addictivecontradiction]

Harlan County, U.S.A., 1976

[enby-scientist]

#us coal mining is a fun bit of cultural connection with us over in wales#ultimately we both got fucked#and had to fight tooth and nail for unions#ironically thanks to tectonic plates we were essentially mining the same mountain range#thousands of miles apart#what you call blue ridge mountains#we call Yr wyddfa#west viginia and all the coal towns are siblings as far as im concerned#we were raised on the same stone#that makes us kin Via: @scottish-valkyrie

[anais-ninja-bitch]

@ruffboijuliaburnsides yeah

[canadian-marxist]

In the early morning of 24 February, the Russian army launched a military operation against Ukraine, inflicting airstrikes on military units, air defence systems and ammunition depots. At the heart of the present dispute is Ukraine’s future membership of NATO. Guaranteeing against this was a central Russian demand, which has been repeatedly refused by Washington. Putin’s aggressive incursion into Ukraine is the latest in a series of destabilizing manoeuvres, using the people of Ukraine as pawns for inter-imperialist rivalries.

The only contribution of Western leaders to the present crisis was a never-ending series of bellicose statements, accompanied by dire threats of “severe” (but unspecified) consequences that would allegedly follow a Russian attack. These remarks, backed up by an obstinate intransigence to even consider Russia’s demands, helped to make an invasion inevitable.

Join us on March 9th at 6pm for a discussion on how we can resist imperialist aggression and lessons we can draw from the history of the struggle against imperialist wars.

LINKS IN NOTES AND REBLOG

[canadian-marxist]

Register in advance for this event here: https://utoronto.zoom.us/.../tZYvdeGvrjIqHtQPfWLTcoP9iH5u...

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

[gayrandalgraves]

you have to fistfight your tumblr pfp. do you think you'd win

[missmentelle]

My sibling is alt-right and extremely hateful about his beliefs. He goes on tirades about liberal agendas and screams and insults me and our other family members when we attempt to debate with him. I live with him and being around him negatively impacts my mental health, especially with me being part of some of the groups he hates so much. I don’t know what to do. I feel so much hatred for him, but he’s my brother and we used to be close.

Members of the so-called “alt right” or “manosphere” actually bear very strong similarities to cult members - they become increasingly rigid in their beliefs, they have decreasing tolerance for ambiguity (everything starts to become either right or wrong, with no room for grey areas), they become increasingly preoccupied with “purity” of thought, their beliefs start to become the core of their personal identity, they accept the word of thought leaders without question or critical thinking, their relationships with family and friends deteriorate, and they often experience negative consequences at work or school as a direct result of their beliefs. 

Dealing with a friend or family member who has joined the alt-right is very different from dealing with a family member who is dabbling with the idea of voting Conservative for economic reasons, or dealing with a family member who erroneously believes that Game of Thrones isn’t very good. Reasoned discussion and laying out your point of view will not work here. The tactics that you need to use with him are actually the tactics used to deprogram cult members, which includes things like:

Do not debate him. Never debate a cult member under any circumstances. It’s a complete waste of time for everybody involved, and it only serves to further entrench him in his toxic beliefs. Cult members do not approach debates in good faith - they are not open to having their minds changed, and they have no intention of ever listening to the other side. Cult members use debate as a tool to recruit people with possibly like-minded beliefs, or as a tool to gather evidence that the “other side” is delusional. The more you debate, the harder he will fight to come up with justifications for his beliefs, and the more satisfaction he will get from feeling like he is defending his “side” from attack. Shut down all debate with him. If he tries to start a debate, redirect immediately. If he makes an inflammatory statement at the dinner table, respond with something non-committal ( “hmmmmm”, “is that so?”, “okay” ) and immediately change the subject. Don’t get sucked in. No matter how hard he tries to open up a debate, deflect, shut him down, or walk away. 

Treat him with detached politeness. I know that it is very difficult not to get visibly upset when someone is insulting the very core of who you are as a person and what you believe, but but you have to stay calm and detached here. Do not let him see that he is upsetting you. When he is going on rants about his beliefs, treat him like a child who is explaining the rules to a video game that you don’t particularly care about - have an air of detached boredom, and no matter how hostile he gets, respond only with politeness. Remember, part of the core beliefs he’s being fed is that people outside of the alt-right are “emotional”, and that his beliefs are “triggering” to those people. Give him no evidence to suggest that is true. Stonewall him. Give him nothing but bored stoicism in response to his outbursts. No matter how much he escalates or how horrifying his beliefs get, always act as though you are having a polite conversation about the weather with a stranger at Starbucks. If he tells you that women should should be property and gays should be killed, respond only with a polite “Well, I suppose that’s one perspective”, or “Yes, I believe you have mentioned this before”. Nothing takes the wind out of a cult member’s sails faster than being treated with calm politeness when they are expecting a fight.

Do not insult him or the people who share his beliefs. The glue that holds cults together is a persecution complex. Cults absolutely thrive on being persecuted for their beliefs, and they depend on it to keep members from leaving. “People outside this group hate you and they will treat you much worse than we will” is the message that keeps people from leaving hateful cults, all the way up until the Kool-Aid is served. He is being fed the message by his fellow cult members that he is hated for who he is - a, presumably, straight white man - and that “Liberals” hate him so much that they want to take away the things he is “owed” (money, power, security, etc) and give it away to undeserving minorities who haven’t really “earned” it. Give him no evidence to suggest that this is true. Refrain from insulting him, or insulting the people he views as thought leaders or role models. You can definitely express your political opinions and make it clear that you are not buying into your brother’s worldview, but keep things direct and refrain from personal attacks. If he is gloating about the president to intentionally get a rise out of you, a simple “I disagree with his policies” is all you have to say - launching into attacks about the president’s looks, family, mannerisms or intelligence is fuel for your brother’s hateful beliefs. Remember that when it comes to your brother, you are not acting in the role of a left-wing activist facing off against a dangerous right-wing activist with a platform. You are a concerned family member dealing with a family member who has gotten involved in a cult. 

Ask polite questions, but do not engage directly with his beliefs. Do not read any of the reading material he recommends, listen to any of the podcasts he puts forward or view any of the videos he asks you to watch; it might be tempting to do so just to prove that you are engaging with him in “good faith” and that you have given his views an “honest try”, but this is a mistake. There is no such thing as “good faith” or intellectual honesty when it comes to cults, and there is nothing to gain from engaging in their propaganda. Do not treat anything produced or recommended by a cult as if it has value, because it does not. When he provides you with something he wants to you read, behave as though a young child has just handed you a live earthworm - thank him for the gesture, but decline to accept. Engaging with propaganda just legitimizes it, and gives him more ammunition to hunker down in his beliefs. When you do ask questions of his beliefs, be detached and polite. If he is ranting that all women are whores, ask him what the basis is for that belief. You are not looking to debate him or get a rise out of him - don’t fire back with counter-points, but make a polite, disinterested noise of acknowledgement, or ask for further clarification. You are merely looking for holes in his reasoning, or gaps where he doesn’t have evidence to back up what he says. You don’t need to point these holes out to him - there will be many. When he is unable to be specific, once again, make a polite acknowledgement ( “Interesting.” ) and move on.

Emphasize how much you miss your former relationship with him. Tell your brother that you miss him. Be specific - talk about the things that you used to do together, and the ways that he used to be involved in your life. If he tries to deflect and start talking about his beliefs again, or how he can’t be involved with you anymore because of your own beliefs or identity, don’t engage. Go back to talking about how you miss the relationship you used to have with him. If he insults you, pretend you didn’t hear him and remind him of a happy memory or a fun thing that you used to do together. It can take a really long time to have success with this tactic, but your brother does remember the relationship he used to have with you, and it is possible to remind him of what he is missing out on by continuing with his hateful beliefs. The idea is to take his beliefs out of the equation as much as possible - make him miss the relationship that he used to have. Any attempt at mending the relationship on his end will necessarily require that he get less extreme in his beliefs - it’s difficult to pursue a close relationship with someone and still insult them. 

Remind him of normal life outside the cult. People in the alt-right - and other cults - tend to become hyper-focused only on issues that concern the cult, and begin to forget about normal life. Your brother is likely spending a lot of time and focus on things like the “sexual marketplace”, abortion rights, refugees, gay rights, female superhero movies etc. Bring him back to earth as often as you can with reminders of things that are outside the scope of the alt-right, and are minimally politically charged. Start a conversation about a new restaurant that is opening up in your town. Show him a funny cat video. Ask him if he’s seen a minimally controversial movie. Constant reminds of normalcy can gradually help him realize how hyper-focused he has become on a few small issues, and remind him that his worldview and priorities are incredibly skewed.

Protect your own mental health. Living with a cult member is exhausting. The combination of fending off the insults, being bombarded with hate rhetoric and missing the person they used to be is exhausting. Make sure you are protecting your own mental health. Take breaks. Leave the house and spend time with other people. Lean on friends and other family members for support. Take care of yourself. Getting someone out of a cult is a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s important to conserve your energy. It can take up to five years to get someone to fully leave cult beliefs behind. Be patient. 

One of the hard parts about dealing with alt-right family members is that people make the mistake of approaching them as a political movement, when it is more appropriate to address them as a cult. The way that they operate is much more similar to the dynamics of a cult than the dynamics of a mainstream political movement, and deprogramming techniques are your best bet for getting your family member back. I highly recommend that you and your family read up on cults and the tactics used to get people out of them. It is especially helpful to read testimony from people who have escaped cults or successfully been persuaded to leave them - if possible, look for materials from people who have left the alt-right, and try to present this material to your brother. This is an incredibly difficult thing for a family to go through, and I highly recommend that you seek out other families who are dealing with similar situations - you are far from alone here. 

Best of luck to all of you. 

[hiveswap]

Could we crash tumblr if we all posted the word "crash" on the 1st of april 2022, 12:35 EST?

[hiveswap]

Everyone schedule

[hiveswap]

Pm

[go-learn-esperanto]

Doing it again since I accidentally put the wrong time zone

Event Time Announcer - Tumblr - Crash

Event Time Announcer shows time for Tumblr - Crash in locations all over the world. In New York it happens on Friday, April 1, 2022 at 12:35

So everyone can find their time :3

[hiveswap]

You may ask, "Jenna, why do you want this? Isn't there enough suffering in the world?" Well, you are right. But I want to scare the owners of this site. Not @staff, you know damn well they don't actually call the shots. No, i want to scare the people who make decisions. I want them to know that we can act as a unit and wreck shit on our own accord, that this community can move mountains. I want them to hesitate next time they make an announcement. Popular sovereignty, motherfuckers.

[gelatinous-cat]

I know most people know this but some people in the notes don't, so reminder that you don't have to wake up or anything to post it, just schedule the post like this:

now you just hit the blue schedule and forget about it until the day it happens 👍

[demonboyhalo]

oh hell yeah im doing this gamers join us

[titleknown]

SHOP SAFE Will Stomp Out Online Sales of Used and Homemade Goods

The House of Representatives has inserted SHOP SAFE—a piece of legislation that would make it extremely difficult for any individual to sell things online and equally difficult for any online platform to compete with Amazon—into a 3,000-page trade bill. It cannot remain there.The “Stopping Harmful...

So, while we’re occupied by the horrors of EARN IT, I feel I should also draw your attention to another terrible bill that will screw over online creators, SHOP SAFE.

It is, more or less, a bill requiring a photo ID on any potential service selling anything online, mandated Content-ID to trace your items for any Trademark Infringements in its sale, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s difficult to exaggerate how this could destroy the livelihoods of online creators who sell physical goods. Unfortunately, the bill was attached like a tumor to the COMPETES Act, which passed out of the House just recently. The good news however, is that it still requires reconciliation with the Senate version, which does not have this terrible, awful, no-good bill attached

Contact your Senators, whether by writing them online or calling them or even using the EFF’s handy tool of their own, and tell them that if they get on that reconciliation committee, you want SHOP SAFE gone from the version of the bill that’s sent to Biden’s desk.