Notices by CJ "siege" Bellwether (siege@masto.hackers.town)

said it before, will say it again

if you look at ai image stuff and think "wow this looks great"

you are on the digital visual appraisal level of a grandma in 2001 thinking clipart and wingdings looks great in an email chain.

anyway, the whole shebang of Organic Fascism and orgs like the british Soil Society is the primary one that comes to mind when i see people throw around the phrase "you are not immune to propaganda" - because its one that most of us grew up in without really ever thinking about and its still not ever been addressed publicly - its just quietly hidden under the rug, waiting.

Its in articles suggesting that you should try yoga or sea swimming instead of medicine.

and for trans people its in a lot of people around you wringing their hands about nebulous concerns for your body.

That to choose to change your body would be somehow very bad.

To tamper with what you were "given at birth", it would make you unpure from some greater plan of a higher being which is always fun coming from people who dont believe in god.

It would be a sin of vanity, a sin of nature.

a very middle class guardian readership idea of blood purity.

anyway ramble over - just as a proviso to all of this, none of it was to plant a flag against things like spiritualism and beliefs about your body. Im not a devout anything and continue to exist in the "whatever works for you" box.

If you want a more hands on activity in playing "is this organic fascism?", check out the british soil association's web page, marvel at the wholesome aesthetics, and then try to find mention of exactly WHO founded the org and what their motivations were.

Surely not -that- soil right? it was just Lady Balfour and these nameless friends, some other folks, you know, people, fancy fun other people, who's to say.

oh thats ok, Wikipedia has who founded it.

oh my!

Soil indeed.

so yeah - not immune to propaganda.

look how wholesome Soil can be!

in the UK, unmasking the scooby doo villain is pretty farcical because who owns the land, oh its literal Lords, Ladies, Princes, Princesses and Kings.

and below that its a lot of multi millionaires claiming to be working class because they own large farmable land and a ton of very expensive farming equipment and vehicles.

like i notice it a lot these days in small dark jokes that a lot of us say in passing.

The general premise is some form of humans should die so nature can live.

"what one animal would you like to see go extinct? man"

we are already at a zeitgeist that is easy for blood and soil to fester in. Desperation at environmental collapse.

i think the fascism that is harder for people (including myself) to recognise is when it turns up as someone talking about the importance of blood and soil.

like sure those words ring the alarm bell, but if those words instead are talking about how we need to ensure the health of our families through clean organic food - that we need to return to a simple life of nature and farming.

the UK absolutely fails to recognise aristocrats calling for a return to peasantry when its dressed up as enviro

"how did so many people into yoga turn to conspiracy over lockdown?" well its pretty much the above.

I grew up with a chronic autoimmune condition while training and working in the arts and it has always been wall to wall people believing in more woo-type things that are absolutely one step over from concepts of blood purity.

Everything is a toxin, allergy, and negative energy. It's not your white blood cells causing inflammation, its that you're not eating enough organic chia seeds.

Nintendo: we would like you to stop sexualising our characters

Nintendo: in the new pokemon the trainer can transform partly into pokemon, look at this trainer with tentacles!

the absolute omnishambles of a closeted enby asking on the trans uk subreddit if its ok for them to do a few weeks paid design work for the Harry Potter TV show.

so many people bending over backwards to say its ok because 'someone else will do it if you dont'

weasels, absolute spineless weasels.

For every person who turns down working for that dead horse, that weighs on the minds of those trying to hire people.

it should be a nightmare trying to hire for a production like that.

And if you're visibly queer, you being there on set gives everyone else comfort that they're ok for having taken the blood money too.

its not gay if you do it in a maze while dracula watches

I've wrote a while back about the idea that every trans person has to do the work in building their own foundation of faith in their identity and how some ideas you might bring to transition when you first come out or grab at early on will not be stable long term.

And you need stability because in the end the biggest threat to your transition is future you.

Youll bring a patchwork of possible ideas and over time as you transition your job is appraising them and discarding the ones that arent stable enough to stop future you from fucking everything up if you were to reach a really dire mental state.

Like some younger trans people might go into transition with the idea "well if i pass then im valid because its all a social construct"

which hey, thats an obvious recipe for disaster.

Theres definitely been a few transmasc people who detransitioned and flipped to being anti-trans quoting they were lied to about how testosterone would make them pass.

Kiera Bell here in the UK said it was she didnt grow tall enough.

Thats weak foundation shit. You made a one legged stool and thought it was stable enough to sit on every day.

To look at a different example:

"Medical transition has made me happier in my body" is a great part of foundation.

But if its your -only- stool leg, you could come to the conclusion "so i have a mental illness / medical condition which needs to be treated but that doesnt mean my gender identity is real".

its why i think things like exclusionary transmedicalist ideas are often a sign of instability of foundation (and why its often people with those ideas who flip to anti-trans)

Being able to look across the entire trans pantheon of identity and recognise we're all connected, and then doing the work to figure out /why/ that is the case is strengthening for your own sense of self.