The conversation around media piracy is never really going to be a black-and-white "always good" or "always bad," because it's so situational.

I'd really prefer people didn't pirate my book, because I am an independent, self-published author who makes like thirty cents per sale and regularly has to e-beg in order to get groceries. Maybe don't pirate from people in my situation.

Meanwhile, it's currently very imperative that people preserve as many things being purged from HBO Max as possible, because even the creators are saying they don't know the fate of the shows right now. The corporations that own everything are screwing people over and restricting access to the art.

Authors have been screwed over by publishing houses over book piracy issues, and legitimate sales numbers can sometimes make or break an author's career. In that sort of circumstance you should get books through shops or the local library, if you can.

But on the flip side, I recently tried very hard to go through legal sources to get my hands on some books for a project I'm working on. Half my booklist is out of print or hard to find, the local libraries didn't have it, the inter-library loan system was complicated to navigate, and the only "accessible" copies cost almost $100 on Thriftbooks. Pirating the PDFs is the only way I'm able to read them at all, just like several documentaries I downloaded that are only available through paid streaming services I can't afford.

Sometimes piracy is a dick move, sometimes it's vital to media preservation, sometimes it's a grey area, most of the time you've gotta make a personal judgment call on what constitutes "ethical piracy."

I generally adhere to the guideline "fuck over as few artists as possible; fuck over corporations as much as you can."

More specifically, 2/3rds of all people living in the US can now be forcibly and legally searched for any reason.

Authorities do not need a warrant or even suspicion of wrongdoing to justify conducting searches on any person.

The (majority conservative) Supreme Court wants to cause a civil war, and they want to burn this country to the ground to rebuild anew. This is the goal, this is how they are going to do it, and we are witnessing in real time the fall to fascism.

So about 200 million people just had their 4th Amendment rights abolished, but they say nothing can be done about the 2nd Amendment?

This fucking country, man

for those wondering, this happened 6/9/2022. this is happening now.

happy PRIDE i’m here i’m queer and i believe the land should be given back to the proper indigenous stewards.

Non-Natives reblogging this are great and wonderful

Please remember that "land back" does not mean "indigenous people are mystical elves with innate epigenetic wisdom of land stewardship and they don't belong in big cities," nor does it mean "non-indigenous people can't be farmers." What it DOES mean is that "non-indigenous farmers should be paying the equivalent of property taxes to the native governments their land was stolen from." It means, "there's a great deal of indigenous scholarship on sustainable agricultural practices that farmers should be taking into account, because indigenous agriculture was more advanced than European agriculture at the time Europe invaded the Americas and western agriculture *still* hasn't caught up in terms of figuring out how to produce equivalently high crop yields without compromising the ecosystem." It means, "non-indigenous farmers should be in an intellectual discourse with indigenous agricultural scientists and indigenous peoples that still do traditional farming, figuring how to repair the damage western farming practices have done to the ecosystem."

Choices

Criminalizing abortions today requires a conservative Supreme Court. It’s the sunlight and the water that will make these weeds rise and bear fruit:

The worst part is that none of this suffering even accomplishes the stated goal. Legal or not, the abortion rate stays flat regardless.

Wealthy women will be able to dodge this by traveling or choosing to relocate to a friendlier state. Poor women will not. And it will lead to wider wealth gaps, higher crime rates, greater reliance on social safety nets, and the continued degradation of wages and workers’ rights.

The average American child costs a quarter million dollars before age eighteen. The idea that any person or family should be forced to make such a financial commitment—or several such commitments—for something they don’t passionately want is fundamentally repugnant to us.

We mostly write about money and careers on Bitches Get Riches. It’s not because we love them so much we wanna kiss ‘em on the mouth. It’s because in the society that we have today, money and careers are the best tools we have to attain complete independence and autonomy.

We believe that each individual is an expert in their own happiness. And given a modest level of financial stability, people will have the freedom to make the choices that make their lives feel deliciously worth living.

Limiting abortion access—much less criminalizing it—stands in direct opposition to these values.

So what do we do? How do we stop this endless cycle?

full article: On Pulling Weeds and Fighting Back: How (and Why) to Protect Abortion Rights

In the town where I grew up, there was a large statue in one of the parks, of a famous historical white colonizer. I'm not going to say who specifically, suffice it to say that it was someone who wasn't worth memorializing for their deeds. And as you can imagine, this statue was a frequent target of vandalism, with paint or toilet paper or eggs on multiple occasions. Now, the local council was generally pretty lax when it came to repairing potholes or other public damage in the town, but every time, 24 hours after this particular statue was hit, the same person would always appear in a Hi-Vis vest, hat, mask and sunglasses, carrying a bucket of water, and wash it clean. They would do it as quickly as possible, but always made sure the face and the name carved at the bottom were generously scrubbed. This only encouraged people to do it again, and so it became a vicious cycle.

Within a year, the statue had sustained so much damage that it was unrecognizable and the lettering unreadable, so eventually the council came and took it down. Also apparently, the person in the Hi-Vis vest didn't even work for the council. They were supposedly just some 'good samaritan' who cleaned it, often before the council even discovered it needed cleaning, so they just let them do it and ignored the problem. They didn't bother putting the statue up again.

Much later, we found out that the anonymous 'samaritan' had been deliberately washing the statue with a bucket of saltwater, which had dramatically corroded it, causing irreversible accumulative damage far worse than spray paint ever would have done. It's even theorized that they were also often the one spray-painting it, just so that they had an excuse to come back after a day to wash it.

i really hate the effect our hypersexualized society has on young girls. do you know how fucked up it is for an 11 year old girl to be scared of heterosexual sex because she thinks its inevitable? when i was 11, guys told me it would be painful, that penetration was mandatory, and that guys will want blowjobs. when i said i didnt want to do that ever, everyone made fun of me, and my parents told me i’d want that when i got older. guys always look forward to sex but little girls not even in their teens yet are anticipating it in fear because they think it’s mandatory for them to experience pain and humiliation to please men honestly what the fuuuck

This is too important

“Some see sex only in terms of performance, where what counts most is the boy enjoying it. I asked a 15-year-old about her first sexual experience. She replied: “I think my body looked OK. He seemed to enjoy it”. Many girls seem cut off from their own sense of pleasure or intimacy. That he enjoyed it is the main thing. Girls and young women are under a lot of pressure to give boys and men what they want, to adopt pornified roles and behaviours, with their bodies being merely sex aids. Growing up in a pornified landscape, girls learn that they are service stations for male gratification and pleasure.

Asked “How do you know a guy likes you?,” a Year 8 replied: “He still wants to talk to you after you suck him off.” A male high school student said to a girl: “If you suck my dick I’ll give you a kiss.” Girls are expected to provide sex acts for tokens of affection. A 15-year-old told me she didn’t enjoy sex at all, but that getting it out of the way quickly was the only way her boyfriend would settle down and watch a movie with her.

I’m increasingly seeing Year 7 girls who seek help on what to do about requests for naked images. Being asked “send me a picture of your tits” is an almost daily occurrence for many. “How do I say ‘no’ without hurting his feelings”? girls ask”

Extract from this article “Growing Up in Pornland” based on a survey recently conducted by Our Watch and Plan Australia (link: http://www.collectiveshout.org/growing_up_in_pornland_girls_have_had_it_with_porn_conditioned_boys)

A teenage boy (or possibly even a grown man in some of these cases) asks a teenage girl for nude photos or for a sexual act. He never stops to think about how that would make her feel, but she still feels like she has to care about how “no” will make him feel.

Women have to handle sexual harassment because men can’t handle rejection.

these ones

oh we can get even more specific than just a list of billionaires:

here are all of the scum who control oil, coal, and natural gas

here are the ones who run the factories

and here are the ones who extract the raw resources that the others need to make it all work

23,000 people are reblogging a hit list

Good.

the fact that we have ceded any and all discussion of systemic misogyny and patriarchy or even acknowledgement that it exists to r*dfems is so fucking wild like i feel so insane having to say this but it’s not gender essentialist to acknowledge that there are structural inequities built into society because it’s not about individual men being Born Evil or whatever oh my god

like absolutely true that a lot of self-proclaimed progressives online do not know how to recognize radfem talking points and thus very easily buy into them and yes absolutely true that the big one is that all men (meaning anyone assigned male at birth) is inherently evil like biologically and that is the root of all of society’s problems but i feel like just completely abandoning any concept of gendered structural inequality is not in fact rejecting radfem philosophies but literally also buying into them because you are buying into the idea that structural inequality is equivalent to and indistinguishable from (their flawed understanding of) biology.

when we are talking about structural issues we are not (or should not be) talking about individuals being Bad on a personal level but somehow that is were we are at now, that is the level of analysis we are doing, like this happens literally all the time with people thinking or talking about homophobia as if it is purely about individual personal hatred so the rallying cry is “love trumps hate!” or racism is going to be solved purely by individual white people realizing the error of their ways and resolving to be better when like.. it is literally about things that are structurally baked into the foundation of our society, legally, politically, economically, and yes culturally, and thus quite literally by definition not purely about individuals being born evil.

the fact that people will see arguments about structural inequality and reject them outright because they (falsely) and hyperbolically boil it down to “oh you’re just saying all men are born evil” is not only missing the point but also just ceding ground to terfs and fully allowing them to set the terms of the discourse. saying “anyone who has anything critical to say about men on a structural/societal level must be a terf because they must be making gender essentialist assumptions about the inherent nature of individuals from birth” is literally just accepting the basic premise that structural issues are fundamentally biological which they are absolutely fucking not.

by interpreting any discussion of structural inequality to be gender essentialist you are in fact the one making that assumption and accepting that false equivalence. like i do not think it’s useful to engage or try to argue with radfems because honestly they truly are just fucking stupid but then i see people who are so afraid to touch anything related to feminism with a ten foot pole out of a fear that they might accidentally be engaging with radfem thought that like.. we are literally just giving it all to them. out of our desire to not engage we’ve just entirely abandoned anything related to any real meaningful feminism that approaches any structural issues beyond like individual-level “just let women do whatever they want” hot takes and rather than shutting terfs down it is allowing them to just fucking run rampant. we have given them their power. i see people labeling the word patriarchy as gender essentialist terf rhetoric and i’m just like. what the fuck are we doing here. what the fuck is going on. fucking look around you jesus fucking christ

i need you to understand that the ruling class hates you and wants to hurt you as much as they possibly can

Well, you know, some bathroom graffiti offers insight.

Red marker handwriting on a bathroom wall. Text reads:

“Boss made a dollar Granddad made a dime But that was a poem From a simpler time.

Boss made a thousand Gave pa a cent But that penny paid the mortgage Or at least it paid the rent

Now Boss makes a million And gives us jack Smugly blames the workers For the labor that he lacks.”

And the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.

The way the British media talks about the royal family is so fucked up it's insane I was watching the British news the other night (it was either the BBC or Sky I cant remember) and a journalist on it described the queen as a grandmother to the nation. What the fuck. If a journalist in North Korea or China or Russia called their leader the grandfather of the nation these British journalists would be falling over themselves to call those nations and peoples brainwashed. But it's totally normal for supposedly neutral and unbiased news shows to worship an unelected woman who defends her paedophile son and is happy for 2 billion pound to be poured down the drain on a celebration that she doesnt even show up to while millions in the UK are struggling to feed their families. Ok.

every english class ive ever had has reaffirmed my belief that english is one of the most necessary classes we have actually

actually most classes, and in general seeing people interact with media make me believe english classes are probably the most important ones i took

there really isnt a single walk of life where learning to analyze the written and spoken word (of any language) isnt important. this is how you learn to understand harmful implications in fictional media. news media. how you learn to dissect propaganda. how certain word choices (intentional or unintentional) can cause irreparable damage. how you learn to see through advertisements. how you learn the weight of people’s words. how you learn to exercise empathy if that is not something that comes naturally to you. i know im a bit insane academically but this is definitely one of the hills i willingly choose to die on

Ok… this is absolutely wild (x)

And the rest:

Wells Fargo artificially inflated diversity

Wells Fargo modern day slavery

Wells Fargo slave trade historically

Account fraud scandal

Wrongful foreclosure and sale of disabled veterans house which the vet died

Evil horrible

Text:

"you can’t “self-care” your way out of being crushed to death by the ruling class.

The quotations are used for a reason. The “self care” industrial complex (lol) is used a) for profit (obviously) and b) to obfuscate systemic roots of suffering at the hands of the ruling class, placing all onus on the individual to get over being crushed through serenity.

Basically: who has the boot on our necks? Can a person simply meditate and pamper the boot off our necks or does the body the boot is attached to need to be forcibly removed. Etc."

Source: https://twitter.com/kellynotbrecht/status/1509251034526334976

Self care, in my opinion, is not escapism and finding ways to endure the boot on our necks.

Self care is building a life we don’t have to escape from just to fucking survive. Which for most of us means dismantling the systems in place that make life unbearable.

I am so fucking sick of CGI this, CGI that. give me back on location filming (when possible), give me back intricate hauntingly realistic animatronics and puppets, give me back handmade props & masks & skillful make up……..just give me back practical effects I am begging

Give me back films made by unionized workers who can collectively bargain for better working conditions the way digital VFX artists currently can't

[Image description/ tweet by let my people go @MichellCClark :

sending love to everyone who wants to do better but can't find the energy to make the necessary changes. sending love to everyone who wonders if their exhaustion is permanent. sending love to everyone who's tired of feeling stuck. /end description]

As a trans woman, I have a lot of behaviors that i am VERY EXCITED to do that are considered traditionally feminine. And I think the General Societal Narrative of a trans women, say, being excited to bake a cake, is that she’s like, Sightseeing Womanhood, doing something Women Do because it tickles her to Be A Woman. Which is… fucking hogwash. these behaviors aren’t Things Women Do, they’re Things Men Don’t Do. 

The urge to bake a cake and coo at babies and welcome houseguests, I think, is just human, but it’s something that men are told basically from birth that they’re not allowed to do. So a huge part of the transfem experience isn’t Discovering New Hobbies That Let You Be A Girl, it’s finally allowing yourself to do things that you’ve spent decades believing you weren’t supposed to.

And in less intersectional feminist spaces, this purveying idea (that a trans woman is taking pleasure from like, Sampling Womanhood) plays to an understanding of “male socialization” that is centered around the effects it has on AFAB people. (”Boys will be boys”, “He’s pulling his hair because he likes you”) 

And while I dont blame people for expressing the pain they suffer under patriarch, it’s pretty conceited to assume that this gives you understanding of the totality of the AMAB experience. Cis men and trans women and other AMAB people spend their childhoods being punished, by peers and authorities and media, for “unmanly” behavior- vulnerability, emotionality, caring, sadness. And I think that a lot of feminism (ESPECIALLY radical feminism) doesn’t fully understand that.

TERFs especially are 100% convinced that they know what male socialization is to the point that they will argue with trans women about it, which is the kind of hubris that would be fucking hilarious if it wasn’t so harmful.

God this is such a great sentence

[ID: Screenshot of tags which say: “the experiences of being a woman who grows up in the patriarchy, and being a woman who grows up being told she’s a man, are two distinct types of trauma that can coexist”. /End ID]

I have made a meme to explain how Millennials aren’t destroying industries, the industries are destroying us:

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

I want to say I am delighted at everyone saying “this is the worst graph mathematically but I get your point and approve”.