Humanity Has No Bounds...

Although misogyny necessarily plays its part into the whole JKR debacle, I think the 'vitriol' as you said is mostly caused by the fact that a large portion of the haters grew up with the Harry Potter books whilst they haven't, for example, ever seen a Polanski film in their life. And JKR in a way could be a sort of parental figure to them. You know, as ~problematic~ as Freud may be, he was onto something when he spoke of one's need to symbolically kill the father; and the same people who practically worshipped the HP novels growing up had already begun dismissing them as child's play when the Rowling vs. Transactivists affair started. To quote another writer here, the issue crystallised at that point.

@helshades

It's so funny that you're bringing that up because I had this exact conversation with my man around a week ago. As I said in the tags of the post that prompted those couple of rants of mine, he's currently reading them for the first time at the rip old age of 35. A result of him giving Philosopher Stone to his pupils this year (HP so bad, primary schools use them to get kids to read, apparently) and making a point of doing everything he asks of them and that include learning all the poetry by heart, and therefore reading all the books as well. After finishing PS, he asked for the rest since he was surprised at how much funnier it was than the movie.

Anyway, I don't exactly remember how we ended up talking about JKR and the discourse currently surrounding her, but he made the exact same point as you, he mentioned how interesting it was that Freud might actually have had some interesting ideas hidden in his work somewhere in there, and that some people do need to "kill the mother / father" in order to grow up and leave childhood behind. I pointed out to him that it was rather obvious and blatantly observable all around us, but that, as per usual, people took that point way too literally, imagining that it meant killing your actual mother/father and marrying the other one so to speak; when a father or mother figure doesnt even have to be someone close to you nor someone you know at all - just a person or even a concept that shaped you enough when you were younger, that you are now feeling the need to "rebel" against in order to mature.

Which really goes back full circle to the point I constantly make when it comes to HP and how people are unable to read (just because you can decipher doesn't mean you can read, I will stand by that, always), and how really, most discourses and analysis surrounding it are people fancying themselves smart by what they believe is "deconstructing" something they loved in childhood, when in reality it's 8 grade level analysis (if I'm generous) and honestly just look like they're going through their teenage phase of explaining to mum why she actually sucks.

Still though, I'll keep believing that if Joanne Rowling had been Jonathan Rowling, there wouldn't be quite the same level of vitriol directed at her and that her being a woman plays a role in how confortable and justified people feel in robbing her of her achievement and devaluing her work.

Fortune

Shanghai residents scream out from high-rise apartments as lockdown stretches into second week

Other viral videos coming out of the city show pets being beaten to death, parents being separated from their children, and a struggle for f

As if these past few years couldn't get more disturbing...

While they are shoving celebrity slaps and reality tv in our face, across the globe, people are screaming for a shred of freedom, and having their children snatched away from them. Is this really about "safety" at this point? What is happening to them could happen to the rest of us if we remain silent. They will create a problem, then snatch away every shred of freedom we could possibly own just to "fix" that problem. People will eventually have to create their own solutions. We know what we want. It is up to us to take it. There is strength in numbers, but a few individuals in their little high chairs have convinced us that we are lesser than. How have they done that for so long? It will come to a point where we can no longer rely on figures that would have us b*mbed in a second if it meant they could spit right back at their opponent.

These people don't want to lead. They want to destroy. The world is their playground, after all.

A compilation of some useful graphics and illustrations that show some of the theoretical basis of Radical Feminism, in comparison to Liberal Feminism and Conservative ideologies.

there’s a connection between the numbing sprays for your feet so you can wear high heels and the anal desensitizing lube so you can have anal sex for your boyfriend and the suppressants for your gag reflex so you can deepthroat that same boyfriend. can’t quite make it though

indy100

Woman shares theory that we never really die and it’s freaking people out

People on TikTok are freaking out after one woman suggested that we might not ever truly pass on - and that the world could have ended many

I've heard of this Quantum immortality theory before. There's this idea that we have been experiencing multiple apolocalyptic events for many years and essentially restaring humanity with each wipe out. I agree with this lady. I don't think we every truly die. Rather our consciousness could live on in an alternate reality.

It's especially odd when you consider other phenomenon like the Mandela Effect. How do some people end up believing they remember events that others believe never happened? Perhaps this is a case of some people paying more attention than others? Suddenly, those theories about the world ending on certain dates don't seem so crazy. People have theorized the world's end for centuries. More recently, people thought the world would end in 2000 (where we would experience a digital apocalypse), then in 2012 (where we would suffer cataclysmic disasters)... maybe something did come to an end in those years, but it wasn't the physical change we expected? People spit on "conspiracies", but I think it's important that at least some people are asking questions about our existence.

I wonder if cis people ever step back and think about just how much trans people have to spend just to live a happier life. I wonder if they realize just how many trans people live poor/live in poverty because they have to juggle between everyday expenses and the expense that being trans is. And that's the expense left if your insurance is "kind" enough to even try covering your healthcare if you need medical care in regards to being trans.

You cannot find meaningful solidarity with people based on a label. Women aren't showing any commitment to wanting less violence, oppression and destruction, even the ones who say they do, but that's okay they're not ready yet. There needs to be a mental purge before the average person can create a shift. This doesn't mean I need to involve myself in what they're having trouble learning.

Whether she claims to want something or not, her actions show her true desires. It's your choice to react how you want: If you want to spend years asking people with a chosen label to change and treat you better, fine. If you want to find people who will accept you regardless of your label, fine. But to find the latter, you must start discussing ideas to start learning about yourself instead of attempting to maintain the criteria of a cultic label.

One of the weapons abusive parents use against children is disgust. They might make comments on your appearance, weight, physical characteristics in a way that makes you ashamed to exist. They might look at you as if you’re the most repulsive thing they’ve ever seen. They might criticize your scent, your clothes, your hair, your state of dissaray, as if it’s something you deserve to be shamed for. They might bestow disgust over your actions, or expressions of pain. It’s possible for them to act the most repulsed and grossed out by you when you’re in pain, shaking, or crying. As if you’re so awful in every single way, that no human being should ever be around you or touch you except to hurt you.

But think about it, have you ever seen a kid that was disgusting to look at or be close to? They’re kids, they’re smaller, undeveloped, inexperienced, in a body that is not even fully grown to be criticized. Only human impulse is to protect and keep safe.

So were they really disgusted? If they still want you to obey them and to give them physical affection, unlikely. They know you’re just a child and there’s nothing wrong with you. The reasons for their ‘disgust’ run deeper.

Possibly they need to convince you that your body is disgusting so you’d feel too ashamed of it and cover it up. And hide the injuries they caused to it. Possibly they need an excuse to hurt or violate a child’s body; calling it disgusting is a very pathetic and transparent victim blaming technique. It’s also possible they want to control your body via shame – disgust hurts. Seeing others look at you like you’re the plague, when you’re just a child, hurts! They want you to ask 'what can I do so you’d stop hurting me? What do I need to do to stop being disgusting to you? So you wouldn’t hate me anymore?’ and this is what they use as leverage for control. Your pain and fear of being dehumanized.

And of course, they don’t want to see expressions of pain because it’s a consequence of their actions. They want to hurt a child but never experience themselves as the perpetrator who is now guilty for a child’s vocal suffering. And they want to neglect their responsibility to comfort and calm you. To reassure you and bring you back to feeling safe. So in the midst of causing pain to their kid, being responsible for suffering, being called to de-escalate the situation and comfort their pained child, what do they do? Pretend they’re busy being disgusted. Pretend their 'disgust’ is priority over everything they’ve done to you. Use disgust to hurt you one more time. Because you being hurt twice is better than them acknowledging they hurt you.

This type of abuse can alienate you from your body. Once it’s cemented in your mind that your body, you appearance, or your pain is the actual reason you’re being so despised, you will start to despise it too. You can become disgusted with your own body, or your actions and emotions, even your pain. But none of that is right. None of that was ever the fault of your body.

You were never disgusting. Nothing about your body, or your pain, was ever wrong or repulsive or worth doing damage to you. You were always okay just as you are. Your body did nothing wrong. Your pain was only ever human. We’re all the same, our bodies are human and warm and nothing about them is worth violating or hurting. We all long for affection and acceptance just the same. Nobody is disgusting, especially not children. There was never a reason to look at you that way, or to hurt you for the projected image of disgust that was never a part of who you are. You’re meant to be free of that shame. You’re okay as you are.

Creation of the Superman

By Raymond W. Bernard

Menstruation Is Not Normal

The human brain is always open to change. Even if it takes baby steps, acknowledging how porn has affected you can be the first step. Society has uplifted it for so long and many have fallen victim to it. Now is the time to seek help and improve our mental health💞.

taking back your mind: a radical feminist approach to recovering from porn use

as radical feminists, we know we live in a society poisoned by porn on a global scale. if you are one of the many women who has fallen prey to the porn industry and are trapped in the cycle of degrading participation in viewing porn, no matter the origins of your usage, just know that you are not alone and that there’s hope for you. read this essay with an open mind - take what works for you and leave the rest.

BE AWARE OF NEUROPLASTICITY first off - your brain is not in stasis (like scientists used to believe!). discovering and understanding the concept of neuroplasticity was a first step in my healing process. neuroplasticity is defined as the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment. neural pathways are simply connections between parts of your nervous system that have formed from patterns of thinking. i’d suggest taking some time to learn about neuroplasticity - there’s some very good articles & videos online!

so what does neuroplasticity mean in relation to porn use? we know that your brain is affected by porn, but you are not permanently pornsick. you are not doomed! here’s what happened: every time you had an orgasm to porn, the neural pathway between groinal response/arousal/orgasm and the stimuli of porn use was strengthened. the neural pathway for groinal responses/arousal/orgasm from stimuli that ISN’T porn is weaker and not in use. that’s why it can feel like porn is the only thing that turns you on or that gets you off, or you can lose groinal response to situations (like consensual & healthy sexual interaction with people you’re actually attracted to) that you feel like you should be turned on by.

 if you’ve been using porn since a really young age and/or extremely heavily, your brain will be more affected, because the effects on your brain are culumative and neuroplasticity is more intense before adulthood. even still: you are not doomed. it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to rewire your brain by avoiding the old neural pathways and using and establishing the new and healthy ones, but with that time and effort there will be progress. a healthy, loving sexuality is worth fighting for.

DON’T HAVE ORGASMS TO PORN so now that we know about neuroplasticity and neural pathways, we know they can be tackled. not having any orgasms to thoughts about porn or porn is the way to do this, combined with working on having orgasms to thoughts of healthy sex! i’m going to share how i did this on a personal level. again, feel free to take what works for you and leave the rest.

when i was having sex or masturbating, if i had any intrusive thoughts about porn or violent/pornagraphic sex, i had a process for stopping those neural pathways from activating. when trying to have an orgasm, if i was thinking about porn/violence, i would physically stop trying to orgasm and then try to clear my mind. when i wasn’t thinking about the porn imagery any more, i would continue. if this was happening over and over again, i would stop all the way and decide i would try again later.

i’ve been asked what to think about instead and it really varies person to person. if you’re not ready to fantasize, try to just focus on the physical sensations and keep your mind clear of thoughts of sex. when you’re feeling ready and less in danger of fantasizing about porn or violent sex, using healthy & loving sexual fantasies is great too, especially if you use them while you orgasm. it is normal to not have the same intense groinal response to these fantasies as you do to porn and doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong or that you’ll never have normal arousal responses. it just takes time.

an important detail: if you have sexual partners, it’s very important to be aware of how your reliance on porn affects the sex you have with them. if you are unable to orgasm with another partner without thoughts of porn, it will most likely be necessary to stop having sex while you work on healing your sexuality, which brings us to the next section. SUPPORT FROM LOVED ONES when you are struggling with porn, you need people on your side. if you have a sexual partner(s), you especially need them on your side. this is an intense journey and involves a lot of shame, especially if you’re a woman with radical politics. shame and isolation are huge barriers to recovery for any person struggling with any kind of addiction. if people don’t know what you’re going through and how you’re trying to fix it, how can they help you?

if your sexual partner is not understanding of this situation, i would urge you to examine that relationship. if you don’t seem to be able to make them understand the seriousness of this situation or if you struggling with this causes serious sexual incompatibility, it may not be the right relationship for you.

dependency on porn for sexual arousal is a very painful and frightening thing to combat, especially when so much of it is accompanied by sexual abuse and trauma. finding friends who are struggling the way you are and having a plan of action together can be really helpful. for example, having a friend who has the information to some sort of parental lock or filter on your phone or computer can be a good barrier. yes, pretty much any filter is by-passable, but that extra step can sometimes be all you need to say wait, i don’t want to do this, and reach out to a friend for help. that help can be serious talk about how porn has affected you or doing something fun and distracting until the urge has passed. feel it out.

KNOW THAT POLITICAL AWARENESS MAY NOT BE A FIX i’ve had multiple women confess miserably that understanding what the women in porn are going through didn’t stop their porn use, and the continued use after that knowledge made them feel even more ashamed and isolated than before. being a female person that uses porn doesn’t make you immune to the effects of it - it causes us to see women as objects. i’ve found that often the lack of empathy for the women we are watching mirrors the lack of empathy we feel for ourselves. many women consume porn that mirrors the kind of sexual abuse they’ve experienced or fetishizes specific oppressions that they face. i don’t think this is a coincidence.

it is frightening and disturbing when your eyes are open to the horror that is the porn industry, the physical and mental toll performing in pornography takes, the sex trafficking involved, and all the other details, and still once that video is on, it doesn’t make a difference. that is what porn does to your brain. it’s an awful truth that you cannot rely on your sense of empathy to help you stop watching porn, because the porn itself has attacked that empathy so wholly. but that brings us to our next tip

MOTIVATE YOURSELF THROUGH RAGE righteous female anger and spite are an excellent motivators. framing your actions to yourself as actions of defiance is helpful in a lot of situations, but i think especially helpful in this one.

on a political level: learning about what women go through in the sex industry isn’t enough - but learning about the men who have created this, fostered this, and prospered from this is a whole new ball game. pimps, pornographers, and sex traffickers want you to watch porn. pornography corporations and pornography CEOs want you to watch porn. they want the ad revenue. they want you to be pornsick so you come back for more. they don’t care how much harm they do to performers or porn consumers, all they care about is the money. on this level, not watching porn is an act of resistance against a violent industry, a capitalist venture that has left nothing but ruin on an unimaginable scale in its wake. they don’t care about rapes or serial murders committed by porn addicts. they don’t care about the new rise of child on child sexual abuse where little kids are molesting and violently raping each other. they don’t care about the suicides and the drug addiction and the trafficking. they just want your mind so they can have your money. are you going to give it to them?

on a personal level, if you were exposed to porn by someone who sexually abused you and/or someone who was sexually abused and just passing it on, i am so fucking angry for you, and i hope you can get angry too. that never should have happened. if someone wanted you to act out porn, or wanted you to think porn was normal, i’m angry at them, and i’m angry at whoever taught them that, and back into that lineage of rape culture forever. porn wants you to feel like a fuckhole. porn wants you to feel like your worth is what a man wants to do to you. porn wants you to feel like an object. and not just you - all your female friends, your female relatives, little tiny girls. do you want us all to feel like fuckholes? no. that’s NOT what we are. get angry. grief comes in many forms and righteous female rage is one of them.

if you get the urge to look up porn - turn to these emotions instead. be angry at who did this to you on a personal or political level. say fuck you, i’m not going to do what you told me i should do, i’m not who you told me i was.

MAINTENANCE ORGASMS your mileage may vary wildly on this point but i’ve known many people who have a lot of trouble falling asleep without having an orgasm, or have their mood affected negatively from not having regular orgasms. but when you’re trying to stop being pornsick, reaching orgasm without porn can become extremely frustrating, causing relapses because you feel like you can’t have an orgasm without porn.

my suggestion is an powerful vibrator and/or lube. i regularly recommend the hitachi magic wand for this purpose. i used it a lot in recovery and when i’m struggling because you can simply induce an orgasm in a really small amount of time, giving you less time to struggle with not using old neural pathways as possible. i know there are debatable downsides of heavy vibrator use so i don’t want to say this is the most awesome solution ever, but if you need regular orgasms to keep an even keel, this can be a solution to that.

IT’S TIME TO STOP USING PORN

you can do this. we can do this! about 3 years after quitting porn (after being introduced to it at a very young age) i started to have normal sexual arousal come back. i still struggle with relapse, especially when re-traumatized or when trauma is coming up hard. this is a journey we’re undertaking, a reclamation of our brains from a sexually violent industry that seeks to destroy us. you can heal your sexuality from porn with time and energy, and it is absolutely worth it.

this year, get angry, get real, and get clean of porn. much love to you all.