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Literally a Paper Mache Pumpkin, not a communist

@commiepumpkin / commiepumpkin.tumblr.com

bad at descriptions, bad at life
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tamarrud
Anonymous asked:

I'm curious. What's the tea on Banksy then? I'd love to hear your thoughts on him in general as I've found it hard to find criticism of him 🤔

The below is an answer to a similar question I got in 2017 so apologies if some links are outdated:

For starters, he keeps hijacking walls that are not his. Not only did he paint and tried to beautify the apartheid wall in Palestine, but he literally went to predominately Black and Latinx areas in East NYC, where art is strictly local, and painted over the walls there.

He has the disgusting habit of normalising and whitewashing struggles. Like how he painted an Israeli occupation solider having a “pillow fight” with a Palestinian or how he graffitied Steve Jobs as a Syrian refugee in order to bring “awareness” to the refugee issue, as if all immigrants have the same privilege as Jobs or that they should be dismissed if they don’t become a version of Steve jobs. He simplifies and glorifies oppressions and struggles.

Which brings me to my next point. He butts into issues that aren’t his and to which he shows little to no understanding at all. Like how he had the nerve to paint a “go back to Africa” in a area of poverty and racial tension, which he believes is “satire” that marginalised communities are ought to understand and recognise as beautiful and be happy about it (as if such phrases are not traumatising in nature). He’s basically shoving his way down these communities’ throats as a white saviour whose stencils are going to bring about change, and god forbid we say anything against them. He’s been asked numerous times to leave, be it in East NYC or Bethlehem, and yet there he is.

He views himself as this edgy hipster and as a result he does not understand how complex of a subculture graffiti really is. His white opportunistic ass is always ready to jump onto issues that are not his own, dominate spaces that aren’t his and in the meantime making profit (some of his work has been valued in six figures) by using our struggles and painting over our walls. He shows no regard or respect to writers and as a matter of fact, he painted over the oldest graffiti in London which made many artists angry.

In short, he’s corny and shallow. His attempts are very lazy, peak liberal and weak and are mainly celebrated by the bourgeoisie. What’s treated by law as “vandalism” apparently only applies when the artists are Black/brown/lower class, yet he gets the police protecting him. And while he can tag walls freely, other artists get arrested for it, and while they hardly get any recognition, his white ass gets coddled by the elitist art scene.

You should also go through my Banksy tag for more Banksy hate.

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irlwakko

this is by far my favorite safety/warning sign btw. they really went off with this one

No cuz I fucking love this sign. It’s not an actual barrier so it’s not like some sort of challenge it simply says “fuck around and you will find out”

Ohohoho I LOVE “fuck around and find out” signs, especially the really dramatic and ominous (but true) ones

(Context for the last one: it’s a WWII era sign posted around the soldiers’ washroom mirror, warning them to never discuss military plans in places where civilians could hear them and report back to the enemy, e.g. in restaurants and pubs in the country. “Loose lips sink ships”.)

I also love these two, which I would place in the category of “You already fucked around, now you’re about to find out.”

Aerated water is fucking scary. It's water that has a fuckton of gas in it, which reduces the buoyancy to the point where you will immediately start to sink if you fall in.

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rigjuice

ive been collecting these recently and wanted to add some of my favorites

Official ominous signs

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Shit man, this wizard war is fucked. I just saw a guy clap his hands together and say "the ten hells" or some similar shit, and every one around him turned inside out, had their tibia explode and then disappeared. The camera didn't even go onto him, that's how common shit like this is. My ass is casting frostbite and level 2 poison. I think I just heard "power word:scrunch" two groups over. I gotta get the fuck outta here.

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knifearo

here's the thing. "ace people can still have sex" and "aro people can still be in relationships" are objectively true statements. this is because people can do whatever the fuck they want forever regardless of their label/orientation. however some of you have GOT to get your shit together and stop using those statements to undermine larger conversations about aspec identity. following up "ace people don't owe you sex in a relationship" with "ace people can still have sex in a relationship though!" is not fucking helpful! yes it's true. yes it's a reality for many people. however if we used our fucking brains for a second and thought about how following up "people don't have to conform to societal expectation" with "but people can still conform!! don't worry they can still conform!!!!" is counterproductive and very frustrating for a lot of people then we could get back to the actual point which is not "aspec people can still have sex/be in relationships" but "aspec people can do whatever they want with their relationships and their bodies". which they can, by the way. they can do whatever they want forever. and you should give them 200 dollars every time you see them for dealing with this shit

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as someone who has been scarred for life by experiences at gay bars, i need people to understand it's beyond tacky to mock people who want queer spaces beyond queer bars- it's dangerous.

let me explain. i went to 2 of my local queer bars a lot last year, as much as i was able to despite being poor. i witnessed a fist fight that was so bloody that ended up with a transmisogynistic drag queen getting hit in the head with a metal baton. the sight caused me to uncontrollably throw up in the bathroom of the club because of how gruesome it was. they had to close down the club and forard people out the back door because of how out of hand this person got- he was screaming transmisogynstic slurs and phrases at the bouncers were were transfem.

i was also sexually assaulted at these places, i was repeatedly groped by several people who i was not interacting with in the first place who found me attractive and decided physically grabbing me on numerous occasions was the way to get my attention. being femme in a queer bar is dangerous even if the people groping you are gay men.

i am also a recovering addict who dealt with alcohol issues in the past and could be considered a recovering alcoholic. i don't want to be around alcohol. i don't want to smell it. it triggers awful memories and also sometimes makes me consider getting a drink, but i can't have one, because the medications i take will cause a fatal reaction- i don't want to be tempted to drink, because it will kill me.

it's not right to mock someone or call them childish or whatever for not wanting to go to a club. whenever alcohol is involved, people's inhibitions are gone and they will do whatever. this includes fighting. i witnessed several other fights. just because it's a queer bar doesn't mean there won't be fights. and it especialyl doesn't m ean that you won't get groped or assaulted because, like i said, since alcohol is involved and it's a bar, there's a high chance this can and will happen.

queer people are not inherently safe angels to be around by virtue of being queer. there are still transphobes in queer bars. tranny chasers come to these bars. homophobic lesbians show up and lesbophobic gay men show up. drag queens and performers bring their cishet friends and family to support their shows. these are not perfect havens. they are not safe. we should not force other queers to interact with inherently dangerous spaces if these are supposed to be our safe spaces.

also these spaces are not friendly to people with disabilities; wheelchair users have nowhere to go especially when it's very crowded. other mobility aids get kicked and knocked over. neurodivergent people can get overstimulated by the deafening music very quickly. photosensitive people can have seizures due to the strobing lights. people with emetophobia like me run the risk of running into those types of triggers. people who are overstimulated by intoxicated people have no choice but to deal with it. dancing is one of the only activities to do other than drink and not many disabled (or even abled) people can dance for extended periods of time comfortably.

not to mention these spaces are not geared toward aromantic or asexual people at all, either. there is a long list of reasons why bars should not be our primary venues of interaction with one another. they serve a specific purpose- for people who want to cruise- but for the rest of us, it's really crucial that we have spaces that provide meaningful interactions with other queers on other levels of our identities.

some people just want to hang out with other queers in a quiet environment and craft, or shop, or drink coffee, or read books together, or just about any other activity on planet earth, and that's not "lame" or "cringy" or bad in any way- these are extremely normal and necessary parts of human interaction that we all require and crave and it's normal to want to do healthy, domestic things with other queers. we need this in our lives.

please take it seriously when people attempt to create queer spaces that don't involve alcohol and bars. it's necessary for our survival and well being as a community.

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anyway i will always remember my freshman year world history teacher who spent a whole day teaching us about the development of hinduism and its cultural impact and the next day came into class and (basically) said “alright so who guessed that everything i said yesterday was bullshit?”

the thing i took away from this was

  1. when learning about a culture You Are Not A Part Of in a class full of liberals, they will accept everything as fact
  2. if something historical sounds simple and widely agreed upon, especially religion, its probably bullshit
  3. you are not smarter than experts. and experts can fucking lie to you anyway.

american non academics have been and will continue to butcher greek mythology and sell it to you like the bible. please. PLEASE. remember those things can be fun but your bullshit detectors should be on.

i am begging people who Were Not In My Class to stop making moral judgements towards the only teacher in a christian school who drilled it into our heads that we had to actually question what we were taught and how we were taught it. you werent there. engage with what he was trying to say or ignore it lol

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awwbrie

I can't believe people are missing the lesson that's being taught here: don't trust authority figures on what they say and do your own research! People can and do lie about information, hoping that you will just trust them and not think for yourself. Even experts who aren't acting malicious have their own implicit biases which lead them to omit or not clarify certain information. This shows how important it is to seek other perspectives and make your own conclusions instead of just listening to the first thing you hear about a topic.

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yardsards

"falin isn't fat in canon (so stop unduly giving this series credit for fat representation in her case)": a very fair point! it *is* honestly a bit concerning that people are so conditioned by media to think stick-thin is the norm that they think medium-sized bodies are fat. and i've seen some very good points about how almost every character we see that has a heavier build is just like that because their race is naturally more stocky, and that almost no characters in this story are "overweight" by their race's standards. so while this story is much better than a lot of others with its body diversity, there are still some things that it could do better.

"falin isn't fat in canon (so stop drawing her fat)": your ignorance astounds me and your foolishness knows no bounds. i could fill libraries with the things you don't know on this subject. every time you bitch i give her another roll.

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quoms

"Rent should be no more than 30% of household income" is a really funny and roundabout way to say "property owners as a class are entitled to 30% of gross wages"

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hishima

i love it when ryoko kui draws the gang in a modern setting but they still have their armour on

like this one specifically. jacket over plate and chainmail armour. sweatpants. hiking boots. i wish people dressed like this for real

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does anyone know if we have transmasc and transfem love and friendship today

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damazcuz

We do. And tomorrow and the next day and every day forever and ever and ever too. :)

a long time ago i was struggling with being transmasc because i felt like i was betraying womanhood somehow. then one of my best friends came out as a trans woman and i realised "ah... there will always be so many beautiful women in the world, so it's okay that i'm not one of them". what i'm trying to say is you need to love each other or there's no point to any of this

in a reversal of this. when i came out as transfem i was almost dissapointed because i spent so long trying to be a truly good man. i was raised with a lot of shitty guys so i tried to be the most pro-feminist comfortable dude i could be for the women around me. when my egg cracked, i almost felt this feeling of "shit, are the only men who think like this secretly women inside?" and it feels nice to see that proven so utterly and completely wrong by the trans men i know in my life. i love seeing people take on the masculinity i hated and do amazing shit with it, god bless trans dudes

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