Kavaron Parent Submission by Yerushalmi

since ive started estrogen, many aspects of me huave bcome quite jiggly

really even an introduction to feminism changes how you see things because misogyny truly is everywhere, all the time, supported by capitalism. so between asking yourself why girlchildren have less inseam on their shorts or why your 6-year-old neighbor's kid already says dinosaurs are for boys, you've also got to put up with your male bosses talking for about 70% longer than strictly necessary.

and you go home and you're just trying to exist but it really is everywhere. you're trying to watch a movie when it dawns on you that pretty much every single powerful woman in media has to spin the wheel on if she's a "sad lady who can't handle her own emotions/power and eventually goes crazy" powerful woman or if she's a "sexy lady who is already crazy but in a male-gaze approved way" powerful woman or if she's a "going to sacrifice herself/her power for others/a man" powerful woman. and of course you're a human being so you'd have to admit you do love when a powerful woman is sexy and powerful, but it does sometimes make your skin crawl when you think about it too hard. because wait if she's sexy the way men find women sexy; that takes away her power somewhat, doesn't it. there always needs to be a way that men think they could somehow overcome her.

and you think of your extended family and how they confidently tell you that women can't be leaders, that even when men mess up, it's because they had an evil woman in their ear. even other women do it - your aunt, while generally a sweetheart, also has asked you to be "less loud" about being feminist and queer. she offers to lend you makeup when you don't wear any, as if being unshod was horrifically unbecoming when you're in front of your actual family.

and you think of how when you say he took credit for my work the response was - well, we're all a team here. you think about how most of the people in the "lower" ranks of your job are women - but the further up the ladder things go, the less you see yourself represented, until women blip out like a dot. a single white lady smiling in front of the CEO - because she can be a boss, but not the boss, after all.

and you think about how you just want to buy a new dress for the wedding you're attending in the fall but instead you're staring at the men in the mall rolling their eyes while they hold bags and look performatively uncomfortable.

online is getting bad. the other day you typed up a whole answer to some body builder who was saying if strength is toxic masculinity, okay, i'm toxic. you had citations and resources essentially to only say you have no idea what that term even means, do you. but what would the point be. his post has fifty-five thousand likes, and you have under 300 followers.

there's a good man in your life and you tried to talk about the fear once, about how when you're in the city alone you have to quiet your music and keep a lookout in the reflections on windows. he said it was dehumanizing on the other side of things, to see a woman get scared when he didn't do anything. in the moment, you have to admit that is probably fair, it would break your heart if someone was scared of you, after all. you end up comforting him.

but late at night you stare at the ceiling and think - what else do you want me to do? simply give up my personal safety to make you more comfortable? i'm not doing that because i like it, i'm doing it because i am trying not to get followed.

in the morning you think of sending him: the patriarchy hurts all of us, even those that benefit directly from it. you think again of the post you almost made, how it felt like you were holding your breath while you typed it, how afterwards you just felt drained and exhausted. what's the point, even.

you can scream all you want. studies show that men just don't want to fucking listen.

male yuri fan: i wish that i could die and be reincarnated as a houseplant in the home of a lesbian couple. specifically without awareness. i don't need to look, just be present and passively cared for

male yuri fan 2: typical male outlook. you want to insert yourself into the lives of women in the role of a child. you're trying to get between them, unlike what i want. which is to be a lamp in the home of a lesbian couple so i could be useful to them without being actively considered

male yuri fan 1: hypocrite. you obviously want to be touched by them and a lamp? even in your fantasies you are a phallic object.

male yuri fan 3: i just tried crossdressing and i got a really weird feeling in my stomach. also my girlfriend seems really into it. am i doing yuri?

generating english pronunciations of chinese words by taking the reconstructed middle chinese pronunciation, loaning that into old english, then following sound changes to predict what the modern descendant of that would have been

中國 <- trjuwng kwok /ʈiuŋ kʷək̚/ -> tioncwoc -> teonquocke -> teenquock /ˈtiːŋ.kwɒk/

漢字 <- xanH dziH /hɑn d͡zɨ/ ("departing" tone) -> hanġi -> henge /hɛnd͡ʒ/

one of my biggest problems with "i transmigrated into medieval fantasy and started the industrial revolution" stories is that they always act like it's possible for one guy to do that just by Knowing Things Intelligently With Their Big Brain, meanwhile i'm always screaming about "the material conditions!!!!" internally. knowing things intelligently won't help you if you don't have the necessary infrastructure, or access to enough raw materials.

I Transmigrated Into A Medieval Fantasy World With No Accessible Coal Deposits So My Plan To Kickstart The Industrial Revolution Fizzled Out Immediately?!?!?!

There are only a handful of things that could have been invented earlier but were not; as in the material conditions allowed for the potential of them being created in the world but the lack of knowledge prevented their creation. Even fewer that someone could reasonably carry the knowledge of with them back in time.

Two that come to mind, that could have existed in the medieval world, but did not, and would have actually measurably changed society, and the only two that I could probably replicate if sent back in time are basic calculus and the flying shuttle.

Calculus came into existence for a variety of mathematical and societal reasons that compelled its development, but it immediately found wide ranging applications outside of the conditions that lead to its development. Its also something that most modern adults can safely be assumed to understand to a decent degree, and would be capable of explaining basic concepts like integrals, derivatives, infinitesimals, and the useful applications of them (finding the area under a curve, finding volumes, calculating flow rate etc.) to a medieval context. Even if you didn't have the mathematical knowledge to formally prove concepts in calculus, medieval mathematicians, when met with the practical application and simplicity of calculus would likely be able to understand it without too much difficulty.

As a technology calculus is broadly useful, even in the context of medieval technology, but it is also a necessary precursor to the kinds of precision engineering and scientific study that made the later part of the industrial revolution possible.

The flying shuttle, on the other hand probably is not something any average person could recreate on the fly, but the mechanism is simple enough that it could be easily memorized and recreated with medieval technology. It would drastically increase the efficiency of looms, and would change the balance of capacity between spinning and weaving, such that textiles could be woven far faster than the thread that makes them could be spun. If they spinning wheel was already present in this medieval society, it would be much more rapidly adopted, and if it wasn't, it might be invented to fill the demand. The capacity imbalance between spinning and weaving after the advent of the flying shuttle in England is what prompted the technological innovations that would eventually lead to mechanization, but even if this feedback cycle didn't happen the decrease in labor necessary to produce clothing would have a pretty dramatic effect on society, both in the decreased cost of an essential good, but also in the labor surplus (among men and especially women) now present in society. Cheaper fabric would also make paper easier to produce, which would make a printing press a more viable invention as well.

There are also a number of relevant ideas that you could show to be true by inference. For instance, germ theory and crude vaccination would have been incredibly useful at any point in history, since society has always had access to alcohol and simple forms of vaccination were much better than nothing. Similar to calculus I suppose. Even a rough geographical map of the earth or certain local regions would be useful if you could memorize them in advance.

The issue is that it is very hard to get people to accept something via inference. People, throughout history generally are going to want proof (either through logic, evidence, or practicality) before accepting a new idea.

Germ theory is something that would prove very hard to prove through logic or evidence in a pre-modern society, in fact in our own world the idea of small organisms spreading from one person to another being the cause of diseases was proposed numerous times before Pasteur, Koch and others finally proved it (through scientific demonstration) in the 19th century.

Germ theory was actually very hard to prove, even in an industrial society! It needed microscopes, sterilization, the ability to grow isolated cell cultures, animal testing, dissection of human bodies, scientific journals, statistical analysis, centralized state institutions, and a host of other things that one wouldn't have access to in a medieval world.

The only form of vaccination that would be practically available prior to those developments was variolation, which worked largely because of the specific symptoms of smallpox, and was already present in the middle ages anyway. The benefit of variolation was difficult to prove, because some people that were inoculated with smallpox still got very sick and died anyway, and it was only on population level scales that it actually inhibited transmission. You could maybe replicate Jenner's cowpox derived smallpox vaccine, and if you were lucky and had some sort of state or institutional backing it might become a popular trend. However, this would only really be the case if you were sent back to medieval china, or perhaps early modern Europe, as small pox wasn't really endemic in Europe until the 15th century. And none of this really would extend to a disease other than smallpox, so if you are in another world with only fictional diseases, or if you are in 1340s europe, it wouldn't help you at all.

Maps could genuinely be useful, although obviously not in the "different world" scenarios, but unless you were in a society that had the ability and desire to fund and manage travel across oceans, a world map (on the level of detail that you could reasonably remember) would be of limited utility. Could be cool for a "Ming China makes first contact with the Americas" scenario though.

At the very least you could introduce the idea of using alchohol, heat, and soap to sanitize things. Not necessarily introduce germ theory conceptually but provide its conclusions evidentially.

one of my biggest problems with "i transmigrated into medieval fantasy and started the industrial revolution" stories is that they always act like it's possible for one guy to do that just by Knowing Things Intelligently With Their Big Brain, meanwhile i'm always screaming about "the material conditions!!!!" internally. knowing things intelligently won't help you if you don't have the necessary infrastructure, or access to enough raw materials.

I Transmigrated Into A Medieval Fantasy World With No Accessible Coal Deposits So My Plan To Kickstart The Industrial Revolution Fizzled Out Immediately?!?!?!

There are only a handful of things that could have been invented earlier but were not; as in the material conditions allowed for the potential of them being created in the world but the lack of knowledge prevented their creation. Even fewer that someone could reasonably carry the knowledge of with them back in time.

Two that come to mind, that could have existed in the medieval world, but did not, and would have actually measurably changed society, and the only two that I could probably replicate if sent back in time are basic calculus and the flying shuttle.

Calculus came into existence for a variety of mathematical and societal reasons that compelled its development, but it immediately found wide ranging applications outside of the conditions that lead to its development. Its also something that most modern adults can safely be assumed to understand to a decent degree, and would be capable of explaining basic concepts like integrals, derivatives, infinitesimals, and the useful applications of them (finding the area under a curve, finding volumes, calculating flow rate etc.) to a medieval context. Even if you didn't have the mathematical knowledge to formally prove concepts in calculus, medieval mathematicians, when met with the practical application and simplicity of calculus would likely be able to understand it without too much difficulty.

As a technology calculus is broadly useful, even in the context of medieval technology, but it is also a necessary precursor to the kinds of precision engineering and scientific study that made the later part of the industrial revolution possible.

The flying shuttle, on the other hand probably is not something any average person could recreate on the fly, but the mechanism is simple enough that it could be easily memorized and recreated with medieval technology. It would drastically increase the efficiency of looms, and would change the balance of capacity between spinning and weaving, such that textiles could be woven far faster than the thread that makes them could be spun. If they spinning wheel was already present in this medieval society, it would be much more rapidly adopted, and if it wasn't, it might be invented to fill the demand. The capacity imbalance between spinning and weaving after the advent of the flying shuttle in England is what prompted the technological innovations that would eventually lead to mechanization, but even if this feedback cycle didn't happen the decrease in labor necessary to produce clothing would have a pretty dramatic effect on society, both in the decreased cost of an essential good, but also in the labor surplus (among men and especially women) now present in society. Cheaper fabric would also make paper easier to produce, which would make a printing press a more viable invention as well.

There are also a number of relevant ideas that you could show to be true by inference. For instance, germ theory and crude vaccination would have been incredibly useful at any point in history, since society has always had access to alcohol and simple forms of vaccination were much better than nothing. Similar to calculus I suppose. Even a rough geographical map of the earth or certain local regions would be useful if you could memorize them in advance.

i did modeling for an "armour knight girl' artist andshe didn't apreciate my 16yh centry brigandine (ming dynasdty, black) and jian (lk chen fihting bull, only slightly anachronistiv (would probabky not be wielded, by a foot soldier)) and attitude (tsunderwe) soshe just drew more late gothic plate armour girls insteas,. fuck thias shit im going back to killing people.

something I want to say as a personal statement, speaking for me, Shelby Donahue:

It always troubles me when people talk about trans women (like Meagan and Autumn Hill, my partners who I talk to every day) in men's prisons, describing them as "rape concentration camps" and emphasizing the sexual violence there. Both Meagan and Autumn Hill have told me, explicitly, that the vast majority of their fellow prisoners respect them and respect their gender, and while some prisoners have been threatening (particularly to Meagan), that the violence against them has primarily come from the institutional systems of the guards, wardens, etc. I know this in part because of their actions: Meagan and Autumn Hill have consistently helped their fellow prisoners, with little things like getting artwork to help a prisoner draw a birthday card for his child, or bigger things like helping someone get back in contact with their family. And a lot of prisoners have been supportive to Meagan and Autumn Hill, especially when they know about the Prairieland case. They make snacks to share, trade books, and comfort Meagan when she's feeling particularly sad.

I say all this for two reasons. The first is that prisoners are not all rapists or bigots, and in fact many of them are not even guilty of the crimes they're arrested for. They're an oppressed class of people, even the worst of them, and they deserve to be understood as individuals, not a nameless and faceless mass of violent threats. And, as individuals, a lot of them have been good comrades to Meagan and Autumn Hill. I want people to keep that in mind when thinking about prisoners. There's a lot of racial stereotypes and bigotries in the way people think of prisoners in the USA, and we need to unlearn those things and understand prisoners as people, as our equals.

The second reason is that you, and me, and everyone we know may end up in jail, or prison. I think about that a lot - getting raided by the FBI will have that effect on you. If we end up in prison, we have to understand the risks and dangers realistically, without excessive fear or unrealistic optimism. And I think it's important people know the facts about what prison is like, and what prisoners are like. Not everyone is violent in prison - but everyone there is the victim of a lot of violence. There are potential friends and allies everywhere.

So a trans guy friend came over to my house for dinner last week. Somehow we got onto the subject of public toilets and bathroom bans, and I made the point that back in 2010-2011, when I co-founded a feminist society/pressure group at University in London, desegregation was basically our main policy position.

And this was not unusual for feminist groups at that time. There was a sense that we were close to the end of a century-long struggle to desegregate society: Universities and most schools were now mixed (my own former school had just become co-ed at this point), youth groups like the Scout Association had recently made it mandatory for all groups to admit girls, there was growing public pressure on men-only spaces like The Garrick Club to admit women, most modern swimming pools had co-ed changing facilities, and gender-neutral bathrooms were starting to become more common.

One of our campaigns was to make all bathrooms in the Students' Union building gender neutral. In the end this failed because of pressure from a group of (white, wealthy, English) men in the Conservative society who insisted that sharing bathrooms with women violated their devout Christian beliefs - they weren't even Christian actually but they managed to spook the lawyers enough in light of the recent Equality Act.

We also frequently discussed desegregating sports - it was widely understood by our (pretty much entirely cis women) members that sex-segregation was a misogynist project that resulted principally in women being paid less. The long mission to get equal prize money at Wimbledon had been won only a few years earlier, and there was pressure on other sports to follow suit. Now we were discussing introducing mixed-gender University sports teams to play competitively.

Bear in mind that the issue of trans women basically never came up in these discussions (mainly due to ignorance: the only reference to trans women I had ever encountered at this point was Ace Ventura). It was principally a matter of desegregation as a moral position that positioned the logic of segregation as part of the systemic oppression of women. The fact that it was right-wing men who were the ones objecting to desegregated toilets (something that has been true throughout the history of toilet segregation) just solidified this point.

Anyway, I gave all this as context to my trans guy friend to explain why I felt frustrated at recent attempts to paint bathroom bans as a win for feminism. That it's depressing to see the feminist activism of 15 years ago sacrificed on the altar of transmisogyny.

This guy has been medically transitioning for a little over a year, and has been discovering feminism in that time too. He recently learned about things like the gender pay gap, and will try to explain it to me like he thinks it's news to me. The gendered nature of domestic abuse is also a favourite topic of his. Before he transitioned, back when he referred to himself as a woman, he tended to take a more liberal normie "men and women are equally oppressed by gender expectations, just let everyone do what they want" line, but tbf we didn't talk about feminism much back then anyway.

The combination of being an early-transition trans guy who is also learning baby's first feminism can be a really dangerous one. He is only now discovering how much he has suffered at the hands of this form of oppression called "misogyny", but at the same time he is a man. He is reading all this literature that positions "men" as the oppressor but also positions people like himself as the oppressed. The easiest way for him to resolve this conflict is to mentally transpose "men" with "AMABs" and "women" with "AFABs", even if he's not aware that's what's happening in his brain.

So in response to my frustration with bathroom bans he starts saying all this stuff about women's reasonable concerns about male violence, how it's difficult to balance the various needs of different groups, how trans men are "obviously" not a threat to women so they should clearly be allowed to use women's toilets. He views the existence of trans women as a spanner in the works of an otherwise rational system with cis men on one side and AFABs on the other.

I try to point out that toilet segregation is actually a real concrete problem for me, the flesh-and-blood person in front of him who he has been friends with for years. That I am risking violence no matter which toilet I use, no matter what clothes I'm in, no matter whether I'm wearing make-up or not. If I use the women's I will get harassed for sure. If I use the men's I have a high chance of being assaulted. His only response is that he also is nervous about using the women's because after a year on T he already passes for cis in nearly all situations. The idea that he should just use the men's since he's a man who looks like a man gets a blank look from him: why should he not be able to use the women's, he's experienced "AFAB oppression" too, hasn't he?

By this point I'm getting quite frustrated. We're talking about feminism as a leftwing movement and I bring up the kind of socialist guy we all know well who says stuff like "misogyny isn't really a priority for me". He hasn't really been listening but he hears me quote this hypothetical man and assumes I'm saying it in earnest. "Did you say misogyny isnt a priority for you?"

Suddenly I, the woman who has been involved in feminist activism for 15 years, am having to defend myself against accusations of misogynist bigotry from a man who discovered feminism a year ago because he decided to not bother listening to what a woman was saying until it was something that sounded incriminating as a soundbite.

At this point I sigh and put my head on the table, exhausted of trying to explain this to him. Later he messages to say that the way I behaved made him feel really shit about himself, like sighing is the rudest thing he's ever heard. I apologise for sighing and go and wash up the dishes from the meal I cooked for him. He goes home and thinks about his innate connection to womanhood.

Extrusion

[<< 1st Part]

Don't worry, this is funny to me.

spider-woman (petra parker) villains react to her coming out as trans

kingpin: ...this changes nothing.

electro: [very clearly uncomfortable but not willing to interrogate what that says about himself] so is this, like, a permanent thing?

rhino: you are...AH!! [drops the bags of money he's holding and gives spider-woman a bone-crushing hug] MY FRIEND!!! YES!!! my cousin's wife, she is like you as well! beautiful woman. maybe you know her? you do not? is not how that works? i see. you two must meet. we will arrange dinner after i break out from raft again. uhp--no arguments. i have decided.

vulture: this is exactly what fox news warned me about...

green goblin: good for you, bug! though don't think i'll go easy on you because of this. after all, you and i both know i don't have a problem killing girls! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

sandman: [after five minutes of failed explanations] oh, like the thing rhino's cousin's wife has

white rabbit: girl!!! me too!!! no way!!! you know, this is perfect timing actually, beetle and i have been looking for a third, if you're interested...

lizard: [really not getting it] ssssso you have to inject yoursssself with girl DNA how often? seemssssss inefficient. you know, connorsssss only injected himself with lizard DNA the once. maybe you ssshould assssk him to make girl DNA for you.

doc ock: [known the whole time] so...you finally figured it out.

mysterio: [trying to fuck with her] so...you finally figured it out.

mr. negative: [gives a single, curt nod and doesn't say anything but makes sure to gender her correctly during their fight]

morbius: HISSSSSSSS!! spider-man!! vhat brings you to zhis dark corner of the city, at so late an--vhat? spider...woman now? [drops the accent] oh hey that's sick. listen if you need an endocrinologist i know a guy. he's over in brooklyn so it's a bit out of the way--oh you're going to diy? no that makes sense. hey, i really appreciate you telling me. no it's no problem at all. thanks! [starts doing the accent again] NOW BEGONE!!! FROM MY LAIR!!!!

electro again: [still really uncomfortable] i just don't think it's an unfair question to ask. remember that time you were like all mean and had the four extra arms and you said shit like "the die is cast?" how do i know this isn't another one of your phases?

carnage: [sprinting down the street on all fours holding the first syllable of a slur like piccolo charging his special beam cannon] fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffFFFFFFFAGGOTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!

black cat: don't get the surgery

obviously it's stupid and exhausting when people try and argue that you can never try to help someone figure out they're trans because of the "egg prime directive", but I do agree with them on one principle, which is that trying to tell somebody else what they are is just kind of rude? like, if I had a male friend who was suffering for reasons that were clearly related to gender, I think it would be incomprehensibly cruel of me not to tell him "there are other options for you, you can always live your live in a way that makes you happier, you should give some thought as to what that would look like," but I would never tell him "You Are A Trans Woman"--not because I hate trans women and want to keep them closeted, but because it would be presumptuous of me to assign him a particular identity based on my own assumptions, no matter what those assumptions are

...and also because there are things you're allowed to be other than a Man or a Woman but I guess we're not allowed to talk about that anymore

yank nationalists (whether they're consciously aware they're being one or not) think they found the cheat code with "Actually it's American Exceptionalism to say that the USA is uniquely evil!" Let us set aside the fact that USA Exceptionalism is a very specific term that doesn't mean "the USA is unique," and that these people are grossly misusing the concept. The fact of the matter is, the USA really is that evil. The USA is the only country to use nuclear weapons in wartime and deliberately targeted civilian population centers. It is the only nation with the amount of the overseas bases it has. It is the only nation to not be a party to any swath of international treaties, including one on the rights of children, because they value the abolity to be Protestant social reactionaries more than they value coexisting with rest of the world.

The USA sends more Christian missionaries than other top 5 nations combined, and spends more on its militaries than other top 5 nations combined. It is the only country to vote against lifting the blockade on Cuba that it has been keeping up for decades, among other human rights resolutions it keeps voting against in the name of "we should be able to do what we want." It is a nation with a mindset of a toddler holding dangerous weapons that it has show. willingness to use. Even by their flawed definition and application of the term, the USA is a uniquely bad entity on the global stage.

i love that we can do this. why can we do this

The way that it's always still formatted like an instructional guide article with boldtext and headings is always just so timelessly funny to me.

"There is no safe way to hug"

i'm a big fan of "i'm a [blank] where's my mama" but i think the hyperspecific ones like these are especially fun

ok this is kinda fun. fuck.

my "suicidal hermit" lifestyle has been largely detrimental to my emotional wellbeing