MerMay Day 2

today's vetted campaigns. please please continue to share and donate. i know lots of my posts are like this now, but we can't lose energy. these families need us.

june 18th:

Tahani Shorbajee and her family of ten (including her three children, all needing urgent treatment for hepatitis) ($11,329/$50,000) - @tahanishorbaje2, verified by @/el-shab-hussein

Fadi Ayyad and his family of eight ($9,446/$35,000) - @mayadayyad, @aymanayyad81, verified by @/nabulsi

Shahad Abu Musa and her family of seven ($11,574/$40,000) - @shahdhatem, verified by @/sar-soor

Muhammad Al-Habil and his family of six (including his chronically ill parents and wife, and three acutely malnourished children) (€3,928/€50,000) - @mohammed-family76, verified by @/el-shab-hussein

Shahed Nahal and family ($4,342/$50,000) - @shahednhall, verified by @/nabulsi

Reem Shehab, her husband Fahed, their five children, and the children's grandmother (€13,730/€50,000) - @malakshehab, @danashehab, verified by @/ibtisams

Amani Hasan and her three children ($9,103 CAD/$17,732 CAD) - @amani93gaza, verified by @/nabulsi

Ahmed Abu Shammalah's family of eight (€7,541/€100,000) - @ahmed8311, verified by @/nabulsi

Skater Hani Alhajjar's family of ten (they lost their father to kidney failure due to lack of treatment, Hani is the family's only support) (€27,993/€50,000) - @skatehani, verified by @/fallahifag

not yet vetted but likely legitimate:

Dalia Mohisen and her family (€6,391/€35,000) - @daliamohisen

Ramez Hilles and his family of ten (€105/€37,000) - @ramezderar

i know link-heavy posts like this can seem like a lot, but if you can pick even just one of these fundraisers to donate to or promote today, it makes a difference

op made the post unrebloggable, can you repost what you wrote about the christan anti sex work group?

Sure thing! I don't blame them for turning off reblogs. I had to block some antisemitic creep who reblogged it from me with a rant about how actually it was feminism's fault, so clearly it had broken containment into the gross side of tumblr. Here it is with OP's handle and icon removed so they don't have to be connected to it anymore.

It's not just the advertisers- that's definitely also part of it, but this is also the direct, targeted action of a specific christian fundamentalist group, the "National Center on Sexual Exploitation," previously "Morality in Media" and "Operation Yorkville," a political lobbying organization that campaigns against pornography, who claim "Pornographers are committing the biggest crimes of the century!"

It was*this group specifically* (accompanied by another Christian anti-porn org, Exodus Cry) that put pressure on mastercard and visa to stop facilitating electronic payment for sites that hosted nsfw material. Faced with the risk of losing their ability to process payments, the sites partnered with visa and mastercard had no choice but to agree to porn bans.

They were behind Onlyfans flirting with banning sex workers last year, and they were one of the principle supporters of FOSTA/SESTA. I can not understate just how much influence this one well connected, well funded group has.

From their about page:

NCOSE convinced mastercard and visa to cut ties with porn not for the sake of advertisers, but because they convinced them that they could be potentially liable for facilitating illegal activity- the exchange of CSAM, prostitution and human trafficking- happening on the porn sites they were partnered with, which in NCOSE's opinion is all porn sites, and all porn period, since they believe all porn is human trafficking.

NCOSE has been around since the 60's, but hasn't seen much success until the last decade. Their previous campaigns, focused on pushing for the enforcement of obscenity laws from the 1800's and fabricating blatantly nonfactual research about porn as a mental health crisis, were not as widely received. But they've had much more success since they've started weaponizing concern for victims of abuse and trafficking, appropriating progressive language and trading in on the white moral panic about child sex trafficking that grew directly from the "Stranger Danger" and "Satanic Ritual Abuse" moral panics of the 80's and 90's- both themselves the result of a right wing reactionary movement using concern trolling about the safety of children to rail against drugs, loud music, and tabletop rpgs.

Blaming the sanitization of the internet solely on the vague specter of "advertisers" ignores the real, nameable groups and their extremely straightforward christofacist goals. It promotes apathy, pointing at an ambiguous target that feels as impossible to combat as the machine of capitalism itself. When it's literally just these specific guys, and like two or three similar, equally identifiable organizations!

I'm not saying sites like facebook don't have a vested interest in looking squeaky clean and family friendly, but tumblr, pornhub, onlyfans, patreon and gumroad did not move to ban porn because of advertising. Tumblr has never attracted the kind of advertisers who care, and pornhub, onlyfans, patreon and gumroad don't make the bulk of their money from ads, but from user transactions, which MUST be facilitated by an electronic banking platform in order to be safe and reliable.

Tumblr's porn ban was due to FOSTA/SESTA meaning the could not continue operating unless they either dumped nsfw content or went adults only and implemented costly and draconian age verification protocols that, frankly, no one was going to put up with for a mediocre blogging platform. The others folded under pressure from the electronic banking platforms, which threatened to drop them as partners due to the pressure *they* were under from NCOSE weaponizing public opinion to create a flurry of anger and condemnation towards these companies "facilitating human trafficking."

The enemy is not hiding, we know their names! They come not in the name of capitalism (who merely rides their coattails when convenient) but in the name of puritanical Christian Fascism.

So no, it's not the puriteens. It's their parents and grandparents, on an open crusade to enforce Christian anti-sex beliefs on as much of the world as they can manage.

Day 9!

Mermay day 3!

I'm already on a low effort day, this doesn't bode well D:

(source)

Unsplash -  photography, illustration, & art

Pixabay - same as unsplash

Pexels - stock photos and videos

Getty Images - photography & illustration

Veceezy - vectors and clipart

Gumroad - photoshop brushes (and more)

StockSnap.io - stock photos

Canva - needs login but has lots of templates

Library of Congress - historical posters and photos

NASA - you guessed it

Creative Commons - all kinds of stuff, homie

Even Adobe has some free images

There are so many ways to make moodboards, bookcovers, and icons without plagiarizing! As artists, authors, and other creatives, we need to be especially careful not to use someone else’s work and pass it off as our own. 

Please add on if you know any more resources for free images <3

for all the artists out there, here are my favorite resources i use to learn!

Files

The Complete Famous Artist Course

Art Books and Resources

Art, Anatomy, and Color Books

PDF Files of Art Books

Internet Archive

YouTube

My YouTube Playlist of Tutorials

How to Draw Facial Features

Drawing and Art Advice

Drawing Lessons

Art Fundamentals

Anatomy of the Human Body

2D Animation

Perspective Drawing

Websites

Pinterest Board for Poses

Another Pinterest Board for Poses

Pinterest Boards for References

Reference Angle

AdorkaStock

Figurosity

Line of Action

Human Anatomy

Animal Photo References

Humanae - Angélica Dass

Fine Art - Jimmy Nelson

Character Design References

CDR's Twitter Account

iamagco's Twitter Account

taco1704's Twitter Account

takuya_kakikata's Twitter Account

EtheringtonBro's Twitter Account

Drawabox

Color Wheel

Color Palette Cinema

Free Images and Pictures

Free Stock Photos

FILMGRAB

Screen Musings

William Nguyen Light Reference Tool

SketchFab - 3D Skeleton Model

Animation References - sakugabooru

Animation Screen Caps

Animation References - Bodies in Motion

"Punishment works!!!" We're drowning in three to four generations of people so pants-shittingly terrified of ever being wrong that half of everyone has constructed a worldview wherein they never even consider the possibility that they could be wrong and the other half behaves like one wrong move will make anything or anyone explode violently into a million irreperable pieces. I don't think it works guys