Guardian News: “‘You Have Stolen My Dreams And My Childhood With Your Empty Words,’ Climate Activist

More, January 6 2021.

The year is 2021, nearly 2022, and JK Rowling has posted yet more TERF bullshit.

I'm not going to post it here. If you're trans, you've probably already seen it, and if you're cis, you don't need to see it.

It is far, far, FAR past time for you to drop Harry Potter if you haven't already.

I get it. Harry Potter was an important piece of many of our lives. It shaped many of our formative years. Choosing your house became a form of self identification for a not insignificant portion of the population. And you're allowed to feel mixed feelings. But there's one thing that needs to be clear:

Harry Potter fandom, in any form, especially done by TME people, harms trans women.

Now I understand what you may say. "Oh I'm not gonna spend any money on it but I'm still gonna make posts/fanfiction/etc about it"

And sure, not giving money that'll go to its TERF creator to fund her TERF desires is just about the bare minimum. But by continuing to engage with the work, by continuing to maintain a fandom presence, you are giving your tacit support to JK Rowling and anyone that agrees with her.

Your trans followers will see this, and the vast majority will be made to feel unsafe as a result.

But perhaps you don't care about trans women. You certainly wouldn't be the only one. So it only seems fair to mention a few other bigotries transphobia is joined by in the Harry Potter series:

Antisemitism: Goblins as a whole, trying to claim "Anthony Goldstein" as Jewish rep despite him barely being relevant and having an incredibly stereotypical name, and once again, GOBLINS AS A WHOLE

Racism: The name "Cho Chang", Lavender Brown starting out as Black in the movies before being whitewashed as soon as she became relevant to the plot

Homophobia: The use of werewolves as an HIV/AIDS metaphor, but where the infection actually IS dangerous to others, not to mention a character who actively targets children to "infect", trying to claim Dumbledore is gay and it never showing up anywhere in text

Sexism: Hermione's whole "not like other girls" schtick that's backed up by the universe itself, traditionally feminine characters being villainized (Lavender Brown, Umbridge)

These are by no means an exhaustive list, but worth mentioning nonetheless.

If you're looking to read other YA books instead, here's a few recommendations to get you started

Diane Duane's Young Wizards series is my top pick for anyone looking for another series about wizards coming of age while they face down the forces of darkness. It's been ongoing since 1983, and the author has shown an admirable willingness to go back and fix plot points that include topics she wasn't well informed enough to be sensitive about at the time. The author herself is actually active on this website, her url is @dduane

Katherine "KA" Applegate's Animorphs will always hold a special place in my heart. If you like sci-fi, aliens, and the horrors of war, this series is for you. The author is fairly vocal of her support for the trans community, and has a trans daughter herself. Her husband is Michael Grant, who both did some work on Animorphs and is the author of the Gone series which is also worth highlighting here

Tamora Pierce has multiple universes of book series largely focused on growing up in magical worlds. While her Song of the Lioness quartet and following series in the same world were great, I was always a big fan of the Circle of Magic books myself

Rick Riordan is well known for his mythology-based series. Starting with Percy Jackson, he contextualized Greek mythology in a modern setting, from the outset giving representation to people with ADHD and dyslexia. As he continued, writing series focusing on Egyptian, Roman, and Norse mythology, he added more representation into his books. While he has sometimes had issues with how he has portrayed these marginalized groups, he has largely shown himself to be receptive to criticism

Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant series is another fantasy series that I quite enjoy who's author has shown explicit support for the trans community. While I am not up to date with the most recent books, it is my understanding that they include an explicitly trans and genderfluid character, and the books' magic system and themes goes into the nature of identity and names many times, in a way that even when it isn't explicitly trans, often FEELS very trans

The TL;DR is this: however you may try to justify it, participating in Harry Potter fandom in any way IS harmful to trans women, and there's a world of other series to go for instead

Greta Thunberg as an angry druid I drew back during the Australian fires.

Dark Brett show us the forbidden ideologies

Hyper-forbidden ideologies:

Posadism

LaRouche thought

Songun Politics Study Group USA-Rural People’s Party thought

Christian Identity

Esoteric Nazism

Cultish, supremacist black nationalist movements (NOI, radical Black Hebrew Israelites, etc.)

Sovereign citizen thought

Transcendental meditation thought (see: Natural Law Party)

Forbidden ideologies:

National Anarchism

Anarcho-Primitivism and deep ecology

French legitimism

Christian reconstructionism

Wahhabism

Juche thought

Ecofascism

Kahanism

All forms of third positonism (Peronism, National Bolshevism, Strasserism, Phalangism, integralism)

Ideologies just normally banned:

Social credit

Gaddafism

Situationism

Gandhian economics

Futarchy

Nasserism

Hoxhaism

Ba’athism

Ujamaa

Austromarxism

Neo-Marxism

Mobutism

Tudjmanism

Cults of personality around various right-wing authoritarian leaders which lack any solid ideological shape (Fujimori, Duterte, Lee Kuan Yew, Putin, etc.)

also if you are anti johnny depp go ahead and unfollow me. the amount of people i have seen on this app that support a**er is astonishing.

if you support her i suggest you leave because i will not stand for people supporting someone who has been seen multiple times mocking, and laughing at someone else’s pain.

like a lawyer in the trial said, nobody in any of the relationships, friendships or his family members has ever said he was violent in anyway other than yelling, which is barely violence.

Feminism vs Female Empowerment vs Feminist Exemplification

In the past years this thread of labeling anything that’s female positive as feminist has really skyrocketed and it bothers me greatly. Great female representation and female empowerment does not make a thing feminist. Something that illustrates, explains or describes a feminist value or point of view does not make that thing feminist.

What defines something as sexist or empowering or feminist is the context and the message or objective that it wants to convey.

There are men in the industry who are progressive and works towards equality by hiring more women, and actively trying to give us better female representation. There are women who direct women in films about women and who try to maintain a crew or team of mostly women. In both cases, none of this makes their project or them feminists.

The majority of the entertainment industry responds and caters to The Male Gaze – it does so even if there are no men operatively involved in the project, because 99.9% of people in the industry do not make art, they are here to make money.

And although it is based on what we commonly call artistic careers, that does not mean that there is a really artistic background or objective in the things being made – it’s purely commercial in a vast majority.  The ultimate goal of the entertainment industry is to sell. Therefore, much of this "art" is not progressive, thought-provoking or subversive in any way, specially if the person in charge believes that this could cost them money. The main objective is to market to the consumers and they do so at the expense of everything - this includes quality, values, points of view, consciousness and self-awareness. And this is when two very interesting things happen: Faux Feminism & Female Exploitation.

Female Exploitation is when the person in charge believes that what sells is quiet, beautiful and sensual women – this is the main thing, and the character's story is secondary (so much that most end up being just eye candy or as a manic pixie dream girl). In this case they think of subversive and thought-provoking as something that can harm their income. So the actresses talent and creativity doesn’t really matter, as long as they’re pretty and sell.

Faux Feminism is when the person in charge believes that the money is in the feminist pov and they make films that could pass as feminist and with strong female characters that follow closely and/or represent the political climate and feminist discourse of today – but that does not make the product feminist, mainly because in most cases they do this in the most superficial way for a monetary gain. Keep in mind, in this cases they don’t explicitally use the word feminism in attachment to whatever their selling, but it’s very obvious.

And sometimes is neither of these, but instead Casual Feminism - when something could represent, stand for feminism but that wasn’t the intention at all. Feminists saw it and were like HECK YEAH.

Is feminist a project in which mostly or only women participate? Is feminist a project where the main roles are 99% female? Is feminist a project that addresses sexism? Is feminist a project that’s inclusive? Is feminist a project with independent and empowered women? Is feminist a project that criticizes the way in which society treats women? The answer to all this is NO.

What defines whether something is feminist or not, is first and foremost if whether its exhibitors/creators are feminists or if it was written to represent/stand for feminism explicitly and consciously. If I wear a shirt that says I am feminist, that does not make me feminist. Being a fan of Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Emma Watson or any other feminist does not make me a feminist. Reading one feminist book does not make me feminist (it’s the start, if so I decide). I'm just wearing something, following a person, consuming a product. And many artistic products are attributed the term feminist when they are not in the slightest. If you assume that it is feminist because it exemplifies feminism or is potentially empowering for women, that does not make it feminist. Talking about self-love, girl power, sorority and sexism does not make you a feminist - it makes you self-aware of your rights, strengths and weaknesses and that is excellent and encouraged, but it does not make you feminist.

Why? Because Feminism is a philosophical, social, political, economic and artistic current. What makes a feminist person a feminist, above all, is that they identify themselves as such, with all the awareness of what feminism is because they have studied it or are constantly studying it or have the intention of studying it.

We can long and dream for a feminist awakening in the entertainment industry, but precisely because of that we should not label just anything as sfeminist, because labeling something or someone as feminist when it is not is a disrespect to the person or product and misleading; and it is harmful to the people and products that are feminist and that are mostly ignored, criticized, received in a negative way and usually overshadowed by pseudo-feminist products with better marketing, plus it only helps to preserve the misinformation and misunderstanding of what feminism is and superficializes it. Not to mention it can perpetuate some misconceptions.

Something or someone not being feminist does not mean it is sexist and there IS feminism in the entertainment industry, but very little and it usually suffers from detractors from the industry itself; so what we find mostly is female empowerment, in an initial and often diluted facet.

So no, we can't call it feminist but we can call it empowering since many women feel that spark of strength, they feel identified and reflected accurately, maybe they even feel understood - and that is something very valuable. We can also use them as an exemplification of feminism, there are many artistic projects that are not feminist but serve to explain, illustrate or describe a feminist point of view because they showed it excellently.

Let’s see some examples of what I’m talking about:

Mean Girls is a great example of a feminist movie. It represents and portrays feminist points of view and feminist values consciously and with the intention and awareness of doing it directly from a feminist stand. It has the feminist label very big and very visibly. It was written by a feminist (Tina Fey), inspired on the novel of another feminist (Rosalind Wiseman). The director is not a feminist, as far as we know, but that doesn’t take away from its value as a feminist piece of work in any manner.

Legally Blonde is another great example of a feminist film. The writers, Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith are both feminists, Kirsten notably being a Riot Grrrl. It is based on a novel written by a feminist (Amanda Brown). And just as Mean Girls, it represents and portrays feminist points of view and feminist values consciously and with the intention and awareness of doing it directly from a feminist stand. It has the feminist label very big and very visibly. Also, it is very female empowering.

Now let’s talk Harley Quinn, because is a very interesting one.

First, let’s talk about her in the comics. She wasn’t created by feminists. She isn’t coded as feminist. She is not written as a feminist character. She is not female empowering for most of her story. Nor she or her story are an exemplification of feminism. The character is not meant to represent or embody feminism in any way. So is she a feminist character? No.

Now, in the movie Birds of Prey. Again, she wasn’t created by feminists. Was the script written by a woman? Yes, but not a feminist woman. Is the movie directed by a woman? Yes, but again, not a feminist woman – the director even said in an interview that she didn’t want to “sound too much like a diehard bra-burning feminist”. The film had an all women crew. Again, Harley isn’t coded as feminist - she is not written as a feminist. The character is not meant to represent or embody feminism in any way. BUT is it female empowering? HELL YES. And the movie as a whole is a great exemplification of feminism, this is another quote from the director: “a harlequin’s role is to serve, they’re nothing without a master and so the movie is about Harley Quinn becoming her own master. And not just Harley, but the Birds of Prey as well. All these women go through something and they’re all trying to break free from their own chains”. So is the movie feminist? No, and so are not it’s characters. But we can and should embrace and celebrate Harley Quinn from a feminist point of view.

Is Hermione Granger a feminist character? No. But she is female empowering and an exemplification of feminism. The actress who plays her, Emma Watson, is a feminist but that doesn’t magically makes all the characters she portrays feminists or well written female characters.

On the other hand, Lisa Simpson IS a feminist. Is the voice-actress a feminist? I don’t know. Are the creators feminists? I dont know either - but it doesn’t matter because Lisa is a feminist and she is explicitly portrayed and written as such, she voices feminism and is meant to embody and represent a feminist (even if it’s an 8 year old one) – and she does so very well if I might add.

So stop calling everything “feminist” and stop telling people that if they believe in equality they are inherently feminists even if they dont want to use that label themselves, stop this specially towards people (I’ve seen this in comment sectons). In my experience, there are three types of women who refuse the feminist label:

1) The Closeted Feminist: a woman that’s not afraid to speak up about their opinions but doesn’t describe themselves or their povs with the word feminism even though their arguments and discourse has a feminist stand that is based on feminist theory to the point where it’s obvious this person has immersed themselves in feminist books, podcasts, films, documentaries, etc – this could be because labeling oneself as a feminist is dangerous. Either in their house, or in the society they’re a part of – and with this I mean that it could actually lead to abuse or active persecution. Not everyone has the same freedom, background and opportunity you do.

 2) The Double Agent: they say they don’t need feminism and they don’t believe in it but they still stand for equality and justice. Usually this person doesn’t really understand what feminism is because they have never cared to learn about it and yet they go round commenting on feminist blogs about “how feminists are wrong” – this person believes the patriarchy’s version of what feminism is. This person is aware of the injustice and inbalance but thinks feminism is sexism towards men, hatred of men and that is used for women as a women-victimizing campaign to get pity points and advantages. This are the people that said Taylor Swift played the victim for 13 years.

 3) The Free Woman: she doesn’t believe in feminism, she probably voices hate towards feminism and feminists and thinks very low of them because “she doesn’t need feminism” because she loves the men in her life and has “never suffered sexism” first hand so it doesn’t exist. The Free Woman and the Patriarchal Feminist have in common that they feel feminism victimizes women and is sexism towards men. The difference is one thinks inequality is a myth and the other one knows it’s still a thing.

If ya’ll read all of this KUDOS TO YOU and THANK YOU. I’ve been thinking about this for almost a year and it took me a long time and effort to write this and put my thoughts into words cause I’m really bad at expressing myself and lack communication skills. I’d like to write too about the difference between Feminist Icon – Feminist Woman – Iconic Women, just because I’m tired of that mess too.

Ecofascism isn't new: white supremacy and exterminism have always lurked in the environmental movement

It’s easy to think of climate denial as a right-wing phenomenon, but a growing and ultra-violent strain of white-nationalism also embraces climate science, in the worst way possible.

Several of the recent white nationalist mass killers have described themselves as “ecofascists” and/or have deployed ecofascist rhetoric in their manifestos. The short version of ecofascism is that it’s the belief that our planet has a “carrying capacity” that has been exceeded by the humans alive today and that we must embrace “de-growth” in the form of mass extermination of billions of humans, in order to reduce our population to a “sustainable” level.

In some ways, ecofascism is just a manifestation of “peak indifference”: the idea that denial eventually self-corrects, as the debt built up by a refusal to pay attention to a real problem mounts and mounts, until it can no longer be denied. Eventually, the wildfires, floods, diseases (and ensuing refugee crises) overcome all but the most dedicated forms of bad-faith motivated reasoning and self-deception, and people start to switch sides from denying science to embracing it.

But there’s an ugly side to peak indifference: that denialism can give way to nihilism. As activists seek to engage people with the urgent crisis, they describe it (correctly) as an existential threat whose time is drawing nigh. Once people acknowledge the threat, it’s easy for them to conclude that it’s too late to do anything about it (“Well, you were right, those cigarettes did give me lung-cancer, but now that I’ve got it, I might as well enjoy my last few years on earth with a cigarette between my lips”).

Ecofascism is a form of nihilism, one that holds that it’s easier to murder half the people on Earth than it is to reform our industrial practices to make our population sustainable. Leaving aside the obvious moral objections to this posture, there’s also an important technical sense in which it is very wrong: we will need every mind and every body our species have to toil for generations to come, building seawalls, accommodating refugees, treating pandemic sufferers, working in more labor-intensive (and less resource-intensive) forms of agriculture, etc. etc. The exterminst doctrine assumes that we can know before the fact which humans are “surplus” and which ones might have the insight that lets us sequester carbon, cure a disease, or store renewable energy at higher densities.

But ecofascism isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Pastoralist and environmental thinking has always harbored a strain of white supremacy (the Nazi doctrine of Lebensraum was inextricably bound up with an environmental ideology of preserving habits from “excess” people – as well as the wrong kind of people, whose inferior blood made them poor stewards of the land.

The connection between eugenics and environmentalism runs deep. One of the fathers of ecofascist thought is Madison Grant, who worked with Teddy Roosevelt to establish the US system of national parks, and also to establish a whiteness requirement for prospective US immigrants. This thread of thinking – that there are too many people, and the wrong people are breeding – carries forward with the environmental movement, with figures like John Tanton, who started his career as a local Sierra Club official, but went on to found the Federation for American Immigration Reform and co-found the Center for Immigration Studies, warning Americans to defend against a coming “Latin onslaught,” revealing himself to be a full-blown white nationalist who is revered today as the ideological father of the ecofascist movement.

Meanwhile, the eco-left kept having its own brushes with xenophobia. In the early 2000s, the Sierra Club underwent an internecine struggle to reform its official anti-immigration stance and purge the white nationalists and xenophobes from its ranks. In the early 2010, Earth First had to oust co-founder Dave Foreman as his pro-environmental activism was overtaken by his anti-immigrant activism, with splinter groups like “Apply the Brakes” taking hard lines on borders and immigration.

Today, the ecofascist movement is closely aligned with the Trump administration, through links to Steven Miller and Jeff Sessions. The former executive director of FAIR is now serving as Trump’s citizenship and immigration services ombudsman. Ann Coulter demands that Americans choose between either “greening or browning” their future. Richard Spencer wraps white nationalism in green rhetoric, and Gavin McInnes has directly linked environmentalism to anti-immigration ideology.

Pushing back against this are two complementary strains of environmental thought: the bright greens who see democratically managed, urbanized, high technology as the way through the climate crisis (dense cities enable a circular economy, heal the metabolic rift, and leave more land free for habitat and carbon-sequestering trees); and the climate justice movement, which recognizes that poor, racialized people are the least responsible parties for carbonization, and the most vulnerable to the climate emergency, and emphasizes climate remediation steps that are led by, and responsive to, the priorities of indigenous people and the Global South.

https://boingboing.net/2019/08/19/grand-lorax.html

Tumblr,

As you’re probably aware, the coronavirus disease, or COVID-19, has now been found in countries all over the globe. This is an understandably disconcerting moment for many, but there are steps we can all take to help mitigate the effect on our communities.

COVID-19 is spreading, but misinformation and disinformation are spreading even faster. The most responsible thing you can do is protect yourself from both the disease and false information. Being prepared with facts and data instead of assumptions and fabrications will help inform how you can best prepare for COVID-19.

Here are some resources you can trust:

WHO provides daily updates surrounding COVID-19’s spread, infection rate, and general influence on our society. Their latest update given on March 3, 2020, details that there is a shortage of personal protective equipment for healthcare professionals. They also provide a very handy FAQ section, where you can learn more about how to protect yourself and your community. 

Every day Worldometer updates its website with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in each country that has been affected. Worldometer has been rated one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association, and for good reason: it lists every single one of its regular sources here, and lists the source of every COVID-19 update at the bottom of the COVID-19 page. 

Your local health department will often have the most up-to-date information specific to your immediate area, including how to proceed if you believe you may be showing symptoms of the virus. If you live in the United States, you can find the contact information for your health department by visiting the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).

There’s another thing about this news that a lot of places are not talking about: the toll on one’s mental health, especially if you are someone who struggles with anxiety. If you find your concerns about being prepared are crossing a line that affects your mental health, please consider reaching out to a loved one who can guide you to help, a mental health professional, or an organization set up to help those in need.

Here are a couple of organizations you can trust:

Crisis Text Line is free, 24/7 support. Just text 741741 from anywhere in the United States. The Crisis Text Line will connect you with a trained Crisis Counselor. 

National Alliance on Mental Illness (@namiorg) offers free support and resources for those who are struggling. NAMI can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 am - 6 pm EST at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or by email at info@nami.org.

Take care of yourselves, Tumblr. Wash your hands well, practice keeping a safe distance from others, only wear a mask if you believe you are sick with COVID-19 symptoms and could infect others (or are immunocompromised yourself), and remember to fact check everything that you see. Head on over to @world-wide-what for a refresher on what fake news looks like and how it spreads. Pass those tips onto others when you see them accidentally spreading false information. 

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