Random Thought of the Day

[Nyctophilia]

I walked like 10.6 miles (17.05905 km,) today lol. Didn't even see what I was trying to see. 😂

Edit: The tweets below I'm quoting weren't spontaneous btw lol (although lots of people online hate British people,) specifically this was a reaction to all the famous transphobes here:



That's right we've moved to cancelling countries lol.

Also yes this is classism lol and ignoring Dave Chappelle. But sure the US liberal elites are well liberal elites. Much as certain people or 'dark elves' as Curtis Yarvin would call them are trying to subvert that LOL. The UK is a much more mixed bag. Nothing really makes sense here. There's a pro-trans pro-weed guy who was running for conservative party mayor of London after all.

British comedy's over

Depends on if Phoebe Waller-Bridge ever writes anything again. Fleabag is the only British TV show I've gotten the urge to watch in like... Probably a decade. Still it's not hilarious but it's a fairly decent show.

I like the fox metaphor.



Spoilers obviously:

not just comedy. y'all haven't given us a bowie or spice girls or even a one direction in over a decade. the last few james bond and harry potter movies flopped. the biggest current british export is sex education which is very americanized. it's over for y'all

I wouldn't have gone with those music choices lol but yeah. Tbf though breaking into America musically is almost impossible and it's difficult to get anywhere in music generally now because of how social media works. The UK hasn't been culturally influential in music since the 90s, Japan took over in the 2000s (not really in terms of music but I guess culture in general though it was popular even before then obviously,) and South Korea in the 2010s.

Anyone decent here just leaves for the US though since there's more opportunities and money there in entertainment, film and TV. I can't blame them either.

Also Little Simz actually had to cancel her US tour for financial reasons:

Little Simz previously had a North American tour scheduled for the spring of 2022, supporting Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, but she canceled those dates due to financial concerns.

Her production (Inflo etc) is really great. Not my favourite rapper though:





Steven Wilson has never even been super famous in the UK lol:







Or any of his projects.











A lot of his music is great but nobody is going to notice for marketing/packaging based reasons mostly.

I'd say even when it happens you probably don't even notice. Because they're not famous in your country there music is just being used in your TV shows like IAMX (who moved to the US eventually anyway after moving to Germany. And you won't have heard of him) Or Labrinth:

He has been referred to as"one of the most important British musicians of his generation."[4] Labrinth has worked with numerous artists as a songwriter and producer including Beyonce, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Eminem, Kanye West, and the Weeknd. His production work on the Weeknd's album Beauty Behind the Madness earned him a Grammy Award for Album of the Year nomination. He also co-produced the soundtrack The Lion King: The Gift, and co-wrote the single "Spirit", alongside Beyonce and Ilya Salmanzadeh, for which he received nominations at the Grammy Awards,[5] Golden Globe Awards, and the Critics' Choice Movie Awards.

Lol.

I don't think he's one of those artists people particularly talk about a lot though. His work is more famous than him I would say.

This track was really famous here:

i'm so proud of him for making a bag off euphoria
his genius was truly underrated for his time

No it wasn't everyone loved the song and it was constantly played on the radio and 4 music.

when was this? No one but me played this where I was, and I discovered it on accident through an old flip phone looking for something from Busta rhymes

Lol man it was playing in every nightclub at one point constantly.



And yeah again it's difficult for anything to get attention now because there's so much competition.

Plus these days people just seem to prefer hip hop. Even hip hop fans are getting tired of the singularity lol:

I made a joke in the Bo Burnham video that there was a distinct white music culture up until maybe the last decade or so and it's now gone. Which on one end it's cool because that means there's all this like amalgamation of stuff happening but on the other end it's all so like watered down. It's all so Jack Harlow. And of course I put this on record it's all so Drake.

[Anthony interjecting: 'Taylor Swift]

Taylor Swift exactly etc. And so I had to find yes there is punk and metal and nu metal out there but it's lost commercial relevance and it's not my explicit experience but I wonder what does that mean for people in general what does that mean for music culture. That this huge thing rock music they were the mega stars of music and then it was like instantly they weren't and it became hip hop stars.

Some of his tweets related to this:

I dream of a world where white folks dig into their precolonial culture and bring back dire wolves and witchcraft. Now all we got is blackcents and complaints about how "interpersonal" racism goes both ways...

Somehow (I don't know how) this all got worse when heavy metal and rock music left mainstream pop culture. Ima prove this one of these days.

But I wouldn't say rock music is a super innovative space these days either.

For years I've been thinking that it's a shame what happened to Rock and Metal and how it's disappeared from mainstream relevance, but as i finish up this Drake video I wonder if that's not a better way to go🤔. Be rendered irrelevant by pop culture before being commodified.

30 years ago hip hop was THE counter culture music. It replaced punk, alt, and metal going into the 2000s as the dangerous music. It makes sense that it's been co-opted to be commercial and neutered in its mainstream forms, but something should have taken it's place right?..

But what did? Am I too old to know? Is it one of these 50 things yall mentioned in these tweets? Dafuk is shoegaze? Nueropunk? Midwest emo (sorry get off my lawn moment)

Why isn't there a singular force of rebellion... is thaT a good or bad thing?

Shoegaze and midwest emo aren't actually new lol.

Having one driving force of rebellion within the youth makes it easier for capitalists to commodify (again see hip hop post 2000s)

But this proliferation also feels... idk weak? That may be my age talking. I'm looking for the zeitgeist and it's been ghost busted in zoomer and post zoomer culture...

Or (more scary) the corporate interests in culture and music have gotten so good at this that it's funneled all of us into little niche markets, algorithmically optimized markets,, none of them being at all challenging to the status quo but perfectly enjoyable.

He often talks about this from a racial perspective but there's a wider issue with pop music becoming more and more homogenous sounding.

https://www.mic.com/articles/107896/...ding%20similar.

The study: In a recent study, researchers from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria studied 15 genres and 374 subgenres. They rated the genre's complexity over time measured by researchers in purely quantitative aspects, such as timbre and acoustical variations and compared that to the genre's sales. They found that in nearly every case, as genres increase in popularity, they also become more generic.

"This can be interpreted," the researchers write, "as music becoming increasingly formulaic in terms of instrumentation under increasing sales numbers due to a tendency to popularize music styles with low variety and musicians with similar skills."

So music all starts simplifying and sounding similar. Not only that, but complexity actually starts turning people off of musical styles. Alternative rock, experimental and hip-hop music are all more complex now than when they began, and each has seen their sales plummet. Startlingly few genres have retained high levels of musical complexity over their histories, according to the researchers. And ones that have -- folk, folk rock and experimental music -- aren't exactly big earners. Unless, of course, they fit into the Mumford & Sons/Lumineers pop-folk mold.

The findings are somewhat intuitive. Of course a genre will sell more once it forms an established sound that listeners can identify with. But the science is only proving the now-dominant truth of pop music: Record companies are only comfortable promoting things they already know will sell. And they know that now better than ever.

Does the What We Do in the Shadows series count as British? I mean it's kiwi-created & american-made but three of the core cast are british comedians, that's gotta count for something...!

(also Matt Berry denounced the transphobic IT Crowd episode he was in 👍 )

Nah it almost feels British probably because kiwi humour is closer to British than American and there's a bunch of British actors but it's actually better than British supernatural shows like Being Human imo.

this just happens every 20-30 years in Britain. They go on some unrighteous crusade against some minority, all the artists and academics say "hey this is bad" and leave for anywhere else, while England is left with next to no culture.

[...]

Well we saw a mass exodus under Johnson, another under Blair, and the biggest and most memorable being the thatcher years which lead to the global growth of Punk rock and the comic renaissance lead by alan moore and other british expats

Well Alan Moore never left his hometown afaik. Most of his work was inspired by Northampton (though that isn't obvious with a lot of it,) and he is quite invested in trying to build new associations for people there atm.

I'd say that Northampton - certainly since it collapsed into a financial black hole in 2018 - but sort of certainly Northampton and probably most other places at the present moment would seem to be particularly disenchanted. That there is no meaning in anything. There is no joy. There is no enchantment at all in our newspaper headlines in the streets that we walk. So one of the duties of literature seems to me - and of art in general - is a reenchantment. To lend meaning to these forgotten spaces, these forgotten people. To make them kind of flare with life again. That is art's job or at least part of it.

If you can attach narratives to places you are kind of rewriting the reality.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...em-northampton

English readers outside of the south Midlands may be equally surprised to find Northampton being given such literary weight as, in recent years, the town has mainly been used as a cultural punchline.

Is that a thing now lol? I noticed that a while back. Technically Northamptonshire is in the East Midland region though. You don't want to be grouped in with Luton lol:

In 2008, the Government referred to an area centred on the City of Milton Keynes as the Milton Keynes and South Midlands growth area. This area comprises the whole of Bedfordshire, the whole of Northamptonshire, and parts of Buckinghamshire (the City of Milton Keynes and other parts of north Buckinghamshire).[citation needed] It straddles the boundaries of other regions of England, including portions of the East Midlands, East of England and South East England.[3]

The main settlements are Aylesbury, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Corby, Kettering, Wellingborough, Rushden, Bedford and Luton. A report in 2002 found that: "The most successful economies are those of Milton Keynes and Northampton. Bedford, Corby and the Luton/Dunstable/Houghton Regis area are in need of regeneration."[4] The region is served by London Luton Airport (the fifth busiest airport in the United Kingdom), and has important road and rail links, being served by the M1 motorway and both the West Coast and East Coast main lines, connecting it with London, Birmingham and the north of England.

Milton Keynes and the South Midlands is a varied area which straddles three different regions and covers an extensive and diverse range of different types of urban settlement in an environment of varying quality.

Lol that's one way of putting it.

https://assets.publishing.service.go...view_FINAL.pdf

The South East Midlands area review covers the unitary local authority areas of Bedford Borough Council, Central Bedfordshire Council, Luton Borough Council and Milton Keynes Council. The area also includes the Northamptonshire County Council.

It's actually kind of weird. Technically Bedfordshire is in the East of England not the East Midlands, but it's right on the border of the South East England region to the point where I've had someone argue with me about this online before lol probably more for cultural reasons then anything but no it is technically in the East of England region (I mean the line has to be drawn somewhere.) So in Luton we can get Anglia and London TV news:

Luton is served by London and East Anglia regional variations of the BBC and ITV. Television signals are received from either Crystal Palace or Sandy Heath TV transmitters. However, the local relay transmitter for Luton only broadcast programmes from Norwich.[96]

But yeah they seem to arbitrarily expand the boundaries so that Luton and the rest of Bedfordshire is sometimes treated as London (as in the airport name,) and then sometimes 'South East Midlands.' or part of the East of England (which is not the East Midlands btw.) Depending on the focus/discussion. Then sometimes new categories are used like 'South Midlands'

It's not at all confusing lol.

Also ironically I think Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day wanted to move here after the abortion ban. You just trade one load of crap stuff for another mostly. I dunno maybe he actually did move here since he was just randomly hanging out in some London bar and got on stage with a Green Day cover band a while ago lol. It's more ironic for me because I was using that band and their music as an escape from school and England etc as a teenager at one point.

[Nyctophilia]

Aella posted this twitter thread:

imo we'd be more accurate in conceiving of fetishes as more similar to sexual orientations - it's just instead of your nonstandard sexuality deviating along lines of gender, it can be lines of sensation, species, size, clothing, body parts, etc.

They have similar origin; probably partially innate/hormonal, partially early environment. In milder cases, can be conditioned. Fetishes, much like homosexuality, presents differently in males and females. They can be narrow (being gay) or broad (bisexual)

for many, fetishes are a required part of sexuality. Much as being gay means you date gays and join gay subculture, many fetish subtypes only allow people sexual satisfaction when they date compatibly among those who share their proclivities. It's an entire sexual way of being.

I think a cultural mistake we're making is not allocating certain fetish presentations the same level of seriousness as we do sexual orientation. These people are going through what gays did pre acceptance; "something is wrong with me" "why don't i wanna [BEEP] my wife"

People used to view homosexuality as a deviant paraphilia for exactly the same reasons - but turns out if you just put gays together, suddenly they have pretty fulfilling sex lives. They wanna [BEEP] if it's a husband! The same damn thing happens for obligate fetishists.

We don't have "straights", "gays", and "weird fetishists" - we basically have a big continuum from common to uncommon sexual interests. It's just that out of the fetish landscape, 'gender' is an uncommon interest that's easy to humanize, and so it's the first to gain acceptance.

Two women holding hands, dressed in bridal gowns is an expression of an uncommon sexual interest that tugs way more effectively on heartstrings than a woman vacuuming a man immobile inside two big sheets of latex. Hard to make that one relatable.

This is very controversial to a lot of people but I've thought this for a long time because I believe this has negatively affected my life on a personal level and many others I've heard talk about their sexuality. Plus there are sexual interests that are associated with some transgender expressions that are demonised as being 'fetishes' anyway. Then you're still seen as creepy and bad and expected to downplay certain things. There's also this idea that fetishes are purely sexual but they're not and they often have romantic elements for a lot of people.

Take the subreddit r/rolereversal for instance that's a romanticised version of a fetish. People who aren't super conservative would probably balk at the idea of that being considered a fetish because it's not super rare and it's not really harming anyone but it still falls into the ballpark. So I stumbled on this subreddit again recently and actually wrote this out earlier coincidentally:

I wish there was some kind of relationship focussed subreddit a bit like r/rolereversal but for non-binary people. Like more relationship dynamic subreddits. The non-binary subreddits that do exist haven't generally been relateable or useful to me when I've stumbled on them over the years (not that I've really browsed them excessively ever.) Probably stumbled on more relatable stuff looking up bigender on tumblr. But I want to find stuff more focussed on relationship dynamics anyway.

I know there are some non-binary people on the rolereversal subreddit but that's not really the point of it/main focus. Non-binary dating posts on other subreddits tend to consist of something like 'my straight boyfriend doesn't accept me and is transphobic' or 'I'm scared I'll never find someone because I'm attracted to men.' Or 'Is my boyfriend gay if they're in a relationship with me?' Then people will tell them to date trans/non-binary people if they're having issues, and that's about it.

I want to date someone who is more feminine though dynamic wise. Which rules out most trans guys even if I find them attractive (which I can do but usually don't. But even if I'm physically attracted there's still the dynamic issue.) I think probably in the past I wouldn't have cared as much or could have enjoyed the idea of two somewhat masculine people, but I have had relationships with guys in the past, and it didn't really work. Maybe because they're straight and there were sexual issues as well I dunno. But at the same time I don't really want things to be black/white but I think it's an important component. Anyway it feels mostly hopeless because it's too late to be experimenting. I never really wanted to experiment irl. I mean I technically already did and that didn't work and it's like how many relationships do I have to have where it just feels wrong? I wanted to magically figure out what I wanted and how to find that before trying again which is probably unrealistic.

Then it seems like pursuing a relationship with someone transfemme just gets you called a chaser 9/10. I saw some tiktok with this trans woman recently who went on a date with a cis lesbian woman and at one point she mentioned that she'd dated a bunch of trans women in the past which I assume she stupidly brought up because she thought it would be reassuring or something? Like 'I don't mind' (but no trans women hate that lol.) And then she was like in the video 'I'm never dating a cis woman again.' :/

It's not much better if you're afab and non-binary from what I've seen. Maybe that's just because people bring up examples where people use really clunky language like that twitter thread I brought up before where they worded things awkwardly and people were threatening them with violence and saying that 'theyfab chasers are the most evil demographic in the world' lol. There were loads of responses and all but one I think incredibly negative.

And this kind of thing is all I see. People yelling at people for how their sexuality works, or talking about how transphobic their cis partners are. There's actually no advice or useful discussion anywhere. That I've ever stumbled on lol. It almost seems impossible I think though for some people.

[Nyctophilia]

I was worried my milk bottle might fall off the edge of the counter so I imagined an alien intermediary came to talk to the 'Human Gods.'


You are God but not in the grandiose sense you like to imagine where you attempt to stand out and believe you're superior to everyone else in your species, but collectively where everything you imagine - every daydream and nightmare that occupies your mind - becomes a reality. Not an alternate reality, not your alternate reality. You are building reality itself.

There were always many mundane thoughts 'What would happen if the milk bottle fell off the edge of the counter before you screwed the lid back on while you took your eye off it to quickly put something in the bin?' Sometimes you're even somewhat conscious of that 'I wonder if there's an alternate reality where that happened to me?' You make it about you again of course because everything is about you.

The idea that you could really have control on a larger scale is not one most of you want to entertain because that would make you responsible, and it would make you alone. So you come up with these conspiracy theories even among your own people - trying to figure out who's really in control. What demonic supernatural force they work for. And what the plan really is. The irony is you're all correct simultaneously. You are all creating reality.

Right now most of you have lost the ability to imagine a future different from the present. When you do it's just fear and negativity. Seeking out intoxication and constant distraction from your own mind. Clinging to nostalgia at an ever increasing rate to combat your own loneliness. I wanted to know what led to that imbalance this time.

Some of you are self aware about that too in your own myopic way:

"The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations." - Mark Fisher. Ghosts of my Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures.

Maybe this was still somewhat a response to Francis Fukuyama who declared liberal democracy the end of history:

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." - Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

After all he'd mentioned him before in Capitalist Realism: is There no Alternative?

"Fukuyama's thesis that history has climaxed with liberal capitalism may have been widely derided, but it is accepted, even assumed, at the level of the cultural unconscious. It should be remembered, though, that even when Fukuyama advanced it, the idea that history had reached a 'terminal beach' was not merely triumphalist. Fukuyama warned that his radiant city would be haunted, but he thought its specters would be Nietzschean rather than Marxian. [...] a detached spectatorialism, replaces engagement and involvement. This is the condition of Nietzsche's Last Man, who has seen everything, but is decadently enfeebled precisely by this excess of (self) awareness."

But Fukuyama was also scared of the future (at this point it's really just me again critiquing Fukuyama lol):

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama made his now-famous pronouncement that because 'the major alternatives to liberal democracy had exhausted themselves,' history as we knew it had reached its end. Ten years later, he revised his argument: we hadn't reached the end of history, he wrote, because we hadn't yet reached the end of science. Arguing that the greatest advances still to come will be in the life sciences, Fukuyama now asks how the ability to modify Human behaviour will affect liberal democracy.

[...]

In Our Posthuman Future, one of the most important living social philosophers begins to describe the potential effects of the biotechnology revolution on the foundations of liberal democracy: the belief that all human beings are equal by nature.

There was a time when evolutionary theorists like V.C. Wynne-Edwards postulated the existence of species-level altruism, but modern kin selection theory argues against the existence of strong group-selection pressures. It postulates instead that altruism arises primarily out of the need of individuals to get their genes passed on to successive generations. Human beings will by this account be altruistic primarily to family members and other kin: a political system that forces them to spend their Saturdays away from their families, working on behalf of the 'heroic Vietnamese people,' will meet with very deep resistance.- Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution

And yet this isn't true for everyone.

The preceding example demonstrates the ways in which human nature and politics are intertwined: kin selection indicates that a political system that respects the right of people to follow their own individual self-interests and attend to family and friends before they attend to strangers halfway around the world will be more stable, workable and satisfying than one that does not. Human nature does not dictate a single, precise list of rights: it is both complex and flexible as it interacts with various natural and technological environments. But it is not infinitely malleable, and our underlying shared Humanity allows us to rule out certain forms of political order, like tyranny, as unjust. Human rights speak to the most deeply felt and universal Human drives, ambitions, and behaviours, will be a more solid foundation for political order than those that do not This explains why there are a lot of capitalist liberal democracies around the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century but very few socialist-dictatorships. - Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution

Of course this is somewhat paradoxical as anything Humans fight for, especially in great numbers, can't really be against Human nature and drives. Except perhaps if you believe this is true:

History has brought about huge changes in human perceptions and behavior such that a member of a hunter-gatherer society and the inhabitant of a contemporary information society seem in many respects to belong to different species. Evolving human institutions and cultural arrangements have produced different human moral attitudes over time. But nature puts limits on the kinds of self-modification that have hitherto been possible. - Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution

That some people are less Human than others. That some desires are less Human than others.

So if Human rights rest on a substantive concept of nature, what is that concept? Can it be defined in a way that does justice to everything that is known scientifically about Human behavior? Up to this point, I have not put forward a theory of Human nature, or even a definition of what Human nature is. There are many -- most commonly in the social sciences, but among natural scientists as well -- who would deny that Human nature exists in any meaningful way. Hence we need, in the chapter that follows, to examine what a species-typical behaviour is, and what it might be for our species.

The definition of the term human nature I will use here is the following: human nature is the sum of the behavior and characteristics that are typical of the human species, arising from genetic rather than environmental factors.

^ here he seems to allow for the idea that some thoughts/desires/behaviours that a Human displays could be inhuman because they're not typical.

This definition of Human is common. As an example if most female Humans don't have the desire to penetrate other people (which as far as I can tell they don't,) then any female Human who has that desire would not be Human. Or not entirely Human (even though penetration isn't a behaviour unique to Humans in the first place.) Many people define Humans as being 100% sexually dimorphic so anyone who deviates from gender norms - especially in a sexual context - become alien others. Even moreso if they modify the body or language to highlight this fact. We are pushing an inhuman agenda. This is just a very common politically current example but there are lots and lots of examples of this ranging from people who display emotions differently (common for autistic people who are seen as robotic and alien,) to most people engaging in criminal behaviour, to various ideological or spiritual beliefs which are defined as inhuman etc.

Quotes about Steven Wilson and his music (but I mentioned all this before it's just such a perfect example of what I'm talking about):

I love his music but there's something about it that seems alien. He doesn't seem to understand love, sex, loss and life. It all sounds great but it comes off as though he's playing a part like an actor and not emoting like a human. Am I alone in these thoughts?

Better than most prog bands sure. Doesn't take much though. Can't hold a candle to Cohen or Cave. He doesn't rock hard enough; he doesn't FEEL it. He's a lame alien

No, I feel like the way you describe it is perhaps approaching his songs/lyrics from the wrong way of looking at it.

He's a storyteller. His songs are 99% of the time telling a story from a character's point of view. A lot of these characters are fundamentally flawed (arent we all aha), and that alien vibe you get is often because his "characters" are so disconnected from what we think of as "normal."

I don't think he's just playing a part, he's setting the scene for situations

Some of his music has some genuine emotion, like Together We're Stranger, Blackwater Park, or PT albums like Signify, Lightbulb Sun, and Metanoia (btw, why does nobody ever talk about Metanoia, it's fantastic). Most of his recent work is still good but Happy Returns doesn't make me feel sad and Permanating doesn't make me feel joyful. It's all a little flat in terms of emotional impact. Maybe there's a chance of that old spark coming back with the new album.

Song was pretty relatable to me (because nothing changes for me,) and actually one of my favourites from that album I go back to a lot lol:



Also kind of weird that the music video came out a bit after I had a haircut + colour similar to this (I also have a round face.) The album was loosely based on a real person though Joyce Carol Vincent who didn't look anything like the person in this video.

He wrote a song from the pov of someone waiting for aliens to come pick them up after a war too lol:



People lose their Humanity every day. And many people don't care (that's why the subreddit voidpunk exists for example.) I'm ambivalent myself about whether it matters. The people who argue the most forcefully for strict objective categorisation that you can't deviate from are the quickest to chuck people out of the Human species category when it suits them.

After that Fukuyama attempts to expand the definition of typical:

The word typical requires some explanation. I use the term in the same way that ethologists do when they speak of "species-typical behavior" (for example, pair-bonding is typical of robins and catbirds but not of gorillas and orangutans). One common misunderstanding about the "nature" of an animal is that the word implies rigid genetic determination. In fact, all natural characteristics show considerable variance within the same species; natural selection and evolutionary adaptation could not occur were this not so. This is particularly the case with cultural animals like human beings: since behaviors can be learned and modified, the variance in behavior is inevitably greater and will reflect the individual's environment to a greater extent than for animals incapable of cultural learning. This means that typicality is a statistical artifact--it refers to something close to the median of a distribution of behavior or characteristics.

But a lot of people don't operate that way. They stop at 'typical.' And you can become less Human categorically in people's minds. You can dehumanise Humans, and people do this all the time with their political opponents to justify oppression and violence against groups of people.

The distinction between therapy and enhancement has been attacked on the grounds that there is no way to distinguish between the two in theory, and therefore no way of discriminating in practice. There is a long tradition, argued most forcefully in recent years by the French postmodernist thinker Michel Foucault," which maintains that what society considers to be pathology or disease is actually a socially constructed phenomenon in which deviation from some presumed norm is stigmatized. Homosexuality, to take one example, was long considered unnatural and was classified as a psychiatric disorder until the latter part of the twentieth century, when it was depathologized as part of the growing acceptance of gayness in developed societies. Something similar can be said of dwarfism: human heights are distributed normally, and it is not clear at what point in the distribution one becomes a dwarf. If it is legitimate to give growth hormone to a child who is in the bottom 0.5 percentile for height, who's to say that you can't also prescribe it for someone who is in the fifth percentile, or for that matter in the fiftieth? Geneticist Lee Silver makes a similar argument about future genetic engineering, saying that it is impossible to draw a line between therapy and enhancement in an objective manner: "in every case, genetic engineering will be used to add something to a child's genome that didn't exist in the genomes of either of its parents."

[...]

It has often seemed to me that the only people who can argue that there is no difference in principle between disease and health are those who have never been sick: if you have a virus or fracture your leg, you know perfectly well that something is wrong.

And even in the cases where the borderline between sickness and health, therapy and enhancement, is murkier, regulatory agencies are routinely able to make these distinctions in practice. Take the case of Ritalin. As noted in Chapter 3, the underlying 'disease' that Ritalin is supposed to treat, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), is most likely not a disease at all but simply the label that we put on people who are in the tail of a normal distribution of behavior related to focus and attention. This is in fact a classic case of the social construction of pathology: ADHD was not even in the medical lexicon a couple of generations ago. There is, correspondingly, no neat line between what one might label the therapeutic and enhancement uses of Ritalin. At one end of the distribution, there are children almost anyone would say are so hyperactive that normal functioning is impossible for them, and it is hard to object to treating them with Ritalin. At the other end of the distribution are children who have no trouble whatsoever concentrating or interacting, for whom taking Ritalin might be an enjoyable experience that would give them a high just like any other amphetamine. But they would be taking the drug for enhancement rather than for therapeutic reasons, and thus most people would want to prevent them from doing so.

What is more important is to think about the design of institutions that can make and enforce regulations on, for example, the use of preimplantation diagnosis and screening for therapeutic rather than enhancement purposes, and how those institutions can be extended internationally.

The politics of Ritalin is very revealing of the impoverished thought categories by which we have come to understand character and behavior, and it offers us a foretaste of what will come if and when genetic engineering, with its potentially far more powerful behavioral enhancements, becomes available. Those who believe that they are suffering from ADHD are often desperate to believe that their inability to concentrate or to perform well in some life function is not, as they have often been told, a matter of poor character or weak will but the result of a neurological condition. Like gays who point to a "gay gene" as the source of their behavior, they would like to absolve themselves of personal responsibility for their actions. As the title of one popular recent pro-Ritalin book puts it, "it's nobody's fault"

When you think about it this is a surprisingly anti-right wing core view. 'Hierarchy exists but do not attempt to enhance or change yourself.' He claims to be a liberal, probably wouldn't consider himself 'right wing' but that doesn't really matter because right wing people (pro hierarchy,) are all on this train. There are limits they've created to what people should be able to do and modify. Not just technical but ethical. "Even if it's possible don't do it."

Fukuyama quotes this in the book:

"All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape." Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1.3

It's a kind of ongoing Ship of Theseus dilemma too. 'We have to define what is Human. If people change too much in too many ways are they still Human?'

This thought process of separating enhancement from therapeutic is applied to gender transition too where you must be suffering from extreme gender dysphoria in order to modify your body and modifying social categories (such that a trans woman with a beard can go into the women's toilets,) receives the greatest push back in some sense because that's basically just creating an entirely new game. This is a debate within the trans community too not just outside of it. Dysphoria is something most trans people struggle with to varying degrees (both social and physical dysphoria.) But it's obvious to me now that nothing makes transphobic people more pissed off than someone who just seems happy and isn't emphasising their own suffering.



^ Not even limited to this really people hate people who seem naive and bubbly. It's just worse in this case because she's talking about trans stuff. Also the amount she talks about it annoys people too. Just like people are annoyed by autistic people because they like to talk about their special interests a lot.

Also on the one hand I do think it's insane that she was invited to the white house but on the other she had such insane backlash from conservatives for no reason that it made sense based on the tribal nature of the culture war and also it's very similar I think to the reason BTS were invited to the White House - a South Korean boyband derided globally for encouraging men to be feminine, and a group that is mostly loved by teenage girls. Who we've all decided we hate for some reason. There's nothing edgier than being a teenage girl.





'I thought this was going to be a sequel to the art of war it kind of is but like it literally isn't.' 🤣

Nothing edgier well at least where conservatives are concerned. Oh and they know this that's why they're ironically going to Barbie films now. 'My producers dragged me' OK.



In that video too when discussing Dylan Mulvaney and the tampon thing:

It's not that we feel threatened. It is that it feels like you are making light of being a woman. Like anyone can be one. like a tampon makes you a woman. Having a period is a sacred thing for women. Sometimes it has brought woman trauma starting their periods. It is one thing that makes us a woman and it is emotional. Some women don't even like to talk about their periods. It is extremely personal.

I know this is common and I also hated the idea of starting it. My mum has done that kind of thing - whispering in public in shops or whatever about it before. I think I probably learnt about it from school first? Many years before I started it since I didn't start mine until I was 13 and a 1/2 but there were lots of girls who started at age 10 or so. Even years after I started my period I denied having started it to another girl asking about it because I didn't want people to know I guess she suggested I see a doctor haha. I also tried to pretend it wasn't happening the first time I had one because I didn't want to talk to my mum about it so I ended up using some free pads we were all given at school and then that wasn't enough so I bled everywhere and had to hide that. Eventually I developed my own coping mechanism where I see it as an edgy thing that has the power to creep other people out which makes it powerful - also bleeding is pretty metal and demonic. But of course I do still occasionally have disgust if I bring it up in convos irl. None of what I've just mentioned is ideal obviously. The opposite extreme 'oh it's sacred and feminine #goddess cult~' isn't good either imo because it's still not neutral. Feeling so ashamed and weak etc isn't ideal. Making the case that this defines women seems chauvinistic or potentially just another case of defining suffering as womanhood (if you feel bad about periods.)

Also in spite of what I just mentioned Dylan's comments didn't bother me at all. As long as she's not chasing me around trying to force tampons on me when I didn't bring it up, which was not what she was suggesting, I don't care. I'm a bit weird though (LOL OBVIOUSLY.) But I kind of think guys with period fetishes are cute anyway (and that's what's triggering most people here obviously.) I found some website where someone was talking about that before. Not something I'd personally want to engage in with someone directly, but his general thoughts about the development of this etc were cute. Like you could tell it was a kind of submissive thing for him so it wasn't threatening to me personally.

There was a 'luxury portaloo' (that's how the company branded itself,) I used recently which had separate male and female toilet rooms with multiple cubicles. I was there with my brother. The water didn't work in the male toilet so my brother decided to go into the female toilet. I usually go in female toilets in public as it gets less questioning. I went into the male toilet after that because I wanted to know what he was talking about when he said it had less cubicles and wasn't as nice as the female one. No one was around and so none of this mattered at all. He said 'there aren't as many cubicles because there are urinals.'

Earlier that day we'd been talking about something else and he mentioned some awkward encounters in male toilets he'd had before because of the social norm where everyone uses a urinal. Like one time trying to use a hand dryer that was placed right next to one. Not always enough room. He doesn't like using them. This isn't the first time I've heard him bring up his discomfort with urinals either over the years. I commented that I found it amusing that so many men have a kind of pathological fear of being gay for all kinds of silly reasons (just check out the 'fellas is it gay' meme lol birthdays are 'gay,') but then just get their dicks out together in public because it's a social norm.

"That's a bit weird innit?"

But that's because they don't worry about being gay. They worry about seeming like an effeminate homosexual male who bottoms during sexual intercourse. They worry about being seen as feminine and weak.

(Also yes this whole situation was a really weird [BEEP] example of synchronicity.)

Fukuyama also quotes this in a section titled 'why we should worry'

"Take Ectogenesis. Pfitzner and Kawaguchi had got the whole technique worked out. But would the Governments look at it? No. There was something called Christianity. Women were forced to go on being viviparous." Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

This is another serious concern people have atm. Surrogacy, the idea of artificial wombs and womb transplants all attract quite a lot of backlash and concern.

Fukuyama doesn't seem entirely opposed to the idea of genetic engineering? But is emphasising caution.

Many kinds of characteristics that a parent might want to give a child have to do with the subtler elements of personality whose benefits are not as clear-cut as looks or intelligence. Parents may be under the sway of a contemporary fad or cultural bias or simple political correctness: one generation may prefer ultrathin girls, or pliable boys, or children with red hair--preferences that can easily fall out of favor in the next generation. One could argue that parents are already free to make such mistakes on behalf of their children and do so all the time by miseducating them or imposing their own quirky values on them.

As noted in Chapter 3, we are already using psychotropic drugs to androgynize our children, giving Prozac to depressed girls and Ritalin to hyperactive boys. The next generation may for whatever reason prefer supermasculine boys and hyperfeminine girls. But you can always stop giving drugs to children if you don't like their effects. Genetic engineering, on the other hand, will embed one generation?s social preferences in the next.

Parents can easily make wrong decisions concerning the best interests of their children because they rely on advice from scientists and doctors with their own agendas. The impulse to master human nature out of simple ambition or on the basis of ideological assumptions about the way people ought to be is all too common.

Brings up David Reimer who transphobic people (or just anyone who dislikes androgyny really,) like to use to argue against people choosing certain things for themselves that go against sex norms.

In his book As Nature Made Him, the journalist John Colapinto describes the heartbreaking story of a boy named David Reimer, who had the double misfortune of having his penis accidentally cauterized as a baby during a botched circumcision and falling under the supervision of a noted sex specialist at Johns Hopkins University, John Money. The latter stood at one extreme of the nature-nurture controversy, arguing throughout his career that gender identities are not natural but constructed after birth. David Reimer provided Money with an opportunity to test his theory, since he happened to be one of a pair of monozygotic twins and thus could be compared with his genetically identical twin brother. After the circumcision accident, Money had the boy castrated and oversaw the raising of David as a girl named Brenda.

Brenda's life became a private hell because she knew that, despite what her parents and Money told her, she was a boy and not a girl. From an early age she insisted on urinating standing up rather than
sitting down. Later,

Enrolled in Girl Scouts, Brenda was miserable. "I remember making daisy chains and thinking, If this is the most exciting thing in Girl Scouts, forget it," David says. "I kept thinking of the fun stuff my brother was doing in Cubs." Given dolls at Christmas and birthdays, Brenda simply refused to play with them. "What can you do with a doll?" David says today, his voice charged with remembered frustration. "You look at it. You dress it. You undress it. Comb its hair. It?s boring! With a car, you can drive it somewhere, go places. I wanted cars"

The effort to create a new gender identity wreaked so much emotional havoc that by the time Brenda reached puberty, she broke free of Money and had her sex change reversed through penis reconstruction; today David Reimer is reportedly a happily married man.

Of course two years after this book was published, he committed suicide. Just like Mark Fisher.

Nowadays it is much better understood that sexual differentiation begins well before birth, and that the brains of human males (as well as other animals) undergo a process of "masculinization" in utero when they receive a bath of prenatal testosterone. What is noteworthy about this story, however, is that Money could assert for almost fifteen years in scientific papers that he had succeeded in changing Brenda's sexual identity to that of a girl, when exactly the opposite was the case.

Me and my brother are both more androgynous than him. He seemed like a very masculine person. My brother is mostly masculine but still went through a phase of playing with and looking after a baby doll as a kid. I liked toy cars and dolls and I always wondered in the back of my mind what the point of brownies (girl scout equivalent in UK,) was when we mostly played inside and never did... Anything. I don't really remember doing much of anything. We role played Harry Potter once at this camp during the weekend which was fun but we never actually went camping or did anything outside much at all (we'd just sleep in dormitories at this one place with bunkbeds when we went there.) I always remember wondering why we never actually went camping. 'Isn't that what kids in these groups are supposed to do? Why do we spend most weeks inside doing random things?' There were badges we'd get for doing certain things and I know I got a bunch but I have no memory of any of that either. So I assume it wasn't a formative experience really lol.

There were these two girls who were friends and would always wander off and just play together lol one had this beanie baby she'd bring everywhere and was very special to her. I only liked going because I got to hang out with my cousin who I was close to... After she left (she was older than me, so aged out of it before me,) the whole thing became less interesting but I kept on with it till I guess the following year. I was made the leader of one of the groups or something by this point though I don't really remember that meaning anything significant and like I say most of my memories are vague lol. Also there was this incredibly cringe initiation ritual essentially with some kind of motto involving the queen I think lol.

So at this point I should probably also point out that the particular brownies I went to was ran by my aunt. My mum also helped out at certain points over the years on/off and my brother was there most of the time. I guess because he had nobody to look after him otherwise (I mean my dad was around but he worked though he finished at about 6-7pm and ???) But he also didn't really participate. I think sometimes socialised with the girls who wandered off and was kind of a irl troll sometimes. Which makes perfect sense to me given the dynamic. I'm sure there was some attempt to like create a narrative around that at some point but don't really remember. In this kind of limbo state where he's not really allowed to participate but also just is sometimes. When we went on trips he was there too.

One memory I have is of having to go to the toilets there late at night when most of the school was dark and creepy. I think either I imagined the possibility of it being haunted with ghosts, or someone did. Augmenting reality again.

So I think about that sometimes (including yesterday cause I saw some stuff while walking,) when I see certain activities for kids and teens about how boring/empty my childhood and especially teen years were in that regard. Like I made my own entertainment sure climbed trees, went to the park with family, messed around with scooters and skateboards, and played video games along with all the stereotypical girly stuff. Was a bit more adventurous when I left the country completely. I don't think my childhood before the age of 11 was bad I enjoyed it at the time, the only issue was bullying in school. But due to a combination of social anxiety, motivation issues, and just boring stuff being the norm I never really stuck with or in some cases even started doing anything most of the time when it came to clubs etc. This just got worse as I became a teenager.

Whether that was tap and ballet, fencing, acting stuff, music school (tbf my mum actually took me out of this after I missed a couple of weeks, but I was finding playing the recorder boring anyway,) cello lessons, netball - tbf netball is boring basketball, the anime and manga club I went to in sixth form once and then never returned to lol. The biggest issue was the presence of other people because of my personality and anxiety issues but I also don't stick with things most of the time not involving other people either (like teaching myself various programming languages, artistic stuff, writing, teaching myself to play the guitar, trying to use Reaper to make music. I think my record was the time I bought some knitting needles lol and then just never used them at all. Tons of unread/unfinished books too over the years.) My brother is very similar so it's partly genetic and/or shared environment factors I think (our dad is like this too.) I've been making gaming videos for a couple of years but already struggling with keeping up with that.

It's also like that Parks and Rec episode where Ron and Leslie have competing groups. Can't find all the relevant clips though:



Leslie's group is about maximising fun and Ron's about survival. Ultimately most of the people from Ron's group decide to go to Leslie's group. I would say my experience wasn't like either though as I have few memories, and most of the time it felt like very little was happening.

Leslie feels bad because Ron is left out so she ends up encouraging boys and girls who like the idea of Ron's activities to join up to his group. This would annoy a lot of people because you're not supposed to have mixed sex groups. They say while making absolutely no groups for androgynous people to even attempt at a compromise. Though of course that would be unfeasible in much the same way as trans sports categories are.



LOL April. Her character really resonates with me because she's completely demotivated and bored with life, and uses creepy edgy [BEEP] as a coping mechanism. I quote this show way too often but the reason I identify with it so much is because Pawnee reminds me of my hometown. It's like this place that everyone thinks is [BEEP] objectively it's really not the best, and I think being from somewhere like that might even contribute the most to this attitude. She's a purposefully extreme example of the type but very common.

She has to make up insane stuff to entertain herself and so does her best friend:



Orin is actually my favourite parks and rec character tbh lol. But he's barely in the show.

The best scene though is when Ron is like 'you forgot to paint a painting son.' And he's just standing in front of an empty canvas.



"I like people, places, and things. And Pawnee is my favourite place in the world~"

"What? We don't get cash this is for a fence? Oh my god... I quit. I quit."

"No I didn't win, but at least I didn't make any new friendships."

So I was walking with my brother and we ran out of footpath so we just started walking on the road verge and when a car passed we'd jump up onto the verge then continue walking on the road (it's much slower to keep walking on the verge. I mean it was raised and not flat or level with the road + stinging nettles, lots of overgrown bits + random holes etc) and at one point my brother wanted to turn back because we couldn't see that far ahead to know if the verge was big enough to continue doing that. But I was really determined at this point so was like 'well what if we get closer and look because we can't really see from here.' I wasn't 100% sure either but I did really want to continue. He was like 'we're not going to do this just because you really want to get to where we're going.' So we kind of debated this and in the end we just kept going and it was fine. And it was actually fun like an adventure. "A video game irl." Although in the end

I STILL DIDN'T SEE THE FUCKING MANSION LMFAO. (There's this place I keep trying to get to. I have similar issues in dreams sometimes though not this specific scenario. I'm probably going to wake up soon and realise my whole life has been a dream.) It was that hotel further away all along. And we got to the estate so late that the stuff that was there was closed anyway. But I did see some other cool stuff like this abandoned house that is now dangerous to go in (there were signs around,) and home to barn owls apparently. Lots of pheasants (I think they were pheasants,) around that look funny when they run.

And once again I'm reminded of this video because everyone's outlook is always negative:

[Doseone]

If I could be any animal which would it be? The human soul because there's almost no... half-life

[Nyctophilia]

People lose their Humanity every day. And many people don't care (that's why the subreddit voidpunk exists for example.) I'm ambivalent myself about whether it matters. The people who argue the most forcefully for strict objective categorisation that you can't deviate from are the quickest to chuck people out of the Human species category when it suits them.

Lol I just clicked on this video and the comments:

If you're as cute as she is, you could pretty much say anything and I'd agree with it.

she is saying good things, so true, but many cute people can be very devilish, or can be acting in such a way that is supporting their own interests. once a i talk to dybbuk at the stream, beautiful woman, but alas, a demon! she says good man buys a woman an apartment, and i think this is so true, and so on, but then aha! she disappears! not saying only woman can be dybbuk, a dybbuk is a soul with no vessel, non-binary in a western sense, i think that is the word you could use to describe that.

In Jewish mythology, a dybbuk (/ˈdɪbək/; Yiddish: דיבוק, from the Hebrew verb דָּבַק‎ dāḇaq meaning 'adhere' or 'cling') is a malicious possessing spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person.[1] It supposedly leaves the host body once it has accomplished its goal, sometimes after being exorcised.[2][3][4]

Traditionally, dybbuks tended to be male spirits who possessed women on the eve of their weddings, typically in a sexual fashion by entering the women through their vaginas, which is seen in Ansky's play.[9]

In psychological literature, the dybbuk has been described as a hysterical syndrome.[10]

...

I'll just pretend it's his terrible English lol. People love to do this though:

Christian minister and failed Republican politician E.W. Jackson made a stunningly stupid claim on his radio show this week, saying those who use the gender nonconforming "they/them" pronouns are doing so because they are possessed by multiple demons. "This whole thing of going to a plural pronoun," Jackson said, "to me, it is a subconscious spiritual admission of demon possession by multiple demons." "The only single individual I'm familiar with who spoke from the plural pronoun was Legion," he added, referencing the Biblical story where Jesus cast demons out of the man. "Think about that: You're not to be referred to by the single 'he' or 'she' but the plural pronoun 'they.' Who is the 'they' in there? We know who the 'they' in there is: a bunch of devils," he concluded.

Florida Republican apologizes for anti-transgender 'demons' and 'mutants' comments

Transgender people and allies were at the public hearing on Monday to share their stories in opposition to the bill when Barnaby made his comments: "I'm looking at society today and it's like I'm watching an X-Men movie it's like we have mutants living among us on planet Earth," Barnaby said.

He later went on, "I'm not afraid to address the dysphoria or the dysfunction. The Lord rebuke you, Satan, and all of your demons and all of your imps will come and parade before us. That's right I called you demons and imps who come and parade before us and pretend that you are part of this world."

Oh yeah I liked Legion in the Marvel show. Not all devils also some angels. I'm an anti-villain or an anti-hero. I'm not famous enough for history to ever decide which.

Anyway no more X-Men for Republican politicians (failed or otherwise.) Needs to take some notes about delivery he fucked up his material lol:



Or at least be like these guys fucking hilarious. Get on their level (this was actual homophobia + transphobia not intended to be comedy lol but it's just so ridiculous and he's also terrible at metaphor just keeps picking up phallic vegetables):



That second guy I quoted is British and a Floridian. I will not be lectured about evil or chaos by you sir. Also on behalf of the UK I'm sorry Florida. God knows you had enough problems with Florida Man.

Later in the hearing, he apologized for his comments.

"I would like to apologize to the trans community for referring to you as demons," he said.

I don't see the point in apologising. He obviously still believes it so what's the point?

After this I was suggested a video about Gia Carangi who I hadn't heard of before and I only clicked because the thumbnail intrigued me. I'm not posting the video because she's obviously on drugs and it's pretty sad.

Some of the comments were like this:

When I discovered Gia at 10 years old I immediately fell in love. I did a research project on her in High School. I didn?t have many [BEEP] role models and Gia was openly interested in women from the age of 13. I once had a girlfriend named Hilary who was also obsessed with Gia. We both found her grave in bucks county back in 2008 and left yellow roses (Gia?s favorite) Gia also became an addict and so did I. Now I?m almost 10 years sober off drugs and alcohol and in school for film. As a filmmaker and a [BEEP] sober person, through my creativity and work in the recovery community I hope to honor her and Hilary?s memory (unfortunately, she passed at age 37 in Dec 2021)

What exactly do you mean when you say queen, you mean you're a lesbian? And all this isn't really something to bragging about...its very sad

I think you meant "Queer" not "Queen". Yes, Queer. I am sending you love and light. i hope you can learn to accept others as I accept you.

I accept people just fine. I'll be honest, I don't have a problem with being gay, it's when the person doesn't know who they are and go back n forth, today I'm a girl tomorrow a guy. Or I'm neither nor, I want to be labeled as they or them. That....is where it gets ridiculous!

So I started reading about Gia and noticed some things besides how tragic her life was and also don't start doing heroin ever but that's been known:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070325...s.asp?AID=2076

At school, she fell in with the Bowie kids - a disparate bunch of fans as obsessive as herself about the star, whose defiantly weird, high-glam style they emulated. For Gia, though, it wasn't just the platform shoes and provocative gear that attracted her, but Bowie's ambiguous gender play and outspoken bisexuality. 'Gia was the purest lesbian I ever met', a friend from that time later told Gia's biographer, Stephen Fried. 'It was the clearest thing about her. She was sending girls flowers when she was 13, and they'd fall for her whether they were gay or not'. Another pal described her tomboy persona and relaxed openness about her sexuality as reminiscent of the character Cay in the 1986 film Desert Hearts.

Gia and her bi-try Bowie-mad friends began to hang out in Philadelphia's gay clubs and bars, but though she was beginning to settle into her lesbian identity, Gia wasn't about to take up the accepted lesbian style.

'(Her) sophisticated androgyny led her to a new style of dressing', writes Fried. 'She had recently jettisoned her glitter clothes for a wardrobe of Army fatigues and men's pleated slacks, worn with a t-shirt or men's Oxford cloth shirt and Army or cowboy boots. And she never wore make-up, unlike all of the women, and many of the men she knew. It was a fashion statement that nobody in Philadelphia ? man, woman, straight or gay - had even thought of making'.

https://www.queerbible.com/queerbibl...y-hannah-hanra

Like many lesbians, Gia hung out at gay clubs, slightly in denial and unwilling to accept her own queerness, she "did not want to take up the accepted lesbian style".

This keeps popping up.

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2008/...ing-of-beauty/

IN HER TEENS, GIA CARANGI BECAME A BOWIE KID, A species pretty common to Philadelphia in the early 1970s. Singer-songwriter David Bowie had made two unheralded rock albums in 1969, but reached a mass audience only after reinventing himself as an androgynous rock'n'roll theater piece several years later. Rolling Stone assessed his career as almost single-handedly "redefining rebellion as entertainment, and entertainment as subversion."

Being a Bowie kid meant outrageous hair styles and hair colors, outrageous glitter makeup, outrageous posing. It also meant, for some kids, delving into the mysteries of sexual confusion; Bowie and his genderbending naturally attracted many teenagers curious about alternative sexual lifestyles.

Kathleen and Henry Sperr were convinced that David Bowie was at the root of Gia's rebellion and sexual confusion. "She got involved with rock concerts," Henry Sperr explains, "and a bunch of people who went to rock concerts. She got a Bowie haircut and that changed her personality completely. She seemed like a sweet young little kid before, and then afterward ? "

Afterward Gia emerged as a rebellious young woman who seemed as alienated from the Sperrs as David Bowie himself might have been. Like so many teenagers of her generation, Gia's attitude toward life, and especially toward her family, was reflected in the music of her favorite pop idols-the androgynous Bowie and the rebellious Rolling Stones.

Because she was convinced it was Bowie changing Gia, Kathleen decided to try to understand Bowie herself by attending his concerts with her daughter. "I learned to appreciate Bowie as a talent," she recalls, "and Gia was tickled to death. And her friends ? well, I always got along great with her friends. They thought I was really neat because I really tried to understand them."

"The mother would come to concerts," a friend of Gia's recalls. "It was so ridiculous. Gia would be high and the mother would be there thinking she was protecting her daughter. If her mother had been a little more accepting of her then, maybe Gia wouldn't have had to rebel so far."

During that time there was perhaps only one facet of Gia Carangi's life with which she seemed comfortable: her homosexuality. "She was the purest lesbian I ever met," recalls another friend. "It was the clearest thing about her. And she was very aggressive about it -- she was sending other girls flowers and poems when she was 14 years old."

It was one such advance that brought Gia's lesbianism to her mother's attention. In her daughter's room, Kathleen found a letter she had written to another girl, who had clearly spurned her. When confronted, Gia told her mother she was gay. Her mother did not believe it and, in fact, does not believe it to this day. "Gia led the gay lifestyle," she concedes, "but in her heart, I don?t think she was gay. She said she was, and clearly all her friends were gay, but I would not believe it. She probably hid behind being gay. If you were gay you didn't have to deal with a man-woman relationship. If you were gay you didn't have to deal with being like everyone else and being normal." It was with this attitude that Kathleen dragged Gia to a counselor for the better part of a year. The therapy was finally discontinued when all concerned realized that Gia was making up stories to tell the counselor.

"She always seemed a little insecure -- she was quiet, introverted, shy. Her home life seemed very hard for her. And she had a way of looking at you at certain times -- this look -- it was the face of a little girl. She learned how to drop it for the camera, but sometimes I would still see it."

^ There's a lot of this sort of thing (but tbf this was coming from a woman she was dating who was 21..):

"She was not a typical 15-year-old," Beverly recalls. "There was always a real child in her. She loved to wrestle, she was very mischievous and had all this energy. But there was also something sad about her. It wasn't really blatant --she was always in a good mood -- but it was there."

Gia and Sharon represented something of a challenge to the lesbian scene of the day, which was still very stereotypically "butch" and "femme," with one very masculine partner and one very feminine. In reality, Gia and Sharon were that way too. But they were perceived as a "femme-femme" couple because Gia was too beautiful to appear truly butch.

I'm not going to speculate on her sexuality a lot of people seem to have because she had sex with men in her life. That's not overly important the important thing is that the style she adopted is more common for bisexual women like say damn what's her name lol... Kristen Stewart. Lots of bisexual women adopt more androgynous styles or go back and forth between aesthetics like Halsey. They're not all bisexual obviously King Princess does this too and is a genderqueer lesbian. I'm non-binary and don't label my sexuality and have a similar style. They hate the ambiguity though. The same people who would have been pissed off about her then are now pissed off about this:

Straus is "emotionally lesbian," she says, but "culturally" a gay man: "Not really a woman, I've never been a woman. I'm a drag queen." In other words, she's a young, queer, female-presenting alpha, gleefully claiming a cultural patch of ground once mostly reserved for male artists.

'I came to terms with the fact that I am fully allowed to be both, in that I am so confident now in being feminine, but in this way that there's humility to it knowing that I could never wake up and put on a dress and walk outside,' she says. 'And yet, I can get on a set and turn it out. It's like using my body as a prop. Clothing is armour. Make-up is armour. It?s everything. I really have figured out my own juj, and now I feel like I act the most feminine as far as my personality. And yet, my physical appearance is very in-between.'

And honestly she seems more self confident and happy than most people can tolerate, and that makes them hate this even more lol. Same with Dylan Mulvaney.

LENT: Who is The L Word character you most relate to?

STRAUS: Although I am non-binary, I'm way too femme to be a Shane. Shane is also calm. That's what my girlfriend said yesterday. She was like, "Girl, you look like Shane kind of, but you are nothing like her personality." And I was like, "Thank you."

LENT: That's an astute observation. Some people just see a shag haircut and think, "They're a Shane."

my porter cover by @quinnwilsonn
happy non binary day I'm so grateful to be smack dead in the middle of the gender spectrum. It's fun to be nothing and everything at the same time

The L Chat website:

She looks like she smells and her music sucks, that's why she's not popular here

What the [BEEP] does this mean? She needs to put down the ketamine and [BEEP] theory

DA. She call herself a lesbian sometimes... And sometimes she said she feels like a drag man... Then she literally comes and says [BEEP] like
She is a "young, [BEEP] female-presenting alpha" and that she's "emotionally lesbian" but "culturally a gay man"... So pretentious lmao. And then it's the "Non-binary Day" and she says that she's always been Non-binary.

I don't think she said that she's a 'female alpha' actually that was the interviewer's interpretation lol... I don't think these people would be a fan of this track lol:



Reminding me of this too lol which talks about the generational shift there in attitude:

It was extremely uncool to brag about yourself or seem confident it was part of the concept to be self effacing. These days the opposite is true. Caroline said it herself:

'17 year olds who present themselves as god's of the world straight out of the gate have a huge advantage and aren't looked down on.'

That would not have flown at all in the world they came up in.

By young people lol older people aren't a fan. Especially if the person is [BEEP] or black or overweight.

She's ok but she reminds me of one of those rich white girls in art school. There something try hard. also question how she got such massive money and backing behind her so fast. She's 19 it wouldn't surprise me if she's well connected. I mean even for lorde it took a year for her royals to get this much attention. There?s something off putting when someone gets hyped so much so fast.

When will these millennial/gen z women realize they will never ever be "one of the guys"? Non binary, drag girl, etc is the new "I'm NoT LiKE OTheR GiRls!" WOW you don't shave and you don?t own a bra...so fucking WHAT, kid?

I have never heard of this woman before, but clicking on that vid she looks like the female version of Napoleon dynamite

She looks like cole sprouse in that clip [rofl emoji]

^ this doesn't seem like an insult honestly he looks good, but I can tell they mean it as one lol....

This bit made up for having to see her hairy pits

They do like to talk about her body hair a lot.

I like her music but her videos always make me cringe a little bit. She tries too hard.
She could become more mainstream if her videos weren't so weird.

I find her a bit annoying and definitely not my type but I don't really understand all the "she's rich" criticisms. Taylor Swift grew up wealthy. Kristen Stewarts parents were both in the industry and she grew up in a multi million dollar home. Cara Delevingne's family has been immensely wealthy for generations. Those are all people who have or had popular threads on L Chat. Yeah, this girl is a bit much but she's one of the only popular youths out there dating women so it can't be a bad thing for us.

It's because she called herself genderqueer and expressed ambiguity about her gender identity. That entire forum is transphobic as fuck.

She is an annoying, pretentious trust fund baby. The "I'm a gay man in a woman's body" [BEEP] gave me so much second hand embarrassment. The industry tried shoving her down everyone's throats but it didn't work, lol.

Will she be the next Elliot?

^ Talking about Elliot Page I assume.

But people hate butch women too for copying men who are evil or for not being feminine because women are supposed to be feminine, and feminine women for conforming to gender roles - if you're [BEEP] and feminine you're attention seeking of course, and feminine men because they hate femininity and see it as weak and degrading, and trans people for a ton of different reasons but often the same reason they hate bisexuals - the ambiguity, trans women shouldn't have beards because they're not trying hard enough but if they are very feminine and pass they're conforming to stereotypes and saying all women are x, and trans men have to be super masculine or they're not real men but trans men usually aren't real men - they're not evil oppressors like cis men after all but they're also gender traitors and evil either because 'they chose to be men' or because 'you're abandoning the sisterhood cult' depending on whether the accuser is a misandric progressive or terf respectively and non-binary people are expected to be androgynous in a very particular way but generally rejected outright regardless but if you don't look androgynous 'how are you non-binary?' and if you do 'you're just saying all women have to look a certain way' and if you're amab (genetically male) you're not non-binary in the first place because non-binary people are all afab (genetically female) - you're a trans woman or a cis man, and they hate straight people for being evil oppressors, and sometimes even masculine cis men for being masculine and also for being evil oppressors. And they hate everyone for various other reasons too.

Love that for Humans.

Apparently Gia 'invented' the 'heroin chic' style which is bleak that they called it that considering her life/how she died. Also I think the shittiest part is that some people just look that way naturally (skinny, androgynous etc.)

The trend eventually faded, in part due to the heroin-related death of prominent fashion photographer Davide Sorrenti in 1997.[13][14] Journalist Amy Spindler described Sorrenti's death as "like a small bomb going off", extinguishing public denial of heroin use in the fashion world. The term heroin chic itself was coined at Sorrenti's wake by editor Ingrid Sischy, who commented: "This is heroin, this isn't chic. This has got to stop, this heroin chic." After his death, Sorrenti's mother, Francesca Sorrenti, led a public campaign against the use of heroin in fashion, after which the promotion of heroin chic subsided.[14] In 1999, Vogue dubbed Brazilian supermodel Gisele B?ndchen "The Return of the Sexy Model" and the end of the heroin chic era.[15]

Heroin chic is a style popularized in early-1990s fashion and characterized by pale skin, dark circles underneath the eyes, emaciated features, androgyny and stringy hair--all traits associated with abuse of heroin or other drugs.

No I'm naturally crazy and skinny actually.



That album had some really great songs actually.

[Nyctophilia]

I have a track record of dating very left wing women. Two of them went full lesbian, one was the "I'll sleep with whoever I want, you mean very little to me" type, and another was adamant she was lesbian even though admitting dating other women felt "awkward and unnatural" to her. My ex fiance who went lesbian later told me "you treated me way better than any of my girlfriends" and "girls suck" all the time. I realized I agree and haven't dated since. The world has truly lost it's mind. One girl told me I was a homophobe for not being interested in dating other guys. Suffice it to say I like being alone these days and spending time in nature. It's the only place where sanity still exists.

As a woman, I like being alone and in nature as well. I gave up on dating. Such a waste of time and energy. If I ever meet someone I like and he's available- great, if not- well....

We may all disagree and hate each other but we all avoid relationships and like spending time in nature. :')

Why not try dating a conservative leaning woman?

It's funny that he thinks that most young women (say below age 40,) aren't at least liberal at this point. There's an increasing political rift between men and women in at least the US and UK. I don't know how old that guy is but most guys prefer dating younger women so... Varies depending on where you live too of course.

Just stop dating green square red square is mostly straight:



lol....

I mean I'm green square and [BEEP] so it's legit. Not a lesbian though I'm much worse.

The YouTube algorithm has gotten scarily good at suggesting videos again:





"So you're a failure and you like looking at people with long hair and glasses and music?"

(I haven't watched either of these videos yet.)

Lol wait I wasn't even signed into my main YouTube account I use to watch most videos actually. What is happening. Maybe an IP thing.

I haven't started reading it yet, but I have sitting on my bookshelf "Art Sex Music" by Cosey of TG. I've heard that in the book Cosey doesn't have a lot of nice things to say about Gen. Gen was abusive towards Cosey. I think Gen was a very intelligent and interesting person, but I agree about the music being mid, even if influential. Maybe not a person you'd want to compare yourself with. I must also say I like your tree background while talking. It actually reminds me of some of Varg's videos back before he was banned from here.

"You might not wish to compare yourself to this person given their history of abusive behaviour and 'mid' music. But I'm going to compare you to the metal musician who killed a guy and set fire to several churches."

I love this timeline.

Also I had no idea who this person was but this is actually a famous black metal musician who is the granddaughter of some oil tycoon with a wikipedia page and I'm just like being suggested her videos where she rambles about random esoteric stuff and music lol. OK. I have a few thousand less subscribers on my random nobody channel it's a similar range though but my video views are a lot higher. I guess these things don't transfer from platform to platform though every time.

It's weird. This is really fucking weird.

Actually I think it's mostly her recent videos that have hardly any views she has some older ones with more views also music uploads have more views. It's still kind of weird though.

I wasn't sure if she was non-binary since she was discussing Genesis and then brought up non-binary people in that video but I think she's a trans woman.

[Nyctophilia]

She was rending a flat in Scotland and apparently her landlord went to prison for Human trafficking. Not overly surprised after the video before where she talked about how it was burgled. I remember thinking that sounded weird. Like why the [BEEP] did someone just leave a pair of shoes in there? And there were other things but my memory of that video is hazy now.

That guy in the top right photo I guess:

https://www.scotland.police.uk/what-...rt-in-glasgow/

Oh I was searching for an article lol and she linked on in the description anyway:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotla...5GXq7YbubedR2E

Jesus! I knew the UK had serious issues with migrant sex trafficking but it's blindsiding when it strikes so close! I'm from the US and keep up with the news over there and it's horrible. Hope you and the family are ok, as well as the victims, and that scumbag gets what's coming to him.

There are a disturbing amount of organised large scale sex crimes that happen here. Also slavery.

[Doseone]

This opinion might be a little bit controversial, but most humans don't deserve to live until old age. We kill so many animals, why do we think that we deserve long lives? Also, most people do very little to minimize human suffering. There are still people in the world dying of hunger/malnourishment. There are still people without access to clean water. Why do we think we deserve long/happy lives?

[Nyctophilia]

I love how this is only 'to all the men who are playing video games.' It's only a problem if you're a guy I guess lol.

The dragon metaphor is getting really old too lol. Not every video game is Skyrim.

Bro I work 50 - 60 hours a week, come home, study and work on gaining my Diploma in my field. Cook, clean, keep my relationship going. Let me play the damn game 😂

Nah bro you know the rules. As a man your hobbies can?t be 'fun' lol

My meaning is to live, survive and succeed in spite of those who don't want me to.

I wouldn't say this is my meaning but it would stop me from ever killing myself. The knowledge that so many people want people like me to die and wanting to spite those people is pretty powerful motivation to keep living actually lol.

Jordan Peterson is a genius

Indeed where would we be without the amazing advice of 'clean your room' and 'don't play video games.'

Also speaking of conservatives nagging she somehow managed to fit complaining about women who have a lot of sex, lesbians, trans people, and otherwise masculine women (you should be feminine,) into this video:



In a really fake forced way as well like 'oh and I was totally a tomboy in high school. Because of all the sluts! They forced me to be masculine so I wouldn't be seen as a slut!'

And as we all know there's definitely only two styles of dress overtly sexual and tomboy. Yup.



It doesn't count if a bunch of girls didn't force you into a feminine makeover at some point. Because that's what actually happens lol.

But no she doesn't have trad fem aesthetics it's true as she sort of points out, but she's still lecturing people lol. Clearly she needs to watch some Abby Shapiro videos on how to become a classic woman lol.

When will conservatives learn that the more you guys all nag the less I and everyone else wants to do anything you say?



Also there are studies that contradict all her points including a paper that shows that white women especially are less happier with kids. This idea that increasing depression is down to one specific thing can't really be proven anyway it's a convenient narrative. You could also argue it may have increased because of social media since the usage of that increased around the same time.

She's very out of touch too people in general really are having increasingly less sex:

Human sexual activity affects cognitive function, health, happiness and overall quality of life--and, yes, there is also the matter of reproduction. The huge range of benefits is one reason researchers have become alarmed at declines in sexual activity around the world, from Japan to Europe to Australia. A recent study evaluating what is happening in the U.S. has added to the pile of evidence, showing declines from 2009 to 2018 in all forms of partnered sexual activity, including penile-vaginal intercourse, anal sex and partnered masturbation. The findings show that adolescents report less solo masturbation as well.

The decreases "aren't trivial," as the authors wrote in the study, published on November 19 in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Between 2009 and 2018, the proportion of adolescents reporting no sexual activity, either alone or with partners, rose from 28.8 percent to 44.2 percent among young men and from 49.5 percent in 2009 to 74 percent among young women. The researchers obtained the self-reported information from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior and used responses from 4,155 people in 2009 and 4,547 people in 2018. These respondents to the confidential survey ranged in age from 14 to 49 years.

Surprised that people are masturbating less tbh but not surprised that people are having less sex.

My YouTube suggestions are just nagging for every gender now. Well sort of if you watch all of that but still no agender nagging. Agender people have the power to destroy the conservatives once and for all.

[Nyctophilia]

Lauren Boebert's lover Quinn Gallagher who she fondled in theater owns gay-friendly bar that hosted DRAG shows

Hmm she is hot. Terrible political opinions though.

Frankly though my biggest takeaway is that this happened at Beetlejuice the musical. There's a musical? I did not know. It does make sense though. Also she went to this musical? Hmm. I feel like it wasn't her idea. You know that meme that's like Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point. It's like that but with fun date ideas.

edit: Hold up how did they know I just posted this:

The meme has been referenced in regard to Donald Trump,[4][5] David Portnoy,[6] Mo Brooks,[7] Neil Gorsuch,[8] Matt Gaetz,[9] and Lauren Boebert.[10] While referencing the meme, writers at Mic and Vulture called the article "absolutely iconic"[11] and "one of the best articles to ever grace the internet",[12] respectively.

Lol obviously not but that's funny.

Also everyone is outraged about them feeling each other up at the musical which is apparently all ages so I've lost some interest in the musical now. Beetlejuice was a pervert really so it kind of fits the vibes lol.

I generally don't see the point of musicals that aren't Repo or Rocky Horror. PG musicals sound like a bad idea. I never watched the American Idiot musical but I guess that's mildly interesting since Green Day were my favourite band at one point as a teenager. I haven't seen any of it on YouTube because I figure if I ever get to watch it it would be better to just see it live.

Not pg lol:



At one point I helped fund the crowdfund of the Devil's Carnival so I have that on blueray I think. I'm not sure if there were multiple versions of it but I had one version. Think I only watched it once lol. Wasn't a huge fan but I did enjoy Repo. I did like this song though at the time:

I have to say, for this being a privately funded movie, I gave it easily a 5/5. It really is fantastic to watch and the singing is amazing. I must have watched it 20 times before I realized Hannah Wagner was in it.

Lol I never noticed that at all until reading some comment or something about it before. I mean I didn't know her full name initially anyway. I'm technically in a YouTube video with her lol but it was a collab video with a bunch of people and that was before she got somewhat famous so later that video got a bunch more views. It was very weird seeing she was in that though although it's a small role like 'oh yeah that's that person from YouTube lol.' She just disappeared too I think except the occasional horror film role. I assume she reconsidered the fame etc after her YouTube channel blew up so much and probably wanted to do other things.

Emilie Autumn was in it too but her music is really hit and miss for me in general so wasn't that into her in the film. I like these songs/performances:



^ this is like pure undiluted conservative trigger material haha. There was lots of stuff from before Tumblr took off and made certain subcultures more visible.





Definitely posted this before but I think she would be fun to see live but I didn't back in the day so I think that ship has sailed now. I kinda miss this aesthetic like dark cabaret mostly for nostalgia reasons. It was semi popular at one point mostly because of Panic! At the Disco. Oh I forgot Dresden Dolls actually had a video messing around with Panic! At the Disco lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0Teob57Kvw

Oh and yeah Alkaline Trio at one point lol:



I kind of used to dress like that at one point too lol. I had a steampunk themed faux corset thing (I'm not sure how to describe it had like metal things) and some other stuff.

But I'd guess this was probably partly because of Moulin Rouge the film and this etc:



This was funny too lol:



Also there are some songs from Chicago I liked when I had to watch that in school:

[Nyctophilia]

Huh didn't realise there was a remix by Dope Stars Inc.



I like this song by them:



They also had a music video filmed in The Sims 2 lol.



For some reason I thought Dope Stars Inc was this band but that's Deathstars lol:



^ I like this song but the lyrics are so funny lol

"When the dark does what the dark does best
It's darkness"

My second favourite cyanide song probably. The first is To The End of course:



to the vows you take
(And say goodbye) to the life you make
(And say goodbye) to the heart you break
And all the cyanide you drank

Forming a list of songs with cyanide in lmfao. My Chemical Romance also have a song called The End to make things potentially more confusing. It is not as good as To The End.

And there was a Sims 2 music video someone made with that Cyanide song that I stumbled on while trying to find the Dope Stars Inc one lol so even YouTube thinks they're the same, but that was fan made I think the Dope Stars Inc video was actually official.

So cheesy and camp lol.



This isn't the best example perhaps, but this is why I call metal straight camp lol.

[Heelsbythebridge]

Why did I go sleep on the couch last night instead of my bed?

[Otherside]

The story of Nico the XL Bully doing the rounds here. Seems he tore a child to pieces. Suddenly became aggressive out of nowhere. Turns out he is descended from Killer Kimbo. Dog was large, muscular. Everything you want in an XL Bully. Seems that Kimbo's offspring are unusually aggresive, likely the result of Kimbo being heavilly inbred (4 of his great grandparents appear to be the same person.

So, the American's stopped using Kimbo to breed more XL Bullies. What was it the British did?

A few days ago, we found ourselves silently observing an Instagram Live session featuring four different Bully XL breeders—three from the UK and one from the US. They were engaged in a frank discussion about their anticipated breeding programs’ future prospects. One UK breeder unfurled his dog’s pedigree, essentially a large piece of paper charting a family tree, and pointed to a name a few generations back: Kimbo.With a level of confidence that was somewhat startling, the UK breeder declared his desire to return to breeding from Kimbo’s line. The reaction from the US breeder was instantaneous and startling. Her face fell, reflecting what could only be described as utter horror. After an awkward silence, she firmly advised the UK breeder not to deal, under any circumstances, with any bloodline stemming from Kimbo.

Several UK breeders continue to disregard Kimbo’s disturbing legacy, choosing to incorporate his offspring into their breeding programs. The allure of Kimbo’s bloodline, renowned for its formidable size and sturdy build, seems to eclipse any underlying issues.

****ing idiots. Why am I not surprised.

Then we have MMB Marshall who apparently is a very popular XL Bully to breed with.

MBB King Marshall’s mother, known as MVP’s Dolly Parton, reveals an interesting lineage. Tracing the family tree back three generations, one finds the names Kimbo and his progeny, the Unstoppable Juggernaut. Examining the full pedigree discloses Kimbo’s lineage repeated four times across five generations. You also find MBB Camo, King Marshall’s paternal grandmother, which was the dog who’s offspring killed Megan Millner in 2020.

Turns out, majority of Bullies here are actually descendents from Kimbo himself, who all happen to have a certain type of name.

In the UK, we believe the majority of dogs can trace their origins to a limited number of foundation animals. The dogs that were imported back in 2014 to 2015. Looking as far back as 5-6 generations, it becomes evident that the same dogs recur consistently in every dog’s lineage. However, one dog stands out among all – Kimbo.

And whilst in America, we have -

There is a faction of US breeders deeply invested in the well-being of the breed and are actively participating in a study to investigate potential genetic issues with Kimbo’s offspring. They are also probing whether there might be something akin to the A22 gene in Belgian Malinois or rage syndrome in Cocker Spaniels prevalent in the American Bully population. They have examined other bloodlines and documented incidents involving dogs attacking people, suffering mental breakdowns, or killing other dogs on their premises. Many argue that temperament testing and selective breeding should now be the top priority, even ahead of physical health and structure.

In Britain, we have -

breeders fall into two distinct categories. Firstly, there are pandemic-era breeders who seem more focused on profit than breed health, with little understanding of genetics or temperament. They operate under the illusion that XLs were bred to be affectionate family pets, an idea bolstered by a network of illicit fertility clinics ready to stake their claim on the breed’s popularity. Secondly, you have the experienced breeders, many of whom are part of the UKBKC circuit. These breeders are aware of Kimbo’s lineage and actively seek it. We do not mince words here: we firmly believe that the majority of XL breeders have no regard for the breed’s health or the law.

And -

Instead of prioritizing health and temperament, the emphasis was disproportionately on size. Breeders sought to produce even larger dogs, advertising studs for their power, size, and “monstrous” strength. Features like the Merle color pattern, now associated with health issues, were intentionally bred to offer a unique selling point. Alarmingly, dogs as young as one year old were being used as studs, and female dogs were being bred in their very first season.

The toxic culture of Bully kennels can be best summarized by what’s become the gold standard of American Bully marketing: the classic shot featuring an XL Bully in sharp focus at the forefront, while an owner — or often an attractive woman or professional model — struggles to hold back the powerful animal, blurred in the background. More nefariously, one account with 100k followers even put dogs in traditional dog fighting poses complete with a scratch corner.

Of course, we buy these dogs because we want to look hard rather than actually get a pet, and for some reason, struggling to keep the animal on lead is a selling point. That's why we didn't buy a Labrador, and why we bought a pitbull-cross, even though we have multiple kids in the house and don't really have anywhere to fit a giant, 70kg dog.

In the midst of all this chaos, the biggest victim is the American Bully itself. From its very inception, the American Bully has been commodified, reduced to an accessory rather than appreciated as a living being with needs and feelings. The dog serves as a prop in social media posts, a status symbol, and ultimately, a means to make money for those who exploit it.

They're not completely wrong. Neither is this -

While there are no quick fixes or easy solutions, one thing remains abundantly clear: much of the chaos is self-inflicted. The American Bully community brought this upon themselves.

That groups twitter post as well -

Why did a breed, where the breeders often have face tattoos and who's ancestry studs are called: ULP’S LEGION, KING LIGER, PRISONBOUND BULLIES ALABAMA’S FINEST MOONSHINE, IRONTHRONE’S CHAINSAW, BLUEFIRE’S TERRORIST THREAT, POWERFULL BULLY BLACK MAMBA, DIEHARD STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON, IRON CROSS MAIDEN’S REVOLUTION, VAUGH’S MR ASSASSIN, DELA CRUZ’ DUNGEON 5150, EBI’S THE JOKER, ODD JOB, CHAIN GANG SILVER, BROOKSVILLE SCARFACE, SIR SMOKE ALOT, BIG BOY BRICK, SACRY BLUE D L'EXL DES TITANS, SCORPION KENNELS PARIS HILTON, HATFIELD MONSTER MUTT, SHOGUN WARRIOR, ARNOLD THE TERMINATOR, CUTTHROAT KURUPTION, THE SAVAGE OF MOTOWN KENNELS, KING SABRE, DARKEST DAYS DRACO, BEAUTY OF THE BEAST, HMONG WARRIROR, BRINGING THE PAYNE not raise a single red flag with anyone?

I wasn't going to say it, but...

[Doseone]

This opinion might be a little bit controversial, but most humans don't deserve to live until old age. We kill so many animals, why do we think that we deserve long lives? Also, most people do very little to minimize human suffering. There are still people in the world dying of hunger/malnourishment. There are still people without access to clean water. Why do we think we deserve long/happy lives?

Actually, I take this back. Everyone deserves to live long/happy lives. Although it's not possible due to some people's brains being fucked up. Unless we come up with a way to fix people's brains, there is always going to be criminal behavior/chaos. Nobody truly deserves to suffer.

[Nyctophilia]

I think the most disgusting and heinous thing Jordan Peterson has ever said is that feminists have an unconscious desire for brutal male domination because they don't criticise Islamists or Islamic regimes. I was watching an interview with him where he said that. It sounds like something a very online misogynist would argue (they often argue feminists have a subconscious desire to be raped.) It's made my opinion of him much lower because it reminds me of various online anon idiots. But it's also just completely nonsensical as feminists don't agree with islamists even if they don't criticise them. And they don't criticise them due to some combination of fear, lack of relevance to their everyday life because they don't live in those countries, and in some cases ideologically placing them in a category that's considered vulnerable because they're a minority group in the West.

The more extreme feminists would castrate every man if they could (at least metaphorically, but if they're that extreme not just metaphorically honestly. I've heard some people argue in favour of that...) and that does include and even especially mean 'men like that.' But I'm sure they don't focus on distant targets they can't take down because they're not delusional and a better strategy would be convincing women in those countries to deal with problematic men not criticising those men. I mean what's criticising them going to do lol? 'Oh no the white women halfway across the world are mad at us... We will have to change now!" Lol no. You influence the women in those countries to take action.

That's also why they spend more time reporting on and writing papers about dissident gender related movements within foreign cultures. Like the nisu subculture in China. In China they'll do that and then the state will intervene by eg: shutting down fanfiction websites and going after obsessive kpop fans and kpop groups lol. Because they are a threat but it's difficult. Much harder to gain any traction in a conservative Islamic country but obviously there's been a lot of pushback in Iran recently which Western feminists have spoken about quite a bit actually but I think this might have been after the interview where he said that not 100% sure. I mean from the looks of it he's been saying similar stuff in several discussions since at least 2018 but the more recent video interview I was watching was from 2021.

It is not like feminists are agreed on the topic about 10 years ago there were a number of protests like this as well:



And the response from Western men was like this:

This is what happens to girls who grow up without proper father figures who love them

That is when reality hits.

Peace be upon my Muslim brothers. As a Christian, thank you for getting some hits in.

Quick to put the boots in weren't they? These women showed a heroic level of bravery here.

What bravery ? More like degeneracy.

Hahaha why did they kick her 😂 that took me by surprise

because their religion isn't inline with feminism ideology...

Feminist sick toxic

Jordan Peterson: See look! She's being brutally dominated just like she obviously wanted.

er I think they might be lesbians

Lol these comments.

Though I'm not a feminist since I don't agree fully with the ideology, I just enjoy the destruction of 'tyrannical/hegemonic masculinity' myself, or of men acting in service of it. Possibly too much. There has been a certain porn scenario recently involving a soldier being transformed + forced to convert to the opposite side + feminisation themes... 'You were just going to be canon fodder now we've made you into something way better.' 👀 Anyway...

Actually technically I had a semi-lucid dream related to that too (well maybe, that part was hazy in my memory when I wrote it down. I think the overall symbolism is still there regardless.)

I was watching TV (only it was more like being online,) and this guy he'd posted this image of himself with like four photos and saying that he was a virgin at the time all these photos were taken but not the last one.

And I was like 'WHAT THE **** YOU WERE A VIRGIN WHEN THE THIRD PHOTO WAS TAKEN BUT YOU'RE SO HOT' because he was like slim and had long black hair and was basically a hot goth.

So anyway then the guy appears and we end up in my room but then it's not entirely clear if he's into me or not and then I'm also unsure how we can have sex, and then I look at him and he has a beard and I'm like 'oh no' because I want to date the goth guy but now he has a beard. [...]

Then a bit later I have some kind of false awakening where I'm explaining this dream.

Only I didn't wake up and then at some point he was back and explaining that nobody liked him before and he met some guy in a park and changed his outlook (maybe he also joined the army but that's kind of vague in my memory.) Then he was successful with women. And then I guess because of the false awakening thing maybe it was semi lucid now it wasn't entirely because I don't think I knew I was dreaming, but I seemed to have more control. So after that I decided to alter the dream and try and convince him to wear a certain outfit that was inspired by a pornographic image I like where there's this goth person surrounded by dicks wearing fishnets and stilettos and a bikini (or something I dunno exactly,) and partly another image I had in mind (was some Loki fanart,) like two of them sort of combined, but he got really into the idea and got aroused.

While trying to find that dream I discovered this one from 2015 again lol:

Day 2 and getting worse:

I dreamt that I found out that this really great guy I went to uni with who I haven't spoken to in years that was really friendly and easy going, killed himself to avoid being killed by the US army for desertion because he couldn't take it anymore.

And I was like oh my god his girlfriend must feel awful (cause he's been in a relationship with this woman in real life for over half a decade now I guess)

I was really torn up about this in dream and then and this is odd as this has never happened before [username] you were there as one of your avatars I think, along with someone I used to watch on YouTube, turns out you both had to watch him die so sorry about that but then you both dissapeared,

and then I was in my kitchen and I was really upset and angry so I chucked this butter knife at the kitchen counter and it bent and was like what the **** is wrong with the US why would they do this!? and then [username 2] (Yeah I know we've barely ever talked even on this forum,) you were were in my kitchen as well and said something silly like 'Now you know how we (US citizens) feel all the time.'

Then cut to various scenes of sad people that I used to know and his mum standing in my old uni crying. Hugging a made up daughter.

So yeeeaaah. That's the last time I give you amunition by making a thread subconcious.

edit: I checked his facebook after this and he's ill. I'm totally psychic (not) if he dies now from a cold I will secretly blame myself forever. Stay strong guy I never spoke to much.

I've also had many dreams where guys I've been attracted to or recently had some romantic interaction with have been attacked or abducted etc. One time I was about to have a threesome with a famous musician and this woman who is in his live band, and then some men broke in and tied up the guy so I started to escape with the woman, but then I thought I had to go back and save him so I went back and opened the door to the room and he was tied up on this chair I think then I woke up before that went further. Many dreams where I'm trying to save someone but usually wake up before there's any conclusion. I think that was partly influenced by often wanting to help someone (specific) who I couldn't help. The precursor to some of these dreams was sexual or romantic so that's related too but it wasn't always. Also this will sound insane but I have a theory that some of that maybe dates back to playing Abe's Odyssey when I was a kid lol. But it's also just a subconscious millennial thing maybe because of the media:



Jordan Peterson is playing into that too lol when he insists that feminists in the West should save women all around the world. (Though I believe his motivation is more to get them to stop complaining about Western men.)

There was some really weird dynamic I noticed earlier today on twitter when I stumbled on some random discourse (this is tangentially related but takes a little while to get there.) I don't know fully what was going on or how it involved men at all but there was this woman I think who kept making false fundraisers and then some other woman had uploaded videos pointing out how she was fake etc and whether or not she was correct I don't know either because I don't know what's going on and someone compared this woman to justpearlythings which is never a good thing regardless - that really wasn't the interesting part.

The interesting part was that in response to whatever was happening for some reason a bunch of black men were commenting on how a white woman was protecting them. But they were doing it in a kind of trying to make black women jealous way again. Because on twitter black men and women are often at each other's throats in a way that mirrors white men and women. So sometimes I see the equivalent to what white western men do where they talk about how they're going to get an East Asian or Eastern European wife but with black guys talking about preferring white women, and black women doing the same with white guys sometimes too.

Uhhh ohhh white women are involved now.. it's going to get ugly here soon.

YT women protecting black men. Love to see it

YT always just makes me think of YouTube lol. YouTube women.

damn.. a white woman protecting black men before black women ??? OOF 😶

Crazy how it takes a white woman to protect black men

YT women are now protecting black men. Black women will cry and I love to see it. They will learn by force.

YT women protecting black men and the black women wonder why the black men hang with the YT women

I don't know why there's so many of these comments..

Some black women were annoyed with all the comments saying stuff like 'you're grown men why do you need a woman to protect you?'

Also some of the other stuff getting posted was really bad. Like a guy posted a bunch of tweets from various black woman to showcase how black women hate black men, and I'm not even going to talk about those tweets. It got dark.

Anyway this is kind of novel lol. And I'm very fascinated by the chaos of online discourse and tribalism at this point. Especially as it relates to sex and relationships. Oh no really someone is even making this argument in another twitter thread lol:

It's literally that whole stereotype that White women are submissive they're "trained" to be wives from a young age & Black women we are seen as independent don't want to be led we are raised in houses where we seen our mothers do it all so we don't like to be told what to do.

Said no else ever about white women lol.

I'm getting conflicting messages.



There's a meme made by some incel I guess where there's a drawing of a white guy with an East Asian (I think Chinese based on dress,) woman saying 'let's have lots of children' and a bunch of white women in some kind of crab pose holding black babies and a bubble saying 'autistic screeching' Then there's a caption saying 'the age of white women is over' lol.

I stumbled on that meme while trying to see if the meme image I ended up having to make myself already existed.

You all need Panacea because Jesus can't fix this nightmare.

Why do I keep staring at trainwrecks/the abyss? I don't know. I'd probably press the electrocution button at least once. Well maybe not - I'm less into physical pain lol.

Imitation of life
Like a koi in a frozen pond
Like a goldfish in a bowl
I don't want to hear you cry

The track's title comes from Douglas Sirk's 1959 film of the same name and is used as a metaphor for adolescence and adulthood.

Now I'm using it as a metaphor for the internet. Though black mirror still works best.

The millennial urge to post resonating song lyrics on Twitter like it?s MySpace, MSN or early 2000's Facebook.

*everywhere.

But yeah the thing I said about the vulnerable racial minority category. That's part of the appeal probably. For some white women. Like the 'white saviour complex.' I think that's mostly sexless but I also imagine this kind of thing appeals to anyone who likes raceplay and has a gender role reversal fantasy too.

I disagree with Jordan Peterson a lot and also think he's driven largely by his emotions and he said the piece about feminists in this weird, angry, resentful bitter way in the interview:



It actually reminds me of the voice he puts on when he's talked about male feminists and other left wing men he has issues with who he compared to rapist orangutans (which is up there actually again with his comments towards feminists.) He's scared of them too. He admitted that before. He actually said he finds 'sjw women' (for lack of a better term he didn't say feminists and it's possible he was talking about any leftist female activists really, and maybe even trans activists,) annoying but the men there made his 'blood run cold.'

But he might have just wanted to provoke feminists into action or something with that statement. Or to try and distract people from their focus on white Western men (most likely the latter.) Weirdly there's a part of the same interview (I think anyway) that someone clipped where he discusses how dangerous and threatening and devouring he finds feminists and similar women while later bringing up that point about thinking feminists subconsciously want to be brutally dominated:



Makes it seem more like a projection of his own desires in a sense. Especially as he's previously said he has no idea how you communicate with women past a certain point because violence is off the table (it isn't, but I guess it is in his moral code that a lot of but not all guys follow.) So basically he's scared of women. I don't blame him.

The comments on that lol:

I have thought this for years... It gives a strong impression that feminism is a purely western drive.

I agree, in recent years it seems that it has gotten more prominent in the west

Wtf did I just see

These idiots just ignoring feminists elsewhere too (these are the same guys who think all non Western women are submissive ahahaha,) and yet they do exist. I spoke to a Russian radical feminist online. Putin declared feminism an extremist ideology lol. Groups like [BEEP] Riot also exist/have existed, though a lot of these people have had to leave Russia and have been imprisoned etc. These guys don't mean feminist when they say feminism either because there's the ideology and self identity and then there's just dominant women who might have similar or overlapping thought patterns and it's annoying because these definitions are used interchangeably. Eg: by some definitions I would be considered a feminist and by some not. I think culturally we've somewhat separated trans people now though from feminism but the genetic female side of that still gets lumped into feminism sometimes and sometimes the entire movement is as well. Sometimes trans activists are considered men's rights activists as well which is even funnier.

The nisu phenomenon isn't technically feminism (in some sense it's the opposite,) but would be considered feminism by the standards of manosphere thinkers as it involves fucking with male gender roles and it exists in China. Also I think this approach is more successful as it's more subconscious and doesn't necessarily involve criticising people per se (more correct to say it doesn't have to but I'm sure some people do because people in general often criticise types of people that don't appeal to them):

When FiFi, a 21-year-old female college student, first joined a fandom at a younger age, she had a difficult time understanding why male idols were written as women in some works of fanfiction, she told The China Project. "Perhaps that's because back then I had a very fixed understanding of gender. I thought these fans were a bit crazy," she said.

Her mindset changed when she became a fan of Zheng Yunlong 郑云龙, a Chinese singer who shot to fame after appearing in the 2018 HunanTV reality show Super Vocal. FiFi cites two main reasons why she became Zheng?s nisu fan.

"First, he possesses feminine traits that sometimes are more obvious than his masculine traits. Second, his fans are really good at discovering these feminine traits and creating works based on them," she said.

"In 2018 and 2019, most nisu fans rejected the description that they were 'feminizing' male idols," Chow told The China Project. "But in 2021, following the ban on 'sissy men' on Chinese television, they embraced the label of 'feminization' because of the belief that femininity should not be seen as inferior."

I'm sure lots of stuff is happening underground in other cultures that I'm not aware of, and that most Western people aren't aware of.

The West is in denial about this (but I am seeing a gradual move towards acknowledging this,):





Even Jordan Peterson technically:



"And that could easily be one of the things that's fuelling at least some of the tension that's existed and exists now politically between men and women."

Actually no though. I'm sure it has little to do with the birth control pill as those effects haven't been replicated and I've never been on birth control myself.

But in general people here haven't tried to go after people doing this kind of thing yet and obviously conservatives don't have as much power here. Western conservatives go after men directly by criticising them for being feminine, weak etc, but it hasn't started fucking with eg: female and [BEEP] fandom stuff yet online. Do I care? Or do I just want more attractive guys with long hair? Hmm.

"I think nisu is like cosmetic surgery for male idols," Rachel, a 21-year-old college student, told The China Project. She was introduced to nisu three years ago and has been in love with it ever since. "Have you seen these photoshopped pictures of men with long hair? They make the men much more appealing by giving them beautiful feminine features."

The comments on the original Jordan Peterson interview I was watching that was over an hour lol:

I love Jordan P, but he comes so close to the problem and just doesn't follow through. The females are the problem 100%. but he still white knights for them. I understand that the man has to do this to maintain friendliness in the public eye, but how are the females ever going to get the message that they are the problem? A problem mind you that cannot be solved as far as I am concerned. I humbly as you all, is there anything you can say to a female about their behaviour?? You cannot even suggest to them they are even remotely wrong.

JORDAN AND HIS THOUGHT PROCESS OF BEING HUMAN AND RESPECT THAT YOU'RE A GOD MADE PERSON EITHER MAN ♂️ OR WOMAN FEMALE NOT... DEMONIC POSSESSION OF THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY COLLEGE OF WOKE TW∆TS AND CORRUPT PRACTICES OF THE HUMAN RACE...

OK.

I was blown away when I saw this was made in 1984. It's so 90s sounding. They were the future.

It's true.