Thorns

Pondering contacting local Australian politicians

2025-05-30T06:38:11Z

This post on tumblr suggested contacting local politicians whenever you're in the mood to shout at someone online for being wrong on the internet, and it occurred to me that might actually work for me, if only as a way to divert my occasional FIGHT ME mood away from getting me in trouble. I've tried contacting politicians before when I was feeling like Being Productive and it felt overwhelming and depressing.

I haven't actually done it yet but I looked up some information! So I'll summarise what I've found here for anyone who might find it useful, further advice/info definitely appreciated!
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Rambling thoughts on 'conservatism' as a failure state

2025-03-11T02:11:07Z

MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing by Cory Doctorow made some interesting points about how many conservative and conspiratorial beliefs mirror progressive and accurate ones.

But I think it uses too much of a dichotomy of progressive vs conservative, when I've seen so many people who sincerely pursue the "good" version of each attitude also fall into the "mirror" version.
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TERFs, Trans Mascs, and Two Steve Feminism

2025-01-05T05:46:51Z

I really liked this article:

TERFs, Trans Mascs, and Two Steve Feminism In which A Man has an Opinion about Feminism, with Mixed Results.

It's about how a lot of "trans inclusive" cis feminists are terrible about trans masc people in ways which ultimately stem from transphobia and hurt all trans people. It's not perfect, but does capture that specific problem well.

I think the tight focus is overall a good thing but there's a few places the argument would have benefited from more mentions of the connection to broader issues with sexism/transphobia etc. Also I disagreed with some parts.

Some further thoughts:
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The Games Behind Your Government's Next War

2024-09-06T10:25:05Z

Interesting video essay!

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A Rant On Respecting Gender Identities

2024-02-22T01:08:30Z

Inspired by this post from a gnc woman who keeps having people insist on using they/them for her.

If your "inclusive" approach to gender consistently misgenders certain types of cis people, it's not actually inclusive. "Respect everyone's stated gender identity" is the very lowest bar you need to clear! If you can't manage that, wtf are you even doing. If you think cis people's feelings literally don't matter at all then (a) That sucks don't do that and (b) do you really think you're not ALSO misgendering certain types of trans people? Cos I bet you are! Go sit in the corner and rethink your concept of gender until you can manage a basic standard of decency and respect for all gender identities.

This includes anyone who, say, "compliments" any straight cis men they like by saying they must actually be closeted trans lesbians. If he says he's a man you treat him like a man! If your definition of man is so narrow that "treating someone like a man" is incompatible with like/respect etc, that's a problem with you! Even if someone you thought was a closeted trans women does actually come out as one, that doesn't change the fact that you should have treated her as a man while she identified as one.

There's nothing wrong with thinking someone is giving off Trans Vibes. Privately saying to a friend "I wouldn't be surprised if X came out" is fine. If you're close enough, approaching them to check in and offer to change what pronouns you use is fine. But acting like you're qualified to ignore their stated gender is never ok. Even if they are closeted, you just outed them!

"Respect everyone's stated gender identity" is the very lowest bar you need to clear.

(And of course this all applies to respecting stated sexuality as well. Yes I am looking at you, people who think it's ok to publicly insist that someone is 'secretly gay')

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Two Collections of Links

2024-02-21T11:39:23Z

(I already posted these to sqbr if you follow me there)

Tumblr:

Trans woman gets sick of transphobia on tumblr, tumblr CEO is awful about it

Worldcon:

Report on the leaked emails where the English speaking side of the committee cheerfully created political dossiers of the nominated authors based on their own projected ideas of what censorship the Chinese government might want, without feeling the need to talk to the actual Chinese people on the committee, do any real research, actually read the relevant books etc. There's been some criticism of this report itself being biased/inaccurate but I don't know of anything better with the same info.

Mary Robinette Kowal talks about similar bad behaviour she had seen from Dave McCarthy previously

Results rigged to exclude Chinese authors. This really underlines how ridiculous it is to blame literally everything on Chinese government interference, as some people still insist on doing. In what universe would they exert pressure to have less Chinese authors win awards?

Tangential but feels broadly relevant: How creators and works from New Zealand/Aotearoa were more subtly excluded at the Wellington Worldcon. This isn't equivalent to the outright censorship of the Chengdu Hugos, but it's an example of how this culture of exclusion is not a new thing or just a reaction to a "bad" foreign country.

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Female characters, genderswap, and the narrative

2024-01-09T05:00:04Z

I was discussing with a friend the attitude that genderswapping male characters is not "celebrating female characters". Because it felt both true and false to me, and I think I've figured out why.
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Your New Favourite Youtubers Part 3

2023-12-14T07:51:33Z

Even more queer youtube essays! I gave up on a lot of these, which is definitely more a function of having seen so many and wanting to be Done than a sign of the quality actually dropping.

BUT NOW I AM DONE. Watching (parts of) all these videos was a worthwhile experience, and I did actually find some new youtubers I like, but I am still glad to be finished.

Part 1

Part 2

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Your New Favourite Youtubers Part 2

2023-12-08T13:49:31Z

More queer youtube essays!

Part 1

Part 3

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Your New Favourite (queer) Youtubers: First ten videos

2023-12-07T01:38:14Z

I've been going through the Your New Favourite Youtubers list by Kat that hbomberguy linked to in a recent video, in an effort to support good queer youtube essayists. It's been interesting enough I thought I'd write some short reviews for anyone who finds the sheer number of videos overwhelming.

I used rich text so I could cut and paste the links, which has made the formatting a MESS, sorry.

Part 2

Part 3

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Yes and-ing gender related terms

2023-12-05T01:23:00Z

Ok I don't know if this has already been done better elsewhere, and it's more of an intellectual exercise than a serious call for new language.

But I've been thinking about how it would be useful to have a way to signify that when I, for example, describe myself as "a man" I mean it in the context of being genderfluid, having a gender which includes "man" but is not defined by or limited to it, and which is just as much "woman" and "other" in the same way. I am not a "man" in the same way that a binary trans man or cis man is a "man", where man is the entirety of their gender identity to the exclusion of "woman" etc.

So it's like... I'm a man&, and also a woman& and other&. (I would use man+ etc but have a vague memory of seeing that used for something else. Google just got confused when I checked, though)
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On the multitides of "asexuality"

2023-11-19T03:32:55Z

I keep writing out responses to posts on tumblr, making them a draft while I think about it, then never posting anything. So I'm going to make more of an effort to post this stuff to dreamwidth instead.

From this tumblr post:

the ideas that “libido and attraction can be separate and for many aces they are”, “aces who have and enjoy sex are still ace” and “aces who do not have sex and don’t want to shouldn’t be pressured” and “you should accept aces regardless of their sexual behavior” can and should coexist

ok this is a bit of a half-formed thought but it just occurred to me to compare this to my experiences when I identified as a wlw, and some general thoughts I've been having about how people treat bisexuality as "gay mixed with straight" rather than it's own experience.
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Against Access

2023-11-13T03:44:12Z

Against Access by John Lee Clark

As I said on tumblr:
This is really interesting to me, in part because of the extent to which it does not match my experience as a disabled person. Which is fine, because he doesn't claim to speak for all disabled people, just for people like himself. And I am a very different kind of disabled.
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Random Links

2023-04-29T02:25:54Z

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They're Not Human

Creative Interventions: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence
Gotta be honest, I only got partway through this, it's a bit repetitive and long winded. Also the attempt at trans inclusion is patchy. But the part I read was really thought provoking and avoided some of the major pitfalls I've seen in other similar toolkits.

And now some things I already posted to tumblr:

A discussion of Camp Which I still don't get, tbh.

mistakes don’t mean you deserve to suffer

The key to co-liberation is that it requires a commitment to and a belief in mutual benefit

the 14 properties of “ur-fascism”

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Three links

2022-03-04T14:53:22Z

The History and Politics of Wuxia

Tabletop RPG safety toolkit I think this has interesting ideas for any sort of collaborative storytelling.

In my many discussions on activism down the years, I've said that one of the most dangerous things we tend to do is treat *insights* as rules.

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Ugh, Al Jazeera

2021-12-12T03:54:00Z

A puff piece on NFTs? Really??

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On 'growing out of' interests

2021-12-11T08:57:24Z

A post I made on tumblr I was pretty happy with, so, a crosspost!

I feel like there’s a fundamental misrepresentation and misunderstanding of how changing interests work.

A lot of adults do ‘grow out of’ the interests they had in their youth. But it’s not like they suddenly lose the joy they took in that interest with nothing to replace it, nor is it (usually) a deliberate choice to Leave Behind Childish Things even though they still bring joy.

It’s just that interests tend to naturally change as you get older, and some interests are on average more appealing to younger people, so most young people into them will eventually start getting into something else. And if someone happens not to lose a particular interest as they grow older then…that’s fine, and not bad or immature or creepy. It’s just how things happened to go.
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Survey on Digital Health stuff in Australia

2021-11-06T20:51:12Z

https://nationalstrategy.digitalhealth.gov.au

It's not a very well made survey, tbh, but it's what we got. At least it let me be non-binary.

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I think I have to accept I will never fully understand the Australian Electoral System

2021-09-17T08:34:27Z

pedanther linked this article by Antony Green(*) about some changes to how voting works in Western Australia and I just...I mean I understand some of it.

(*)A respected Australian political analyst
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Discussion of age on tumblr

2021-07-10T09:03:35Z

I was happy with my addition, so am going to crosspost it here. Just had my second vaccine dose so hopefully this isn't incoherent.

Advantages to younger people from knowing older ones.

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Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading: Pages 21-35

2021-07-05T06:06:53Z

Masterlist, links, and glossary

I got all the way to the end, yay me! It was pretty interesting, too.

Content note: Cancer, death.
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Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading: Pages 7-21

2021-07-03T08:47:27Z

Masterlist, links, and glossary

I found a online version of the 2003 version of the essay, from a brief skim it's basically identical, minus the parts about the book of essays it used to be an introduction to.

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Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading: Pages 1-7

2021-07-02T13:34:11Z

Masterlist, links, and glossary

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Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading (Masterlist)

2021-07-02T13:33:57Z

Or: You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Post Is about You

About the original essay, and the point of all this

I came across the idea of reparative reading on Tumblr and was immediately taken with it. As described in this article:

A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader.

Unfortunately all the discussion I could find was either unhelpfully vague, or in the form of (very positive) reactions to the writings of the creator of the term, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Specifically, to her 2003 essay collection Touching Feeling and the essay "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is about You".

Just as I was deciding if I really wanted to pay $25 US for a book I probably wouldn't be able to understand, I came across the original version of the essay, created in 1997 as the introduction to a book of queer readings, and offered online for free by the publisher: Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is about You.

I found a online version of the 2003 version of the essay, from a brief skim it's basically identical, minus the parts about the book of essays it used to be an introduction to.

Anyway! I started reading and it was interesting but I started getting overwhelmed by all the unfamiliar terms and concepts, and so I'm going to try summarise it as I go like I did with confusing academic papers during my Phd. Which may or may or not end up helpful for anyone else but will hopefully at least help me!

I was going to do this as one post but then looked at how long it had gotten for just the first 7 pages of 35 and went AH. OK THEN. TIME FOR A MASTERLIST.
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Thoughts on men writing f/f, and people writing for their kinks

2021-04-04T02:09:31Z

I've decided to go through my tumblr drafts, which are full of posts I felt too nervous to post publicly in case I got reblogged into Discourse, and see which are worth posting here. In most cases I feel like I didn't quite capture my full thoughts on the matter, but sometimes you gotta let yourself be a bit incoherent to flail towards understanding.

So, let's begin with a post about men writing f/f! *starts out intending some mild edits for clarity, ends up doubling the length*

The original post:

People comparing men’s fetishization of lesbians to slash fandom is always so funny like imagine a world where large amounts of men did get extremely emotionally invested in potential romantic relationships between fictional women

I keep seeing posts like this and...that is a thing that exists? As a group they tend to have the same male gazey sexism issues as male het shippers, but they still very much care about the romances.
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