the void and i are friends

A story in 5 parts

Can't just go places without a hat, not when it's raining.

What the actual fuck

the collection so far

my life’s dream is to be a wife guy

this applies even if I’m married to a man. btw

this applies even

if I’m married to a man.

btw

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

so... I automatically translate 'btw' to 'by the way' in my brain. It took me a solid minute of staring at haikubot's post (by the way? three syllables? ehhh??)

before I got it

and saw 'bee tee double you'

is 5 syllables

So y’all know the classic edge trope of “my blade cannot be sheathed until it has tasted blood”? What if a magic sword that has that requirement, except it’s sort of inverted. A sword that, instead of being inhabited by an evil spirit which once awakened cannot be lulled back to sleep except by blood sacrifice, was inhabited by a benevolent spirit who would not allow the sword to be drawn unless bloodshed were the only possible solution. A sword whose power could never be misused because it would only allow itself to be used in situations where it was justified. What about a Paladin who spends their entire journey fighting with a sheathed sword, incapacitating but never killing or maiming. The party believes that the Paladin has taken an oath of no killing, until they face the big villain. And it is in that moment, and that moment alone, that the sword will allow itself to be drawn.

Idk, this image set my mindwheels a-turning.

But do y’all see the vision?

In general, understanding radical feminism for what it is and why it appeals to many people requires an understanding that the greatest strength of radical feminism as a tool for understanding misogyny and sexism is also its greatest faultline.

See, radical feminism is a second wave position in feminist thought and development. It is a reaction to what we sometimes call first wave feminism, which was so focused on specific legal freedoms that we usually refer to the activists who focused on it as suffragists or suffragettes: that is, first wave feminists were thinking about explicit laws that said "women cannot do this thing, and if they try, the law of the state and of other powerful institutions will forcibly evict them." Women of that era were very focused on explicit and obvious barriers to full participation in public and civil life, because there were a lot of them: you could not vote, you could not access education, you could not be trained in certain crucial professions, you could not earn your own pay even if you decided you wanted to.

And so these activists began to try to dig into the implicit beliefs and cultural structures that served to trap women asking designated paths, even if they did wish to do other things. Why is it that woman are pressured not to go into certain high prestige fields, even if in theory no one is stopping them? How do our ideas and attitudes about sex and gender create assumptions and patterns and constrictions that leave us trapped even when the explicit chains have been removed?

The second wave of feminism, then, is what happened when the daughters of this first wave--and their opponents--looked around and said to themselves: hold on, the explicit barriers are gone. The laws that treat us as a different and lesser class of people are gone. Why doesn't it feel like I have full access to freedoms that I see the men around me enjoying? What are the unspoken laws that keep us here?

And so these activists focused on the implicit ideas that create behavioral outcomes. They looked inward to interrogate both their own beliefs and the beliefs of other people around them. They discovered many things that were real and illuminated barriers that people hadn't thought of, especially around sexual violence and rape and trauma and harassment. In particular, these activists became known for exercises like consciousness-raising, in which everyday people were encouraged to sit down and consider the ways in which their own unspoken, implicit beliefs contributed to general societal problems of sexism and misogyny.

Introspection can be so intoxicating, though, because it allows us to place ourselves at the center of the social problems that we see around us. We are all naturally a little self centered, after all. When your work is so directly tied to digging up implications and resonances from unspoken beliefs, you start getting really into drawing lines of connection from your own point of interest to other related marginalizations--and for this generation of thinkers, often people who only experienced one major marginalization got the center of attention. Compounding this is the reality that it is easier to see the impacts of marginalization when they apply directly to you, and things that apply to you seem more important.

So some of this generation of thinkers thought to themselves, hang on. Hang on. Misogyny has its fingers in so many pies that we don't see, and I can see misogyny echoing through so many other marginalizations too--homophobia especially but also racism and ableism and classism. These echoes must be because there is one central oppression that underlies all the others, and while theoretically you could have a society with no class distinctions and no race distinctions, just biologically you always have sex and gender distinctions, right? So: perhaps misogyny is the original sin of culture, the well from which all the rest of it springs. Perhaps there's really no differences in gender, only in sex, and perhaps we can reach equality if only we can figure out how to eradicate gender entirely. Perhaps misogyny is the root from which all other oppressions stem: and this group of feminists called themselves radical feminists, after that root, because radix is the Latin word for root.

Very few of this generation of thinkers, you may be unsurprised to note, actually lived under a second marginalization that was not directly entangled with sexism and gender; queerness was pretty common, but queerness is also so very hard to distinguish from gender politics anyway. It's perhaps not surprising that at this time several Black women who were interested in gender oppression became openly annoyed and frustrated by the notion that if only we can fix gender oppression, we can fix everything: they understood racism much more clearly, they were used to considering and interrogating racism and thinking deeply about it, and they thought that collapsing racism into just a facet of misogyny cheapened both things and failed to let you understand either very well. These thinkers said: no, actually, there isn't one original sin that corrupted us all, there are a host of sins humans are prone to, and hey, isn't the concept of original sin just a little bit Christianocentric anyway?

And from these thinkers we see intersectional feminists appearing. These are the third wave, and from this point much mainstream feminist throughout moves to asking: okay, so how do the intersections of misogyny make it appear differently in all these different marginalized contexts? What does misogyny do in response to racial oppression? What does it look like against this background, or that one?

But the radical feminists remained, because seeing your own problems and your own thought processes as the center of the entire world and the answer to the entire problem of justice is very seductive indeed. And they felt left behind and got quite angry about this, and cast about for ways to feel relevant without having to decenter themselves. And, well, trans women were right there, and they made such a convenient target...

That's what a TERF is.

Now you know.

If you read "maybe it's not helping us if the only thing boys and young men see from equity-seeking spaces is how they, personally, are to blame for everything and we actively hate them and they're garbage, regardless of behaviour, their own experiences/situations/marginalizations, and maybe we need to address that"...

...and you immediately interpret that as "you're telling me I have to prioritize never hurting men's feelings" and so on....

....maybe stop and consider that there are in fact a range of ways to treat people and interact with people and even work for change that include more options than "any criticism at all hurts feelings and is not allowed" and "people who have a characteristic that is more privileged than mine in society can be rightfully subjected to anything I want to do or say to them and I don't have to think about the impact, accuracy or justice of anything I say, ever."

Like there are some other options here. Human communication and consideration allows for a whole range in between these two comical yet so often foregrounded extremes.

Further note:

There’s also a difference between someone asking you to invite someone else to your table as an honoured guest….

…. and someone saying that if you keep calling them a piece of shit at the top of your lungs, they’re probably not going to be motivated to sign your petition and or donate to your cause.

Like. “Maybe it would help if people wearing our uniform weren’t constantly out there calling the people we’re actively canvassing for electoral support Pieces of Shit all the time” is not actually. The same. As making everything about them. Especially when that part ISN’T A METAPHOR.

Given the way the book goes, that's actually a reasonable question.

A very useful thread on Bluesky:

(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)

Chai tea bag + lil but of brown sugar + apple cider packet + 16 oz. mug of hot but not quite boiling water

it will not Fix You but like. maybe. maybe.

tags by @eridan-ampora

Update: this is the best post I've ever made because everyone is sharing their Warm Beverage recipes in the notes. Go check the notes for more Warm Beverages That Will Fix You.

I think everyone could probably use a hot beverage this week

Expanding a bit on the post I just reblogged, I absolutely HATE how a surprisingly large portion of the population now thinks that feminism is synonymous with being a "girlboss". The idea that working some kind of professional job and being successful at it is the only way to do feminism is insane. People will literally say "feminism has failed us" or "I'm giving up on feminism" when they're unhappy with their jobs. Babes idk how to explain this to you but that is not a problem with feminism that is a problem with your job. You don't need a rich man to provide for you while you take care of the kids you need a goddamn union and some paid leave

The reason why feminists of past generations fought for middle to upper class women to leave the house and join the workforce was not because they thought working a job is some kind of emotionally fulfilling activity. They fought for that because housewives at the time were completely at the mercy of their husbands. If you were a housewife and your husband was abusive, or you just didn't love him anymore and wanted out, you had nowhere to go. You had no money because he controlled the finances, you had no car or place to stay because his name was on the title for both, you had no job because you stayed at home and no education or work experience with which to get a job because you probably got married pretty young. The point of getting women into the workforce was to make women less dependent on men because if you depend on someone for the roof over your head and the food on your plate, they can do whatever the fuck they want to you and you'll have absolutely no recourse.

The natural next step of this thought process should be "ok, now women are in the workforce, they are not dependent on men in the way they once were, how can we change the structure of work such that it doesn't make everyone fucking miserable" giving up on feminism because your predecessors fought for the right for you to have a well-paying job and your job sucks is such an intellectually lazy conclusion to come to.

Like hey, if you've ever thought "working for a living is miserable, I wish I had a man to pay all the bills" do yourself a favor and ask yourself why that was the solution your brain went to? Why is it that when you feel like work is sucking your soul, the first solution you go to is to become a housewife? Maybe it's because as a girl, you were taught that being a housewife is a good and admirable thing to do, and even though you were also taught that it's good to have a career as a woman, everyone for your whole life has always been subtly, gently nudging you toward the idea of "settling down". Have you considered that perhaps that is an expression of a system of social organization that prioritizes the needs of men over women and encourages women to submit to the whims of men? You know, like some kind of *patriarchy*? Damn if only we had some kind of ideology to combat that...

'girl you don't need a husband you need a union' is such a succinct and badass summary of our next step forward.

As part of a birthday gift I made a repeating pattern for my friends of their cute little cat Hime. I just refreshed it, and she's looking so cute.

You can find her in my Redbubble on stickers, shirts, socks, all sorts of cute shit.

REACTION SPEED [Heroic: failure] - a single ravioli, damp from the water, still pleasantly steaming, lands with a defeated slap, on the linoleum floor. You see it happen, watch it flip through the air, like an Olympic bronze off the high-dive, or a suicidal veteran of war. you feel yourself shout a "No!", but it is too late. there, the ravioli, impossibly, lays limp. FORSAKEN RAVIOLI - Why, it thinks, why me? For all the time I was grown and processed then crafted and for all the time I have waited for the only purpose which I was made for. To be cast so suddenly, so errantly, into the realm of the beyond? Beyond savior. DRAMA - And here you stand, clad like a captain with your wooden spoon, watching as an honorable soldier, nay, a man, lies without your hand to aid him, on the kitchen floor.

VOLITION - you must act, now! first it must be picked up, then its fate can be decided. COMPOSURE - Its fate is the trash. AUTHORITY - Its fate is the trash. YOU - You pick up the ravioli, it is hot, nearly still boiling, gushing steam and hot pasta blood down your hand. It hurts, but standing here, there is nowhere else for it. PERCEPTION - It looks fine... LOGIC - Don't do this. SHIVERS [Heroic: Success] - Somewhere southeast of here, perhaps hundreds of miles, grain sprouts in a field, rich wheat, and butternut squash, only an acre over. The wind whistles through the fields, running like gleeful children through the tiny, green plants. Some will be eaten by birds, worms, or moles, but some will reach high into the sky, where they will be plucked and ground into pasta dough. You have seen the birthplace of this soldier. It is humble, a beautiful childhood, and so, so long ago. An entire pasta-lifetime, now. FORSAKEN RAVIOLI - I thought I had finally made it. And with my brethren... YOU - You look at the bowl, the rest of the ravioli, steaming in mournful, pyrrhic celebration. My company... EMPATHY - This ravioli could be you. You can't give up on it now. Not because of your own mistake. AUTHORITY - This is not what a dignified man would do. send him off and mourn, perhaps, but do not spend one moment more considering his limp, cooling corpse. DRAMA - Where has your heart gone, O Honorable One? Authority - … EMPATHY - the greatest service you could do for this little soldier, and for all those beyond you that forged him, is to eat him. What else is rightfully to be done? VISUAL CALCULUS - It was on the floor for less than 4.7 whole seconds. ENCYLOPEDIA - most forms of bacterium are able to jump, especially to wet materials, in about 1.2- PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - any residue on your kitchen floor may well be material which was once already in your stomach. CONCEPTUALIZATION - if you think about it, that means you've already kind of eaten the ravioli.

INLAND EMPIRE - From the Floor, Of the Floor, To the Floor. To be, or not to be, one with this eternal cycle? ENDURANCE - Anything the floor could not contain, you could digest. (with VOLITION) We are iron. HALF LIGHT - Bite into its soft, warm flesh. EMPATHY - Give it peace. ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Eat the floor-violi, pasta slut! YOU - weeping, bring the ravioli to your lips, and then, impossibly, with infinite mercy, love, bring it into you. It tastes fantastic. You would have never know it was on the floor at all. You can feel the hum of satisfaction, the glory of it in your lungs, swelling to fill you more than even a pasta-feast could. This is the mercy you wish your God could cast on you, when you fall. KIM KITSURAGI - "Harry,"

#WHAT a fucking read of the manic pixie dream girl#I want this desperately actually???#perfect quirky enigmatic mystery girl who has all the traits you don't but long for#and lives life with extreme confidence and whimsy doing whatever she truly wants#and she's the future you can have!! she's here because she loves you! she wants you to be happy!#she hated being you so she knows how much you hate being yourself but she's here to prove to you#that there is a joy you can attain#there is a self you will love (tags via @aethersea)

This is a Sun Bittern

It’s wings are just Like That.

Cool bird

Hope you like it :)

Huh, I never considered putting butterfly patterns on birds until now.

If you live in the USA and you're pleading for donations to pay your rent, bills, or get food then dial 211! Please dial 211 before the last minute!

It's a toll free service with people who will help you find programs in your community to pay those bills, find food, and find housing! They will give you numbers to call so you can get help.

It is not 100% foolproof. Their job is to direct you to a program they believe will help your current issue, but it's still a step up from praying random strangers online will give you enough cash before a deadline! The added benefit of these community programs, which get funded by the local government most of the time, is if there are more people using them then they can get more money to help more people.

You're not taking resources from other people if you use your community services. Your taxes pay for them. Use them.

Dial 211 first to see if they can help, and if for some reason they can't, then make your donation posts!

https://www.211.org/

i'm so glad goncharov happened when it did, right before prolific public use of AI. that was pure honest gaslighting straight from the heart. real human whimsicality and trickery thru blood sweat and tears. we were a family. and we all gonched, together. you cant replicate that with any machine.

#also goncharov with a bunch of ai images just wouldn't be as cool#people put in real time and effort#typing something into a prompt is souless#it is the opposite of putting your whole pussy into something#it is pussyless behavior#keep AI off our gaslighting community creative projects thanks (via @asleepinawell)