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Y'know all the Gen Z folks online who oversimplify the entire world and all morality into a binary oppressor and victim dynamic which...just doesn't reflect reality?

Which routinely regards murdering, raping, suicide bombing, gay-hating, misogynist terrorists...as the good guys?

Want to know how they developed this particular set of cognative distortions?

This worldview, often seen among Millennials and very common among Gen Z leftists, was produced by the corruption of a good and useful bit of critical theory meant to address nuance, complexity, and compassion: intersectionality.

Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, intersectionality began as a way to explain how different forms of discrimination overlap and interact, especially for Black women who face both racism and sexism in ways that neither anti-racist nor feminist frameworks alone fully addressed.

So, for example:

A white woman might face sexism but not racism.

A Black man might face racism but not sexism.

A Black woman faces both, and often in compounded ways.

This seems like a helpful way to understand complexity in lived experiences, right?

Because it is! It's fantastic and appropriate and necessary! Sojourner Truth brought it up in 1851.

So late Millennials and Gen Z college students were exposed to sloppy versions of Crenshaw's thesis and, like a lab leak, the idea spread beyond academic critical theory into activist and online spaces...where it began to mutate into something else entirely.

Instead of just understanding overlapping disadvantages, intersectionality became a kind of oppression calculator.

People began to stack their marginalized identities in a way that assigned moral authority. The more marginalized identities you hold, the more your voice is prioritized.

If you have "privileged" identities (white, male, cisgender, etc.), you may be expected in leftist spaces to sit down, shut up, and only listen.

The problem: it is awfully illiberal to grant agency to (or take agency from) an individual based on their group association.

(Liberals recognize that as old fashioned bigotry masquerading as justice.)

Oppressor/Oppressed

So this framing helped flatten the complexity of individuals into a binary of oppressor or oppressed, based solely on which and how many marginalized identities one can claim.

This inevitably led to hierarchies of victimhood in which competing identities are ranked to determine whose suffering is more valid.

Leftists seemingly trade memes like the one below without irony:

That's the origin of Oppression Olympics.

This is where it went completely off the rails, with some movements and organizations deciding that only those with certain identities or performed political perspectives should be permitted to speak.

But...what if you're not a holder of one of these victim identities? Well, if you belong to a privileged group, you're now the proud owner of collective guilt and are held responsible for the system of oppression...even if you've personally done nothing wrong.

This made it easy to turn entire groups, millions of complex people in varying and nuanced circumstances...into simplified moral symbols.

If a group is judged powerful or privileged, it (and anyone associated with it) is an oppressor.

If a group is judged marginalized, it becomes the victim.

Wait, though - it gets worse.

Once this kind of "intersectionality" (which no longer resembled Crenshaw's) became part of the social media discourse, algorithms boosted simple, emotional content that aligned with the victim/oppressor binary. In social media, engagement is everything, and it distorts everything.

Gen Z folks are particularly susceptible to these distortions because they have spent most of their lives soaking in performative social media activism which offers a (wrong but) clear, simple, binary moral compass in a world which otherwise feels messy, confusing, and overwhelming. This gives them the opportunity to express solidarity with those who suffer injustice, which makes them feel like they're good people for siding with the good people against the bad people.

So intersectionality went from "people are complex" to "if you check [X] boxes, you are righteous, and if not...you're complicit."

Intersectionality started as a tool for empathy and nuance, helping us see how systems of oppression intersect and interact. This, I want to repeat, is great.

In social media activism, though, it got flattened into a worldview where people and nations are judged morally and collectively based on their group identities and perceived power.

You know how you can tell that this isn't really justice? Justice is rarely so simple, binary, and completely devoid of nuance.

Okay, so there's the mindset of the Gen Z leftist. Let's look at how they apply it to Israel.

The many and complex facts and long history of the Arab/Israeli conflict don't fit neatly into this framing, so the narratives must be re-written to cram them into the shape such leftists demand:

Palestinians = oppressed

Framed as an indigenous, stateless people living under military occupation and suffering from systemic discrimination, they are exclusively innocent victims without agency who need the good people of the West to save them from...

Israel/Jews = oppressors

Cast as a colonial, European, settler colonialist, imperialist, racist power, seen as inflicting structural violence on a vulnerable population.

And because these leftists don't read history (just memes and TikTok), they believe this oppression has been going on from time immemorial.

(That's perhaps part of where they get the idea that "Palestine" is an ancient civilization.)

This framework, this need to be on the right side of a false binary requires them to aggressively ignore, bury, appropriate, downplay, or invert all Jewish historical trauma, indigeneity, and security concerns...all to make a complex set of circumstances fit into the box of their simple moral binary.

Think about it. Isn't that the content of most of the ugly comments you get from them? Simple, moral binaries which aren't supported by facts, evidence, or reason?

(Yes, the far right Gen Z folks do the same thing for different reasons and in a mirror...where victim and Oppressor switch places. That's how we get cishet white Christian males who are certain they're being oppressed, but that's a topic for another time, maybe.)

Israel as White Colonial Power

Israel is increasingly racialized as "white" or "European," despite its multi-ethnic population (including ~50% Mizrahi/ Sephardi Jews and ~20% Arab citizens).

Zionism, instead of being recognized as a liberation movement for Jews after ~2000 years of genocides and ethnic cleansings, is recast as an extension of European settler colonialism...despite Jews being undeniably indigenous to the region and never meeting the definition of 'settler colonialism.'

The term's definition, the leftists realize, must be changed so they can cram Israel into the oppressor box! It's become a common tactic.

Remember when Amnesty International could only try to make "genocide" stick to Israel by changing the definition of genicide?

Remember when Ireland demanded that the ICJ change the definition of genocide for the exclusive purpose of slapping that label on Israel?

Its still effin' ridiculous, but at least this finally explains their cognative distortion of reality: They must distort reality in order to feel okay about themselves.

Palestinians as Eternal Victims

Palestinians, to be crammed into this framing, are depicted as having no agency, portrayed solely as victims of Israeli evil.

Violence by Palestinian actors (terrorism, 138 suicide bombings, incitement...October 7th...) is justified, excused, or omitted as a "reaction" to occupation. They're oppressed, say the leftists, so they bear no responsibility for their choices.

Like children. Infantilizing, isn't it?

Power is Oppression

Israel's military, economy, and alliance with the US make it the powerful party and therefore the oppressor. Why?

Because the framing requires the more powerful side to be morally wrong...even if it is acting in self-defense.

Not satisfied with ordinary Jewish Erasure, this victim/oppressor framing erases:

Jewish indigeneity to the land.

The Holocaust's role in accelerating global Zionist momentum after WWII

The ethnic cleansing of 850,000 Jews from Arab lands, most of whom went to Israel.

~2,000 years of Jewish ethnic cleansings and genocides.

This false binary requires that Jews be racialized as white and labeled privileged.

De-legitimizing the oppression of Jews usefully de-legitimizes their right to self-determination.

So history, facts and reason are set aside, any attempt to bring nuance to the conversation is shut down, any fact or point of view shared by an Israeli or a Jew is obviously a lie because Jews, remember, are oppressors. As a result, any defense of Israel is framed as siding with oppression. (As has been the case so many times before, Jews are just wrong and evil and will therefore be condemned regardless of what they do.)

Again, think about it. How many times on Tumblr have you seen a reasoned defense of Israel and the response from the tankies is something along the lines of 'you're lying and defending genocide?'

The victim-oppressor lens simplifies the complex, long-term Israel-Arab conflict into a grotesquely, dishonestly simplified morality play with a powerful villain and a powerless victim.

That's why kids who claim to care about justice do shit like this:

Understanding how they got like this is just the first step.

The next question is:

Can they be de-programmed?

Thoughts?

אם היה יום שמיני בשבוע, מה הזברה הייתה לובשת בו?

(לצורך העניין יום המנוחה הוא עדיין יום שבת)

אני מצפה לתמונות להמחשה.

וואו קיבלתי את כוח 12 באירוע לבני ובנות מצווה בעבודה של אבא שלי והייתי כזה: מה אתם מנסים להכריח אותי להיות דתיה?

אז תרמתי את הספר ושכחתי מקיומו עד לרגע הזה עכשיו

ספר ישראלי אהוב?

.

I know I've talked about this before, but I love the idea of the doctor and the master regenerating together in mysterious circumstances, and having the audience be kept in the dark about which one's which for an episode or three

Okay but whats another term for this position of power? Prime Minister. And who was a prime minister? Harold Saxon, better known as the master

Mrs Flood called herself the governor. What’s a governor? The head of a governmental body of a particular region. What’s another term for this same position of power? A president. And who do we know who’s been the president of gallifrey? Romana.

It's interesting how the same Jews that were systematically murdered by Europeans for their ethnicity, magically became European colonizers when they rebuilt their own country in their historic homeland so they won't get murdered.

According to the antisemites cosplaying as human rights activists.

You know, the ones who are currently silent about the Druze, Christians and Alawites being murdered, raped and taken into slavery by islamists in Syria.

Unlike them, Israeli people are not silent and the Israeli government is helping them - the wounded Syrian Druze are being treated in Israeli hospitals right now, the IDF is actively backing up the minorities in Syria & preventing the terrorists from massacaring them, Israelis are raising money to send to families that were harmed.

Meanwhile, the "peace activists" are like "haha there is a fire in Israel lol hope they all die"

There are people who risk their life to save lives and there are people who don't have a life because they are too busy wishing death upon others. Supporting terrorists is the perfect activity for the latter.

Is is just me or is the #unitislying thing REALLY sounds like the free palestine movement?

Fucking conspiracy theorists. Mmm HAmaS AreN'T TerRoriSts THeY'rE FReEdOm FigHtERs

Yeah okay. Just close your eyes then

And if anyone wants to tell me in the dms about how I'm wrong, I can send you all sorts of academic papers about the Israeli-palastinian conflict. So hit me up! My dms are open to anyone who genuinely wants to listen and talk :)

I think the main reason I'm a bit let down about the well's monster reveal is that midnight wasn't so much a monster-of-the-week episode than it was a study on human behaviour, especially in high-stress environments.

the well had it's own story to tell. in fact, I really enjoyed it, especially how it incorporated a deaf character into the narrative and explored her isolation when people turned her back on her, disallowing her the ability to lip read or sign. the fact that the monster on her own back would sooner kill if she was to do the same thing speaks volumes, it was a really poignant message.

in fact, it was such a poignant message that I sort of fail to understand why we needed the story to have any connection to midnight at all. the monster worked in such a different way from midnight that it really wouldn't have been noticeable if they took out the parts that tied the episodes together.

midnight stood strong as a stand-alone, it didn't need any further examination or lore because it was never about the monster to begin with. adding any depth to that doesn't improve upon the story, it just waters it down.

in short, I really liked the themes of this episode, I just think it would have worked better with its own monster, instead of borrowing from one that needed no further development.

Am I the only one that was not terrified enough by the midnight thing? It being behind you is so much less scary then it being IN you, a perfect mimic, even better than you at being you. Terrifying. I had the midnight thing in my nightmares. This is just very scary, not so terrifying it makes your skin crawl.

people will say "why cant the eldritch gods just be nice to humans :((" and then kill a bug for existing near them

מה??? אני הולכת בירושלים, חיה את החיים, ופתאום נופל עליי חול מצינור שיורד מאחד הבניינים. אבל רגע. זה לא חול. אולי נסורת? לא. זה קמח מצה. ועכשיו יש לי קמח מצה בעיניים. הצילו

Reminded me of something so storytime:

*Family dinner*

My brother: lol like that time I got hit be a car

Everyone: WHAT

Brother: yeah like two months ago. There's a GIF *shows us GIF of security cameras catching him getting hit by a car*

Us: are you okay??

Brother: yea the girl that hit me didn't ever talk to me afterwards lol

Us: ???????

It was an accident :(((

When I was 3 years old I went to a preschool that had this little green crocheted crocodile finger puppet that was my absolute favorite toy to play with of all time. I named her Chelsea, because Chelsea starts with C and crocodile starts with C and more often than not wild animals in fiction aimed at kids have names that start with the same first letter as their species. I played with Chelsea every day, because she was my favorite toy, and because the other kids weren't really interested in her, and also because I eventually started to hide her in a special secret spot in the room so no one else would find her before I did. She was so beloved by me that when I graduated from preschool, my teachers gave Chelsea to me permanently, because it was clear no one else would ever love that little crochet crocodile as much as me anyway (in part because I hid her). They waited a few weeks after I graduated before doing it, too, and sent Chelsea with some post cards as if the crocodile had been on a whirlwind "travel the world" vacation before deciding to come live with me.

And Chelsea remained my favorite toy all through my childhood. There were others I loved nearly as much, like my Imperial Godzilla and the big red T.rex from the first Jurassic Park toy line and my tiny knockoff plush Charmander, but Chelsea always held the place of honor in my heart. She was my absolute favorite toy.

I kept a lot of my favorite toys through adolescence, even if social pressure eventually got me to give away a lot of them (and some, y'know, broke). That's obviously not surprising to you if you've followed my blog, since I still collect toys into my adulthood. But it's important to note because while I know I made a conscious effort to never throw out Chelsea every time I pared down my collection... at some point, she went missing.

I became aware of it when I graduated from high school. I was feeling really emotional about leaving that stage of my life and, y'know, becoming an adult and shit, and in that state I decided to find Chelsea to reassure myself that I hadn't entirely left childhood behind. But Chelsea wasn't there. No matter how hard I looked, I could not find Chelsea anyway.

And that was, like, devastating, because the only explanation was that somehow, at some point, I had accidentally tossed her out with some other "childhood junk" while trying to grow up and be responsible in my teen years. I had literally thrown away my childhood in a careless attempt to be more grown up.

Of course I knew she was just a toy - nothing more than some yarn twisted together in the loose shape of a crocodile, lifeless and soul-less and more or less worthless in the objective light of day. But she was also Chelsea, my best friend since i was three, my stalwart little pal, a source of comfort for most of my life at that point, and I had just... tossed her out! Like garbage! What kind of person was I becoming if I could do that to my best friend?

I was very visibly distraught, and my mom noticed. Being very crafty, she tried to find the pattern for Chelsea so she could knit me a new one. The problem is, she had no idea where to find said pattern. She checked all her books of crochet patterns, and when that failed she tried the internet, but no matter how hard she looked, she found nothing.

So my mom found the next best thing.

The original Chelsea was a tiny finger puppet, and I had "met" her when I was three. Well, I was eighteen now - shouldn't Chelsea have grown too? And as has been established, this crocodile was fond of whirlwind vacations. My mom found a pattern that looked as much like Chelsea as possible while also being a much bigger crocodile, and gifted her to me before I left for college - to show that while we can't stop the flow of time or how it changes us, that doesn't mean we have to leave it behind.

And yeah, I decided to believe it. That's Chelsea now. Yeah, I know that in reality it's a completely different set of yarn made by my mom rather than... whoever it was that crocheted the original Chelsea, but then, Chelsea was never really the yarn. She was the feelings I put into the yarn, you know? So that's Chelsea, all grown up, and still my most prized toy.

...

Flash forward... Jesus, eighteen years, holy shit. A few weeks ago I saw a post trying to identify a different crochet crocodile pattern, and thinking it was cute, I decided to try and look for it on ebay and etsy, just to see if maybe I could find it. I didn't, but do you know what I found instead?

A very familiar crochet crocodile finger puppet. An intensely familiar one, you might say. Of course I bought it. And of course I asked the seller if, perhaps, they might have the pattern for it or know where it came from (they did not, alas). And after a few days, she showed up at my house.

She's not Chelsea, obviously. For one thing, she's far too clean and fresh looking - Chelsea was very well loved, and looked the part, while this crocodile finger puppet has definitely not endured years upon years of a child's affection. And, more importantly, she's not Chelsea because we've already established that Chelsea grew up into a bigger crochet crocodile. This has to be Chelsea's younger sister, Cici.

And if I could find another of Chelsea's kind after all these years, then maybe, with a bit of luck, I might find the pattern for her, and be able to make more of them. Fill the world with Chelseas.

Casual reminder: If someone asks to kiss you you should NOT SAY SURE. You should WANT IT!!! If you don't want it DO NOT DO IT.

Here's the story of how I learned I was aro.

Me: hmm I think I'm aromantic... but also this friend of mine is kinda cute.

Me: do you wanna date? I might be aro though if it bothers you

Boyfriend: yes. Let's date

Me: hmm I feel kinda bad with dating

Boyfriend: kiss?

Me: ...ummm sure?

*kiss*

Me: shit that was terrible

Me: let's break up

And now I think I might need to try dating a girl just to be sure (while she knows!!! Very important to tell people you might break their heart and let them choose when they know that.) but like... nah. I think I'm sure

Here's the story of how I learned I was aro.

Me: hmm I think I'm aromantic... but also this friend of mine is kinda cute.

Me: do you wanna date? I might be aro though if it bothers you

Boyfriend: yes. Let's date

Me: hmm I feel kinda bad with dating

Boyfriend: kiss?

Me: ...ummm sure?

*kiss*

Me: shit that was terrible

Me: let's break up

And now I think I might need to try dating a girl just to be sure (while she knows!!! Very important to tell people you might break their heart and let them choose when they know that.) but like... nah. I think I'm sure

פגשתי אותם כשהייתי בכיתה ו'. כן יש עובדים של חברת החשמל שהעבודה שלהם היא לדבר עם ילדים כשהם בתחפושת ענק של שקע ותקע. קצת מפחיד כי יוצא שהתחפושות הן בגובה של כזה שני מטר.

Sometimes I just cant get over the fact that the mascots for the Israel Electric Company are a gay muppet couple with a baby

How the hell did I get caught up in an argument about Dick's skin tone again? 😭

DRAW HIM ANYWAY YOU WANT, AND LET ME DRAW HIM ANYWAY I WANT.

Modi'in.

Okay but what is the worst city in Israel?

I was about to say that I am confused because I am Ashkenazi and we use both dates and apples but now I remember that one of my gradmas doesn't use dates. So ig we eat both?

fun(?) fact: i somehow only found out about non ashkenazi charoset last year (despite living in israel my whole life) when i tried the ben and jerrys charoset ice cream

this was not a pleasant experience cuz i dont like dates and i really like apple charoset 😔

Ddba is so. Fucking. Good. It has many problems but this episode was almost perfect. Literally the only thing that bothered me is that the roses are blue (roses can't be blue. You can dye them but not on the bush). Literally how is this episode so perfect. No spoilers but god. The parallels. THE PARELLELS.

List of parallels (no spoilers)

Matt | Foggy (yes. I did cry.)

Matt | Fisk (a classic)

Matt & Heather | Fisk & Venessa (classic 2.0)

Matt | Venessa (this is new and exciting)

Heather | Fisk (aAAaaa this is incredible)

Venessa | Fisk (expected)

Bonus: BB | that police dude

"In another life, you may be defending me. That's what a good man does. Defends his worst enemy" you don't fucking understand how hard that line goes when you know that Dex isn't Matt's worst enemy. Fisk is. And Matt defended his worst enemy. Because that's what a good man does

they're fun to draw

קניידלך זה מעולה אבל החלק הכי טעים במרק בפסח זה פשוט לשבור מצה למרק

אני אוכלת מציה לארוחת בוקר כל יום בפסח ועד גמר המצות. מציה זה הכי אחי

עוגת מצות זה גרוע. עדיף מצה עם שוקולד.

Frank Castle being the only other person aside from Karen and Matt to mourn and be outraged by what happened to Foggy was not what I was expecting. In fact his outward anger at what happened to Foggy nearly rivaled Matt's.

His relationship with Foggy was testy at best--so to hear him actually call Foggy by his name and say he deserved better was very gut wrenching.

I don't even know if he ever spoke Foggy's name until Born Again, but the way he did it and the reverence in which he did was something else.

He compared Foggy and Foggy's death to his own child, and a need to exact vengeance.

I'm fully against making judgments of shows without having the final product. Like, this might be target towards Daredevil Born Again people, but we don't have enough to consciously say the show is bad or amazing.

I don't lean either way before having the full product because it doesn't feel conductive and my opinion might change lmao.

From what I've seen so far, I has some issues but is not nearly enough to be called a bad show and again, it feels way too early to be saying that.

This show was reworked a lot, we are getting through the midpoint and season 2 will reach the final arcs, I don't expect the show to solve everything now or to deal with everything now, how could I?

That's just my personal opinion but I needed it to say that.

Every time I see muse I think about my friend who did artwork with period blood. And my other friend worked with mixed media and cut herself on a shard of glass she was adding to a canvas, and then had drops of blood all over that part of the canvas. She ment to add fake blood anyways (and she did on top of it). And like dude you can steal women's menstrual cups and use that blood. Or like out of date donated blood. Or animal's blood. No need to kill people. Talk about an overkill

So i Got a freecard to draw anything I wanted in art. I was thinking Bucky, but I have this big piece in mind, and I don’t have the time for it. So Muse it is!!!