I've Said This Before And I'll Say It Again: It's More Important To Know And Understand Fully Why Something

okay so a ceasefire will happen soon, inshallah, but i just know the second it does, most of y'all will pack it up and go home. the world has proven time and time again that the second the violence "stops", then everyone forgets about us and then we just go back to suffering under the israeli occupation. you guys need to promise us, promise every single palestinian child in the world right now, that you will not stop fighting. that you will continue boycotting, you will continue protesting, you will continue disrupting the world until palestine is free. and then we'll do it again. and again and again and again and again. for sudan, for the congo, for everyone who is suffering right now.

you guys cant keep leaving us and forgetting about us once you've done "your part". it always happens, and we always go back to suffering. you need to stand with us until palestine is completely free. until we have our land back, until we can rebuild our homes, until we can drink clean water and breathe clean air, until our children grow up never having to face a horror like the nakba ever again. you need to stay fighting until we are all free forever.

When a straight man lashes out after dating or having sex with a trans woman, he is often afraid of the implication that his sexuality is joined to hers. When a gay man anxiously keeps trans women out of his activism or social circles, he is often fearful of their common stigma as feminine. And when a non-trans feminist claims she is erased by trans women’s access to a bathroom, she is often afraid that their shared vulnerability as feminized people will be magnified intolerably by trans women’s presence. In each case, trans misogyny displays a fear of interdependence and a refusal of solidarity. It is felt as a fear of proximity. Trans femininity is too sociable, too connected to everyone—too exuberant about stigmatized femininity—and many people fear the excess of trans femininity and sexuality getting too close. But sociability can never be confined or blamed on one person in a relationship; it’s impersonal, and it sticks to everyone. The defensive fear and projection built into trans misogyny, whether genuine or performed, is an attempt to wish away what it nonetheless recognizes: that trans femininity is an integral part of the social fabric. There will be no emancipation for anyone until we embrace trans femininity’s centrality and value.

Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny

Seeing the reports yesterday about how as of November 27, while Israel had released 117 hostages as part of the agreement, it has taken 116 new captives from the West Bank should tell you a lot about Israel.

One reporter said something like "for every family celebrating the return of their child from Israeli captivity, another family is mourning due to the detention of their child by Israel"

Israel hates nothing more than to see Palestinians rejoice, this is why they banned celebrations and distributing sweets in the first place.

please consider how you engage with aaron bushnell's death. you may react to it as you will, but it's crucial to remember that his death was specifically a call to action. it was not meant solely to shock but to draw attention to a vast moral hypocrisy: that to many, a soldier dying in a campaign backed by the U.S. government is noble, even if the soldier kills innocents to do so, even if the cause is morally bankrupt--but this? this is insanity. a man taking his own life, on his own terms, in an attempt to help others while hurting nobody else, is somehow less rational and more horrifying than the mass killing of civilians.

of course aaron's death was horrific. but as he said beforehand, it is realistically no more horrific than what's happening in gaza. if we can't stomach this, then why can we stomach children being bombed? thousands being starved? for all that self immolation is, it brings death in a matter of minutes. it is a fraction of the amount of pain, fear, and grief that people in gaza are experiencing. it's just that we are able to quantify it. and this tiny, quantifiable sliver of horror is still so unbelievably awful. how can anyone bear to think about anything else when this horror is happening a millionfold in palestine? this is the question aaron bushnell was asking. and he wanted you to face it, head-on, watching him burn to death.

I've been seeing people make fanart. minimalist graphics to sell on t-shirts. to commodify his death, to mythologize it not a day afterwards, is not only in poor taste but a hindrance to his message. the answer is not commodification, nor is it defeatism, nor is it rejoicing in his death. if you want to honor aaron's legacy, take action. channel your horror and your outrage into making a material change. this wasn't about him. this was about palestine. remember that it was always about palestine.

Okay, since the Spielberg post blew up, I need to clear up something because I can see in the notes that pple think that Spielberg owns the rights to MLK speeches and I don't want to spread any misinformation. This is what the Vice article says:

vice.com

The Bizarre Reason You Rarely Hear Martin Luther King Quotes in Movies

Steven Spielberg has received criticism for buying the film rights to MLK's speeches, and further controversy stems from King's estate.

In 2009, Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks company paid the estate for film rights to King's words, along with his life rights, which allow a person or company to make content based on an individual's story. DreamWorks has yet to produce or direct Spielberg's planned King biopic, but the rights have caused complications for numerous filmmakers. (Neither Spielberg's literary agent nor King's estate returned Broadly's request for comment.)

This means that while the MLK estate still owns the original copyright for the speeches, Spielberg actually bought and now owns the film rights to MLK's speeches. However, this doesn't erase how problematic it it is since this means that Spielberg is the only filmmaker legally allowed to use MLK's speeches word for word in his films. A White filmmaker is essentially holding onto the film rights, at the expense of Black filmmakers. The article talks about how Ava Duvernay had to write original speeches from scratch for Selma.

King has received only one major biopic, 2014's Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay [...] Instead of using King's speeches, DuVernay wrote original monologues that sounded like soliloquies the civil rights leader could have given. [...] When asked about the changes in 2014, DuVernay told the Washington Post, "We knew those rights are already gone. They're with Spielberg."

The article also mentioned that Spielberg bought life rights and according to this Forbes article, this means that Spielberg also bought the rights to MLK's life.

By paying the Estate for the film rights to Dr. King's speeches along with life rights, Spielberg obtained unprecedented filmmaking access to Dr. King’s life — supported by Dr. King’s extraordinary intellectual property (the right to use Dr. King’s actual words.)

Hope this clarifies everything!

- mod sodapop

three years ago today we lost sophie . she was unimaginably important .

[X]

Children saying "I'd rather be dead" is not normal. Children crying "is this a dream?" is not normal. Children wondering "am I being taken to the cemetery?" is not normal.

We can all reckon the lasting psychological effects of this genocide on these children, but also remember that to many of the children of Gaza, this is the second, third, or even fourth Israeli aggression they had to live through.

Almost 50% of Gaza's population are children, over 10,000 of which have been murdered by Israel since October of this year.

white gays need to read up on pinkwashing and homonationalism before ever even thinking about opening their mouths talking about homophobia/transphobia in the global south

Everytime I see news about Eurovision my eye twitches because every year Palestinians said stop watching this and the response was “how dare you take away my emotional support pinkwashing show”