Artemis

#horror and #ttrpg enthusiast.

I'm a bisexual anti-capitalist, artist, & aspiring propagandist. We're not free until we're *all* free.

I sometimes have updates from my brother "Apollo" on the ground in Minneapolis.

Guillermo del Toro fan account. Anarchist pep-talks are provided free of charge. Solidarity forever!

Location: In your dreams
Pronouns: she/her, they/them

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Last Notes

2026-03-30 13:19:50 UTC

Ah. I knew Andy Weir gave me the ick, even if I didn't know why.
Andy Weir, author of the books Project Hail Mary & The Martian (now major Hollywood blockbusters!) just did an interview with The Critical Drinker on YouTube.
Drinker is a loudly misogynistic, queerphobic, & racist "anti-woke' movie commentator.
Yeah, I'll be skipping anything associated with Andy Weir from here on out.
#ProjectHailMary #AndyWeir

2026-03-30 03:20:06 UTC

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The US military in no way represents me, nor my interests, beliefs, or hopes. It doesn't represent you or yours either.
We don't have to speak of it as somehow part of "us". It's not. It's an instrument of colonial oppression. Unless that is your mission, that's not "your" military.

2026-03-30 03:16:40 UTC

Dear folks in the US: please don't say "we" when you are speaking of the actions of the US military or federal government, at least not unless you identify yourself with the Empire.
It's a bad habit of mine, so I'm not judging you if you're in a similar boat trying to unlearn it, but I won't lie... seeing someone saying "we" over & over about US military actions makes me uncomfortable even when they are being critical of some of the specifics.

2026-03-26 15:15:35 UTC

Poor white folks claiming "the South will rise again" are talking about how they wish to be serfs to a feudal lord, more or less.
"The South" was never wealthy. The big landowners were, though.
"The South rising again" would only be more of the same poverty & exploitation for most of its residents. These fools don't realize that when there is a landed, propertied class, everyone else lives at their whims. It should be obvious, but I guess it's not.

2026-03-26 12:05:49 UTC

It's so funny (haha?) that high-earners are trapped in spending cycles that keep them broke, because to prove they are the "right" people for the job, they have to wear expensive clothes, drive expensive cars, eat expensive food, & buy expensive stuff.
Is that another reason some folks desperately want remote work to end, because when you're working remotely, you don't have "opportunities" to flaunt your earnings?

2026-03-25 21:57:10 UTC

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We have to stop living in the fictional "America" & look around at the US & see it for what it is: a highly segregated society where your access to "justice" depends on who you are, what your background is, & how much money you have in your pockets.

2026-03-25 21:57:10 UTC

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The truth they don't want you to know & understand—the reason museums & schools are being told what they are allowed to say about simple, factual history—is that we have never had a stable, just society in this country.
It's a myth. A fiction. They made it up.
The evidence of that is literally everywhere.

2026-03-25 21:47:49 UTC

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Long before it was ICE, it was slave catchers.
THAT targeted violence is part of the very fabric of this nation.
The United States has never, ever existed without it. There has never been a time where we could all expect equality under the law, not EVER.

2026-03-25 21:45:52 UTC

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Normal is the State holding you in jail without trial. Normal is police stealing from you & you having no recourse.
Normal is assault & abuse & cruelty from officers of the State on the regular. Normal is being given the run around so you can't access State benefits. Normal is being unable to seek out help because you will be targeted for who you are.
Normal is having no justice.
That's normal. Those of us who don't currently see it that way are just sheltered & rather willfully naive.

2026-03-25 21:45:52 UTC

Saw someone talking about the "dual State" in Nazi Germany (the two different experiences of "business as usual" government for some people while others were targets of extreme state violence), & she posited that this is the situation in "Trump's America."
To which I say, yes, BUT it has *always* been a reality in the United States. Frankly, it's probably one of those things they got from us & not the other way around.
What privileged white folks think of as "normal" is anything but.

2026-03-25 17:47:38 UTC

I strongly encourage anyone who spends their hours prompting image generators to spend those hours drawing, painting, doodling, or fucking scratching in the dirt instead.
You could spend those hours making your own art & finding your own unique creative expression, but right now you're leasing your own creativity.

2026-03-20 11:55:56 UTC

When you get taught about scary, scary communism as a kid, they make it sound as though it means you couldn't even own your teddy bear.
No one explains (likely because they themselves believed the same when they were taught) the difference between your teddy bear & a factory.

2026-03-19 14:19:23 UTC

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I'm trying to unlearn how much I think about other people's feelings & reactions because it is TOO MUCH.
I think autistic women don't just lack the same privileges. I think the expectations placed on women & girls have an especially intense effect on autistic women because we already have to expend so much effort managing how other people perceive us, so we just take on the full load of emotional management for everyone. Because why not? We're required to think about it 24/7 anyway, right?

2026-03-19 14:09:55 UTC

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And Bro2 is a WHITE man. Like, he chooses to be, he wants to be. Before he started his van life, he was climbing the corporate ladder at accounting firms & banks.
He doesn't know it—he would tell you it's not true—but he embraced his white male privilege & was trying to get his seat at the white men with money & "good" jobs table.
He noticed how shitty the other dudes acted & instead of choosing another way to be, he purposefully emulated them in a lot of areas.

2026-03-19 14:06:17 UTC

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It bugs me that the public image of autism always seems to be a privileged white guy who didn't have to learn to think about others because that's not in the standard white male curriculum.
Like, I think the image of "lack of empathy" in autistic people has a good deal to do with how white men are trained to think about themselves & then how that manifests.

2026-03-19 14:06:17 UTC

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White men aren't taught to be considerate of others, especially not when they are older sons. It just becomes more obvious with autism because they aren't doing the other social things that might disguise their self-interest.

2026-03-19 14:06:17 UTC

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Birth order matters here too, I think.
Bro2 who I was speaking of here was only the 2nd child out of 6. Myself & Apollo (also autistic) are #4 & #5. Apollo was not expected to have the nurturing/caregiving capacity asked out of me as a girl, but he did not have the privilege of being able to mostly ignore the people around him the way Bro2 did.

2026-03-19 13:47:25 UTC

It really is interesting as an autistic woman looking at the autistic men in my family & seeing how differently our autistic tendencies/traits got channeled.
Part of me is envious of their "freedom".
But part of me is grateful that I wasn't allowed to be careless of other people's feelings. I wish I hadn't been asked to be *responsible* for them, but it does irritate me to see my older brother pretend like he couldn't possibly have noticed such things as other people's emotional experiences.

2026-03-17 14:38:04 UTC

Rich white women making movies doth not a feminism make.

2026-03-16 15:58:19 UTC

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Land back because we have seen what happens when profit motive determines everything.
Land back because it's obvious that the indigenous people who currently fight to protect waterways & preserve the natural world are much better fucking equipped to make determination of what is to be done to care for & rejuvenate life here.
Land back because those who see land as the host of life, not an exploitable resource, are the people we desperately need to learn from RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.

2026-03-16 15:49:40 UTC

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When indigenous folks say "land back" it's not because they want to become the capitalist overlords.
They know better than anyone what the cost of the capitalist project really is.
The idea isn't to elevate others to the status of oppressor. The oppressor stamped out other ways of living, so it's time for the oppressors to stop calling the shots.
Land back because we have to start again, without the systems built to oppress & exploit this land & its inhabitants.

2026-03-16 15:45:10 UTC

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The idea isn't just for "property" to change hands.
The idea is to rewrite what it means for something to belong to us.
The idea is to stop hemming in the native peoples of this land, stop stealing the water, stop burning & cutting & destroying, & start stewarding.
It's time to stop grabbing & taking. It's time to call a halt to all of this violence & begin again. Land Back because we CANNOT possess it.

2026-03-16 15:38:34 UTC

Land Back not because we need to hand over all the "real estate" to indigenous landlords, but because the life-giving land must no longer be "real estate" & landlords must not exist.
Land Back because it was the conversion of "land" into "property" that led to destruction of all that lives on the land: people, plants, & animals alike.
Land Back because imposing colonialist rule on this place creates endless, ongoing suffering.
Land Back because this must once again become a place of life.

2026-03-16 15:09:02 UTC

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Fuck "middle class". Fuck "the American dream". Fuck "upward mobility."
It's not freedom until we tear down the prisons.
It's not freedom until everyone's children have food to eat.
It's not freedom until we stop fucking ripping apart indigenous families, Black families, families of color, poor families, HOUSELESS families...
This is not fucking freedom. This is not "order". This is brutal fucking oppression.

2026-03-16 15:01:42 UTC

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My biggest fucking privilege is that I get to live my life in a way where—if I chose—I could spend most of my time pretending I am free.
I'm not. You're not. None of us are.
But some are allowed the illusion if we will just accept with docility the harm which other people experience & show our own deference by behaving as "good, decent people."

2026-03-16 14:58:52 UTC

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Maybe the biggest fucking privilege of all in this fucking country is the fucking privilege of never seeing your parents jailed because they are too poor to do anything about it.
It's never being selected as a target of police harassment.
It's living your fucking days in any way that could make you see the cops as anything other than violent oppressors who fucking stomp you & all your friends & loved ones under their feet.
That is fucking privilege.

2026-03-16 14:53:46 UTC

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Show me how someone talks about unhoused people, & I'll tell you whether they actually care about liberation or not.

2026-03-16 14:52:22 UTC

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At what point is the injustice too much to bear?
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas?" Oh if only a single tortured child were enough for us to reject this defunct capitalist nightmare "utopia"!
How many children have to be torn from their parents because of petty crimes, unpaid fines, or simply FALSE ACCUSATIONS before it really disrupts our peace of mind?
How many years of human misery behind bars in torturous conditions are too many?

2026-03-16 14:52:22 UTC

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How many indigenous communities torn apart, harassed, abused, starved, & stolen from?
How many Black men (& Black folks of all genders & children) shot by cops?
How much is too much? What does it take to count as an oppressive police state? How many lives?
Does it matter the color of their skin or the background of their families? Does it matter how educated they are? Does it matter whether or not they are houseless?
No justice. No peace.

2026-03-16 14:41:09 UTC

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The reason we can't legislate ourselves out of this nightmare is that our laws exist to *create* this nightmare.
At some point I think we have to admit that what the system *does* is what it is intended to do.
Our "legal" system makes the poor—especially the racialized poor—slaves & prisoners. People often wait months, even years, in jail before they ever face trial, losing everything & being cut off from friends & family despite being convicted of no crime.

2026-03-16 14:37:56 UTC

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Poverty isn't just "can't pay the bills."
Poverty is also "can do nothing about harassment by cops or the legal system."
Poverty is "everything you could do to help yourself or your community breaks some laws or regulations or is functionally impossible."
Poverty is "the State has extreme power over you, because you can't survive without the tiny pittance that is your disability check."
Poverty is "your kids have no future because the State keeps your schools bankrupt."

2026-03-16 14:34:45 UTC

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A lot of us middle class folks first wake up to the idea that we are being exploited, & if we are empathetic & have some self-awareness, we will get from there to understanding that some people are *more exploited* than we are & we know that we should care about this.
So because we are empathetic & aware, we start demanding things that ought to help all of us, & especially lift up those most struggling.
It's a good start.
It's not a sufficient understanding of the true circumstances however.

2026-03-16 14:30:39 UTC

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Every time I start to write like this, I start to worry about somehow "overstating" things or being "alarmist", but fuck no.
I have never been as clear or unequivocal about this as I should be, because the fictionalized "America" in my head still sometimes overwrites the actual United States I see with my eyes, hear reports & witness accounts from, & can look at the data about.
Some voice in my head still tells me it's hyperbolic to speak this way, but that's because I'm fucking propagandized.

2026-03-16 14:24:13 UTC

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That's the kind of fucking privilege that keeps you docile & asleep.
It's a fucking police state out there already, motherfuckers. They were just hoping you wouldn't notice.
No matter how class conscious we might try to be, how forward-thinking, how interested in eliminating poverty, those of us starting from this point of privilege rarely fucking think about what the real fucking danger of poverty is: becoming an underclass with no way to appeal or escape your unjust treatment.

2026-03-16 14:20:51 UTC

Something white folks like me from "middle class" backgrounds really need to fucking deal with is that privilege isn't just the advantages that put us a little ahead or give us a little more comfort or space or whatever.
Privilege is also having the real ugliness of the "American way of life" hidden from us.
There is no justice here. Our prisons are full of the suffering underclasses that are impoverished, criminalized, & enslaved. Unhoused people are treated like vermin to exterminate.

2026-03-16 14:20:51 UTC

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Financially, my family was at the bottom of the white "middle class", barely able to uphold the image.
There were times my parents barely managed to afford food for all of us. We went through some tough times.
You know what my middle-class ass did not have to deal with, despite that? Being dehumanized as a target for state violence. We weren't always considered the "right" kind of people, but we were firmly in the group: "people the police still speak to with a small amount of 'respect'".

2026-03-13 19:20:02 UTC

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Delusional racism...
These motherfuckers think they are the Master Race so they can't actually comprehend that brown people could beat them. They think they win by default.
Their brains are so cooked. They did not fucking believe this could possibly be difficult.

2026-03-13 19:06:58 UTC

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I also think they didn't comprehend that Iran has prepared for this. I don't mean bracing up due to recent threats. I mean, the US has been threatening their very existence for such a very long time.
They are prepared, they have strategies, they don't use expensive tech where something else will do, & they have made themselves intimately familiar with their enemies' capabilities. What else would anyone expect them to do?
They knew we intended to come for them eventually.

2026-03-13 18:55:45 UTC

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Since he keeps up on all this stuff & has knowledge of naval operations, spouse has a pretty good idea of what the Navy is capable of, & he thinks the US is pretty much fucked when it comes to the Straits of Hormuz.
They didn't even THINK about this once before doing it.

2026-03-13 18:52:11 UTC

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The thing about the minesweepers comes from my ex-Navy spouse. He pays attention to exactly what equipment the US Navy has, how much it costs, how old it is, & how difficult it is to replace (they have a lot of ships & equipment that are very difficult to replace because they just stopped making any more of them a very long time ago).
Last year, the Trump admin decommissioned HALF of the US Navy's Avenger-class mine countermeasure ships. So there were 8. Now there are 4.

2026-03-13 18:47:06 UTC

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I do not think the US is prepared for how this is going to go.
I think we might just get stomped down by a country many folks here think of as "backwards" & believe to have far inferior military capabilities.
If Iran is laying mines using small boats, & the US has just 4 minesweeper ships, who is better equipped? Seems to me, the US can keep shooting those boats & Iran can just get more. But if Iran destroys their minesweepers, well, they're gone.

2026-03-13 18:40:01 UTC

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Iran appears to be using shortwave radio to send cyphered messages. It's an old school Soviet method of communication. And guess what? It works. None of it goes through a computer, so there is nothing to hack. It's inexpensive & easy to do, & you can just keep changing frequencies when your opponents start interfering with the one you're using.
All the fancy spy equipment the US has? Not meant to deal with that simple, low-tech tactic.

2026-03-13 18:35:20 UTC

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It's not a great time to be a "military superpower." All of your equipment costs too much, is overcomplicated & over-engineered & everyone involved is complacent & overconfident.
This is like in Stargate when the Asgardians ask the humans for help because "we're too smart to think of the silly things you humans do, like using projectile weapons."

2026-03-13 18:32:09 UTC

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As we have ALREADY seen in Ukraine, military "superpowers" have a real problem facing off against forces defending their homeland using cheap & quick-to-manufacture arms & equipment.

2026-03-13 18:32:08 UTC

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I think the entire world is going to watch as it is proven that for all its swagger & all its fancy equipment, the US military is perhaps not *quite* the unstoppable juggernaut it claims to be.

2026-03-13 18:25:17 UTC

So it turns out that having the most *expensive* military tech in the world may not be the best strategy, huh?
Who could have known that having very expensive equipment & arms/ammunition that take a long time to make might not be an advantage?

2026-03-12 02:21:04 UTC

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It's not magical, but "could I get that in writing?" can be surprisingly powerful.
You do have to be persistent & leverage documented communication as much as possible to get results.
Communicate over email if at all possible, & if you have a phone call or an in-person meeting about it, take notes & then send them in an email to all persons involved. Every single little convo you have about it, email the person & say "thanks for the talk, here's the content of our conversation."

2026-03-12 02:11:46 UTC

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Obviously being able to do this depends on a certain amount of job security.
But if you are fairly secure in your position, when you are told to do something shady at work, asking the company to put it in writing will often make them suddenly decide they don't actually need you to do that thing.
Obviously they have no problem writing "we want you to use AI." What they probably don't want to put in writing is "we are aware of the potential harm to our employees from AI use."

2026-03-12 02:11:43 UTC

I suppose if you are being pressured to use AI at work, one thing you could do is send HR articles/studies on AI psychosis & ask "does [company name] accept liability for any mental harm that may occur from AI use?"
Before you touch any of the AI tools they want you to use, ask them to put in writing that the company is aware of the concerns about mental harm from AI use but is asking you to use it anyway. Ask to put a note in your employee file saying that you objected to using it.

2026-03-11 23:13:41 UTC

This is a long article, but it is worth getting into. This is something that *resembles* a cult, but lacks the core features which make cults cohesive. These people may bounce off each other sometimes but it's really many, many cults of 1.
It's like a virus. It's self-replicating but not in an intelligent way. But it doesn't have to be intelligent to a) harm a lot of people & b) potentially keep evolving & become more dangerous.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/spiralist-cult-ai-chatbot-1235463175/

2026-03-10 23:07:48 UTC

Feelings ARE facts.
They are facts about your emotional experience. Your emotional experience is real.
Feeling angry at someone doesn't necessarily mean they did anything they shouldn't have, but it does mean that you feel angry.
Why does this matter? Well, it means that we have to deal with how we *feel* about things regardless of whatever we *think*.

2026-03-10 15:59:30 UTC

Jesus fucking Christ, Cory, this is patently ridiculous.
He doesn't engage with Audre Lorde's actual intention & meaning. No, he brings up a Black woman thinker/writer/activist, assures us he knows how "smart" she was, & then dismisses her words out of hand without even superficial engagement by using a cute little analogy.
I'm not trying to nitpick: that is some real colonizer bullshit.
https://cdn.masto.host/dicecamp/media_attachments/files/116/205/706/859/540/450/original/a551e8fdae465a15.png

2026-03-09 18:48:55 UTC

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And it's disgusting the way every generation has softened their settler history. Every generation quietly rewrites history to hide their guilt & that of their parents.
What a legacy to pass down to your grandchildren over the centuries, the legacy of forgetfulness & comforting lies.

2026-03-09 18:46:05 UTC

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Seriously, I don't even know how to process what it means that my ancestors came to the brand-new state of "Iowa" & settled on land there. They were squatters, joining a great crowd of people being sent out with promises of great prosperity to keep indigenous people from their homes & permanently wrest the land away from them. Whatever else they may have done, THAT I know for sure.
No, I don't feel guilt for things other people did long, long before I was born, but I certainly feel disgust.

2026-03-09 18:26:11 UTC

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Settler colonialism by nature requires very large numbers of participants. One of the key components is just squatting on land & driving people out. That takes a whole hell of a lot of people.
Enter the myth of "America" to soothe their cognitive dissonance & keep them from asking themselves "are we the baddies?"
Again, that's why we can't keep these myths. The myths exist to allow, facilitate, & erase the violence.

2026-03-09 18:26:11 UTC

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I know a lot of Europeans find American "patriotism" weird, but you must understand that it is load-bearing patriotism.
In order to settle this vast territory, a lot of violence needed to be done by a lot of people, & they needed to not only fuel the violence but soothe the conscience with forgetfulness.

2026-03-09 18:17:53 UTC

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The reason the "American" mythos is so strong & all-encompassing is that it has to be for the settler-colonial project to work.
We need the identity & the mythology of "America" because otherwise how can you get people to commit atrocities & then erase them while solemnly insisting that they are definitely "the good guys"?

2026-03-09 18:12:13 UTC

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If Israeli settlers ever fully move into Gaza & build it up nice over the corpses of the dead & try to pretend it was always that way, I'm never going to join them in that pretense & let "the past" die, & that is one of the reasons I can't live with the myths of the US anymore.
I can't participate in this anymore. I can't tell the false stories. To accept the lies, the erasure of the past, is to become a participant in the present day violence.

2026-03-09 18:01:41 UTC

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Nor would I actually want to unsee it.
I would rather there not be atrocities in the world, but I will bear witness anyway, because that is the absolute least we can do for the victims & the survivors. We can refuse to let people be erased both in their past & in the present.
(Indigenous peoples still persist throughout this land & still suffer from the same colonialist violence TO THIS DAY, so let's be sure we don't make this all about the past either)

2026-03-09 17:55:08 UTC

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I don't know if I would be getting this quite so clearly if I couldn't look across the world at Palestine & at the murderous settler colonial nation that is a few steps behind us on the genocidal plan.
Being able to see the truth with my own eyes of what the violence of being a settler is cracked something open in my mind. The realization: oh, that's what it looked like. That's what my ancestors did so that I could "belong" to this stolen land.
Once you see it, you can't "unsee" it.

2026-03-09 17:46:59 UTC

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US settler's children & their children's children may have quietly softened the memory of the things their parents had done, the things they were still doing, the things which have to be done to create, expand, & maintain colonialist rule.
But regardless of how it has been obscured now, it stretches the imagination to the breaking point to try to say that these participants had no idea at the time of what they were doing. Israeli settlers know what they are doing & do it anyway.

2026-03-09 17:46:59 UTC

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Everybody has their mental justifications for why they are participating in a genocide for sure. They'll explain to you "their perspective" & expect you to relate, but that doesn't mean that they don't know what they are doing. They just choose not to think about it.

2026-03-09 17:46:59 UTC

My ancestors weren't immigrants. They were settlers.
They came here as participants in the colonialist project to take over land & drive indigenous people out.
The plans for getting widespread participation in this were laid by "The Founding Fathers" & those who followed immediately after them. Give them the blame for murder in the millions & untold destruction. Fuck those people forever.
But
the plan required hordes of participants & they found a lot of them!

2026-03-05 13:03:44 UTC

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In 2016, there were a lot of people out there going "wouldn't it be HILARIOUS if Trump won" all the while trusting that it wouldn't *really* happen.
The shock some other people expressed when he won was hard for me to deal with. I was really scared by the idea of a Trump presidency, but when he won I found out that a great number of people had just mentally decided that he couldn't win. That unfounded belief was weird & upsetting to me.

2026-03-05 12:51:27 UTC

I still believe that a factor in Trump getting elected the first time was people voting for him in "protest" thinking he would never win. I don't have the data to back that up, & I think we may never really know because how people vote & why is all self-report.
I'm pretty sure I know a couple people who voted for Trump that first time around thinking it was a joke or a way of registering disapproval for Clinton, but they've never quite come right out & told me that & most likely never will.

2026-03-05 12:51:27 UTC

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But yeah, I think a lot of people convinced themselves he would "never win", & that's part of how we got everything that came next: people who were entertained by his bigotry & wanted to "stick it to the man" without a single thought about anything that might happen.

2026-02-27 03:42:37 UTC

The difference between Republicans & Democrats is more significant than the difference between red & blue jerseys
BUT
the difference exists because of the different roles the two parties play. They differ because they have different purposes.
The difference is NOT "between fascism & not". It's all fascism, I'm sorry to say.

2026-02-26 01:43:41 UTC

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Just fucking wait. If we follow them down this path in a couple years Democrats will be saying "we need to be more 'culturally normal' & stop talking about women's rights."

2026-02-26 01:41:17 UTC

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Trans folks are fighting for their lives.
To abandon them right now is unthinkable.
This isn't about what we the people want.
This is about what powerful people want us to want.

2026-02-26 01:37:49 UTC

RE: https://masto.ai/@transworld/116133383689609626
This isn't about courting voters—they intend to consolidate both parties to agreement on the dehumanization of many groups of people in hopes of continuing the fascist/authoritarian tightening of control.
This isn't about the "culture". It's not about what people in general feel. This is about power, control, & the ability to murder people.
#note1ujc…n6y4

2026-02-25 18:59:24 UTC

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So yeah, when it comes to POC saying "white people, listen up," I think we should all perk up our ears & listen to what they are saying & think about how it relates to us.
And sometimes it won't really relate to us, so if you fucking see someone talking about a thing you never do, you don't need to chime in "I never do that thing." Just make a mental note that you may need to be on the lookout for that behavior & move the fuck on.

2026-02-25 18:44:13 UTC

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I don't have control over how other people respond to me, but I can try to make my disinterest in playing this game obvious.
It's not some great virtue or sacrifice either. People who center whiteness in their identity are people you should wish far away from you. Participation in "whiteness" comes with so many fucking privileges but it costs you everything that is you. It's a deal with the devil. Willingly participating in this particular club is like lying down to sleep in a viper's nest.

2026-02-25 18:27:45 UTC

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I personally try not to be perceived as "the right kind of white person" by people who do consider themselves the "right kind". I used to do the opposite because that's what you do to move up. You dress the "right way". You move, you speak, you behave in ways that will make you "successful" in various areas of your life.
And I'm here to tell you: don't. Don't seek membership in this club. You do not want it. It would be better for you if these people crossed the street when they see you coming.

2026-02-25 18:23:01 UTC

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Obviously with the above about piercings & "alternative" looks you could cite instances where that is NOT TRUE AT ALL. They are sometimes part of very aggressively "white" subcultures.
Different contexts get different results. But when I am presenting myself with short hair & a septum piercing, what I am NOT doing is performing "white femininity".
Which is also not to say that appearing "feminine" is morally bad. This just happens to be one potential way I can signal my refusal to participate.

2026-02-25 18:23:00 UTC

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Incidentally, I think there are ways to reduce white people lumping you in as a member of the White People Club without appropriating other cultures.
For example, piercings & other "alt" aspects of your appearance create barriers where you will not be welcome in certain White spaces, because you are not conforming. It doesn't fully exclude you—it doesn't delete your privileges—but it can be a way of signaling non-participation & saying "skip me with your shit."
(see next post for nuance)

2026-02-25 18:23:00 UTC

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Honestly, you cannot opt out of being perceived as "white" nor out of the fact that you have benefited from your "whiteness" but you absolutely can (& should) take whiteness out of your identity.
I consider myself white when I am perking up my ears to hear what racialized people have to say, but when it comes to the social club "White People", I am trying to make sure I'm not welcome. I do not claim membership, & I don't want its "special perks".

2026-02-25 17:58:11 UTC

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Someone in Eastern Europe has a different relationship with colonialism than Western Europe, not only because Western European nations are the primary beneficiaries of a number of centuries-old murderous & exploitative projects across the globe, but also Eastern Europeans really are only *conditionally* white, depending on where the "proper" white people feel like drawing the line in a given context.
I'm not asking you to ignore your context. I am saying your context deserves your attention.

2026-02-25 17:58:11 UTC

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At this point, both an Irish person & an English person would be treated as "white" in most generalized contexts.
One of them is from a people who were colonized, plundered, & genocided by people from the group the other comes from. So both have some participation in whiteness that requires their attention, but NO, those two people do NOT have the *same* relationship to colonialism.

2026-02-25 17:46:35 UTC

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We all also operate on different levels of "whiteness". A lot of people who are considered properly "white" in one context will in other contexts be targeted & excluded due to some characteristic that makes them not the "right" kind of "white".
Whiteness is a construct for global oppression, crafted over centuries. It's complicated. However, if you are prickling at the idea of "dealing with your relationship to colonialism", I would suggest maybe there is something there you need to look at.

2026-02-25 17:46:35 UTC

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We all actually need to be aware of our relationship to colonialist systems, but the thing is racialized people already do that because it's literally in their faces at all times. Hence, why "white people" need to be called out. If you already are reflecting on your participation in colonial systems, then my call-out wasn't for you.

2026-02-25 17:36:02 UTC

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Mind you, I say "deal with your relationship to colonialism". I'm not telling you what your specific relationship to colonialism is, because I actually can't. Not even on the level of pointing to people in a specific region or with a specific background.
Your relationship to colonialism, the ways you benefit & are harmed, the ways you participate or abstain, is specifically yours. I'm not telling you what it is. I literally can't & don't claim to.

2026-02-25 17:29:15 UTC

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I have my hands full trying to educate myself on "American" colonialism & our homegrown atrocities.
But I see some people out there blaming "America" for all the sins which have enriched their nations too, & y'all, that dog won't hunt (regional slang: "that idea does not fucking work & never will")

2026-02-25 17:23:59 UTC

White people *globally* need to complete the "deal with your relationship to colonialism" challenge.
I'm working on learning the history of the peoples of my region & the people who are occupying it now, so if you're European, I'm going to need you to do your own homework on how the nations of Europe have engaged in & benefited from worldwide exploitation & plunder.

2026-02-25 15:25:55 UTC

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Obviously I don't usually CW my political content, but when I'm talking about something no one actually needs to know or care about, it certainly seems fair, & that's all this was.
A lot of nothing. I'm talking about it because I did watch it so it's on my mind, but it's not actually something that requires our attention. It was weird, yeah, but there was nothing there.

2026-02-25 15:05:16 UTC

Well, that was a whole bunch of weird pageantry with nothing of interest said.
I wasn't going to watch, but then I decided that if Trump had a stroke or announced war on Iran, I'd want to be watching in real time.
So I watched & what a waste of time that was. Exposure to 2 hours of that man talking is bad for my mental health. I think that's part of why I struggled to get to sleep last night.

2026-02-24 17:29:24 UTC

I always heard people "pooh-pooh" the idea that there shouldn't be so many guns & so much violence in movies & TV, especially for kids, but these days I'm inclined to think that is an important point.
Mind you, I'm literally a horror movie enthusiast so it's not that I think violence needs to disappear, but seeing how people's attitudes towards doing violence to others seem to be shaped by media, I think media that encourages casual attitudes about violence can be very dangerous.

2026-02-23 20:11:42 UTC

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Please understand: we need the term "purity culture" in part because we need to be able to talk about the Christo-fascist takeover of our government.
We need to be able to talk about & understand the way purity culture plays into power & oppression, its relationship to white supremacy, its influence on people's thinking, & how we can counter this shit & do something different.
You may not think it's relevant to you, but it is, because Christian Nationalists have made this EVERYBODY'S PROBLEM.

2026-02-23 19:51:22 UTC

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Purity culture created a lot of the worst aspects of my religious trauma. MY WHOLE LIFE was purity culture. Everything I did, every interaction I had before my mid 20s was shaped by it.
Would it be so bad to just let us survivors of religious trauma use a combination of words which really didn't get used much at all for anything before we coined it & started using it? Nobody was using it for much, we started using it & now apparently it's a popular term for something almost completely separate.

2026-02-23 19:51:22 UTC

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I don't try to be a language purist who insists words & phrases can only ever be used in certain ways, but...sometimes we have come up with useful terms for things we really need to be able to discuss & think through & it's just not *helpful* to have them hijacked for non-specific purposes where *any number of other words* could be used instead.

2026-02-23 19:41:14 UTC

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Go ahead!

2026-02-23 19:40:48 UTC

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It's really frustrating having a term people like me use to describe the trauma that shaped us picked up & used in some vague & non-specific way for no particular reason.
If you Google the term, you'll see references to the meaning I am using. People can come up with another term for their annoyance at people who have opinions about what they should or shouldn't do.
Don't steal terms from trauma survivors. We're using those.

2026-02-23 19:40:48 UTC

So, in my circles, the phrase "purity culture" refers to the harmful & abusive attitudes & behavior around sex & sexuality in religious communities (especially within evangelicalism).
I'm seeing discussion of Cory Doctorow's use of the term "purity culture" to mean something like people who are (supposedly) so obsessed with being perfectly ethical that they harass others and...I dunno...halt progress. I guess he's not the only one who uses it that way, but it's news to me.

2026-02-23 19:29:42 UTC

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His usage of "purity culture" is very frustrating to me anyway, because where I come from "purity culture" means the abusive, harmful culture around sexuality in evangelical Christianity (and other religious communities).
Very frustrating to have a term used for my religious trauma turned into something meaningless to dodge answering difficult questions about ethics.

2026-02-23 17:18:54 UTC

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It shouldn't have surprised me how defensive he got. I had no reason other than just pure hope to believe he'd gotten to a point where he could actually encounter discussions of white supremacy & colonialism without feeling personally attacked.
It still sucks though, even if I shouldn't be surprised.

2026-02-23 17:18:54 UTC

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He's still deeply invested in whiteness in ways I cannot fucking comprehend. He hates & resents the demands that patriarchy & white supremacy place on HIM, a white man, but he can't fucking get around to hating them in their entirety.
He would like to keep all the privileges with none of the drawbacks.
He'd like to be free to perform his gender how he pleases. He'd like to reject The Protestant Work Ethic & the white picket fence lifestyle. But he seems afraid of anything actually egalitarian.

2026-02-23 17:10:16 UTC

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This brother once called me & asked what I was doing, so I said I was reading a book titled "Not a Nation of Immigrants: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion" (by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz) & he went immediately to a defensive attitude & said something about how he wasn't alive when certain stuff was happening & doesn't really have any control over things.
I told him that if someone wants to understand systems of oppression, they have to study up.

2026-02-23 17:03:51 UTC

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I mean, let's be honest, anyone who wants to talk about exploitation carried out by the capital class without discussing colonialism is just not very serious about the whole conversation.

2026-02-23 16:22:44 UTC

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What's sad is that I thought he was more open to other people & their experiences than he actually is.
I've been in denial about where he is at because I wanted him to be in a different place, thinking much more critically. The reality is our "shared" concepts of how the world works are paper thin. We both look at the world & see exploitation, but that's about where the similarity ends. He's got a highly fictionalized concept of oppression that has little to do with real people's experiences.

2026-02-23 16:22:44 UTC

I'm not talking to my second oldest brother right now, & it kind of sucks, but also... it's kind of freeing. I don't have to try to get him to see things from other people's perspectives, I don't have to try to get him to process new information or examine his privilege.
He got mad at me for interrupting the peace of the family group chat & now we aren't talking, & I wish I were more sad about it than I seem to actually be.

2026-02-20 13:56:27 UTC

White men think the real global conspiracy is women who don't want to have & raise their babies.