And honestly let’s look at some of the things we talk about on here. My fellow mod has talked extensively over ableism this past week and how certain actions are violence so that’s what I’m assuming you’re talking about. If not, it’s pretty easy to use what I’m about to say about other examples of oppression.

Violence is any behavior  that is intended to hurt, damage, or kill something or something. Look at any topic my fellow mod has talked about and PLEASE explain to me how it isn’t violence. 

When the government intentionally keeps people with disabilities in poverty and gives them the bare minimum and has rules in place to keep them from even saving money - that IS violence.

Punishing those who receive financial assistance by cutting off/reducing their aid IS violence. 

Doctors denying care to their patients and not taking their pain seriously IS violence. 

The intentionally strict rules and constant and confusing hoops that people with disabilities have to go through to get assistance IS violence.

Making medical assistance near unaffordable to anyone who isn’t already wealthy IS violence. 

Like please, PLEASE give me any example of any fucking this we’ve called “violence” on here and I will explain exactly why you’re wrong and why you don’t understand the bigger picture here. 

Anyways I’m done with these anons but I’m going to say a couple things.

First of all, the initial message was bullshit. I really don’t care if you think “they’re on our side,” because what they said was fucking garbage. They were explicitly addressing our posts about violence against people with disabilities. Somethings that we personally deal with, and one mod has specifically been talking about this past regarding their own situation. The initial message was telling US that our anger towards the system that hurts us is wrong and stop talking about it in the way we do. The initial message also told us that what we experience is not violence, which it is. We’ve explained why it is over and over and you really have no right to try to police our experiences. Like yeah… I’m going to think you’re an asshole here.

Second, I really don’t care if you think this person was “on our side.” What they said was bullshit and I don’t have to respond with sunshine just because they said they agree with our “goals and message.” And no I’m not going to always be totally nice to some jerk who comes into our ask box and tells how how what we feel and how we should act and how we should work things to appease the oppressors. Like, give me a fucking break.  

Finally, you can all stop with your messages acting like you fucking own us or that we get paid to do this shit. 

everyone forgot that mlk jr. said he hated white moderates

he said white moderates were a greater stumbling block to freedom than the kkk. mlk jr said that.

yo can someone please tell me if this is accurate? Because that’s fucked up

yes and he was right

read the thing for yourself https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Letter_Birmingham_Jail.pdf

Most relevant paragraph 

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

He wasn’t wrong. It is, sadly, still true today.

“…who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” We talk about this in seminary all the time: peace that is won by one side holding its foot on the other side’s throat is not peace. When we pray for peace, we must pray for peace with justice, never at the cost of justice, made by silencing the oppressed.

Fellow white people, don’t just reblog or share mlk jr.’s more palatable “hate cannot drive out hate” type quotes and ignore the fact that he also said challenging things like this. We must hold ourselves accountable. We must not be lukewarm. And there is never a “more convenient season” to act to secure rights for all people – the time is now.

Also, apply this to other forms of oppression – acknowledge the source as being about racism originally (don’t just grab the idea and act like you thought it up on your own – unless you did, which is possible, but isn’t the most likely scenario this would come up in) but definitely, definitely use it in your thinking about every form of oppression, because it applies damn well to every kind I’ve seen.

That said I’ve also seen this kind of thing used to shut down necessary conversations about methods, whether the ends justify the means, etc., both inside marginalized groups and outside them, and in mixed company.  So don’t assume that any time someone (with or without privilege in whatever context it comes up in) says “Hey, I don’t think this is the right way to go about this,” then they’re doing what MLK described.  At the same time, don’t automatically assume that they’re not doing so either, especially if you have privilege in that area. It’s much harder for white people to figure out if our misgivings about black people’s activism have a racist element, than it is for black people to figure out if their misgivings have racist elements.  But at the same time, this sort of thing can be used to avoid listening to people that it’s ideologically inconvenient to listen to at the moment, even when said people are saying something important.  

I guess what I’m saying is – wonderful, accurate quote and I’m certain that whatever instances MLK was thinking of when he said this, were exactly what he said they were.  But whether they apply to some other situation he wasn’t thinking about and never lived to see… that’s for those of us alive now to figure out ourselves.  And to do so can be messy and difficult, but it’s work that shouldn’t be avoided.  So take in the meaning of this quote, think of it often in contexts where it seems to apply, but also be really careful.  Use this quote, but then use your brain and do the hard intellectual work of figuring out when and whether it applies to various current situations, both those dealing with racism and those dealing with other forms of oppression. But if you apply it to another kind of oppression, give credit to MLK and acknowledge that you’re building on the work of black people, because too often white activists use the ideas of people of color without giving the same credit they’d usually give if using the ideas of other white people.  So when using or building on the work and ideas of people of color, it’s very important that we give credit to our sources if we can remember where we got the ideas from.

everyone forgot that mlk jr. said he hated white moderates

he said white moderates were a greater stumbling block to freedom than the kkk. mlk jr said that.

yo can someone please tell me if this is accurate? Because that’s fucked up

yes and he was right

read the thing for yourself https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Letter_Birmingham_Jail.pdf

Most relevant paragraph 

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

He wasn’t wrong. It is, sadly, still true today.

“…who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” We talk about this in seminary all the time: peace that is won by one side holding its foot on the other side’s throat is not peace. When we pray for peace, we must pray for peace with justice, never at the cost of justice, made by silencing the oppressed.

Fellow white people, don’t just reblog or share mlk jr.’s more palatable “hate cannot drive out hate” type quotes and ignore the fact that he also said challenging things like this. We must hold ourselves accountable. We must not be lukewarm. And there is never a “more convenient season” to act to secure rights for all people – the time is now.

Also, apply this to other forms of oppression – acknowledge the source as being about racism originally (don’t just grab the idea and act like you thought it up on your own – unless you did, which is possible, but isn’t the most likely scenario this would come up in) but definitely, definitely use it in your thinking about every form of oppression, because it applies damn well to every kind I’ve seen.

That said I’ve also seen this kind of thing used to shut down necessary conversations about methods, whether the ends justify the means, etc., both inside marginalized groups and outside them, and in mixed company.  So don’t assume that any time someone (with or without privilege in whatever context it comes up in) says “Hey, I don’t think this is the right way to go about this,” then they’re doing what MLK described.  At the same time, don’t automatically assume that they’re not doing so either, especially if you have privilege in that area. It’s much harder for white people to figure out if our misgivings about black people’s activism have a racist element, than it is for black people to figure out if their misgivings have racist elements.  But at the same time, this sort of thing can be used to avoid listening to people that it’s ideologically inconvenient to listen to at the moment, even when said people are saying something important.  

I guess what I’m saying is – wonderful, accurate quote and I’m certain that whatever instances MLK was thinking of when he said this, were exactly what he said they were.  But whether they apply to some other situation he wasn’t thinking about and never lived to see… that’s for those of us alive now to figure out ourselves.  And to do so can be messy and difficult, but it’s work that shouldn’t be avoided.  So take in the meaning of this quote, think of it often in contexts where it seems to apply, but also be really careful.  Use this quote, but then use your brain and do the hard intellectual work of figuring out when and whether it applies to various current situations, both those dealing with racism and those dealing with other forms of oppression. But if you apply it to another kind of oppression, give credit to MLK and acknowledge that you’re building on the work of black people, because too often white activists use the ideas of people of color without giving the same credit they’d usually give if using the ideas of other white people.  So when using or building on the work and ideas of people of color, it’s very important that we give credit to our sources if we can remember where we got the ideas from.

Just don't...

When women talk about the current state of sexism and misogyny, it isn’t the job of men to derail and change the subject by bloviating about what a goodguy™ they think they are.

When Lgbtq people complain about the state of discrimination, homophobia or trans-misogyny, that is not a cue for straight cis people to interject themselves into the conversation by proclaiming how “tolerant” and accepting they think they are. 

When Black people talk about institutional anti-blackness and racism, that is not a personal invitation for white people to derail by talking about how “colorblind” they think they are. And it also isn’t a challenge for NBPoC to derail with their version of the Oppression Olympics.

When people living with a disability talk about ableism or how difficult it is living in a world not made to accommodate them is, guess what? That’s not a sign that they want abled people to change the conversation to how they (claim to) treat everyone equally regardless of physical or mental challenges.

Come on people. It’s not that difficult, is it? We get it. Everyone gets it: You think that you’re a great person. But your alleged greatest wasn’t the point of the conversation that you just barged into, was it? What does that really add to the convo? Telling everyone what a wonderful human being you think you are might make YOU feel a little better, but exactly what does that do for the people you just stepped all over? Nothing. Absolutely, positively nothing.

And yes, if you do this version of “but not ALL…” then you should feel badly for trying to turn a post about a marginalized group’s suffering into an opportunity to boast about what an outstanding person you believe you are. Trust me, no one’s going to mistake you for an ally when you pull this kind of shit. There is an easily recognizable difference between “I feel bad that this is happening to other people” and, “BUT I’M NOT LIKE THAT!”

Sometimes there are conversations oppressed people have that do not require your input if you aren’t being oppressed. Particularly when said input isn’t showing true empathy, but instead is nothing more meaningful than you trying (and failing) to masquerade your “humble bragging” about how enlightened you supposedly are. Stop derailing. Just stop it. Stop trying to make it all about you.

Nayyirah Waheed (via not-quite-thereyet)

Nayyirah Waheed (via not-quite-thereyet)

there’s an arabic proverb: “health is a crown that only the sick can see”

Power Structure of Oppression

Yes. Yes. YES. 

I’m just gonna leave this here, in case anyone thought their fee fees were more important than systematic oppression 

I will honestly reblog this every time it comes across my dash. It is so important. 

Yes, this is essential. People don’t realized how the littlest thing can affect the way we live.

I can't stand this "grudges are always bad" bullshit

Fuck your 2 cents, “I slept thru one goddamn psych class in uni” fuckery.

When your survival is on the line, when shit that others mark as lowkey or innocuous is filled to the brim with violence (and can invoke phys violence too, if you’re in the wrong place when it happens), when there is no good choices, when you have to choose between the lesser of 300 evils and not one goddamn good, sometimes you can’t play nice, sometimes you fucking shouldn’t.

It’s true for most if not all oppressions (especially when you got a bunch of intersections) and stuff like rape and abuse.

Grudges are a mark. A mark on someone that says, “this person did this fucked up goddamn thing and I need to remember this cuz they could do it again and devastate me again”. And yeah they reduce trust, CUZ THAT’S WHAT THEY’RE FUCKING FOR. THEY’RE THERE SO THAT YOU CAN REMEMBER NOT TO TRUST SOMEONE AS MUCH AS BEFORE TO REDUCE THE VULNERABILITY AND YOUR CHANCES OF BEING HARMED BY THEM.

There’s no single goddamn way to handle a grudge. I held a grudge against the douche who sexually assaulted me in a theater and I still tried to rebuild our friendship, just never forgetting what that person did to me (the martyring fuck decided that I wasn’t allowed to try to still be friends and hold a grudge at the same time tho, so that ended quickly). I’ve held grudges against people (like my rapist abusive ex who used to OD me w/ painkillers regularly to “shut me up”) that involved cutting off contact too.

A grudge is a grudge cuz it’s a mark of distrust. THAT IS IT. That is ALL IT IS.

And being able to mark who you find you can trust and how far you can trust them if so is NOT AN ABILITY ANYONE SHOULD CRITICIZE OR TRY TO TAKE AWAY.

It is sometimes… no, OFTEN the only coping mechanism and self protection many people have.

So don’t. Take your shiny armored knight useless fuck self out and shove your helpfulness, shove your whining about positivity and negativity and your dime a dozen psych 101 musings and shove them so far up your ass that your colon implodes and prolapses into a pink squishy giant fucking Jörmungandr that you then proceed to choke yourself with like you were Yggdrasil’s douchebag seedcousin.

Stop bugging the abused. Stop bugging rape survivors. Stop bugging POC. Stop bugging trans people. Stop bugging queer folks. Stop bugging neurodiverse and autistic people. Stop bugging the mentally ill. STOP BUGGING ANYONE WHO FACES SERIOUS SHIT AND USES GRUDGES ABOUT THEIR GRUDGES.

Just. Fucking. Stop.

Survivors use grudges. Stop standing in the way of that survival. Or you deserve to and will be steamrolled the fuck down.

exactly.  This is why I keep grudges.  I remember the bullies who tormented me in elementary school who then tried to ask me out in high school.  I keep grudges on organizations whom I know have fucked up over the past (and who still continue to do so).  I keep grudges against people who have said some terrible things, and step cautiously with them.  I keep grudges against the people who have stolen from me, who have abused me, who has threatened to kill me, who have mentally tormented me. 

Grudges keep me safe.  I know as a Christian I should forgive, but I will not forget, because it keeps me safe. Grudges gives me, a rather naive and sometimes too trusting individual, the warning bells and red flags to determine when something or someone is going to hurt me, and to get the hell out of there.  I may not be the survivor of the worst hell out there, but it doesn't make what scars I do have less real and the grudges I have less valid.  And like hell I won't use them to keep myself safe.

http://www.pbs.org/kued/nosafeplace/articles/nightmare.html (via alullaby)

That sums it up

(via erikawithac)

This reminds me of a discussion we had in school, and one girl was talking about living in fear of her safety because she is a girl, and this guy chimed in and was all “It’s hard for guys too! I’m so awkward around girls! It’s embarrassing!” Yeah, not the same thing, exactly?

(via tulletulle) Wow.

(via kittencoaster)

This reminds me of an article about online (heterosexual) dating that I read a while ago. It listed men’s and women’s worst fears about meeting someone from online. The highest ranked fear that men had was that their date would be fat, whereas the highest ranked fear that women had was that their date would turn out to be violent and kill them. 

I think that says a lot. 

(via kaitg)

Always reblogging this

Not all violence is created equal

“Violence is violence!” says the privileged person in an anon askbox message to me, after noticing that I persisted in wishing a pile of fiery living knives sliced and diced and burned the privileged folks who threaten trans women with death, rape and harm.

While I was cuddling that creepy cat thing I thought about that little tautology. Hm. Violence is violence. I mean, tautologies do tend to be true. That’s how they work because they say very little. But people like to use tautologies to claim that everything is simple and tied in a little blue bow. That the very little they’re saying actually means that there’s nothing more to say.

Well, I got more to say, thanks.

Violence may be violence but there’s different kinds of violence. And what the anon was trying to say is that ALL TYPES OF VIOLENCE = ALL TYPES OF VIOLENCE in all ways.

But it’s not. Not even close.

Ever heard of this pesky thing called self defense? When someone is pointing a gun at you and firing and you shoot back or tackle them through a window or something. You just committed an act of violence. More importantly you committed an act of violence in direct response to an ongoing act of violence.

Guess it isn’t that simple, huh?

“BUT IT’S DIFFERENT” you cry, those salty droplets of privilege spilling from your unobservant eyes, into the jar I store such tears for the purposes of gaining supernatural powers.

Ha, yes it is in many cases different, but not in the way you thought.

It’s actually tons worse.

If you’re new to the fucking universe or just bad at paying attention there’s this thing called privilege. It comes from this thing called oppression. It’s what happens when this big system violently (ooo there’s that word) knocks down and does horrific things to an entire group of people, while the people who aren’t like them gain certain boosts in life as a result. Oh? You know what all that is? Well shit, I guess you really have no excuse then.

Oh, you’re crying again. Look, lemme switch jars. Come on, just tilt your head this way. Okay, good. Thanks. Wastefulness is bad, yanno? And I really wanna learn how to teleport.

You see, the violence that these systems perpetrate and the power they give people like you makes your violence very dangerous. It also makes things you do violent when you don’t even recognize them as such.  Like making jokes about a trans woman and a bathroom smack around. Using the word lynching to describe a bad experience around a person of color. You’re not only triggering someone, which is a fairly violent and harmful experience, you’re setting them up for even more violence by making it look okay to other people around you.

And then there’s the disturbing fact that if you even threaten violence, you are infinitely more likely to be able to back up that threat, often with backup and little in the way of consequences.

Hey, heyheyhey, watch out. Jar switch again. Wow, those little suckers in your face sure do pump em out.

Don’t glaze over now! It gets worse. See this isn’t normal violence on oppressed people’s side vs. super power backed up violence on your side. Noooooo, it’s worse. Don’t worry, I got another jar. Let em loose.

You see, any sort of violence done by an oppressed person, a trans woman, a woman of color, a mentally ill person, etc (and any combo amplifies this) will be cracked down on by society like you just tried to obliterate a planet full of people. And eat their souls and shit. Like supervillain stuff. Which is a little ironic since privileged people got the monopoly on that.

Nope, not done, it doesn’t get better.

Even threatening violence. Even saying words that are of a violent type, triggering someone privileged gets shit tons of backlash. And often even worse threats from you. That get ignored of course. By you. Oh come on. I’m making it personal cuz it IS personal. You did this. Each gear in a machine still turns. You can’t blame the machine for your rotations just cuz you lack the self awareness to notice the shit you do.

Okay, I ran out of jars. Can you step back from the carpet?

So, screw your tautologies. No one is fooled by them. Not all violence is created equal and until y’all start dismantling the shit that makes everyone, you included, ignore the threats and the violence and the triggering of the people you have power over and flip your goddamn shit over the threats and the violence and the triggering of your people, often in direct response to what your people did, the violence done to the privileged will never be as bad as the violence done to the oppressed.

Okay, get out. You’re flooding the place.

The real kicker about all of this?

Those privileged crocodile tears are what privileged people, and honestly the majority of people seem to pay attention to.

“Oh shit they were just threatening you with violence? Well I guess we bett…. HOLD THE FUCK UP. WE GOT SOME WHITE CIS GIRL CRYING OVER THIS WAY. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!”

And so they all scatter on over to this privileged person as if all the oppressive shit they just did towards us was magically erased. Nothing they did that could have victimized us really matters anymore.

We’re now the terrible ones. “Why aren’t we comforting her?!” They ask.

And the real shit of it all? Is that no matter how victimized we actually were. No matter what kind of offensive or threatening BS this white cis girl pulled. We actually do start to feel guilty about speaking up and defending ourselves.

We feel like shit while this oppressive person is made to feel like they are the victim.

And hell anything might come out of her mouth at this point now that she’s got her sympathizers around.

“They were so mean!” “They made fun of me!” “They threatened me!” “They were super angry!”

Despite how true any of this is. (Can’t say how many times someone has told me I was being mean and angry when I was actually responding in the nicest way possible to their busted bullshit).

And then, in everyone else’s eyes, we are the worst.

And this is probably one of the greatest silencing tactics I’ve seen. After already being victimized and made to feel like shit. When we speak up we are often times made to feel worse. Our oppressors garner sympathy and play the victim while our suffering is pushed to the side.

And for all those privileged tears they have to shed they go into it knowing all of this. They know what a great silencing tactic it is and they know that it works.

Yep.