Tumblr Is Weird Because Sometimes You Go To A Mutual's Page And Like/reblog Half Their Content Like You

Something I made on my tablet while I was out

America really is irredeemably evil. This article in the new york times ADMITS that prisons are an industry in America, yet tries to convince its readers to empathize with the people enforcing US law in these prisons, with NO empathy for the people incarcerated there

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

protector at heart

Obviously Harry Potter is fucked up as hell, filled with bigotry and stereotypes, and a lot of the morals they claim to espouse are very broken aesops.  

However, there’s one broken aesop/fucked up thing that I haven’t seen anyone talk about: the fact that the narrative tries to push wizards as “oppressed”, when really they are oppressing basically everyone else.

Literally the only time we see a wizard being oppressed because they’re a wizard is Harry with the Dursleys, and a couple mentions of the Witch Trials.  The Harry thing is one isolated incident, which hasn’t happened to any of the other known muggleborn and/or muggle-raised characters.

I’m not saying that the Dursleys didn’t abuse Harry, or that he “deserved” how they treated him.  I’m one of the first who will call the Dursleys’ abuse what it is, and no child deserves to go through that shit.  Also, I know that HP-verse wizards are born with their ability to use magic and they can’t help it.

However, wizarding society as a whole oppresses everyone who isn’t a wizard, and even some wizards.  

Wizards see muggles(non-magical humans) not unlike how muggles see those apes that know sign language(and other intelligent animals).  They also see nothing wrong with regularly fucking with muggles’ minds and memories, and they often all but divide/isolate muggleborn wizards from their muggle family members.  

Wizards treat all non-humans and part-humans like utter shit.  This includes oppressive laws(eg. werewolves and goblins, as well as the whole bigoted “beasts vs beings” classification the wizarding government does with non-humans), mass enslavement(eg. house-elves), wars and thievery(eg. goblins), full-on genocide(eg. giants), and general societal assholery and disdain(eg. half-giants and other hybrids, and centaurs, and others).

Wizards even see their own kind as “lesser” if they have any muggle ancestry that is more recent than great-grandparents.  They especially see wizards that have completely muggle parentage as “lesser”.

Even the “good guy” wizards tend to be dismissive of muggles and prejudiced against non-humans!

So like, it really screws over the supposed messages about “bigotry being bad” and “your blood not mattering” and whatnot.  Especially since most of the supposed “good guys” are still bigoted, and the bigotry against non-humans wasn’t changed even when things got better for muggleborn wizards.  

Also it honestly makes me uncomfortable these days when I read a fic that suggests that wizards are “oppressed” for being wizards/having magic.  This is most commonly seen in fics that mention/are about Harry and his experiences with the Dursleys.

Again, Harry was abused by the Dursleys and treated like shit for having magic.  He was arguably “oppressed” by his blood family for having magic, and he didn’t deserve what he went through.

However, Harry’s case was one isolated incident, once which hadn’t been seen in the cases of any of the other known muggle-raised wizards.  The only other character who arguably had an abusive muggle family member was Snape, and from what I know his dad mostly fought with his mom, and, while Tobias Snape was an asshole, he wasn’t the horrifyingly physically abusive monster that the Snape Stannies paint him as in their Snape-woobification stuff.  

And even if you take Snape into account, there’s still the fact that Harry went from being “oppressed” to being in a high rank of the oppressor class as soon as he joined the wizarding world: he was a fully human wizard, and one of his parents was a pureblood wizard from a rich and well-known pureblood family, and he also has the “Boy Who Lived”/“Chosen One”/“Savior Of The Wizarding World” fame and celebrity status on top of that(though the way he got that fame/status is fucked up and tragic, I’ll admit).

So, while Harry did have a shitty life, he wasn’t oppressed in the wizarding world, especially not for being a wizard.  In fact, he’s actually really privileged in the wizarding world, outside of the whole “dead parents + abusive relatives” thing and the “constantly targeted by Voldemort” thing.

blue lock is so stupid im obsessed with it. sixty percent of you guys would be ten times better at midfield. this whole project is definitely illegal like are they all just skipping school for months that can’t be legal. the rin/sae conflict was building up to be this mysterious tragic event and it was just that sae’s the only person in the whole entire manga who can understand that some people are better at midfielder. reo needs to redistribute his fucking wealth instead of having a gay crisis in soccer hell. there is an on-page comparison of the soccer goal to a womb. one character vanished for several chapters and came back looking and acting like he’d literally been deployed to war this is not an exaggeration. i’m pretty sure every character needs therapy but i can’t even begin to figure out what for

(Across the Spider-Verse spoiler)

these new kiana and mei designs...

when i was a freshman in college i wanted to dress up for halloween because i thought surely college students would have the spirit. so i elected to put a whole entire Skull Kid from legend of zelda majora’s mask cosplay together and wear that fucking ensemble to college on halloween.

i step on campus and realize immediately that not one other person is dressed up. not so much as a cat ear headband. so imagine this fucking dude sitting in a class of otherwise normally dressed people looking like this. that was me. this was my 9/11

"Last time i promised that, i broke someone i care into a pieces"

HC triangle love between jingyuan x danheng x blade