Latest Posts by quidditism - Page 2

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”

― Robert Louis Stevenson

Source: Grow Your Garden Instagram page

"Solarpunk will never happen!"

As if it's not already coming, already here and starting to bloom before our eyes.

Neighborhood cooking clubs and libraries lending out more then just books, it's the art club that the community garden started, it's the funky gardens my neighbors have.

It's the DIY projects ppl wear with pride and ones that hide in the back of their dresser drawer. It's in the magazines and podcasts and in passing hope forward.

Like gruella gardening alone is enough for proof of concept for me, but the rise in community events and potlucks and fighting for rent caps and UBI and decentalizing energy and gardening is happening now.

And yea I gotta fight nazis and dickwards daily for it, and I gotta spend the time to educate and build up as I take down, but they can't say this future isn't coming. I'm here with you right now in it.

I am trying to choose to hope. 

I am choosing to imagine public transportation. 

Grocery stores with attached soup kitchens to decrease food waste. 

Neighborhood meal- and garden-sharing programs.

Green spaces connecting to other green spaces.

The rainforest ADVANCING, churning up dry soil and turning it dark and healthy. 

The sky filled with birds and the sea with fish, their populations increasing. 

The air and water clean. 

Emissions-free vehicles on roadways, with speeds governed, and safe streets for tricycles, bicycles, dogs, deer, and stray soccer balls.

Solar panels on every public building, over every parking lot. 

Beehives and wildflowers on the open berms between roadways. 

The total lack of gunshots around the world, and instead the sound of shovels, digging holes to plant fruit trees by public sidewalks. 

It's punk to compost, in a world filled with trash.

It's punk to be fat, in a world that wants you to keep getting smaller.

It's punk to ride an old bike, drive an old car, patch your old clothes with different colored thread, cut up old sheets for rags instead of using paper towels, and make stuffed animals out of scrap fabric, in a world that wants you to just "order it off amazon".

It's punk to tend a messy, overgrown, weed-filled garden. Tomatoes grow right next to dandelions.

It's punk to can the veggies from your messy garden and give your neighbors delicious tomato soup in the depths of winter.

It's punk to make a bird feeder and look out the window to take a break from your screen.

It's punk to wear your "Let Trans Kids Play" shirt to a college basketball game where there are no trans players, because a trans kid in the crowd will see it and maybe (this year) decide to join the team.

It's punk to have wrinkles, when the world wants you to stop aging at 23.

It's punk to go to your local library.

It's punk to take your kids to your local library.

It's punk to take your kids to a pride parade, a sit-in, a land-back ceremony, an accessible trunk-or-treat, a soup kitchen.

It's punk to plant trees. It's punk to PROTECT trees.

It's punk save for solar panels, someday.

It's punk to hope, whenever you can.

I wondered why green is so associated with hope and then I remembered being 8 and seeing a little plant sprout after a few days of waiting and. Yeah. I get it now.

Very valid concerns! We do have an alternate flag that differs a lot from theirs if that's of any interest! /info

so i was browsing for a bit and found these

two radqueer ideologies that seem similar at face value due to their aesthetics but are actually starkly contrasted, quidditsm and consistent progressivism i think both of these provide an interesting and cohesive look at how radqueer liberation might be achieved so i made this chart to compare and contrast them

just to clarify i'm not taking a side on either of them, i just wanted to analyze them alongside each other

what are your thoughts on these?

The flag situation

It's been brought to our attention that the original versions of the quidditism flags hel a lot of resemblance to the flag from a queer facsist group rising to "fame" lately.

At first, we elected to ignore it, but alas, nobody wants to be conflated with these people.

The flag has therefore been changed.

The old designs will stay up on this post and can of course still be used, but the main flag is now the one on the pinned/coining post.

Old flag designs:

New flag design:

just found this while scrolling and it seems remarkably similar to consistent progressivism but with contrasting values; wanted to ask what are the core fundamentals of quidditism and how does it compare to consistent progressivism; what would be some key differences between the two stances /neu

We could be considered similar for 2 aspects.

First one is, we're radqueer adjacent, and so are they. That means being pro-para, pro-bodily autonomy, pro-transid, and profiction for example.

The second similarity is that contrary to the radqueer community, that is closer to the MOGAI community on this point, we are not just a community for people to be themselves. We would like to do some activism as well, a trait we share with consistent progressivism.

However, the similarities stop there, and thank goodness.

I am working on an article about this, but they are basically fascists that covered themselves in rainbows. For a quick explanation, I reblogged this post (link) that explains the basics pretty well.

But let me give you the three main differences.

First: science denial. They redefine words and consider using Google and dictionaries as being conservative. Here is a screenshot of their Discord server.

In the thread linked to this, they list words that are conservative to use in their opinions. These words include parent, family, adult, anarchy, biology and age, amongst others.

Second: they believe everyone can consent to everything. Here is their resources about this. We quidditists have much needed nuance on this subject.

Third: to preface this, I'll start by sharing a screenshot of their definition of conservatism.

In short, they define anyone who holds discriminatory views as a conservative.

In practise, anyone that does not fully agrees with them is labelled a conservative. I won't get into it here, but it is one of the few cult tactics they use: the "Us vs Them" mentality.

Now, the bigger problem with this, is that they wish to violently genocide and torture everyone they see as conservative. They talk about this quite often in their Discord server, and even asks new members to describe how they would torture and violate a conservative in order to get verified.

Here is proof of them wanting to unforce this violence on everyone they label a conservative.

(other than their graphic & Discord sticker, the black & white images are quote pics made with a bot from messages on their servers, that they keep in a special channel)

Quidditism advocates for violence to only be used if you need to, as a last resort, and strictly as much as necessary and humane. Aka no torture, rape, slavery,...

I hope this clears things up! And thank you for your good faith question! /g

If anyone has any more questions, please send them my way! I'd be happy to answer them! /g

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

The Conversation

Explainer: what is citizen science?

Public participation in science is increasing, and citizen science has a central part in this. It is a contribution by the public to researc

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

"guys we're so cooked" "it's wraps" "the end is near" shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up. i say that with love because you are probably saying it out of distress and hopelessness, but for your own well-being and for everyone else's, please stop saying this shit.

no we are not "cooked." and by saying that, by the way, you are giving more power to the neo-nazi oligarchy in charge.

they want you to abandon all hope of a better life. they want you to believe "oh well, it's over, we might as well stop trying to fight back and just resign ourselves to despair forever."

every time you get on tiktok and comment "guys we're so cooked haha it's over," you are feeding into the mindset of hopeless compliance. you are, unknowingly, spreading this infectious idea that just because we've lost one battle, we've lost the entire war.

your words matter. i am saying this out of love and concern for our future, but please stop choosing words of defeat.

Remember kids: one of the punkest things you can do right now is to look out for your neighbors and make sure they are safe

Did u get my vibes man?

it is so important that you are a little bit ugly. please get comfortable with having unplucked eyebrows and nonexistent jawlines and wrinkles. let your blue hair grow out into an uneven pale green and your clothes be old and mend them and modify them until they’re unique to you. wear lipstick which doesnt compliment your skintone and mismatched outfits which went out of fashion 5 years ago. be a little bit too loud and a little bit too passionate and as weird as you can be because oh my god there is nothing more disturbing to me than perfection. beauty is manufactured and sold to us and you need to realise that you are a fucking animal to live a joyful life I am so serious. you cant obsess over aesthetics forever please just live messily and make your body your home however you please.

if you dont do it for you, do it for all the teenagers who will see u in the street and know that they are not obligated to be attractive

I'm so serious about being kind above all else. it has genuinely changed the way I interact with the world on a fundamental level and has made me so so much happier.

I wish we had been born into a kinder time.

But we weren't. So we're going to have to build one.

Tips for Defying the End of the World.

Printable version here - feel free to print out for yourself or distribute to others for free.

One of the things that make us personally uncomfortable with the notion that child-appearing or young-appearing headmates can never consent:

We have a genetic condition that makes our body look a lot younger than we actually are. We didn't look like an adult til our late twenties/early thirties and even then, just barely.

But we WERE an adult when we got married. And there was no harm in anyone, including our ex, being attracted to us. Or our current partner, who's several years younger than us but looks several years older.

When we got married, our headmate Sunni Willow felt about 16, though we were bodily 21. She could give consent because our brain was that of an adult.

Our ability to give informed consent matters. And is the only thing that matters.

damselpunk as a term focuses on the strength of a person who is affected by mysogyny. this obviously isnt limited to women, but naturally theres a reference to being a princess who needs to be saved or obtained; hence "damsel".

but for the opposite forme of opression, the one bestowed usually upon men, im not sure what stereotype would apply. something that references the fact that men (and more) are forced to become leaders, macho bravo, strong soldiers, units of force— im not even sure this has a name, maybe toxic masculinity, but its the way of which patriarchy affects men. turns them into emotionless machines made for earning money and being tough.

i think i'm gonna try to coin the male version of damselpunk myself. namely for me, because my masculinity is punk in the sense is is passive and soft and chill, instead of the expected "domineering and strong" masculinity in societal standards. but first, i think stablishing a name is important.

CAVALIER and KNIGHT are the first words that come to mind, in direct parallel to damselpunk. since damselBLADE is the symbol for the other term, i thought this term's symbol should be a SHIELD instead of any weapon— signifying not how "a real man is expected to protec", but the protection of the self within cavalierpunk/knightpunk.

please share thoughts 👀 i am very interested in making more than just this term for genderpunk modalities

In light of certain fandoms' creators recently using their considerable fortunes to substantively make life worse for trans people, particularly trans women, this week, V and Emily take a look at a pioneering gender-conforming person who, literally, founded modern scifi fandom: Donald Wollheim. We look at Donald's fannish history, including hosting the very first scifi con ever; publishing Lord of the Rings in the US; and founding the Futurians, the early East Coast scifi fan club who definitely won the all-time BNF war. Then, we look at the other side of Donald's life as a landmark figure in the midcentury East Coast trans and GNC community, including penning the first first-person book about being gender-nonconforming and it not being something to shun, but something to celebrate. While certain big-name authors have decided that they want their legacy to be one of division and hate, we look this week at an individual whose legacies in both fandom and the queer community are ones of building. Of hope for the future. And of telling people that they are not alone.

Sources

American Experience: Casa Susannah A Year Among the Girls, Darrell G. Raynor (Donald Wollheim) Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia Fancyclopedia 2 (1959)

This Week In Fandom History is a fandom-centric podcast that tells you… what happened this week in fandom history!

Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at @thisweekinfandomhistory

You can support the show via our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/thisweekinfandomhistory. 

If you have a fannish company, event, or service and would like to sponsor or partner with TWIFH, please contact us via our website.

Please remember to rate the show 5 stars on your listening platform of choice!

bro n@zism is not "when killing any group of people" 😭🙏

Correct. Nazism is “extreme racist or authoritarian views or behavior.” (Oxford Dictionaries)

The primary goal of Nazis is to create a “Volksgemeinschaft”. Which means the People’s Community, however the word was later turned to mean a cleansing of previous “inferior” races/ideologies/practices and to replace them with the Aryan. The Aryan was not only determined to be the “Master Race” by Adolf Hitler, but the Aryan was also characterizrd to be those who are dedicated to defending the Nazi party and political movement.

So, I did use the term Nazi correctly, if that is what you were trying to get at.

Consistent Progressivism prides itself on eliminating inferior beliefs or practices that they determine to be “Conservative”. And that is step 1 of Fascism (or as I say, Nazism). By them watering down and dehumanizing a group of people into a very wide term and to be used derogatory, is step 1.

Step 2 is to seek and assault, kill, hunt or destroy a large group of people. And for them, Consistent Progressives, this is a large part of their identity. They torture and exterminate people who identify as conservative or use “Conservative Languages/Practices”.

Now, step 2.5 is to change the definition of terminology in order for them to seem the most correct ideology and political class of people. And for Consistent Progressives, they did this by turning the definition of “Conservative” into something that benefits their party.

Their definition: “A political worldview defined by a broad category of ideas either implicitly or explicitly believing that people should be discriminated against because of their race, gender identity, pronouns, sexual identity, or anything else regarding their identity that does not harm others”

The true definition: “a person who is averse to change and holds traditional values.” (Oxford)

Along with step 2.5, they are against any other dictionary and discourage their followers from using dictionaries like Oxford and deem the usage as “Conservative” (see step 2)

I hope this helps you. If you need help getting out of a cult like this, my dms are open and I am never judgemental.

eci.ec.europa.eu

European Citizens' Initiative

Give your support !

EUROPEAN CITIZEN INITIATIVE (ECI) : Ban of conversion practices in the European union. Just 762.726 more signatures

for this campaign to reach its goal before May 17th !!!!

just gonna post this here

! ! ! You are what you say you are ! ! !

Identify as any race!

Identify with any paraphilia!

Identify with any mental disorder!

Identify with any age!

Identify as any person or thing or other!

You are what you are and what you say. <3

No ifs, ands, or buts. >:)

You can judge things in multiple ways at once. Things are rarely just good or just bad.

Normalize not liking things for no reason or for stupid reasons.

Normalize disliking things others like and still treating them (the person and the thing in question) with respect.

Normalize not having an opinion on things.

Normalize not knowing things and asking others about them.

Normalize doing research.

Normalize disagreeing with your friends' tastes.

Normalize having mixed feelings about things.

Normalize being proud and loud about things you're into.

Normalize trying to emphasize with those you have opposing views with.

If something doesn't HURT anyone

It's okay.

We're only human!

We are not perfect and nobody should expect us to be.

Allow yourself to be you and let others be themselves.

I can just imagine saying “lobotomies are bad” in like 1949 and having someone say “you’re wrong, the science is settled, lobotomies are the best way to treat mental illness” and guess what? In 1949 I might be the unpopular and socially wrong one. The person with the backwards, conservative thinking. That is the year that António Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize for lobotomies.

Lobotomies are still bad, but a lot of people have now understood that it’s a deeply harmful and anti-human practice. It was often performed on women (60% of cases were women in the US, a study in Ontario put women patients at 72%) and on gay men. Societal mores have changed on what is psychiatrically appropriate—many of these women were depressed and repressed housewives, or were not naturally submissive to their husbands and considered “combative”.

Many lobotomies were called “ice pick lobotomies” because they involved inserting an ice pick through the eye to sever the part of your brain that feels emotions. There were different techniques, largely dependent on which surgeon you saw. Norbert Wiener said in 1948, "Prefrontal lobotomy... has recently been having a certain vogue, probably not unconnected with the fact that it makes the custodial care of many patients easier. Let me remark in passing that killing them makes their custodial care still easier."

In 1944, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease ran an article saying, “The history of prefrontal lobotomy has been brief and stormy. Its course has been dotted with both violent opposition and with slavish, unquestioning acceptance."

Walter Freeman called the practice “surgically induced childhood”—he specialized in lobotomies and performed them until 1967, so he found this to be a good outcome. In fact, he worked on an “assembly line” process where he could lobotomies 20 people a day, and even did a surgical procedure face-off with another doctor in 1948 to compete in an operating theatre to show an audience of doctors that his technique was superior. The other professor was a professor at Yale, William Beecher Scoville, another famous lobotomist known for proliferating the procedure. They called it a miracle cure, and the gold standard for psychiatric treatment.

Scoville’s most famous patient, Henry Molaison, was a 7-year old boy with epilepsy after a fall from his bike. Scoville couldn’t find the problem, so he just destroyed all three regions of Henry’s temporal lobes. Afterwards, the surgeon noted memory loss “so severe as to prevent the patient from remembering the location of the rooms in which he lives, the names of his close associates, or even the way to the toilet or the urinal.”

Scoville’s wife sought psychiatric care after her husband cheated on her and she had a breakdown. Her husband lobotomized her himself.

In the 1960s, when schizophrenia became a radicalized charged diagnosis that was often used against Black people, especially those involved in the civil rights struggle. Walter Freeman did several pushes to lobotomize Black people, including as young as five, for “hyperactive and aggressive behavior”.

The practice continued in some places until the 1980s. It was used to treat schizophrenia, affective disturbance (mood disorders and people reacting in non-mainstream ways like being an opinionated woman or gay), and OCD, chronic neurosis (anxiety), psychopathic disorders, and depression, among other things. You may notice the old names for these things—things that we might not consider the same way now. Being gay was a mental disorder. Women who wanted independence or respect were often diagnosed. Not fulfilling your traditional societal role was a good way to end up institutionalized.

It was considered, at time of invention, to be an humane alternative to insulin comas and shock therapy (ECT). Many people considered it lifesaving and gold standard treatment for mental illness. Some reports believe that about a third of patients found the procedure beneficial. Others faced dementia, death, incontinence, inability to speak, paralysis, and other effects. Many people were unable to ever leave care again afterwards, though they were more complacent.

I don’t think any scientist who tells you that science is settled is a good scientist. I think that treatments that target people who don’t fit the mold of society, people who are countercultural, and people from marginalized groups should be especially criticized. Psychiatry is a very new field. Part of the phasing out of lobotomies had to do with the development of the first medications for psychiatric use—which in turn have had their own social, political, and ethical conundrums and misuse. Many could consider Valium (“mother’s little helper”) the spiritual successor to the lobotomy.

But in 1949, if I said lobotomies are bad—I might have been met with “Do you hate mentally ill people?” “It works great for most people!” “Without it, she will just be depressed and kill herself” or “My friend did it and all her problems seem better now”.

Lobotomies were bad the whole time.

if you feel like you're always getting talked over, or if you feel like you're always accidentally interrupting people, you should consider looking into some of the linguistics research about conversation style and turn-taking. lingthusiasm podcast has a great episode called "how to rebalance a lopsided conversation" that goes over some of this research in a really accessible way; Deborah Tannen's book You just don't understand is an early book¹ that's aimed at general audiences on the same topic.

the thing is, when there's conflict in how a conversation flows, often what's going on is a mismatch in norms or expectations -- not that one person is necessarily acting "wrong" and the other person is "right." the mismatches in norms/expectations can and do align with existing power structures in society, but being more aware of them can really help you as an individual trying to navigate them.

you can train your brain for more linguistic awareness! start listening for pauses, intakes of breath, or back-channeling that's meant to support, not interrupt. try it out!

¹ I am linking to the wikipedia page for the book rather than a link to buy the book because it's kind of outdated and the criticism section on the wiki page is pretty reasonable. If you do read this book, be prepared for uhhhh period-typical gender essentialism that, to my knowledge, Tannen has not particularly updated her views on in the intervening time. But it is an influential and important book, just read it skeptically imo

you aren't going to let it end like this.

even if you have to bite, crawl, scratch, and scream, your way into a kinder better tomorrow.

you aren't going to let it end like this.

grit your teeth. spit out the blood. take the next step.

"wait but how can that work ?" instead of asking how their queer identity works, and how can it be valid, maybe ask them their experiences. ask how it feels to themself being a mspec mono, or lesboy, or turigirl, or whatever. instead of getting angry at queer identities which dont fit your standard, just perhaps let it go and ask them as a person what their identity means to them. stop policing identities and open up your mind a little.