If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I’ve been creating pride flag collages for years (since 2017, to be exact). This is a culmination of that and will be out on October 1st, just in time for LGBT+ History month!
So many of you are part of the reason behind this book. Tumblr has been where I have learned about queer identities far and wide, including my own when I was a teenager (hello out there, ace Tumblr), and you have continued to educate me (most recently with people who use it/its pronouns). You’re gems, and I’m really excited to share this with you.
Also, if you like it, want to support the book, or want to read it and don’t have the money (because art books can be more expensive), suggest it to your local library!!!! That way you and others can enjoy it even if you can’t buy it. <3
I was asked why there’s a zionist claim that the Palestininian identity is not legitimate. And I think it’s important to understand why Palestinians as a whole are seen as a threat by Israel. To understand why it’s not about Hamas.
The claim is that the Palestininian identity was made up in order to push us out. Palestinian existence is a threat to the legitimacy of Israel as a country.
I was taught in school that Palestine was empty when we got here. They used a Mark Twain quote. It was a barren land full of swamps and some nomadic people (Beduins) but as soon as we wanted to come here, the awful antisemitic Arabs sent people to settle here before we could to take up the space. I was in school in the settlements though. I was taught the most extreme version of this.
Another version of this is that Palestine was never its own thing, they’re just Arabs the same as all Arabs from the surrounding countries. So they could just… scooch over and give us the space, please and thank you. In Israel no one uses the term Palestinian. If I do, people roll their eyes and dismissively go “Arab.” An Arab is an Arab. It’s a way to strip away their unique identity and blend them in with the rest to say they could always move to Jordan, or Syria, or Lebanon, and it’s all the same to them.
It’s a way to make Palestinian existence by itself into a malicious plot to deny us a homeland.
Because if Palestinians exist as a distinct group of people, we aren’t the only ones with a connection to this land. And you don’t create an ethnostate by sharing.
You still hear echoes of this mentality. Why won’t all these Muslim countries take the people of Gaza as refugees? That’s asking why they won’t let Israel make its ethnic cleansing more neat and convenient. Yes, refugees should be taken in and given shelter. But this question shifts responsibility away from Israel. Palestinians shouldn’t be forced suffer either ethnic cleansing that leaves them as refugees, or a genocide.
Reading about how intersex athletes have been treated is so fucking horrible. The countless lies and human rights violations. The discrimination and how it’s ruined the lives of so many people is so awful. There has been no apologies from any athletics comptetions or organizations. They have blood on their hands. Just a tw for intersexism and mental health issues and suicide in the next paragraph because it can get pretty heavy.
Annet Negesa, who was a middle distance runner. She was suddenly barred from competing due to her hormones. No one told her why. She was then told she needed to take medication to lower her testosterone, then what she was told was switched. She was lied to about a surgery that she was told was like an injection and would let her compete again. She woke up with scars and had had a gonadectomy. That violation of basic human rights and medical ethics combined with inadequate postsurgical care basically ended her career. She deserves justice. She deserves apologies from the Olympics and everyone single doctor who was involved in it, and compensation and the promise that it should never have happened and will never happen again. She. Needs. Justice.
Pratima Gaonkar needs justice. She was a rising track and field star. After forced sex verificatiom she killed herself. The way media and news treated her after her death was disgusting. She deserves and needs justice. Her family deserves justice.
Santhi Soundarajan had her medals stripped and was treated as an outcast after forced sex verification showed she had androgen insensitivity syndrome. She was treated as an outcast, her gender was mocked. She’s spoken out about how much discrimination she’s faced, and how badly she’s been treated. She now works as a coach, but was barred from competing. She deserves justice.
Caster Semenya deserves justice. Francine Niyonsaba deserves justice. Margaret Wambui deserves justice. Barbra Banda deserves justice. Beatrice Masilingi and Christine Mboma deserve justice.
The racism and intersexism and horrible human rights violations and medical abuse these women have faced for the supposed crime of being intersex and good at a sport is horrible. They deserve justice, but the organizations that perpetuate these atrocities don’t seem to care. It’s so fucking horrible.
Hey. HEY. Everyone listen up.
There is a common thread besides intersexism here, too. They are all people of colour. Take note.
Bumped into a guy I knew from ages ago last night who casually mentioned he was going in for surgery next week.
I said that I hope everything’s alright and he went “aye just getting a sex change” and I was halfway through congratulating him before he realised he wasn’t getting the reaction he wanted, panicked and tried to play it off as a joke.
Just a super strange interaction.
Rolled a 1 for a Transphobia Check
Lmao
personally I think you rolled a 20 on that interaction. You opened their eyes to the possiblity that the action they were joking about was one that’d be met positively rather than negatively, while being able to mask it in a manner that didn’t lead you into some kind of horrific transphobic rant on their end.
If they were gauging your reaction from the standpoint of not knowing who they can trust, they probably know they can come to you. If they’re a transphobe they’re wary that people they’re happy to start a personal conversation with aren’t quite as likely as they thought to hold the same ideals, meaning they’ll be less likely to make the same joke again. You know more about that person, without them necessarily knowing you. You’ve ensured a level of comfortable control over whether you interact with that person again.
That’s better than any other roll could hope for <3
Calling all gender nonconformity an “egg moment” is just reinforcing gender stereotypes with a trans hat actually
Every time I see some well-meaning idiot who’s trying to be progressive basically go “We should stop putting people in the Girl Box based on them having a vagina and start putting people in the Girl Box based on them liking or doing Girl Things,” I genuinely want to shake them until they turn into a funko pop.
(probably) egg moment (ok and fun to talk abt with the person after they’ve come out and are ok with it, or to think and keep to yourself): ugh girls are so pretty. i wish i could be a girl. but i could never do that, i mean i’m not trans i just think being a girl would be great and i would be happier and actually want to live my life. but i’m not trans.
not (inherently) egg moment: i really like wearing dresses, makeup, nail polish, and things that are generally seen as more stereotypically feminine. i like the aesthetic and it’s fun to play around with gender norms.
(probably) egg moment (see above): i’ve always seen myself as a tom boy, i hate wearing clothing that makes people use feminine descriptors for me and being called a girl, but i could never actually be a boy, i mean you’re not allowed to do that. if i could flip a switch and be a boy right now i absolutely would with zero regret, even if it meant i could never flip back, but it’s not like i’m trans or anything.
not (inherently) egg moment: i like being butch and think it’s fun when my femme girlfriend calls me her boyfriend. we like the dynamic, but we’re both happy describing ourselves as women.
Stop misappropriating the abuse and trauma cults use through purity culture for your stupid fucking shipping discourse? Holy fuck no wonder everyone hates this whole discourse.
Since when is "priests getting shuffled around after raping kids and kids being told they're sinful because they had bodily reactions to being SAd" comparable to "Bobo the clown said my ship was cringe"
I’m not gonna answer this with The Aristocrats, as a I threatened, because I want to make a very serious point to this anon:
Purity culture isn’t just religious abuse. It is most widely connected to religious abuse. Including actions in the Catholic Church and all fundamentalist Christianity. It’s entire existence is about terrifying and indoctrinating people into being fearful of their own actions and bodies so that they feel certain that moving out from the “umbrella of safety” (to use a fundamentalist term) will result in them being harmed in ways they can’t imagine. This is generally happening at the same time as they are being harmed by those who are supposed to be keeping them safe from all those terrible, worldly evils. Like speaking up when you’re being abused. Believing you are not responsible for the actions of a rapist, and many, many other things that any person with an ounce of self-worth and good sense (two things not allowed in fundamentalist circles) knows are true in abuse situations.
But the point of the purity culture as identity in the above-mentioned circles is to teach people from birth that they aren’t to have their own feelings, ideas, or instincts. They are only to follow the feelings, ideas, and instincts on the approved list in order to stay within the structures they know and feel safe in even as they feel very unsafe.
That being said:
Purity culture can also exist WITHOUT a religious structure while still being about controlling the thoughts, feelings, and actions of everyone within it. In terms of fandom, purity culture is groups of people stating that if you write something uncomfortable or gross or immoral, then YOU must be uncomfortable or gross or immoral and therefore, not worthy of the safety and moral superiority of the group.
Purity culture without religion teaches black and white thinking, encourages thought policing, and shames anyone who steps outside of a very narrow definition of good and bad by turning an entire group of people against them for being “bad”.
Just like in religious circles.
Just like in the cult of fundamentalism.
Purity culture is a term taken by fundamentalists and turned into a whole way of life because the goal of fundamentalism is to make people too scared to leave. Purity culture in fandom does the same thing. It uses fear and threats of abandonment/harassment to control the way people act because a group of people decided they didn’t like something, so they must try and wipe it out rather than simply ignore it.
I am not mis-using the term because “Bobo the clown said my ship was cringe.” My use of the term is intentional and precise because what is happening in fandom spaces now is non-religious purity culture cult thinking. My use of the term does not invalidate or water down the use of it in conversations about religious abuse and trauma. With or without religion, purity culture is a dangerous cult of “us vs them” that is built to demoralize and eradicate those deemed unworthy.
I think you’re missing something really nasty that nonnie did in the question here though. “Bobo the clown said my ship was cringe” is downplaying the harassment that happens when someone decides that you’re rotating your imaginary people in your head in a “bad” way. It would be a HUGE improvement if people started complaining that ships were cringe, rather than the “well, this character is introduced as a teenager, so to ship them with anyone when they’re 20 years older is a ILLEGAL and a sign that you’re a horrible person who deserves anything bad we can make happen to you” that gets done.
You’re making an excellent point.
I chose to ignore the details of this person attempting to discredit me in order to focus on their overall argument that I’m not allowed to use a phrase that they want to establish as having a single meaning and use. When, in truth, it’s a phrase that identifies a set of ideas and behaviors that can function across many situations. In the same way that a cult can be religious or commercial, for example.
But it’s important to also note what you said. That the phrasing of the what they see as my issue (“Bobo the clown…”) is written in the most juvenile language to imply that the results of purity culture within fandom aren’t serious or dangerous or traumatizing.
Which is, unsurprisingly, a common purity culture tactic.
Also, as someone who experienced intensive purity culture from especially my family in ways that are typically only thought of as happening in hyperreligious christian households, despite my mom and dad being agnostic and atheist respectively…
It absolutely does go beyond shipcourse. I was shamed for my sexuality. I was shamed for masturbation. I was shamed for having HARMLESS kinks by ANY standards (things literally like piss). I was shamed so hard and in such insidious ways as a form of thought control that I have extreme moral OCD to this day and despite having worked incredibly hard to unlearn it and let myself be my incredibly kinky self, I STILL sometimes have panic attacks or feel the urges to start “confessing” what I’m getting off to to my parents again.
This shit damages you. It’s traumatic. It nearly cost the relationship I now have with my partner because my parents so strongly were convinced they knew my sexuality innately, inside and out, that they delayed my realization of my own pansexuality, my aspec identities, my abroness, etc, for several YEARS while I worried they were right and that I wouldn’t be attracted to my partner anymore once she transitioned. They told me I was just straight and into her “male body” when I came out.
For the record, she is more beautiful every day she becomes more herself.
I felt dirty for having a body. My mom USED her suspicions of my sexual abuse pre-adoption to shame me for my piss kink, to call it abnormal and pathological. When I realized that SA had happened?
She backtracked so fast she tripped over herself, because me actually processing the real trauma and having a healthy relationship with my sexuality was more than she could handle.
I’m still unlearning just how deep that toxicity managed to seep into my psyche and healing with gentle hands the scars it left behind. I’m learning to love myself in ways I never realized I hated myself.
And I see these exact same patterns mirrored in shipcourse.
I see them mirrored in the moralization and demonization of depictions of sex that when fictional, harm no one. I see people making their discomfort the problem of survivors writing pieces that clearly are saying “this is bad” to anyone with critical thinking skills. I see children being called child predators for ageing characters up or down to self-ship. I see it in light and sexy erotica for people with cnc kinks being treated as dangerous pro-rape propaganda.
I see it in words on the page being held as equally horrible as what happened to me, when even if they were in fact actually harmful in any material way, it would be plancks to the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall galactic filament of harm that is actual harm to a single actual living child.
For reference, a planck length is the smallest theoretical unit in the universe. The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall is a cluster of galaxies that is the single largest object in the known universe. The scales don’t even compare. This isn’t even ants to planets or booboos to broken bones. This is a momentary itch to total extinction of all existing life in this universe levels of scale, in the imaginary theoretical scenario where any part of a fanfic depicting the abuse I went through could be inherently harmful in any way.
Aside from misguided survivors, who I have enough empathy for to feel more neutral, I have nothing but the coldest void of hate for those that dare to compare the two. And worse, who then have the GALL to tell people talking about other forms of valid sexual trauma due to repression, shame, and abusive control, and tell them that THEY’RE in the wrong for noting the very real similarities and in cases IDENTICAL practices between cases of institutionalized thought control used to perpetrate sexual abuse in religion and secular thought control used to shape societal attitudes around and perpetrate sexual abuse in wider society?
Who do they think they are, to reduce it to “being told Bobo the clown is cringe” (never mind the multiple cases of minors and survivors being driven to attempts suicide, or any of the other number of serious harm done. never mind the actual predators sheltered by the anti community and rhe grooming done under the guise of “protecting the children” while sharing actual sexual materials with said children and spamming gore and death threats at and even doxxing others)?
How dare they try and minimize the very real harm done by secular purity culture and the way it shapes “protect the children” rhetoric and prevents children from receiving the age appropriate sexual education that has been proven time and time again to REDUCE sexual abuse and cause more perpetrators to be caught and kids to be saved?
How dare they further speak over and silence survivors talking about the methods by which a foundation is built on which to rest rape culture and prioritize the comfort of those who’ve never endured such a thing over the healing and safety of survivors?
How. Dare they.
Hell would seem a kind fate for that kind of person if I believed in such a place.
But my principles inform me to say: I hope anon can learn just how wrong they are about everything. I hope they spend the rest of their life working to help the people they’re truly hurting with their quippy one-liners that bely deep underlying attitudes that are working to support and uphold societal, structural real world harm.
Though the petty part of me can’t help but hope that the harm they’ve done or allowed to be done drives them to work ever harder, chasing unattainable absolution withheld only by their own guilt, as the haunting reality of what they’ve participated in nips at their heels like venom-fanged hellhounds.
I know, that’s not very anarchist or reform/rehabilitation justice paradigm of me. I know that part is neither useful nor kind.
But as a survivor, please give me the grace of allowing me that anger at someone who won’t even acknowledge the smallest parts of the hurt that was done to me, how it all compounded and twisted in on and corrupted all the other bits and festered inside until it broke open into a cacophony of rot and spores that I’m in intensive therapy to try and root out so I can start growing in all the places that were made infertile for me as an INFANT, where most other people have had all the years of their life to nurture and grow.
And allow me to finish with: anon, go fuck yourself.
literally EVERYBODY thought the lion king was gonna flop and pocahontas would be their greatest movie ever made. people begged to ditch lion king and work on pocahontas.
the reason robin hood ends so abruptly is that there was an actual ending planned and storyboarded but the crew spent too long arguing about everyone’s fursonas to finish animating it
madam mim was way less comedic in the original book but because her character was too similar to maleficent (who was in their latest film at the time), the sword and the stone crew decided to differentiate her by making her fucking hilarious
when making a goofy movie, jeffrey katzenberg (studio chairman at the time) told bill farmer to give goofy “a normal voice.” farmer, who had been voicing goofy for eight years at that point, including in the goof troop show that a goofy movie was a sequel to, was very confused. after making an attempt they decided to scrap that note completely.
as of march 2023, farmer is still voicing goofy, and tony anselmo has been voicing donald since 1986. the 2017 reboot of ducktales, which was slated as “wanting to do for donald what goofy movie did for goofy,” featured both actors as those characters; they had also been doing the voices for the original ducktales and goof troop/goofy movie. all the times goofy and donald interact in the 2017 ducktales however, donald was voiced by guest star don cheadle as a joke
current voice of mickey mouse bret iwan has stated that he has attempted to play kingdom hearts and did not do well
disneyland’s current world of color halloween overlay features a plot that is basically “the disney villains simultaneously adopt a goth kid” and i love it
people will make jokes about “well math says that the beast would’ve been 11 when he was cursed” well that was actually the original intent, but a flashback scene of baby beast was scrapped because he looked “too much like eddie munster”
when disney sent a representative to pixar to check on toy story production, she was like “this is all great! what style of music are you thinking” and they were like “for what” “for the songs” “we uh. we weren’t gonna have. any songs” and she went dead silent and then went “i have to make a call” and left the room
saludos amigos and the three caballeros were made as ww2 propaganda. the government commissioned disney to make movies to make latin america like them so that they wouldnt side with the nazis and provide them an in to invade, and latin america really liked donald duck so
saludos amigos was apparently the first time many usamericans realized that latin american people were like. people. film historian alfred charles richard jr said that the film “did more to cement a community of interest between peoples of the americas in a few months than the state department had in fifty years”
while latin america generally liked both films, chilean cartoonist rené rios boettiger fucking hated the chilean segment of saludos amigos, seeing the main character of pedro the plane as a weakass bitch, so in response he created condorito, the most popular comic character in all of latin america
disney wanted to adapt ts eliot’s old possum’s book of practical cats. his widow adamantly refused, and then sold the rights to andrew lloyd webber bc he wanted to make it sexy and she said “tom would’ve liked that”
in case you haven’t seen the defunctland, walt disney wanted epcot to be a futuristic utopia where he was basically the dictator. then he died so they just made it another theme park
speaking of defunctland the first defunctland video was on disneyworld’s alien attraction and please watch it. please it’s so funny
after the huge failure of the black cauldron disney was going to shut down its animation department. the department tried to convince them to keep them alive by showing them the one scene they had finished for the next movie– the mouse burlesque from the great mouse detective. it worked
the only attraction the black cauldron ever got was in tokyo disneyland where they put a tour under cinderella’s castle where everyone had to escape the disney villains trying to kill them, only to end at the horned king and the cauldron, who would try to sacrifice them to satan. this tour was popular but was closed in the early 2000s as the tunnels didn’t fit earthquake regulations and i want it in disneyworld so bad
walt disney once referred to his unionizing workers, led by goofy’s creator art babbitt, as “commie sons of bitches,” and i want a mickey build-a-bear that calls me a commie son-of-a-bitch whenever i squeeze its paw
The sharp increase in people creating Cyberpunk Ai voice mods is fucking alarming.
If you do not have permission. Stealing someone’s voice is quite literally a form of identity theft.
Stop training these systems. Christ.
I don’t really go here, but as I saw Elias Toufexis (actor of Adam Jensen in deus ex) on twitter recently addressing this very thing so for some added context.
Even if you personally have good intentions - don’t do this shit
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I actually sent a message to SAG-AFTRA about it and linked the Scarlett Johanson, Ryan Gosling, and Ariana Grande one. Nexus currently will only allow reporting from the individual or whoever owns the property being used so we can’t report these mods.
The US House also has introduced a draft bill called NO FAKES seeking to put limits on this kind of shit. I think one thing in the meantime we could do is let the voice actors or relevant union know and link to them because they are unauthorized AI and that they can request Nexus remove the mods.
Here’s my email and their response
Oh hell yeah. Get em.
I really hope enough attention can get Nexus to finally put their foot down on this kind of thing. If a threat of a possible lawsuit from the affected parties is what does it, then I hope they use that as a way to slap some sense into them.
I’m Diné (Navajo) and in high school I was put in some kind of group for native kids. It was run by a white woman who told us that if we were ever in class and feeling overwhelmed, we had permission to just up and leave class to go wander around outside and reconnect with nature. We all took advantage of this regularly
the implication she thought you were like, forest fairies that had to periodically connect with nature to regain your strength is the most racist but also kinda funny thing I ever heard
Yesterday I almost cried because my baby cousin ran up to my grandmother and was like. “Ha! Buhbuh ba ha.” And she said okay you want to show me something? And he led her over to the garden patch and crouched down and pointed at rocks and plants and was like. “Ah. Habah ba ah” as she listened attentively.
And I was like that happened 1,000 years ago. Probably 10,000 years ago. Maybe 100,000. The youngest human in a group went to the oldest one and said to the best of their ability “come see.” And the adult went.
this is such a beautiful post it doesn’t need my dumb addition, but i can’t fit this in the tags. at the archaeological site Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic there are a bunch of really really fascinating finds and I’m only going to tell you about one tiny detail of one of the most interesting sites in the world.
at this settlement 20-30,000 years ago there lived a person who appears to have been a sort of sorcerer-grandmother-ceramics artist and her workshop was preserved very well in the sedimentary layers. her hut where she had her kilns was full of little sculptures of animals and people that seem to have been made to explode in the kiln on purpose, we’re not sure why but nevermind. the relevant detail is that when you sculpt something with your hands and then fire it, your fingerprints can be preserved in the surface of the clay forever, so we have fingerprints of ancient ceramics artists that have survived for tens of thousands of years. and one of the major artifacts from Dolni Vestonice has a fingerprint on it that is so small it could only have belonged to a child
so this shaman-grandmother-sculptor, who was buried with her pet fox by the way, had children running through her workshop and touching everything she made while she was at her mysterious work of creating the world’s oldest ceramics, none of which appear to be bowls, bottles, pots, or any “useful” items at all, but rather a collection of animal and human and sometimes anthropomorphic figures, some of which appear to be self portraits. exactly the same as sandersstudios’ grandmother being led to the garden by an excited baby. we’ve all been the same for 30,000 years.
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Hey. I'm Jen, 27, and this is my personal blog. (I use all pronouns) My RedBubble can be found here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/cajunhusker