divine, phenomenal, rare proof of a loving god, good to hold, better to grab, need to wrap their highs around my head and let me take care of them, should also let me make them dinner, are allowed to do whatever they want forever, infallible, etc.
“Dios me bendijo haciéndome transexual por la misma razón que Dios hizo el trigo pero no el pan y el fruto pero no el vino, para que la humanidad pudiera participar en el acto de la creación”
Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel por Julian K. Jarboe
Hey there Tumblr. Trans kids in England are under threat. and no one is talking about it. so I need you to be noisy. The government is currently proposing “guidance” that would force teachers to out students who are questioning their gender. (here’s an article in The Gardian about it)
I don’t think I need to tell you how terrible this is. How it is ultimately going to cause so much harm to so many kids. And not just trans pupils. Just gender-non conforming students who don’t fit stereotypes. Because this guidance isn’t just about students who’ve come out to teachers. It’s anyone they suspect to be questioning their gender.
And the worst part is. I can barely find anyone talking about it. I think there was an Instagram post I saw going around a little while ago, but even then… I was talking to some trans adults at a pride event a few weeks ago and they didn’t even know this shit is happening to us. I don’t know what to do. I feel completely powerless. And making a stupid Tumblr post is the only think I can think of. Because if people don’t know this stuff is happening, there’s no way we can stop it.
I think the guidance is due to come out next week, although they keep on saying things like that and then nothing happens, so who knows.
And to any others trans kids in England (or anywhere, really) right now. Good luck. I see you. We will stick together and we can make it through this
“what if people transition and then regret it?” ok. let’s do that with everything. no more straight marriages until the heterosexual divorce rate is below the detransition rates
full res image to share 💜
Hey you good? you reblogged this like three times now.
the most important value for me as an ML is anti-imperialism, so i guess i’ll always recommend that people start with works centred on that
some suggestions below (all books should be available either on marxist.org or as pdf/epub files on libgen)
American Holocaust by David E. Stannard
about the colonization of america. not explicitly marxist, but it’s probably done more to radicalize me than any other piece of writing. this is the pile of corpses capitalism is built on:
Within no more than a handful of generations following their first en counters with Europeans, the vast majority of the Western Hemisphere’s native peoples had been exterminated. The pace and magnitude of their obliteration varied from place to place and from time to time, but for years now historical demographers have been uncovering, in region upon region, post-Columbian depopulation rates of between 90 and 98 percent with such regularity that an overall decline of 95 percent has become a working rule of thumb. What this means is that, on average, for every twenty natives alive at the moment of European contact-when the lands of the Americas teemed with numerous tens of millions of people-only one stood in their place when the bloodbath was over.
To put this in a contemporary context, the ratio of native survivorship in the Americas following European contact was less than half of what the human survivorship ratio would be in the United States today if every single white person and every single black person died. The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. That is why, as one historian aptly has said, far from the heroic and romantic heraldry that customarily is used to symbolize the European settlement of the Americas, the emblem most congruent with reality would be a pyramid of skulls.
- David E. Stannard
2. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin
Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
- Vladimir Lenin
3. The Wretched of The Earth by Franz Fanon
Let us look at ourselves, if we can bear to, and see what is becoming of us. First, we must face that unexpected revelation, the strip-tease of our humanism. There you can see it, quite naked, and it’s not a pretty sight. It was nothing but an ideology of lies, a perfect justification for pillage; its honeyed words, its affectation of sensibility were only alibis for our aggressions. A fine sight they are too, the believers in non-violence, saying that they are neither executioners nor victims. Very well then; if you’re not victims when the government which you’ve voted for, when the army in which your younger brothers are serving without hesitation or remorse have undertaken race murder, you are, without a shadow of doubt, executioners. And if you chose to be victims and to risk being put in prison for a day or two, you are simply choosing to pull your irons out of the fire. But you will not be able to pull them out; they’ll have to stay there till the end. Try to understand this at any rate: if violence began this very evening and if exploitation and oppression had never existed on the earth, perhaps the slogans of non-violence might end the quarrel. But if the whole regime, even your non-violent ideas, are conditioned by a thousand-year-old oppression, your passivity serves only to place you in the ranks of the oppressors.
- prefrace by Jean-Paul Sartre
4. Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire
Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa
I have talked a good deal about Hitler. Because he deserves it: he makes it possible to see things on a large scale and to grasp the fact that capitalist society, at its present stage, is incapable of establishing a concept of the rights of all men, just as it has proved incapable of establishing a system of individual ethics. Whether one likes it or not, at the end of the blind alley that is Europe, I mean the Europe of Adenauer, Schuman, Bidault, and a few others, there is Hitler. At the end of capitalism, which is eager to outlive its day, there is Hitler. At the end of formal humanism and philosophicrenunciation, there is Hitler
- Aimé Césaire
5. Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti
probably the most accessible introduction to communism that doesn’t demonize countries that have undergone—or attempted to undergo—a transitation into socalism (like the ussr, cuba, etc.)
The very concept of “revolutionary violence” is somewhat falsely cast, since most of the violence comes from those who attempt to prevent reform, not from those struggling for reform. By focusing on the violent rebellions of the downtrodden, we overlook the much greater repressive force and violence utilized by the ruling oligarchs to maintain the status quo, including armed attacks against peaceful demonstrations, mass arrests, torture, destruction of opposition organizations, suppression of dissident publications, death squad assassinations, the extermination of whole villages, and the like.
See, this is the trick conservatives are trying to pull.
They’ll justify banning gender affirming care for minors by saying there just isn’t enough data on the safety and efficacy of things like puberty blockers and hormones (despite these treatments existing since at least the early-1980’s).
Then they’ll turn around and ban any studies into the effects of gender affirming care for minors.
So “we don’t have enough information” becomes a perpetual excuse because we can never seek the information. It’s absurd!