Petition to refer to TERFs as FARTs, which stands for Feminist Appropiating Reactionary Tranaphobe
“Trans-Exclusionary-Radical-Feminist,” when you think about it, is a VERY kind term. To be called a TERF is for the person to admit that they still consider you a feminist.
But what kind of feminist excludes so many women from their movement? If you hate so many women for what they are, you really don’t deserve to be called any kind of feminist, radical or otherwise.
Anti-trans people: Stop calling us terfs it’s insulting
Sometimes i think about the idea of Common as a language in fantasy settings.
On the one hand, it’s a nice convenient narrative device that doesn’t necessarily need to be explored, but if you do take a moment to think about where it came from or what it might look like, you find that there’s really only 2 possible origins.
In settings where humans speak common and only Common, while every other race has its own language and also speaks Common, the implication is rather clear: at some point in the setting’s history, humans did the imperialism thing, and while their empire has crumbled, the only reason everyone speaks Human is that way back when, they had to, and since everyone speaks it, the humans rebranded their language as Common and painted themselves as the default race in a not-so-subtle parallel of real-world whiteness.
In settings where Human and Common are separate languages, though (and I haven’t seen nearly as many of these as I’d like), Common would have developed communally between at least three or four races who needed to communicate all together. With only two races trying to communicate, no one would need to learn more than one new language, but if, say, a marketplace became a trading hub for humans, dwarves, orcs, and elves, then either any given trader would need to learn three new languages to be sure that they could talk to every potential customer, OR a pidgin could spring up around that marketplace that eventually spreads as the traders travel the world.
Drop your concept of Common meaning “english, but in middle earth” for a moment and imagine a language where everyone uses human words for produce, farming, and carpentry; dwarven words for gemstones, masonry, and construction; elven words for textiles, magic, and music; and orcish words for smithing weaponry/armor, and livestock. Imagine that it’s all tied together with a mishmash of grammatical structures where some words conjugate and others don’t, some adjectives go before the noun and some go after, and plurals and tenses vary wildly based on what you’re talking about.
Now try to tell me that’s not infinitely more interesting.
While I think it’s great seeing all the excitement and press coverage about India legalizing gay sex, I think it’s really important to remember that this is NOT India progressing due to Western influence. This is India decolonizing.
The homophobic statute that was overturned is a product of British colonialism in India. Prior to that, India had a rich and vibrant queer community that played important functions in society. There were queer Hindu gods and hijras serve as an example of how queerness in society was venerated. This is not something to patronize India over and congratulate ourselves in the West for. This is a victory for India reclaiming their culture.
Delicious Fish 