Shalom and happy Thanksgiving, please consider donating to the mashpee wampanoag tribe in Massachusetts, a tribe that was one of the first to be pushed out of their lands and are often in the fake folklore of the history of Thanksgiving. Currently Massachusetts does not recognize the mashpee wampanoag as a tribal nation and has been trying to steal even more of their land and destroying their culture
Because, god knows when it rains it pours, there’s yet another horrible internet bill on the table, and it is a doozy!
It’s called the Kids Online Safety Act and it’s basically designed to force internet companies to mandate ID for website logins, destroy websites with any hint of a kid looking at things they aren’t supposed to (With an extremely broad definition of “what they aren’t supposed to”), force companies to send data “for study” to the government (IE, spy on kids) force them to use an age-verification system that will likely include mandatory government ID checks, and put on mandatory parental controls cranked up to high by default for parents to spy on their kids!
Now, this is a nightmare for several reasons. The mandated ID checks are horrifying and intrusive violation of privacy for adults and the young alike, in a way that screws over queer sex workers especially, and the increased liability for websites will lead to truly biblical purges of NSFW content, but there’s another big one:
This bill will lead to kids getting abused and killed.
Like, imagine that parental spying being used on queer or mentally ill teens. Imagine the definition of “not okay for minors” being expanded by, like say, the transphobic push in Texas or Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill. You see where this goes.
Now, this is before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, who’s members are:
You can find their contact info here, and if they’re a part of your state, contact them and tell them this bill is a spying bill that will kill children, it needs to die.
But, even in other state, contact your sentators any way you can, and tell them this is a bad bill, and if it gets out of committee, it needs to die.
Tell your friends IRL to do it too either way, because they measure this shit in terms of how many messages they get, and so we need to flood their offices, and this goes for the other badinternet bills I’ve talked about too.
Again, deeply fatigued by all the godawful internet bills, but this is a goddamn war, and nobody ever won a war by giving up…
Reblogging because the bill just left committee and is now in the full Senate.
And it passed committee fucking unanimously, which is terrifying.
Call your Senators and tell them this bill needs to be destroyed, make it controversial, make it legislative poison.
Blogging this again because it got worse, in that they are trying to push it through the “lame duck” session of Congress.
Which, for those who don’t know what that means, basically they’re going to try and sneak it into a big “must-pass” bill or just try and push it out while everyone’s asleep at the wheel.
The Supreme Court is set to hear out the possible overturning of ICWA in 2 weeks
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) basically stopped the forced removal of indigenous children from their loving families and protected indigenous children from the forced Christianization that still hurts many indigenous adults to this day.
These are stunning designs by Wenatchi Wear which is an Indigenous owned business for stickers mugs, tanks, hoodies, t shirts and just generally sicc clothes.
What’s more sicc than that is the go fund me run by the owner of Wenatchi Wear!
This is an opportunity for the Wenatchi tribe to buy back some of their ancestral lands.
Why is this so FUCKING important?
The current reservation is the Colville Confederated Tribe reservation which is a conglomerate of TWELVE tribes. (This alone is a disgusting violation of so many treaties and some day I’ll have words about what it did to my family) More importantly right now is that the Wenatchi is a non-federally recognized tribe!!! This has many implications for the preservation of their culture but also limits their access to the resources both monetarily AND on the the lands they had treaty rights to that are part of their ancestral lands. This land purchase would put many Wenatchi people back on their ancestral lands and also funds a community center so their tribe has space to practice heal and grow their community and culture.
I think it would be great if they could reach 10,000 before Th*nksg*ving just saying 💅
[ID: The first two photos are instagram screenshots of Wenatchi Wear’s products. One shows a yellow flower sticker on a blue hoodie. The other is a purple sticker showing a mountainous landscape.
The third photo is of a landscape with a cloudy sky and mountains on the horizon. A caption reads ‘Original P’Squosa (Wenatchi) Homelands)
End ID]
^^For those of you asking for photo IDs there’s several people who have done these in the notes but here’s the first one I noticed^^
This is an older version of the post so only the first link works
this is going around again and it’s less than 2000 away from their goal! The spike in donations is great to see so please keep it up! If y'all are interested in some of the other mutual aid and outreach this group is doing follow their Instagram! They post updates for pop up shops, elder support, clothing drives, and educational resources about how to be a better Indigenous accomplish
one of the key points of trauma recovery is learning to let go the idea of getting back to “who i was before”. your trauma has shaped you and that’s okay. recovery is learning how to live with what happened rather than getting rid of it, even if that feels impossible at the moment
the amount of you who have started to say “autism and adhd are so similar they’re just the same disorder tbh” makes me big uncomfortable
ok first of all this idea is way too similar to the old belief that you can’t have autism and adhd for my comfort (this idea harmed a lot of people!). i think yall looked at the high comorbity and some similarities between autism and adhd and went “may as well be the same thing!”
but here’s the thing: even though a lot of symptoms of these two things can present similarly they have different base causes.
for example: trouble making friends is a big part of both disorders, but if we look at the reasons why they’re pretty different.
autistic people have trouble making friends because we don’t have an understanding of social “rules,” we don’t pick up on social cues, we take things too literally, etc.
adhd people have trouble making friends because we’re impulsive, have poor volume control, talk too much or too fast, tend to interrupt people, are very sensitive to perceived rejection, etc.
labels should give people an understanding of themselves, not just a list of symptoms. when i found out im autistic and adhd, a lot started to click in place and i understood better why i had trouble making friends because i could examine the root causes of me not being able to make friends.
this is why the distinction is important. you can’t look at something and go “same outcome so it’s the same thing!”
if you had just said to me “well autistic people have trouble making friends” that wouldn’t have explained anything to me or brought me any understanding or comfort. but when you have a label that gives you why you struggle or are different, then you can use that label to understand yourself and find people who are like you.
another big thing that you’re ignoring is that these two groups have very different needs.
the majority of adhd people see drastic positive changes from medication, have you ever seen someone medicated for autism?
many autistic people feel occupational and/or speech therapy was really helpful for them, but this isn’t a common treatment for adhd.
adhd and autism can present similarly sometimes, but they are different. please stop denying our experiences.
ok to rb but don’t clown on my post
[small text copied and pasted for accessibility: ok to rb but don’t clown on my post]
Exactly!! Also social or general anxiety is comorbid in both, so is depression and so is often trauma disorders.
It doesn’t mean it’s the same. We deal with it and are affected in different ways.
It is deeply, deeply beneficial to TERFs if the only characteristic of TERF ideology you will recognize as wrong, harmful, or problematic is “they hate trans women”.
TERF ideology is an expansive network of extremely toxic ideas, and the more of them we accept and normalize, the easier it becomes for them to fly under the radar and recruit new TERFs. The closer they get to turning the tide against all trans people, trans women included.
Case in point: In 2014-2015, I fell headlong into radical feminism. I did not know it was called radical feminism at the time, but I also didn’t know what was wrong with radical feminism in the first place. I didn’t see a problem with it.
I was a year deep into this shit when people I had been following, listening to, and looking up to finally said they didn’t think trans women were women. It was only then that I unfollowed those people, specifically; but I continued to follow other TERFs-who-didn’t-say-they-were-TERFs. I continued ingesting and spreading their ideas- for years after.
If TERFs “only target trans women” and “only want trans women gone”, if that’s the one and only problem with their ideology and if that’s the only way we’ll define them, we will inevitably miss a vast majority of the quiet beliefs that support their much louder hatred of trans women.
As another example: the trans community stood relatively united when TERFs and conservatives targeted our right to use the correct restroom, citing the “dangers” of trans women sharing space with cis women. But when they began targeting Lost Little Girls and Confused Lesbians and trotting detransitioners out to raise a panic about trans men, virtually the only people speaking up about it were other transmascs. Now we see a rash of anti-trans healthcare bills being passed in the US, and they’re hurting every single one of us.
When you refuse to call a TERF a TERF just because they didn’t specifically say they hate trans women, when you refuse to think critically about a TERF belief just because it’s not directly related to trans women, you are actively helping TERFs spread their influence and build credibility.
what is some TERF ideology we should be on the look out for?
This isn’t comprehensive, but I’ll do my best.
TERFs are, first and foremost, radical feminists. Radical feminism is essentially second-wave feminism without the intersectionality brought in by third-wave feminism. It believes that patriarchy is at fault for the oppression of women, but sees this in a very strict, binary way: women are the oppressed, and men are the oppressors.
TERFs use this to justify their specific brand of transphobia. This idea, among others, is essential in supporting that transphobia.
I’ll try to outline some of those ideas, and some of the logical thruoughlines they use:
Women are uniquely oppressed, and always in danger. Womanhood- or the experience of being a woman- is defined by oppression, misogyny, and Being In Danger.
Women are particularly in danger in the presence of, and in relationships with, men. Spaces that exclude men are essential to preserving the safety of women.
Socialization: men are raised to support patriarchy, while women are raised to be subjugated by it. Men have no motive to unlearn these lessons, so all men are inherently more corrupted by these lessons than women.
Relationships with men are therefore inherently (more likely to be) abusive, and relationships with women are inherently safe(er).
Sex, in particular, is more often exploitative than not. Only some kinds of sex are not exploitative. Many kinds of sex that we think are consensual, or that people say are consensual, are either rape or proto-rape.
Exchanging money for sex is inherently rape/exploitation/non-consensual in some way.
As women who deny men access to them, lesbians are The Most Oppressed and also The Most Endangered. They must be protected at all costs.
Because so many women have been raped by men with penises, both men and penises are inherently traumatic to A Lot Of Women.
Many lesbians will naturally have an aversion to relationships with trans women because of this. Trans women who argue against this “genital preference” are potential rapists trying to infiltrate lesbian spaces to hurt and take advantage of women.
Men will always try to invade “women’s spaces” to take advantage of women, endanger them, and strip away their resources both for personal gain/pleasure, and in service of upholding the patriarchy.
If we allow men to say they are women, they will invade those spaces and hurt “real” women. Men who say they are women are dangerous, and must be excluded and punished.
Men may try to obfuscate labels and terminology to “define women out of existence” or otherwise cause confusion, which they can manipulate to further their infiltration.
Women are all miserable with their bodies, cursed with the pressure to reproduce and have sex with men.
Women are all miserable with their genders, forced as they are to ensure the overwhelming and constant suffering that is patriarchy.
Women will attempt to escape this misery and pressure by “becoming men”. This is cowardly, but understandable; a tragic but inevitable result of patriarchy. These women must be saved.
Some women who try to escape patriarchy are doing it out of self-interest; they are betraying women by becoming men, and contributing to their oppression. These women must be punished.
Bio-essentialism: women are oppressed specifically because of their bodies and ability to reproduce. This is an inherent and defining part of womanhood. Nobody can claim womanhood without this experience, everyone who has had this experience is a woman.
Women’s bodies are all beautiful and perfect because they are women’s bodies. If the womanliness of them is tampered with, they become less valuable. Men’s bodies are gross and undesirable symbols of patriarchy.
Testosterone makes people violent, aggressive, irrational, and angry. Estrogen makes people calm, kind, and happy.
Men can never understand women’s bodies as well as other women do.
People can be attracted to other people on the basis of “sex” alone. This is inherent, immutable, and unquestionable.
Men are sexual animals who inherently and unavoidably find lots of bad things sexually arousing. Because “youth” is attractive, many men find young girls and children attractive, and will try to take advantage of them. Misogynistic control/power over women, hurting women, and even rape are also inherently sexually appealing to men.
“Gender” is meaningless; it’s founded in misogynistic stereotypes about men and women, and when you remove the stereotypes, there’s nothing left at all. Only binary “sex” is real, because that’s what patriarchy (and biology) is based on.
Manhood is itself a toxic, oppressive, inherently corrupting concept. Anyone who participates in manhood is corrupt and immoral; who would choose to be the oppressor?
Masculinity is defined only by hating women, having power, and being aggressive, violent, and controlling (etc.)
Patriarchy doesn’t just target women, but femininity as a whole, for its association with women.
Patriarchy doesn’t just reward men, but masculinity, as it rejects femininity. People who reject femininity and embrace masculinity are rewarded by the patriarchy.
Some of these ideas are contradictory, but they lead to the same conclusions. Some of them lead to similar conclusions, many of which take very little further nudging to push into more dogmatic ideas.
This is exactly why we need to understand all of these paths into TERF ideology- and more.
In fact, the vast majority of the points on this list- particularly the beginnings of their logic- can be very easily swallowed while still holding that trans women are women, and trans men are men.
That’s what TIRFs (trans-inclusive radical feminists) are, and they’re still incredibly dangerous. TIRF ideology normalizes these points, making it far easier for TERFs to recruit; even if TIRFs themselves try to be aggressively anti-TERF.
Again, this isn’t comprehensive, and it would take a long time and a lot of words to cover every flaw and danger in every line of reasoning here.
But remember how these things work; even if some of them begin with a grain of truth, even if some of them are true- especially if you define the words they contain differently- be wary of them.
It’s important to note how sex-negative they can be, and how in some circles this leads to a belief that being a lesbian is the only way one can liberate oneself from the abuse of men. They see sexual orientation as a choice to be made for one’s safety, or a political act–not something based on genuine attraction. They also sometimes push the idea of the “gold-star lesbian”–that is, a lesbian who’s never been with a man–as the ideal. If you’re a bisexual? Disgusting, don’t interact.
Friendly reminder that GIMP does pretty much everything Photoshop does, and it’s 100% free. Fuck DRM and the license culture, we have plenty of open source options available to us as a consumer.
Lightworks is a freeware video editor on par with Premiere
Blender is an excellent freeware 3D renderer,possibly better than After Effects
