I’ll take this one since I’m the blog’s resident Jew. Oy vey, where do I start…
SJ community loves to police Jewish identity and silence actual Jews when they talk about their own identities. This usually happens in context of either “Are Jews White?” or “Jewishness is just a religion” conversations. In reality, Jews are an ethnoreligious group that ethnically originated in the middle east, and while some ethnic Jews have light skin, it’s actually due to centuries of forced assimilation in European and Slavic countries through rape, which is a big reason why Jewishness is matrilineal. Furthermore, there exist Jews who do not look white at all. There are black, brown, and asian Jews who are all ethnically Jewish, and these conversations erase them.
“Jewish privilege”. Fact: It’s not a thing. It’s actually a very common anti-semitic trope that says that Jews run everything so they are not oppressed. Jews are oppressed, and face anti-semitic violence.
“Anti-semitism is not just about Jews, there are other semitic people.” While yea, there are other semitic people, the term “anti-semitism” was created by Germans in the 19th century to refer specifically to the hatred of Jews because it sounded more scientific.
Blaming anti-semitic violence in Europe on the actions of Israel. I see this literally every single day on this site, and it’s very upsetting. Jews that live in the diaspora are not responsible for Israel’s actions, and especially should not be suffering at the hands of white people in Europe under the guise of anti-zionism.
Finally, and this is a big pet peeve of mine. The only people I ever see reblogging posts about anti-semitism are other Jews. Even a lot of my non-Jewish followers will reblog posts about racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. but ignore posts about anti-semitism, and that as a Jew makes me feel unsafe.
That’s enough for now. If you’re interested in learning more about Jewish identity and anti-semitism, you are welcome to check out my personal blog: yochevedke. I discuss that stuff a lot.
-Yeva
Another Jew reblogging about anti-semitism. I’ve seen some increase in concern about this from goyim, but it’s been slow going. Hopefully we’ll pick up a big head of steam soon.
“The only people I ever see reblogging posts about anti-semitism are other Jews. Even a lot of my non-Jewish followers will reblog posts about racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. but ignore posts about anti-semitism, and that as a Jew makes me feel unsafe.”
the amount with which this point in particular resonates with me is unreal
The bold is especially important.
I don’t think I suffer a lot from anti-Semitism, and I certainly don’t face anything close to the degree of oppression that many of my peers have to face because of their gender and sexual identity and the color of their skin. That being said, The previous posters are absolutely right on all counts.
Again, The only people I ever see reblogging posts about anti-Semitism are other Jews, while many blogs I follow reblog every post under the sun relating to racism, sexism, and homophobia. This issue has on occasion made me feel pretty isolated, because I have seen a lot of people reblogging posts related to recents events in Gaza that reflected extremely anti-Israel points of view. There’s nothing wrong with that, people have every right to hold those opinions, and I even share some of them. However, as the original poster said, a lot of recent anti-Semitic violence in Europe stems from the the willingness of anti-Israel Europeans to hold Jews in the Diaspora responsible for the actions of the state of Israel. This is not ok. This is anti-Semitism, and this is part of what American Jews are seeing as anti-Semitic in what tumblr users say and do.
The average American Jew on tumblr doesn’t think “I support what Israel is doing in Gaza, and the horrible things people say about Israel are anti-Semitic attacks”.
The average American Jew on tumblr thinks “I don’t support what Israel is doing in Gaza, and even though there wasn’t a single popular protest in Europe over civilian deaths in Syria, Libya, or elsewhere in the Middle East caused government violence, but as soon as Israel did it Europe was outraged, and tumblr exploded with anti-Israel posts covering the protests and Israel’s actions.”
Fantastic points. Bravo everyone.
I, as a non-Jewish person, probably don’t reblog enough about anti-semitism, so here’s a great post from Jewish tumblr peeps with some excellent points about anti-semitism and systematic opression of Jewish folks, so, read up, folks.
~Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria– is an extreme emotional sensitivity and emotional pain triggered by the perception that one is being rejected, teased, or criticized. The emotional response is complete with suicidal ideation and people suffering from RSD often get misdiagnosed with serious personality disorders. RSD is only seen in people with ADHD and the emotional sensitivity/reaction is much more severe than that of a neurotypical person.
✦Some other fun ADHD things!
~inability to regulate emotions
~no concept of time
~noticeable public stimming (resulting in stares from neurotypicals)
~no impulse control
~insomnia
~listen but cannot absorb what is being said
~no volume control
~increased inability to focus when emotional
~difficulty stopping a task and transitioning to the next
~social anxiety
~higher levels on generalized anxiety
~extremely forgetful
~”all or nothing” mentality
@ neurotypicals- some things to be aware of:
– you cannothyperfixate. only people who are neurodivergent can hyperfixate. please don’t use that word when describing your latest obsession 🙂
– please don’t stare at neurodivergent people who are stimming in public
– be respectful of those who actually need fidget toys so they can subtly stim in public
– if we forget something you tell us it is not because we don’t care, we just have a million other thoughts racing through our mind and no way to filter through them.
– please be gentle with us. no don’t tip toe around us and treat us like we aren’t human, but be aware that even offhand comments can trigger RSD. no we aren’t being too sensitive, our brains are wired differently than yours.
ADHD also can have weird as heck coping mechanisms like:
– always talking in a monotone voice because expressing any high state emotional arousal (really happy, sad, excited, angry, etc) causes you to be loud and get in trouble in class
– procrastination
– seemingly crying all of a sudden for no reason, except there’s been loud noises/bright lights/whatever that neurotypicals just don’t notice
– you forget your keys, your umbrella, your wallet, and your life’s purpose in one night. Don’t worry, you know eleven things about blue lobsters. Your wall is sticky notes. Your binders are sticky notes. You always forget at least one thing.
– having a routine that is set in stone for every morning
– having an entirely different routine every morning because you always forget to do something before you leave. The time it takes to walk back to your room is factored into how long it take to get ready.
– quadruple checking everything because you forget the information your just absorbed a literal second ago
– studying way more than others or way less than others for the same results
Also:
– the reason neurotypicals don’t hyperfixate is because hyperfixation caused me to sit in my room for an entire day and a half without eating because I was doing something I needed to focus on and getting food would interrupt that. I didn’t sleep that night. Hyperfixation is a “maladaptive” behavior, and is often seen as Too Extreme and Unhealthy. Lots of people experience varying levels of it though- or not at all. If you think you’ve experienced a period of time like that, you should fill out one of those self surveys for ADHD and probably depression. Hyperfixation can cause major issues fulfilling basic life tasks and learning to deal with it can be very important.
– ADHD has three subtypes; inattentive, hyperactive, and mixed. Some ADHD people fulfill the stereotype of talking fast, getting distracted by anything, etc. Some people will space out at a moment’s notice, and information goes through their brain like it’s a sieve. A majority are mixed, which includes enough symptoms of each type to be diagnosed as both. This means ADHD people will almost never have symptoms that you expect, and you can’t really diagnose ADHD people yourself unless you have some very intimate knowledge of all their difficulties in school, home life, etc. On top of that, coping mechanisms like the ones I just listed above make it even harder to tell if someone has symptoms in the first place, and there are as many of them as people with ADHD. So please, please, don’t use “ADHD” as an adjective unless the person already identifies with it.
– “no impulse control” often leads to doing/saying things that are regretted immediately which is partially why social anxiety, higher rates of depression, feelings of isolation, and RSD exists. The thing that probably would have saved people from mountain lions or bullies actually is pretty useless in most other situations.
– sorry for the clicky pens but I actually have no regrets
ANY TIME SOMEONE SHAMES YOU FOR WRITING FANFICTION
REMEMBER THAT THIS
IS FANFICTION OF THIS
THIS
IS FANFICTION OF THIS
THIS
IS FANFICTION OF THIS and Plato’s Ring of Gyges
AND THIS
A MODERN AU OC-CENTRIC VERSION OF THIS
EVERYTHING IS FANFICTION OF SOMETHING, WE ONLY CARE THAT IT’S GOOD AND MAKES US HAPPY
The trick about fic is the individual spin each writer puts on the material. Different writer = different spin. Take five writers, give the all the same legend, ask for a 5000 word short story and you’ll get five different legends.
This whole “trust Tumblr blindly” thing is eventually going to kill someone, as I became pointedly aware of on one occasion I was making fun of how poorly a particular bleach-based drain declogger was working on my sink and got a chorus of really dangerously misinformed people telling me to pour vinegar in after it because all cute little cool kid diy home care blogs they’re following talk about vinegar like it it’s the big secret the cleaning companies don’t want you to know.
And I cringed knowing that someday, some Well Actually expert who read a blog article once is going to give that advice to someone who unfortunately didn’t take high school chemistry and isn’t aware that MIXING VINEGAR AND BLEACH MAKES CHLORINE GAS.
holy fucking jesus tits reblog to save a life
MY TIME HAS COME! Tabby’s gonna show you all the ways to NOTdie horribly in your own kitchen.
First thing: Chlorine gas is deadly. It’s also known as mustard gas. Why am I bothering to tell you this? Because people seem to see “chlorine” and assume it’s the stuff that kills germs in a swimming pool and go “Nah, I’ll be fine.” NO!!! That is
calcium hypochlorite. Ca(ClO)2, or sodium hypochlorite NaClO (aka BLEACH).
NOT THE SAME AS CHLORINE GAS. They will not kill you in minutes the way pure Cl2
will.
See the Cl in NaClO? That’s a chlorine atom. You want it firmly locked in with its buddies at all times. Under no circumstances should that nasty little bitch be on its own, because it is starving for electrons and will react with the moisture in your lungs to get them! What does that do? It leaves HYDROCHLORIC ACID IN YOUR LUNGS. Nobody wants that. You die. Don’t do it!
So! That said, time for some life-saving chemistry:
Never mix bleach with vinegar. It frees up the chlorine atoms and you will not like having acid in your lungs even a little bit.
Never mix bleach with ammonia-based cleaners, like Windex. This will also produce chlorine gas.
Never mix bleach with rubbing alcohol: it yields a whole bunch of compounds that can damage your kidneys, liver, nervous system, eyes, lungs, or just straight up kill you.
Just don’t mix stuff with bleach, okay????
Never mix hydrogen peroxide with vinegar. They clean things well on their own, but they do not play nice together. They make parecetic acid and it will burn the crap out of any soft tissue it touches. Like eyes, lungs, inside your nose.
Never mix two different brands of drain cleaner. Depending on what they’re made of, sometimes they can produce what chemists call a “strongly exothermic reaction,” and the rest of us refer to as “a fucking explosion.”
Also, just for the record, this one isn’t deadly, but it pisses me off: a mixture of baking soda and vinegar is touted as some floofy, natural cleaning agent all over Pinterest and whatever, and I’m sorry, but that’s total bullshit. When you mix them you produce sodium acetate and water. That doesn’t clean your kitchen any better than a damp sponge would. Just use the sponge. Vinegar alone is a great anti-microbial, and baking soda alone is a gentle abrasive for stubborn spills. But together they’re just dirty water.
Reblogging with an addendum about chlorine gas because I keep seeing people reblogging this and saying shit like “Chlorine gas is a myth,” or “it will just hurt you and not kill you, it happened to my sister.”
There is a thing called dosage, people. You can technically eat a nonlethal dose of fucking cyanide, but that doesn’t make it any less toxic as a substance. When you mix bleach with stuff you have NO way of knowing what kind of dosage of chlorine you will get.
Chlorine gas has an extremely high LD50, meaning that it doesn’t take a very high dosage to kill. And even if you get lucky and you aren’t exposed to a lethal dose, you are STILL at risk of getting serious damage from HCl (hydrochloride acid) in your lungs. Your lungs will scar. Scar tissue doesn’t exchange gasses like lungs are supposed to. This means breathing issues for LIFE. I’ve seen it happen. It’s not worth it, guys. Also remember that a nonlethal dose to you may still be lethal to a smaller living thing like a child or a cat or dog.
I don’t care if someone’s brother’s cousin’s former roommate got exposed and they’re okay. That just means they were stupidly, ridiculously lucky. You have no way of knowing how large a dose you will get when mixing random chemicals in your sink. Please do not play chemical Russian Roulette in your kitchen!!
I’ve taught chemistry for years and I’ve seen and heard some shit. Do not mix bleach with anything but water. Seriously.
I hate when men smirk and gloat and say shit like “Women are attracted to powerful men,” like that negates any feminist impulse, like they think that at the heart of all women is this little, mincing girl that wants to be dominated.
I just roll my eyes because, dude. If you ever read the second half of any fucking harlequin novel ever, and saw how the hero always ends up blubbering on his knees and saying shit like “I can’t live without you! You unman me!” you’d realize that being attracted to powerful men is just the first part of a two-step plan.
The second step is to completely fucking annihilate him.
Apparently this is the most important thing I’ll ever say.
*clears throat* Allow me to quote Jayne Ann Krentz:
“In the romance novels … the woman always wins. With courage, intelligence, and gentleness she brings the most dangerous creature on earth, the human male, to his knees. More than that, she forces him to acknowledge her power as a woman.” (“Introduction” from Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of Romance.)
The romance hero may start as a total alphahole, but by the end of the novel, as stated above, HE HAS TO CHANGE. He needs to become respectful and treat the heroine as an equal partner, otherwise it won’t work. This is why Elizabeth Bennet refuses Mr Darcy the first time but accepts him later. This is what so many people miss. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this post.
Was playing around with the sketchbook app on my tablet. Discovered a couple cool effects by accident (the best way). Discovered another interesting effect sorta on purpose (it did what I was aiming for in the end so it totally counts)
Decided to use it with a quote from @deadcatwithaflamethrower because I have had this idea in my head for months and no way to make it happen properly. It is now better than originally planned. Even with my crappy handwriting for anything other than caps
YEP, KEEPING IT.
The Organization for Transformative Works was founded six years ago, because fans realized that owning the means of circulating and distributing fanworks—the servers, the interface, the code, the terms of service—would be essential to the long-term health of fan creativity, and so we created the nonprofit, donor-supported Archive of Our Own. Today, when I talk about the importance of fan writing, I don’t just mean fiction and nonfiction: I mean contracts and code. In the old days, fans self-published their fiction (and put it under copyright, asserting their ownership in their words), they distributed their own VHS cassettes and digital downloads, and they coded and built their own websites and created their own terms of service. Today, enormous commercial entities—YouTube, Amazon, LiveJournal, Wattpad, Tumblr—own much of this infrastructure.
This is a very mixed bag. On the one hand, these companies’ products and interfaces have made it infinitely easier for the average fan to connect with other fans and distribute fanworks. Now you only need a username and a password to get started, where before you needed access to server space, a knowledge of HTML, how to use FTP, and so on. However, there are also various dangers, including not only capricious or exploitative terms of service but simple market failure. None of the companies I just listed has anything like the track record of the average fandom or fannish institution; consider how much younger they are than Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, or even Supernatural fandom. In the best case, these companies may fail and become a disruptive force in relatively stable and long-term communities; in the worst case, they may exploit and betray their users.
In the past few years, the nature of the arguments I have been having as a fandom advocate has changed: In the past, I found myself arguing for the legitimacy of our works; now, I find myself arguing against their exploitation. The commercial ownership of the infrastructure means that money has now complicated fandom’s gift culture, and, like it or not, we now have to think about who should benefit. Here, too, there is a spectrum: Some grassroots creators don’t want to engage with the commercial world on any terms (and they should have the right not to); others feel that if someone is profiting from their works, it should be them, and it should be a fair compensation. If the relationship between fans and the commercial world is being renegotiated, we’re going to have to apply some of our creative energies to writing contracts as well as fanfiction, rather than let unfavorable or disrespectful terms of authorship be handed down to us by corporate owners.
Oh. Hey. That’s another thing about ageism in fandom-
How many of you have looked around at the fic and art being created by your fellow fans and looked at your own and winced, wondering how all of these other people could be so GOOD AT IT, and whether or not you should just give up now ‘cause you “clearly” don’t have the same talent as they do?
Chances are, if you’re a teenager, the works you are looking at were created by someone six to fifteen years older than you. They probably fell into fandom at about your age, and the works they produced at that time probably looked a lot like the ones you’re making now. They aren’t naturally more talented than you- they’ve just been working at their craft for far longer.
KEEP THE PEN IN YOUR HAND. You can be as good, or better, than ANYONE you see out there. I promise you, anyone you’re a fan of had a point in their life where their work was far less impressive than yours. You just need time, and practice.
And remember, we love this stuff for the same reasons you love this stuff.
That’s why we’re here.
Exactly this.
The shit I wrote at age 15 was terrible, but I was enthused so I kept at it. And kept at it. And now I seem to have forgotten to stop.
Anyway: Keep writing. Get yourself a good beta and a good cheerleader. These can be both, but a good beta will make you be a *better* writer. If your writing doesn’t improve after six months, if they never point out any errors or things that need to be fixed at all and you’re still not happy with your writing, keep your cheerleader and find a better beta to match.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 