reinstating the death penalty but only for politicians who let people starve on their watch; good idea or great idea
there’s one terf i keep seeing around and tbh it’d be too easy to make fun of her she’s like openly racist, thinks black women criticising white feminism is leftist infightingβ’ and i think their nsfw tag is “acephobia tw” and they seem to think that’s genuinely funny like, what a complete malfunction of a human being could make a sense of humour like that
telling butch lesbians to βbe uglyβ when rejecting feminine beauty standards is nice but butchness is something that lesbians find beautiful and desirable so maybe instead of telling butches to accept that they are ugly in a het world tell them that they dont have to live in a world where theyβre considered ugly. you dont have to accept being ugly bc you arent ugly to us.
I mean pals, friendos, weβve all talked about how media depictions influence things like racism and transphobia and misogyny.
Weβve all talked about how scrubbing media of all depictions is bad, tokenization is bad, false or slanderous depictions are bad and they all influence the ways people think of vulnerable people. This is common ground!
None of you fandom kids crying aboutΒ βantisβ are unfamiliar with this discourse, itβs basic level crap.
So why does that all disintegrate the moment the stuff you find sexy in your prons gets a tiny iota of criticism? I havenβt even said anything about your own coping responses. Iβm not your therapist. Itβs not my call to say if watching rape porn is good or bad for your healing process and in no way am I going to get in the way of whatever things you do privately in your own home to cope.Β
But everything that literally all of us know about media does still extend to porn. The ways women are depicted in porn can still harm women as a class by priming men as a class because itβs still media, that people consume (often uncritically) like literally all other forms of media. The ways trans women are depicted in porn can still do harm! Racism in porn still does harm! Those things donβt just disappear because itβs your fave wank bank material!
And that canβt be ignored. We need to change all forms of media. Porn included. Itβs all got problems. Get a grip, folks
It very neatly describes the way liberals see the world and political struggle.
Lots of people complain about the anti-climactic ending, but really I donβt think it could any other way [sic]. Iβd like to imagine that thereβs some alternate universe where Rowling actually believed in something and Harry was actually built up as the anti-Voldemort he was only hinted as being in the beginning of the books. Where heβs opposes [sic] all the many injustices of the wizarding world and determines to change their frequently backwards, insular, contradictory society for the better, and forms his own faction antithetical to the Death Eaters and when he finally has a showdown with Voldy, Harry surpasses by [sic] adopting new methods, breaking the rules and embracing change and the progression of history. While Voldemort clings to an idyllic imaging of the past and the greatest extent of his dreams is to become the self-appointed god of a eternally stagnant Neverland. Harry has embraced the possibility of a shining future and so can overcome the self-imposed limits Voldemort could never cross, and Voldemort is ultimately defeated by this.
But that would require a Harry that believed in something, and since Rowling is a liberal centrist Blairite that doesnβt really believe in anything, Harry lives in a world drought [sic] with conflict and injustice: a stratified class society, slavery of sentient magic creatures, the absurd charade the wizarding world puts up to enforce their own self-segregation, a corrupted and bureaucracy-choked government, rampant racism, so on and so forth. But Harry is little more than a passive observer for most of it, only the racism really bothers him (and then, really only racism against half-bloods). In fact, when Hermione stands up against the slavery of elves, sheβs treated as some kind of ridiculous Soapbox Sadie. For opposing chattel slavery. In the end, the biggest force for change is Voldemort and Harry and friends only ever fight for the preservation and reproduction of the status quo. The very height of Harryβs dreams is to join the aurors, a sort of wizard FBI and the ultimate defenders of the wizarding status quo. Harry doesnβt even beat Voldemort, Voldemort accidentally kills himself because he violated some obscure technicality that causes one of his spells to bounce back at him.
And this is really the struggle of liberals, they live in a world fraught with conflict, but arenβt particularly bothered by any of it except those bit that threaten multicultural pluralism. They see change, and the force behind that change, as a wholly negative phenomenon. Even then, they can only act within the legal and ideological framework of their society. So, for instance, instead of organizing insurrectionary and disruptive activity against Trump and the far-right, all they can do is bang their drum about what a racist bigot he is and hope they can catch him violating some technicality that will allow them to have him impeached or at least destroy his political clout. It wonβt work, it will never work, but thatβs the limit of liberalism just as it was the limit of Harry Potter.
I totally agree with OP about the terrible way Rowling handled the house elves situation (only Dobby was ever liberated and in large part because he was the only βweirdoβ who wanted to be – every other house elf enjoys being enslaved – and ended up dying anyway for the person who freed him, which makes this a very uncomfortable comparison to how a lot of white people viewed black slaves)
BUT
OP advocates βorganizing insurrectionary and disruptive activityβ which just makes it seem like OP subscribes to radicalism, which no wonder OP abhors liberalism. Radicals often turn their nose up at the way many liberals hope to enact slow but more permanent change through official channels because (1) even if change is slow through law making it is also more likely to work and (2) liberals would actually like to not be mirror images of reactionaries (people who think any change is terrible and everything should go back to the good old days). A lot of radicals are anarchists (not saying OP is) and I saw them turn a peaceful protest at my university violent many a time and also smash and vandalize store fronts while I was in Athens. How is that doing anything and affecting positive change? Unless if OP meant boycotts and sit-ins and such by the words βorganizing insurrectionary and disruptive activityβ, then my mistake and i have no gripe with that.
Today in horseshoe theory bullshit and completely unwarranted faith in reform
if millennials making fun of gen z becomes a meme iβm calling every one of you out for hypocrisy
weβre making fun of them for eating laundry detergent not destroying their economy and criticizing them for being poor
see, what bothers me about this post is the underlying mean-spiritedness I always saw but never bothered to mention in this whole generational mentality. I remember exactly where theΒ βtide pods look like candyβ thing started, and literally all of us knew it was a joke because the person who posted it talked about how annoying it was that they couldnβt safely eat something that looked like a peppermint or whatever the fuck.Β
thatβs not all Iβm annoyed about, though.Β
each generation seems to be assigned defining traits based on stereotypes older generations see fit to give them. so then, what are gen zβs stereotypical defining traits? let me think about this for a while.Β
difficulty suppressing impulsive behaviors
sensory-inclinedΒ
a tendency to take things literally (much to the amusement of our elders)
hatred of sitting still for long periods of time, needing constant activity to be stimulated
desperately in need of attention and/or constant external validationΒ
and, last but not least, unable to function without social media
now Iβm not entirely sure if this all means something, but at least 5/6 of those are associated with symptoms of mental disorders. Iβm not here to shit on your fun. by all means, go ahead, crack some more tide pod jokes. weird shitty trends are fair game for your jokes. but can you like. be adults long enough to catch yourselves before you make fun of a group of people who arenβt even the target of your jokes.Β
since when havenβt these jokes been subtly targeting autistic people