I really think people have forgotten just how bad things were under the Trump Administration. Literally every day there was news about some service being cut or someone terrible appointed somewhere they shouldn't be or what have you. He constantly flirted with WW3 and military dictatorship. It was such a blur of badness that there aren't big standouts for people to point to to make him "the XYZ president." it was everything. all the time. Why do we not remember this.
Yes, you’re right, but the democrats did next to nothing to reverse the policies he introduced. In fact, they’re continuing the ones they said they’d stop, like the border wall. We will continue lurching into fascism is we don’t stand up and stop the establishment now. Republicans push us right, and democrats keep us there until the next republican pushes us a little further.
You're right, that's why Biden immediately rejoined the World Health Organization, rejoined the Paris Climate agreement, revoked the permit for the keystone pipeline, revoked the border wall emergency, ended the Muslim ban, restored rights to gay beneficiaries, created a White House office of gun violence prevention, challenged trans care bans, signed the respect for marriage act, started allowing X gender markers on passports, and that's what I found in just thirty seconds of googling. It's why he's pushing so much student loan forgiveness and limiting the price of drugs. Because he is secretly upholding the Trump agenda. Obvs.
can't believe garak went from 'hope you have fun following my little breadcrumb trail of maybe-truths doctor it builds character ;)' at the beginning of the show to '*sigh* fuck it here's the whole loaf. the entire fucked up bakery of my soul. if you somehow still wanna have sex with me after this you know where I am, yours in infinite longing etc.' in a stitch in time. has anyone ever been so pathetically horrifically enduringly down bad as garak is for julian (laudatory)
FOUND family??? you think i just found them like this??? babes this is FORGED family. Me & the bros were scrap metal in a junkyard (very valuable, very sharp, very dangerous, uncared for) and we GOT IN THE FUCKING FIRE TOGETHER. WE did this. we said I AM NOT LEAVING YOU and melted into each other for better or for worse (it’s for better) and we are A FUNCTIONAL UNIT now. DO NOT SEPARATE. BATTERIES FUCKING INCLUDED. FOUND family my ass, we built this non-nuclear family unit from the ground up, don’t devalue this!!! it was is and will be a labour of love!!!
The ACLU has launched a petition against Mastercard’s policies on adult content!
Mastercard put into effect a new policy regulating adult content sellers that makes it extremely hard for sex workers to earn a living online. It must be stopped.
The policy itself imposes strict and invasive requirements on adult content websites using Mastercard’s financial services – including pre-approval of all content before publication, forbidding certain search terms, and monitoring the age and identity verification process for all performers.
Sex workers’ livelihoods shouldn’t depend on the whims of corporations. Numerous banks and companies already single out sex workers – forcing them to pay higher fees and interest rates. And public platforms like PayPal and Venmo continue to boot sex workers off their platforms with little due process.
Laws and policies like these – that criminalize and stigmatize sex work – make sex workers more vulnerable to abuse by clients, law enforcement, and others who target and harass sex workers or those perceived as sex workers, particularly trans women of color.
Mastercard’s latest actions are only a continuation of this history of discrimination and it must be stopped: Sign this petition telling Mastercard to reverse its discriminatory policy now.
Thoughts that are mutual between cats and their people:
- Yeah you're cute when you sleep but you didn't let me sleep either so I'm going to annoy you now because I'm bored. Hahah get poked, sleepy idiot.
- How do you not comprehend this when I am literally staring at you. Like I understand that your brain can't understand things this nuanced but come on, how do you not get this.
- I don't know if you know that what I am currently doing is an expression of affection, but that won't stop me. Knowing that I showed you that I love you is enough.
- I heard a crinkly material and the sound of you chewing so I have to know what's in your mouth RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
- I can't communicate with you and you can't communicate with me, so I'm just copying the tone of the sound you're making in hopes that you understand that I try.
- You are doing activities beyond my comprehension, and I find this fascinating. I will never understand what the fuck you are trying to achieve here, but I am intrigued nonetheless.
- Hey are you ok, you haven't done your weird thing in a while. Yeah I don't get why you do that but I know you do that when you're ok.
Is it me or is the anti movement... really american? We have that stereotype over here that americans are super uptight about sex and super shy about it and obsessed with purity and hiding it from the children and stuff. Idk as a european it always striked me as a product of american culture
it’s very, very American. While there are certainly antis who aren’t American, many of them are.
I have a lot of theories as to why this is, but a lot of them are covered in this post: anti-shipping as the cool new trend (while it’s mostly about the age bracket of anti-shippers as of June 2017 (this time last year), it’s an americentric post talking almost entirely about US phenomena).
tl;dr version? anti-shipping is:
- the natural result of growing up both LGBT+/queer and marinated in American-flavored Puritan Christianity/purity culture
- with a side order of valuing safety over freedom
- b/c you’ve always had freedom of information
- but you’ve never known a sense of security
- thanks to lifelong internet access
- paired with post-9/11 paranoia.
- add a dash of radical feminism/exclusionist thinking
- never being taught how to think critically, and
- zero education on sex of any kind, and
viola: anti-shippers.
someone* added these tags to their reblog of this post, which, uh: this is literally the basic, standard fandom anti-shipper position on ships.
Whether you call yourself an ‘anti’ or not, this is precisely what a fandom anti does: ‘throw down’ if they think someone’s ships are ‘abusive’, ‘pedophilia’, or ‘incest’ (generally with widely expanded definitions, hence the scare quotes).
it’s a pretty solid example of how this works, though:
- tag op is 21: too young to remember a world before 9/11 happened or remember a world without internet access
- tag op’s strong feelings about fictional ships suggests they flatten fiction and reality to equal levels of potential danger: classic black & white thinking structure that is strongly encouraged by American Protestant Christianity
- tag op didn’t read this post with self-awareness and/or application of critical thought, much less click the link that the tl;dr list references
- tag op feels justified in limiting other people’s freedom to use fictional ships to explore certain social/romantic/sexual dynamics, threatening to throw down over it.
- this is because those social/romantic/sexual dynamics are not safe or healthy in real life.
- even though ships are fictional, the safety of censorship is more important than freedom of expression or thought.
- the concern is always about ships/sex fantasies: never violence/fantasies about harming others. this is the combined effect of purity culture and radical feminism in a society that glorifies and normalizes violence.
- tag op will fight you for bad ships, because it is okay to fantasize about fighting people but not okay to fantasize about unhealthy fictional relationships
Anyway.
I have a lot of sympathy for antis because I think their lives often set them up to favor censorship and abhor education-as-inoculation, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re being jerks to fellow fans on the basis of assuming things about the core of their person because of what they ship.
fandom policing of this sort is assumptive, presumptive, and deeply damaging, both to the victims of anti-shipper cyberbullying and the anti-shippers themselves, who are encouraged in this abusive cycle hellhole behavior by emotional manipulation and coercion.
(I want to end this with a joke about how American this is, but assholes are everywhere tbh. Americans are just especially susceptible to the thinking patterns established by fandom antis at this precise moment in history because of the factors listed above.)
*if you figure out who it is, kindly be a decent person and leave them the hell alone.
To take this the next step which is to say, why does this matter? There’s a phrase that’s hovering at the tip of my tongue, can’t quite remember it, but it’s a word that basically means “a culturally specific passcode.” (Ed. I looked it up – it’s “shibboleth”.) A thing that members of the community will use to challenge you on your authenticity, to verify your right to be in that community, with the specific implication that this kind of verification is essential for keeping the community safe. The classic example is that of an American brigade in the European theater in World War II, suspecting the presence of a German spy, remorselessly interrogating a new recruit about World Series baseball scores. Because of course, any TRUE American would know everything about baseball scores! – and no non-American would, so if someone fails this test you are righteous and justified in declaring them The Enemy.
The overt, performative denunciation of Bad Content has become the “shibboleth” for modern fandom, as managed by the increasing influence of antis. Why is that every time one of these posts come around people so inescapably feel the need to add “but of course I don’t condone the pedo stuff” to their reblogs? Do they have reason to assume that pedophiles are so universal and normative that any reasonable person would assume they were, unless they explicitly state otherwise? Of course not – it’s a passcode. A performance of cultural acceptability.
And as the anti movement is hugely American, that means that the passcodes and rituals are also firmly based in American culture. Why all the focus on who is and isn’t eighteen? That’s the age of legal adulthood in America. There’s no magical transition in America where you go to bed on the eve of your 18th birthday an infant and wake up the next day magically transformed into an adult, any more than this same metamorphosis occurs at 16 in the UK, or at 20 in Japan. Concepts like the age of adulthood are entirely arbitrary and culturally defined – but the only acceptable metric, among antis, is the American one.
All the other Unacceptables are equally foggy as soon as you step outside the USA boundaries. Are relationships between adopted siblings considered incest? What about non-blood related people raised in the same creche? Childhood friends? Step-siblings? Classmates? Second or twice-removed cousins? Ancestors or descendants? Different cultures don’t all answer these things the same ways (nor is there any reason that they should,) and that murkiness provides plenty of foothold to launch an attack from, when someone else is shipping in a way that Just Doesn’t Seem Right to you.
Anyway, a lot of this goes under the surface. Many antis don’t even realize how inherently American their anti-ness is, and how much of their opposition to Bad Fan Content is rooted in opposition to non-Americanness, because very little of this happens out in the open. They don’t say to themselves, “American culture and ideals are better than any others, and anyone who fails to adhere to those must be punished,” – instead it gets sublimated into passphrases and rituals, little things you do to signal that you are one of the Good Ones, you are Doing Fandom Correctly. And outsiders who don’t know the correct passphrases and don’t perform the right rituals aren’t just newcomers or people with different cultures – they’re abuse apologists and pedos and predators. Outsiders against whom the community must be defended, even if it comes to a fight.
The thing they don't tell you about fried egg runny yolk is that if you put it in a sandwich it will be the best most delicious thing and you can mop up the egg with the bread, but in exchange you Will get so so messy and covered in egg yolk
TOP 3 TRAITORS:
3. Brutus 2. Judas 1. Printers when you are in a hurry
Bringing this back because guess what happened to your boy this very morning.
Were you stabbed by Brutus?
average conversation with straight women
Queer Slur Heritage Post
And if we're busy picking which type of gay is most acceptable, that leaves tons of room for bigots to come in and say "this side is right" and watch us tear each other apart. And then they can pretty easily say to the side what won "Well actually you were a little too mean to the other gays so now you die too" all the way until there are no gay people left alive; or that the only ones who are alive are too afraid to go out in public ever again.
Which is
You know
THE BIGOTS' WHOLE PLAN
I’d like to make a call out post for Dave the cat. Crimes include:
Like Ritter, many concertgoers did not initially believe they could get the pill, which retails for up to $50, for free. “There are always some people who reach for the emergency contraception and then say: ‘What do I have to do in order to get this?’ or ‘Is it really free?’” Sheley said. “You might have to repeat that it’s free three times. The look on their face when they realize they’re being cared for and someone wants to help, that’s what we’re here for.”
This fucking rules
"The Don't Say Gay Law has been cut down to size in more ways than this.
- LGBTQ+ students and staff may now be protected by anti-bullying and anti-discrimination measures
- Libraries are free to restock LGBTQ+ books
- LGBTQ+ topics may be discussed freely
GO CRY IN A CORNER RON