(Long post, thinking aloud)

A part of this goes hand-in-hand with anti ideology. 

I have seen - far too often - people’s mistakes being dredged up from the past, to the extent that callouts often include posts before people have changed groups or altered their behaviours, and these callouts can be used weeks or months or years into the future. In real-life, I think a case for this would be James Gunn and his tweets from over a decade ago being used against him. 

If we allow people to be redeemed, or to change, it goes beyond just potentially forgiving them (or feeling we are expected to forgive them), but often requires a change of a black-and-white mentality … no longer is the abuser the bogeyman in the closet, but a complex and three-dimensional being capable of both great feats of evil and great acts of goodness. Where do you place someone like that on a scale? How do you react to someone like that?

If someone is seen as evil and inhuman, abuse and harassment become “justified” in one’s mindset … you ‘deserve’ to be suicide-baited, as you ship a ‘paedophillic’ ship, and the abuser ‘deserves’ to be hated, as they caused you irrevocable harm and caused you great trauma. They cease to be something human, but a mere embodiment of the ‘evil’ you detest. 

I would hazard a guess that this changes a bit from the ask to antis, as antis are looking for reasons to be angry and justify expressions of their anger, but in the case of the ask -? It may be more complex. It sounds like they are unable to forgive - (which is justified and understandable) - but feels an outside pressure to forgive, which is creating resentment, potentially from a lack of closure, and rather than deal with these complex emotions, it’s easier to simplify. 

If the abuser is an irredeemable monster, I can continue to hate him and insult him and compartmentalise his existence … I know it’s all his fault, it’s innate, and that none of this stems from any further or complicated issues.

If the abuser can be redeemed -?

Well, do I forgive him or not? Why did he abuse? How do I know he won’t abuse again? How long must he be punished? Is he punished enough? How do I reconcile my anger with the fact he is happy? Is it right for him to be happy after he made me suffer? Why am I still suffering? If he is over it, should I be over it? Can you get ‘over’ it? Does he care he hurt me? If I’m angry, I’m still suffering, and is that his fault or my fault or no one’s fault? What purpose does my anger serve? Would revenge make it go away? Would that be right if he’s changed?

It opens a whole can of worms. 

A lack of redemption makes for black-and-white mentality. A monster is a monster and cannot be anything other than a monster … no need for the victim to ask hard questions or reconsider events, because it’s simplified and neat and tidy, and throwing in redemption complicates them. Depending on where you are in recovery, it may even be impossible to process or comprehend. 

Maybe some people need for people to be irredeemable … 

Makes it easier to process their trauma. 

A good addition.

>Good guy director gets fired after far-right pundit digs up past he repeatedly apologized for

>Tumblr thinks this is okay

New rule, starting now. Anyone making a snarky comment about this gets unfollowed because that’s gross

>28 year old my little pony fan thinks I value their opinion on someone getting fired for making rape jokes

hahahahaha here I was, legit hoping this discourse wouldn’t show up on my blog but, there it is. wow.

#1) The person who dragged up the pedophilia jokes about James Gunn is none other than far-right blogger Mike Cernowich. You know, the guy behind fucking #PIZZAGATE.

#2) James Gunn already apologized for previous behavior. Like, several years ago. In 2012. Before #MeToo. Before ANY of this. And his behavior since then proves a marked change.

#3) In fact, James Gunn’s behavior changed so radically that he became the target of Mike Cernovich. Because Gunn’s been pretty outspoken about our current president. Which didn’t sit well with President Pizzagate, not one bit.

#4) So Mike Cernovich finding and released all the old tweets during SDCC was NOT a coincidence. This was targeted to Disney, to see if Mike can wank himself over forcing the biggest major conglomerate to make a marketing decision in order to get ONE GUY rightfully furious about Trump out of the business.

#5) Look, I think James Gunn’s tweets are pretty damn horrible. But to put it on the same level as someone like Harvey Weinstein is disingenuous.

#6) We’re not winning any wars with the mentality of “problematic people are forever doomed for having once done problematic things, even if they’ve changed.” And like stated above, James Gunn is NOT another Weinstein. I’ve said homophobic things in the past, and I’m A LESBIAN for fuck’s sake!!

#7) Dave Bautista isn’t the only one who’s on James Gunn’s side in this. The entire GOTG cast is on his side.

#8) In the end this isn’t just about GOTG. This isn’t about Disney. This isn’t about James Gunn’s career (he’ll bounce back). This is about Right-winger trolls weaponizing accountability. And it’s fucking gross.

This isn’t about Disney. This isn’t about James Gunn’s career (he’ll bounce back). This is about Right-winger trolls weaponizing accountability. And it’s fucking gross.

If James Gunn really cared he’d at least have yannow. Deleted the tweet

If Disney really cared they’d at least have yannow. Not hired him in the first place instead of combing through his social media AFTER someone brought it up instead of, yannow. Doing that before they hired him like any other company with a reputation to uphold.

One other thing: people think James Gunn is what made Guardians great and that the results can’t be repeated with him gone, is the gist of the defense. That knocks down the talent the actors, writers, cgi, props, costumes, and other people pour into the work. The director really is just a person that tells other people what to do. That’s it.

He apologized for the tweets but left them up because he wasn’t hiding what he said - he owned up to that and didn’t pretend it never happened.

The issue here is people who criticize Trump can be taken down by alt-right by weaponizing left wing purity/perfection politics. This is the same strategy that helped put Trump is in power.

Hillary Clinton isn’t perfect therefor both are bad, stay home, let Trump win that will show them.

It’s stupid to ignore the agenda behind the artificially created outrage over Gunn.

And I don’t even thing Gunn was that great. There are issues with those movies and those are worth criticizing and had been criticized for years. And that’s fine.

But this thing where the right wing can bring down any liberal who critiques Trump/gets in the way of their agenda by painting them as problematic is an issue. Because it creates a double standard where literal Nazi in the alt right don’t get half the criticism as liberals who don’t uphold some unreachable standard of perfection.

Because the right is morally bankrupt and won’t be held accountable and the left is too concerned with being perfect to not tear itself apart trying to purge anyone who falls short of perfection. It’s a double standard and it’s allowing alt right people to have power.

The same crowd is already using the same strategy against Jewish creators, Jewish women in particular. But, who cares? Certainly not tumblr. They are too busy celebrating Taika Watiti replacing Gunn.

The Lesbrary Goodreads Project

So after running this tumblr and the Lesbrary for a couple years, I’ve gathered together a couple lists of specific lesbian (etc) books about specific topics, and I’ve stumbled on some similar lists other people have made. In order to keep them a little more organized, I’ve decided to put them all up on Goodreads. Here are the ones I have so far:

Specific identities:

General:

Speculative Fiction (SFF and Horror):

Young Adult/Teen/Children’s:

Romance and Erotica:

Nonfiction:

Specific genres/content:

Good Lesbian Books’s lists that I haven’t put on Goodreads:

Other lists not yet on Goodreads:

The good thing about the Goodreads lists is that you can add books and vote for your favorites!

Support the Lesbrary and Bi & Les Lit on Patreon for $2 or more a month and be entered into monthly book giveaways!

[Image Description: Screenshots of a series of tweets by a user named @valeriehalla that read

End of tweets.]

Just to make something about this crystal clear, and this is something that I think many people will recognize about these tweets, the situations that valeriehalla is describing aren’t just the result of people punishing honest mistakes. Some of these things are straight up authoritarian bullshit perpetrated by people who are trying to create power structures in the LGBTQ+ community.

This is what it means to be a TERF, a transmedicalist/truscum, or an ace exclusionist. This is the environment they’re trying to build, one where other people in the LGBTQ+ community have to live with fear and anxiety of the kind of authoritarian bullying that these people try to create.

It’s really important to push back on this stuff anytime we see it, because authoritarians actively work to spread their malfeasant ideology. They lie and manipulate in order to spread their message because they honestly believe that anything, no matter how immoral, is justified in pursuit of their core goals. And their core goals always involve hurting us, all of us. They only see three types of people; those that agree with them and are allies, those that don’t agree with them and are enemies, and those people who they hate and will only ever attack.

We fight them by not letting them get away with it. We fight them by educating people about their tactics and their evil. We fight them by protecting those of us who are young enough or immature enough to still be vulnerable to their recruitment tactics. And we win by never giving them an inch, ever.

In a fight where one side believes only in the oppression and eventual destruction of the other, there’s no middle ground to be found, they are wholly wrong in their beliefs and they’re willing to hurt people in service to them.

What I hate about callout culture?

It leads to mass-reporting and false-reporting. 

This then leads to @staff - either by acting on false reports without looking, or by employing bots to act on their behalf - to terminate innocent blogs. Due to staff being overworked and possibly understaffed, it also means that appeals get overlooked and delayed. I wouldn’t mind this so much, if reasons could be given for why terminations took place beyond standard/copy-paste emails. 

What examples of rule-breaking? What posts? Which blog? 

It leads then to a climate of fear, as people who have been terminated - based only on false/mass reports - can’t speak out, as they fear their appeals will be overlooked (many appeals are, and I have friends who - months or years later - still haven’t been given reasons for their terminations). It also means people are afraid to use the site in general, as no one knows what will lead to a termination, as no reasons are given for existing terminations. 

Amidst all this -? The harassers get off scott-free. 

One today I saw was labelled something like “youarenotamapyouareapredator”, which is encouraging people to mass report with false reports, and has created a campaign to false report even aesthetic blogs. These people - along with porn-bots, hate speech blogs, and illegal blogs - are allowed to remain, while people engaging in debate or discourse and abiding site rules are banned. 

People need evidence for any accusations laid against them. 

People need examples of any alleged violations. 

It’s unethical to terminate without proof. 

You have created a system in which people can start campaigns, as that user has started, to erase any dissenting voices that they dislike, while innocent people are afraid to speak up lest they be terminated, too. I broke no rules, but I was terminated. I was not given reasons or examples or evidence. Meanwhile, my harassers continue with their campaign to target other innocent users. Why are ToS being selectively applied? 

Added to that:

Why is the entire account deleted, not just the accused blog? Why is a person forced to lose contact to friends, their follow and followed lists, and all their content … without proof or evidence, simply based on mass and unfounded accusations? Why not just suspend the accused blog until evidence can be ascertained, without terminating the entire account? 

kirbylovesyou replied to your post “impuretale: socialjusticeichigo: thefriendsinmyheadthatilove: …”

There is way too much to unpack here, maybe someone else can explain why ‘ace’ doesn’t mean ‘never wants to have sex.’ I am a) allosexual and b) too fucking tired. 

I’m pretty fucking tired too but you know what let’s have at this 

wrt aces having sex:  asexual does not mean “has no libido”.  asexual dos not mean “celibate”.  asexual means “does not experience sexual attraction”.  if you need help understanding this, let me use myself as an example:  I get horny sometimes.  it has nothing to do with the people I see around me or whether I think they’re pretty.  so yes, I’m an ace with a libido, because libido is not the same as attraction.

wrt aces and allos being compatible or not:  incompatibility is a mutual state.  it’s never “YOU are incompatible with ME and that’s YOUR fault.”  it’s always “WE are incompatible with each other, and that’s NOBODY’S fault.”  

incompatibility is also based on a hell of a lot more than ace or allo identity, or libido, or celibacy.  there are aces who can be and are happy in highly sexual relationships.  there are allos who can be and are happy in entirely sexless relationships.  don’t assume that “I’m not ace, and this is how I feel about sex, so this is how everyone who isn’t ace feels about sex.”  once you’ve made that assumption, you’re automatically wrong.

if you, personally, are not going to be happy in a sexless relationship, by all means, don’t be in one!  nobody’s asking you to!  but that’s a negotiation that needs to happen between you and your partner(s), NOT between you and the entire concept of people who don’t want to have sex.

dang this is some good shit

Don’t mind me I’m just screaming about all the empty neighbourhoods in my country that no one can move into because private builders want to charge hundreds of thousands of euros for them and no one can pay so they sit empty while children and adults sleep on the streets here in the cold and dumbfucks blame refugees instead of the government who should fix this by seizing the properties and publicising them

Also I don’t care how much was spent on them, it’s evil to create homes and deny them to people because you’re not making the exact amount of money you want

People need homes, affordable homes, fuck the rich who built these places and allow their greed to damage the community

if you’re grey-ace, you’re allowed to reblog posts about being asexual that you relate to even if they’re not specifically about grey-asexuality

if you’re grey-aro, you’re allowed to reblog posts about being aromantic that you relate to even if they’re not specifically about grey-aromanticism

if you’re grey-aroace, you’re allowed to reblog posts about being aroace that you relate to even if they’re not specifically about being grey-aroace

if you’re in any way grey a-spec and id with other terms (gay, lesbian, bi, pan, etc), you’re allowed to reblog posts about being gay/lesbian/bi/pan/whatever even if they’re not specifically stating they’re for grey a-specs

sometimes as a grey a-spec it’s hard to really fit in and it can feel like you’re always on the outside of the ace and aro communities and any other communities for other labels you id with, but you’re allowed to participate in them! you’re allowed to reblog these posts. you’re allowed to find them relateable. you’re not stepping on anyone’s toes or hurting anyone or swerving out of your lane by doing this. 

grey a-specs belong just as much as anyone else, please don’t listen to that little voice in your head telling you that you don’t. ✨🖤 

the really amazing part of all this is a few years ago I was an ~~exclusionist~~ with bad arguments and bad opinions and I’m general just a bad attitude.

then I grew up and learned some compassion and empathy.

I fell into a trap. I thought if I espoused the same beliefs as people who hated asexuals, I would be One of the Good Ones and they would want me.

I was wrong.

how much self-loathing did I carry around because of this? how much of my experiences and feelings did I push aside because people on this website told me none of them were real? How much damage was done by having it harassed into me that none of the prejudice or problems I’d experienced for being asexual…. didn’t happen?

My first girlfriend rejected my asexuality with disgust. Told me I was wrong, took it as an insult, accused me of thinking she was ugly…. and yes. pressured me into sex I didn’t want. Over and over again. She made me feel guilty for being ace and then abused me for it.

And I spent years on this website not only being told none of this happened, or if it did it had nothing to do with my asexuality, but then repeating that ad nauseum. What does that do to a 18/19 year old recovering from an abusive relationship?

How much of my recovery was hindered by the acecourse tee-em?

the worst was probably the idea I internalized that I couldn’t be asexual and gay. Or that being ace made me basically straight.

Your discourse is poisonous to lgbt people. Your rhetoric harms victims of sexual violence. Your stupid petty arguing is hurting people and all you people care about is whether hypothetical cisgender hetroromantic asexuals should be allowed in hypothetical lgbt hangouts you probably don’t even go to anyway.

I’m sorry you went through all this, but I’m glad you’ve grown and healed ❤️

it’s okay to be demisexual / demisexuality is a real and valid sexuality / you deserve to be respected as a demisexual person/ it’s okay to be proud of your demisexuality

i have a hot take idk if yallre ready for it

a bi man married to a bi woman is peak wlw/mlm solidarity 

biphobes big mad at this post

Backing up your Tumblr blog to WordPress

In this tutorial we’ll teach you how to make a copy of your Tumblr blog onto WordPress.com to act as a backup.

The first two steps don’t need to be followed if you already use WordPress.com.

1. Sign up for a WordPress.com account

You need a WordPress.com blog, simply follow the steps to select your username and confirm your account via email.

2. Open WordPress Admin

3. Visit the import tools page

In the sidebar menu select ‘tools’ and then ‘import’.

4. Select import from Tumblr

5. Allow Tumblr access

Click the ‘Connect to Tumblr to begin’ button. You may need to log into Tumblr if you haven’t already. Be sure to allow access to WordPress.com

6. Start the import!

Once authenticated you can select your Tumblr blog from the list of your blogs and click on ‘Import this blog’.

And you’re done, WordPress.com takes care of the rest and will create a copy of your posts onto your WordPress.com blog.

How to Backup your Tumblr

I was just semi-complaining that I was still looking for a decent way to backup my +4k posts without having to use paid services or even just wordpress (which has an import from tumblr tool that asks for permission to access your blog and also make posts), when I decided to actually put some effort into my google search. 

Results were positive: I have successfully backed up my blog* 

*By which I mean: everything that I have ever posted.  Not included: drafts, queue, likes, followers, following, comments, notes, chat. 

I followed this method (word by word), and now have a 450 MB folder on my computer with the name of my blog on it containing: 

1. Folder “Archive” (contains .html files listed by month) 2. Folder “Media” (contains gifs and images, mine has +1k files in it; might contain also audios but I have no way of confirming that because I’ve never reblogged an audio post from this blog) 3. Folder “Posts” (contains single .html files, each one a post; I have +4k files in it) 4. Folder “Theme” (contains only my avatar, but it might be a matter of if you have personalized themes or not) 5. .html file “Index” (by opening it it will give you the archive of your blog organized by month; clicking on a month will open up the archive for that month, and you’ll be able to read all the posts for that month as if you were on your blog**, except sans your theme graphic, with each page containing 50 posts)

**I can see gifs, links, embedded videos, tags, number of notes (but I can’t open up the notes, clearly), text is also correctly formatted. 

So yeah, in case anyone wants a very quick way to back up their blog, it took me less than 10 minutes. 

P.S. I didn’t have any issue, but to be on the safe side always check for spyware and virus threats before and after downloading anything. 

Honestly the amount of “anti radfems” who eagerly spread their posts, their articles, or their most famous quotes, recommend their books, praise them, use their rhetoric, etc…. it’s shocking sometimes.

If you want to claim you’re anti radfem, maybe you should look into what radfems believe, who spreads their rhetoric, what their rhetoric sounds like, who is famous among them, what works they produce, etc., so you can stop saying you hate them and never want to show them support while simultaneously actively supporting them all the time and gushing about how great or smart or wonderful they are?

I mean doesn’t it seem counterproductive to make no effort to make sure you’re not knee deep in radfem rhetoric before you share something while also saying you don’t want to share stuff dripping with radfem rhetoric?

I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to see a post that’s basically like “I support sex workers and hate swerfs and also here is why I love Andrea Dworkin and her explanations of why sex work is evil and anti women.” Which might sound like an exaggeration, but a lot of you “anti swerfs” really seem to love famous swerfs… And the same can be said of “anti twerfs” who seem to love transmisogynists…

You need to learn that something doesn’t have to say “I hate trans women and sex workers” to be radical feminism and that it often can sound like a really reasonable, well thought out, meaningful and deep analysis of society to the untrained ear that can’t pick up the tiny little signals that tell you a radfem wrote it. So train yourself!

And don’t expect trans women and sex workers to train you and do all the work of making sure someone isn’t a twerf or swerf for you. You have to pull your own weight here.

At the very least, look up famous radfems! Read a wikipedia article on radical feminism! Something! That knowledge would really help a lot of you and would make a huge difference for you.

Just think about it, okay? Because if we want to make safe spaces for trans women and sex workers, what is currently happening is not going to do it. So let’s change what we are doing. Okay?

❄💙 Bella 💙❄

(Image description: white text over a background of silver glitter that says “queer women are wonderful”. End image description.)

okay like. supposedly being interested in m/m relationships, or even a specific m/m relationship because you like the specific dynamic depicted is fetishizing. because it’s only acceptable to take an interest in any m/m relationship if you’re a man who likes men, apparently. BUT then also m/f relationships are supposedly relatable and accessible to everybody???

or maybe.

just maybe.

that’s a bullshit argument used to shut down enthusiasm for anything that isn’t heteronormative as well as to shame a group of what is perceived to be young women and girls. because any time young women like anything at all, however harmless or even positive and uplifting, that thing is relentlessly mocked and derided as shallow and ridiculous.

When fan fic writers tell other fic writers: 

Slash is fun. Slash can be beautiful. Individual slash pairings can be so much better than canon.  M/M slash pairings are to fanfic what Obligatory Het Romance ™ is to a summer blockbuster. 

Slash as a genre is not as progressive or transgressive as it likes to pretend it is, especially since it’s been the fanfic default setting for 50 years now. 

There are problems with M/M but the problem isn’t that women like M/M

And if we have people saying:

Don’t ship M/F it’s heteronormative/doesn’t give representation because it’s porn based on what women think is cute

And

Don’t ship M/M it’s fetishizing gay men/doesn’t give representation because it’s porn based on what women think is cute

What are women allowed to enjoy?

Not F/F - how many things even pass the betchdel test?