The Discourse - Tumblr Posts

I love watching people progressive themselves into radical right-wing beliefs, it's horrifying and very funny.

the repackaging of old misogynistic ideas that younger generations think they’ve outgrown into buzzword-filled tik toks and tweets that will be pushed towards young impressionable people is extremely dangerous. But also extremely funny like you can’t get this anywhere else

Is hating men literally just as bad as misogyny? No. Is thinking that every man you'll ever meet is secretly a rapist or a monster, despite being an understandable trauma response, healthy? No. Does this thinking inherently fit within a category of "punching up" and righteous fury? No. Does it almost inevitably contribute to the dehumanization and criminalization of men of color and trans people? Yes.

I wrote a longass thing about kink and pride and how people are trapping themselves in a closet of their own making and getting mad at everyone else for not similarly engaging in normative sexuality but I deleted it. I deserve some kind of reward... dubloons perhaps

not only are there no bad languages there are also no bad or annoying dialects

Puritanical backsliding and infiltration of terf thought into all queer discourse.

love seeing revisionism in the wild “free the nipple never meant you can walk around topless every where that’s still sexual harassment it just meant for like breastfeeding and stuff”no it literally means you should be able to walk around topless anywhere because get this. breasts aren’t fucking sexual organs.

This discourse is from a month ago, but just so we're clear here; I choose the man because when searchers found us they'd at first assume he somehow got hit by a truck and backed up over repeatedly out here in the middle of the woods.

The idea that trans women should be allowed in single sex spaces for cis women is completely contradicted by the man vs. bear discourse. Ignore that I keep going back to the meme - maybe it's still doing numbers, I don't know, but it's good shorthand either way. If you think men are inherently suspicious and dangerous, ask yourself: why does that not apply to trans women?

What, exactly, does a trans woman do to make herself different from men? How are you not advocating a belief in male socialization which can only logically apply to trans women as much as it does cis men? It boggles the mind how, if that's a true concept, one could simply self-identify out it. Yet, the way transradfems talk, literally the only thing that distinguishes an AMAB better-than-bear from an AMAB worse-than-bear is that the former says they're totally better than a bear and you should take their word for it, which if men are really Like That should be of little comfort or security.

Some, even, will make impassioned defenses of butch trans women, which as a butch trans woman is great. But then they'll go on about how evil men are, and how innocent and victimized trans women are, and I wonder, what, exactly, differs an especially trans woman from a man to them? If, like me, a trans butch woman doesn't always wear clearly feminine clothes, has body hair, maybe even a shade of facial hair, and doesn't at all try to train her voice, you're going to be uncomfortable with them right up until they realize they forgot to put their pin on and you see the she/her. Apparently that flips the switch from someone you desperately don't want to be alone with to someone you're totally fine undressing in front of?

All that sounds like TERFism, which is exactly the problem. The transradfem version of reality is one where TERF talking points are completely logical. They are not logical in my version of reality, YOU have constructed a system perfect for them to operate in, that their ideology is fantastic for pointing out errors of reasoning in, as if it was deliberately crafted by them to be deconstructed. I would not at all be surprised if that's the origin of a lot of transradfeminism, a psyop to make the trans community weaker with logic knots that TERFism can swing through like the Gordian Knot.

If you accept man vs. bear, TERFism is the only logical conclusion. If you don't, as I don't, then it isn't.

The only alternative is that you think being a woman is the only thing anyone should be and "choosing" to be a man is morally inferior. Which I shouldn't have to tell you is horrifying. It's also again incongruous with at least your defense of butch trans women - what exactly defines a "man" and a "woman" when a butch trans woman doesn't have to try to pass at all? You are literally saying all of this, gender, transmisogyny, misogyny, hinges entirely on pronouns and a difference of two letters in the name of what they call themselves, someone is dangerous or not depending on if they go by he/him or not.

TERFs will see this and be like "yeah! exactly!" BUT MY POINT IS USING THAT TO SHOW YOU SHARE THE SAME FOUNDATIONAL LOGIC AS THEM. If you don't want TERFs to have a point then you can stop accepting their worldview any day now! Come join me and frolic freely where we think TERFs are wrong!

i feel like "but we need this new insult we made up that deliberately highlights the marginalized identity of the people we're insulting to call out marginalized people who are bad!" is literally always a red flag. like, we've talked about not insulting people's appearance when talking about ways they're bigoted or fucked up things they've done because you're hurting other people who don't do things like that in the crossfire and it's the same principle. you can say someone sucks and has bad opinions without making up a new slur to imply that everyone who is part of this marginalized group is cringe and inherently suspicious. also not everything has to be made into a sick burn that's fun and quick to fling around because regardless of your intentions it's at best going to get flung at anyone who makes people mad because that's how insults are used and at worst you're creating a new dogwhistle for bigots to latch onto

No, trust me, trust me. This time we found the good context for calling queer identities insulting names.

there’s got to be a term for “this vapid pop culture account is suddenly dying on the hill of being able to say nazi shit with no social reprecussions”

There is absolutely no excuse for using the term "zog", and trying to normalize it makes you look evil. Not all of these people are going to come back from this, but those that do are going to be mortified at how they acted.

do youse realize that you can say “american politicians generally favor israel in the i/p conflict for various reasons” rather than some neo-nazi shit about a zionist occupied government or whatever? tired of everyone acting like they HAVE to be antisemitic. like. you really do not have to.

I wonder if they've ever even touched a gun.

you are not a militant. you make horrible posts on tumblr.com

I asked cryptotheism if they thought whoever was in charge of the project 2025 camp would maybe let them put on little skits, and they blocked me.

Being on this site is such fuckin torture lately

Every other post is some smug piece of shit anti-electoralist "dunking on" someone correctly pointing out harm reduction is an important thing

If trump wins again it's all your fault, you fucking idiot huge-follower-count blogs, spreading the idea that voting doesn't matter and the dems are just as bad to your massive following who further disseminate it

You have to recognise that democrats are at least possible to make incremental progress with, while the republicans want you fucking dead or dying

it's so fucked that all these super popular blogs on here have this political stance that is actually more likely to lead to a republican victory, despite calling themselves "leftists". they are either too stupid to know that, deliberately ignorant, or they actually want the republicans to win, because in their mind it leads easier to their fantasy of a "revolution"

I feel like that was all of us, I read Jurassic Park when I was ten and Starship Troopers when I was nine, that Percy Jackson scare piece seems to be cutting directly to the soft nougatty center of the brains of every single kid who read ahead in the history book and asked the teacher for books that were longer. It's embarrassing.

Maybe it’s just me, but I always wanted to read books for “older people” when I was younger - like I full on brought “The Girlfriends Guide to Pregnancy” with me to my Catholic private school in like second or third grade and lied and said my mom wanted me to understand her pregnancy when asked about it. I was reading Shakespeare and Tolkien in fourth and fifth grade, and same with Orwell. Like I never wanted to read at or below where I was at but always wanted to go higher, more mature, more interesting and even uncomfortable.

I'm just here to point out that what you're doing is far worse, you're literally stealing other people's hard work just because you think they're not worthy enough to continue working on it. I will try to be mature here and avoid name calling and swearing to prove that I'm serious. But honestly, things are far more OK before you had the awesome idea to ruin everything else. You should be ashamed for even attempting to bring this up.

The mods of Alphaswap ship what they want and we respect that, but just know that they acknowledged canon ships as much as you do, though they prefer to not speak of them, which I find to be an understandable thing.

So please for the love of Hussie just delete this blog and stop fueling the drama, it'll be better for the both of us, I'm begging you.

Betatrade

Hey there! Do you like @alphaswap‘s AU but not the mods? Then come to Betatrade! It’s essentially the same thing except a lot more lax and less hypocritical on the whole shipping thing. Seriously, ship away!

However I cannot do this alone! If you have experience helping format a tumblr page and some free time then I encourage you to apply for status as a mod and help make this dream a reality. Plus if there’s anything you wish to submit that you know that Alphaswap won’t accept (see: sinking ships) then feel free to submit it here!

If you’ve read this far then thank you for your patience and I hope you have a lovely day!

Mod Photon

I think the other really important distinction that gets lost is fandom stories published on e.g. ao3 vs. stories that are marketed and sold by publishing houses/Hollywood/whatever for the purpose of making money off the people who will pay to consume that story.

In the second case, there is a limited amount of resources that can be invested into a limited number of stories, and those stories have to be both well written enough to be readable and compelling to an audience and thus worth that audience spending money on them, and have enough broad appeal that the people putting in resources to create this thing and get it out into the world will get back more than they put in. In this case, the thing to do is make it clear that you as an audience member want more diverse stories, and that lots of other people do to. At the same time, advocate for more diverse writers/editors/artists/etc to be hired or given a chance on their work (and advocate for more hiring diversity across the board, tbh).

In the first case though, literally this is the easiest space to add more diversity to the collection of stories available for people to read. Sign up for an account, and write a story. It's not great, because you aren't the best writer? Your fic is full of so many plot holes it could be mistaken for swiss cheese? You struggle with motivation and can only write little things that get like 20 kudos and were maybe read by 100 people each? That's okay, half the fanfiction full of tropes you hate is in the same boat!

But maybe one of those people who read your fic was inspired to write their own with some of those ideas that you wanted to see. Maybe they shared it with a friend who writes, or got inspired to create some new headcanons that inspired a stranger a few steps down the line on tumblr. Maybe none of that happened the first dozen times you wrote a little drabble of a story, but over time you found yourself writing better things, writing longer things, writing with more nuance and care and energy that comes from practicing a thing until the parts that used to exhaust you now give you energy back instead, and one day you look at your ao3 account and realize that the latest story you wrote was actually really good and people loved it.

And while you're writing those stories of your own, or still practicing but haven't quite gotten up to a full story you want to share just yet, go find some things you love that other people wrote and give them a comment, even if it's just to say, "Nice story! I love how creative this was!" Share some headcanons of your own on tumblr, and share other people's headcanons that you'd like to see more of. Bookmark the stories that you think are worth sharing with other people. Bookmark tabs with stories that you maybe didn't love-love but did want to leave a comment on, if only you had more energy to leave a comment, so that you can come back and leave that comment later.

Create the kind of content you want to see, and support other people who are creating content you find interesting even if it's not the best story you've ever read.

Fandom is the easiest place to leave your own mark, to create your own content and share it with other fans. At the same time, plenty of fans are young and still learning, or older but new to this whole "fandom" gig, or tentatively returning after time away, or older and still learning because we are all still learning new things no matter how long we've been around, and the best way to encourage them to stick around and keep growing is to be kind. To be supportive when you read something and liked it even a bit, even enough just to say, "That was fun! Thank you for writing and sharing it!"

There is such a strange, nuanced distinction between a trope being okay at the micro-level and problematic at the macro level, and I don’t think we appreciate it enough.

Like, let’s take one trope for example: the old 80′s “career woman is unfulfilled and unhappy until she Finds Love and quits her job for a man.”

I think a lot has been said about this being a sexist trope. But I would argue that on its own, it’s actually… fine? It could even be an important story to someone, depending on execution. Because, well–work isn’t fulfilling for most people! Lots of workers, even in very high earning jobs, get burned out and are sort of encouraged to stay in this unhealthy rat race where all that matters is make line go up.

Of course a relationship can be more fulfilling than a job! Damn!

But. But.

While an individual story about a woman going “work sucks, fuck this, I actually just want to have a torrid romance and leave to have wild sex with a muscley lumberjack in the hills” doesn’t necessarily have to be sexist…. that kind of story being the overwhelming majority is.

One snowflake is harmless. A snowstorm is not.

One story about a woman being better off not working is harmless. Every single story being about it, in a culture that pressures women into having less independence and power, is not. 

So then what do you do? Do you tell everyone who wants to write their cheesy lumberjack romcom to stop? Will that even work?

I do think one important piece to add back to OP's post is - Pay attention to nuance *in real life.* Someone liking fiction that has zero nuance doesn't mean that they ascribe zero nuance to their real lives any more than people liking fictional villains makes them villains in their real lives. Sometimes people get exhausted of the gray spaces they inhabit every day in the real world with real people, and fiction is their pleasant escape from that reality for a while. A way to de-stress that harms zero real people. And this, too, is as valid as any other story preference.

Nuance is far more important as a tool for remembering the equal humanity of someone who loves the kinds of stories you hate, then it is as a tool for writing The Best Kind Of Literature.

(Though it can, of course, make for some damn good literature, too!)

90% of arguments about media could just be solved by saying “different people like different things in their stories” and leaving it at that

I'd say this also goes for things like tumblr asks/replies/reblogs. That person has Opinions that are The Worst, and you desperately need to say something about it? Say something to a friend. Write your own post on your own blog that's distanced enough from OP that it won't send other people mobbing after them. There are many options that don't involve being a dick to a random total stranger who you disagree with in fandom!

sometimes people are absolutely WILD about comments, acting like the idea that they shouldn’t be a jerk is a violation of their first amendment rights 

last week i read a fic i HATED. it was well written and highly recommended and i wish i had never read it. hours of my life i will never get back. 

i disagreed with: it’s interpretation on canon, it’s take on mental health, the social contract between loved ones, recovery, trauma, boundaries, and … more tbh

i could NOT stop thinking about how much i disagreed with it. me and this fic have philosophical differences so large i could give a ted talk and i was still super irritated about it days later. 

so you know what i did?

i called up my friends and was like “you guys have no context but i’m going to bitch about this fic you haven’t read in this fandom you haven’t consumed for the next thirty minutes” and they were like “okay sure it’s a tuesday night, we’re in a pandemic, i have nothing better to do”

what did i not do? 

leave a comment on this person’s fic because i’m a human person

So. Look. I held off on saying anything, and I'm still putting this under a read more, because I have zero interest in starting an internet fight over something this silly. On the other hand, I have very little chill, so I'm still going to foist my thoughts out into the tumblr void anyway.

I don't care about the J. K. Rowling discourse.

Not in the sense that I don't care about the HP books, or the shitty transphobic sense that I think her shitty transphobic views are remotely okay.

What I don't care for is the way this discourse has sparked tumblr's usual lack of nuance and gotten people claiming that to care about or talk about the HP books nowadays is synonymous with validating or supporting J. K. Rowling's views. I don't care for the performative virtue signaling it has inspired in every bit of HP related content I see cross my dash. I don't need to read a disclaimer from every HP fan about how guilty they feel for still enjoying a series of fictional fantasy books, a rambling rationalization of how this or that bit of carefully curated engagement with HP is still okay as long as you do it The Right Way, or any more performative glee from someone who still spitefully enjoys the books while not supporting the author's views.

The HP books are not J. K. Rowling. Even if I did want to judge them by the author's views and circumstances, it seems kind of absurd to judge them by her views and circumstances today.

She began writing those books over two decades ago. When she wrote the first book, she was a young single mother struggling to support herself and her child on government welfare. The only reason she was able to complete the first book was because of a loan from a friend that gave her a stable place to live, and she completed the second book only with the help of a grant she applied for before the first book had been published.

Beyond that, the whole series espouses the opposite of her current transphobic views. The HP books are about the value of love, compassion, friendship, and bravery in the face of tyranny and oppression from a dominant social group. It is about not giving into the views of an intolerant minority obsessed only with maintaining their own power, about not giving up hope in the face of a complacent majority afraid to stand up against oppression or uncaring about issues that don't seem to directly affect their own lives.

Loving the HP books today is not incompatible with recognizing that their author has become one of the wealthy and powerful people that the HP books themselves called out for the self-centered and short-sighted cruelty of their views. Enjoying the work she wrote when she was a person who prioritized kindness and understanding of other people and their differences does not negate any criticisms of J. K. Rowling's current intolerance and bigotry. Participating in the creation and sharing of HP fanworks, taking part in conversations about the fantastical world she created, loving any of the characters she wrote into being with love - none of these things mean that you agree with her on the question of whether transgender women are women deserving of respect and dignity and the same basic rights as any other woman.

People shouldn't be made to feel guilty for enjoying a work of fiction, just because the author is Problematic now.

All human beings are flawed. Every piece of media you consume was created by someone imperfect.

Love what you love without shame. Enjoy your favorite fictional works without guilt. Those are the views that I stand behind.

One of my biggest frustrations in trying to discuss queer media is how many people seem incapable of separating "this is an important milestone in representation" from "I did or did not enjoy this piece of media." Media analysis goes beyond just "fandom stuff," and queer media in particular deserves analysis and discussion because of how hard it's been stifled.

It doesn't matter if you hate Steven Universe, it's still important to talk about, because it showed the first queer wedding in American children's television. It has been cited by the creators of subsequent queer family animation as a major milestone in allowing their shows to enter production. The Ruby/Sapphire wedding is a historical milestone, and that doesn't stop being true just because you hate the show or think the ending was bad.

It doesn't matter if you think Will & Grace is entertaining or if you have any real interest in watching it, it's still a majorly important entry in televised queer representation. It kicked down the door to allow even more to come after, and deserves credit for what it did even if you don't personally care about the story.

It doesn't matter if you have any personal interest in Rocky Horror Picture Show, it's still got a ton of important history in queer spaces. Understanding why Rocky Horror showings were and still are hubs of queer expression is important even if you despise the movie and the creator.

Giving credit for representation milestones doesn't mean you can't have criticisms of a piece of media, it doesn't mean you have to like the media, and it doesn't mean you can't prefer other media. It doesn't mean it's free from problematic material, it doesn't mean it's god's gift to television, it doesn't mean it's better or worse storytelling than other stories.

It just means it's worth talking about and understanding the context in which it was made.